As it turns out, a student from good 'ole Calvin College was sitting right next to the Nigerian extremist who tried to blow up the plane in Detroit. You can read his whole interview with Chimes, the student newspaper, here.

There were two things I found particularly striking. The student, when he smelled smoke, moved the guy's blanket, sending out a plume of smoke, alerting other passengers to the danger, and perhaps interrupting a process that could have taken down the plane. The student also had this to say about the Nigerian, "He had extremist views and he wanted to kill us all, but he didn’t seem like that bad of a guy."

Hilarious quote on the hand, sobering truth on the other. Extremists are people too. Hatred and clouded clarity strike us all at different times. We would all vehemently argue that we would never blow up a plane full of people, but circumstances are surprisingly powerful. If you could save 1,000,000 people in New York City from a bombing by flipping a switch that caused a bomb-laden plane to divert harmlessly into the ocean but killing all 300 passengers aboard, you would probably think long and hard about the consequences of any action you might take.

The Nigerian probably thought he was helping people too.