As many of you will be aware, a State Department Official was killed in Benghazi yesterday by a mob of religious lunatics, supposedly incited to violent retalliation to a film that was produced in July which they said insulted the prophet Mohammed.
What most of you won't know is that the person concerned was someone with whom I have, on occasion, interacted in an online 'Internet Spaceships' game called EVE Online, and that person was Sean Smith, aka in-game as 'Vile Rat'.
Vile Rat was a valued member of the Council for Stellar Management, a player-elected committee made up of players which, among other things, act as a sounding-board for the game's creators, CCP, to help shape the continued development of the game.
The CSM's former chairman Alexander "The Mittani" Gianturco has paid tribute to Vile Rat in an article on his blog at
http://themittani.com/news/rip-vile-rat.
I post this here as I know that in most news items, we never get to hear veyr many details about the people who lose their lives in circumstances such as this, and I think that this tribute and many of the subsequent comments goes a long way to giving everyone a glimpse of the person behind the news headline.
RIP Vile Rat