Posts Tagged ‘Murder’
“Warning: this guide contains highly offensive language and discussion of content which may cause offence”*…
Salty language, systematically sorted…
Ofcom [the UK’s communications regulator— essentially their FCC] commissioned Ipsos MORI to conduct research to help them understand public attitudes towards offensive language on TV and radio. This document serves as a Quick Reference Guide summarising views towards the acceptability of individual words on TV and radio…
For example…
And there’s more: other sections unpack the relative offensiveness of “references to body parts,” “sexual references,” “political references,” “references to race, nationality, and ethnicity,” “references to sexual orientation and gender identity,” “religious references,” and “Non-English words” [mostly South Asian].
Public Attitudes to Offensive Language on TV and Radio: a Quick Reference Guide… a report that doubles as a remarkable lexicon.
See also: “Cursing and the Bloody Class Struggle.”
* from the title page of this report
###
As we curse carefully, we might recall that it was on this date in 1888 that The “From Hell” letter was postmarked. Received the next day by George Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, it purported to be from the serial killer we know as Jack the Ripper, who enclosed half a preserved human kidney. The police and Lusk’s group received hundreds of letters pertaining to the Ripper case, many dozen supposedly from the killer himself. The “From Hell” letter is one of the few that has been seriously considered to be genuine.
“Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world”*…
Everybody has a hobby. It can be anything as simple as collecting coins or stamps, partaking in certain sports, whether as a player or a spectator, or even cosplaying, but it can also be a bit more uncommon, like trainspotting, collecting pictures of doors, and rating benches.
Never heard of the last one? Well, then meet Samuel Wilmot, a 23-year-old recruiter from Bristol, England with an educational background in history studies who spends much of his time rating the various benches found around the UK on Instagram…
More at “This Guy Rates Benches All Around The UK And The Reviews Are Spot-On,” and at Samuel’s Instagram feed.
* Oscar Wilde
###
As we lean back, we might recall that on this date in 2012 New York City recorded no incidents of murder, shooting, stabbing, or other violent crime through the entire (24 hour) day.
“Then murder’s out of tune”*…
Thomas Hargrove reviewing notes sent to him by police departments
In 2015, Scripps spun off the last of its newspapers, and Hargrove and the other print reporters lost their jobs. “The only guy who left with a skip was me,” he says. Hargrove, who was 59 at the time and had worked at the company for 37 years, qualified for a large severance and a nice pension, leaving him well-covered. Now he had enough time to go all in on his data project. He founded the Murder Accountability Project, or MAP, a tiny nonprofit seeking to make FBI murder data more widely and easily available…
His innovation was to teach a computer to spot trends in unsolved murders, using publicly available information that no one, including anyone in law enforcement, had used before. This makes him, in a manner of speaking, the Billy Beane of murder…
One might think that there’s a trove of data being crunched by law enforcement agencies across the country to find any clue that might be used to identify the perpetrators of what could be multiple homicides. Thomas Hargrove found out there wasn’t. So he starting building one: “Serial Killers Should Fear This Algorithm.” (Via the always-illuminating Next Draft.)
* Shakespeare, Othello
###
As we track ’em down, we might recall that it was on this day in 2002 that former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic went on trial at The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Milosevic served as his own attorney for much of the prolonged trial, which ended without a verdict when the so-called “Butcher of the Balkans” was found dead at age 64 from an apparent heart attack in his prison cell on March 11, 2006.
“I am convinced that imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve the problem of crime”*…
In 1798 John Neagle, an honest Philadelphia blacksmith, was falsely convicted and incarcerated for America’s first major bank robbery; exonerated six months later, he then became America’s first recipient of a “wrongful imprisonment” settlement from the city. The incredible tale in its entirety (and an explanation of the symbolism in the portrait of Neagle above) at “The First American Bank Robbery Was An Epic Farce.”
* Howard Zinn
###
As we take care not to throw away the key, we might send beautiful– but deadly– birthday greetings to Benvenuto Cellini; he was born on this date in 1500. A Renaissance goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, artist, poet, and memoirist, he was an important figure in the Mannerist period… and as he confessed inThe Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, a multiple murderer and maimer.
When certain decisions of the court were sent me by those lawyers, and I perceived that my cause had been unjustly lost, I had recourse for my defense to a great dagger I carried; for I have always taken pleasure in keeping fine weapons. The first man I attacked was a plaintiff who had sued me; and one evening I wounded him in the legs and arms so severely, taking care, however, not to kill him, that I deprived him of the use of both his legs. Then I sought out the other fellow who had brought the suit, and used him also such wise that he dropped it.
– The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Ch. XXVIII, as translated by John Addington Symonds, Dolphin Books edition, 1961
The Cellini Salt Cellar (or Salteria)
Bust of Cellini on the Ponte Vecchio, Florence
“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece”*…
In 2012, 437,000 people were killed worldwide, yielding a global average murder rate of 6.2 per 100,000 inhabitants. A third of those homicides occurred in Latin America and the Caribbean, home to just 8% of the world’s population. But data on violent death can be difficult to obtain, since governments are often reluctant to share their homicide statistics. What data is available is sometimes inconsistent and inconclusive.
To make this data clear and to better address the problem of global homicide, a new open-source visualization tool, the Homicide Monitor, tracks the total number of murders and murder rates per country, broken down by gender, age and, where the data is available, the type of weapon used, including firearms, sharp weapons, blunt weapons, poisoning, and others. For the most violent region in the world, the 40 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, you can also see statistics by state and city. That geographic specificity helps to underscore an important point about murders, says Robert Muggah, the research director and program coordinator for Citizen Security at the Rio de Janeiro-based Igarapé Institute, in the above-lined story: “In most cities, the vast majority of violence takes place on just a few street corners, at certain times of the day, and among specific people.”
via Slashdot. Explore the interactive murder map here.
* William Shakespeare, Macbeth
###
As we reach for the kevlar, we might recall that it was on this date in 1637 (or nearabouts, as closely as scholars can say) that Cardinal Richelieu introduced the first table knives (knives with rounded edges)–reputedly to cure dinner guests of the unsavory habit of picking their teeth with the knife-points of the daggers that were, until then, used to cut meat at the table. Years later, in 1669, King Louis XIV followed suit, forbidding pointed knives at his table; indeed, he extended the prohibition, banning pointed knives in the street in an attempt to reduce violence.
You must be logged in to post a comment.