We were flipping through the channels tonight after watching a particularly unambitious episode of Nip/Tuck when we saw the news of the bombings of three hotels in Jordan. It is a strange feeling, because this isn’t the first time we’ve been flipping through television channels and have seen news footage of an explosive aftermath accompanied by Arabic commentary and thought, “Shit, was that here?” Since we understand only very little of what is being said, this is generally followed by scrambling to find something on the internet or on an English tv news station (of which, lamentably, BBC World is practically our only resource). But this is the first time I can think of that we’ve thought, “was that here?” and it hasn’t been. I’m just reading and watching the reports coming in now, but this series of attacks is most certainly of a different and more awful strain–by many orders of magnitude–than anything we’ve had here.