Sadness: Let me first express my sadness and horror at the news coming out of VA. Tech. I know that when more of the names of victims come out there will almost certainly be families from this area that had a student at tech that is either now wounded or dead. This sort of things sends shocks through me and really penetrates my heart. I empathize with the parents that have lost their children and my heart breaks for them. This sort of things should not happen. Ever.

Numbers: It's weird how numbers work and by weird I mean odd, strange, demented. We live in time where we like to round numbers or where specific numbers aren't important until an event like this. I was at the gym yesterday and when I left my computer and headed to the gym the number said 1 victim dead. Then when I get to the Y the death toll is at 21 and as I pedalled on the bike, in 15 short minutes the death toll rose from 21 to 25 and then suddenly to 29. As I pedaled I was just hoping this was all some sort of misinformation but really knew it wasn't.

Based on the stats at the National Census 7200 people died yesterday in the United States.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

If my math is correct a little more than .1% of Tech students were killed yesterday. In any other situation no one worries about
.1% until something like this happens and it matters the whole world to 33 parents. And in many ways it matters to many millions of Americans. All that to say that every life is important no matter what percentages say.