Whenever I talk tough, and especially when I advocate aggression in the political sphere, my beloved shakes her head and puckers her lips. “My salon warrior,” she mutters as if to herself. In other words, I am all talk. The last time she used this expression was a moment ago, when I made a few appreciative comments about a video clip from Syria, where the combatants from one side in the civil war were throwing their dead adversaries from the roof of a tallish building to the pavement below. There was much angry shouting and occasional bursts of machinegun fire from around the building. To the salon warrior in me, it all smacked of the end of the world. A most happy occasion, that is. Perhaps there is something to my beloved’s assessment, after all. To tell the truth, I would not like to be anywhere near the building in the video clip. Or anywhere near Syria, for that matter.