It's a Smallish World After Some

Remember that shoe bomber? Well, I'm taking a class and one of my fellow students was a prominent member of Richard Reid's legal team. (I don't know if he was the lead or what, but he did seem to be the one the newspapers quoted.) We had a short interesting chat about how that experience gave him a lot of understanding of Reid's motivations, but that understanding Reid's motivations was no help in understanding the motivations of people who might superficially appear similar (e.g., the three girls who seem to be attempting to join the Islamic State).