America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead
Interesting piece about the evidence that lead exposure and crime reates are highly correlated. I recommend reading it. Although I couldn’t shake the feeling I was being taken for a ride.
A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.
Tag Archives: crime
Yakuza 3 reviewed by Yakuza
I totally missed this until now, but in 2010, Jake Adelstein, author of neato book Tokyo Vice, used his yakuza contacts for the noblest of purposes: reviewing the accuracy of SEGA’s video game Yakuza 3:
M: I like the fact that you power up by eating real food. Shio ramen gives you a lot of power — CC Lemon, not as much. It all makes sense.
S: The breaded pork cutlet bento box is like mega power. More than ramen. That’s accurate.
K: Kiryu is fighting all the time. He’s gotta be a fucking idiot. No yakuza is going to run around getting into fistfights like that. Especially not an executive type. He’ll wind up in jail or in the hospital or dead, maybe even whacked by his own people for being a troublemaker. These days, he’d probably get kicked out before even going to jail. Guys like that start gang wars and nobody wants that now. When a yakuza gets into a fight, it’s serious business.
One of the most amazing things I’ve ever read.
U.S. and U.K. Entangled in Legal Battle to Release Former IRA Militants’ Stories
U.S. and U.K. Entangled in Legal Battle to Release Former IRA Militants’ Stories
Kira Kay reporting for PBS Newshour:
In 2001, a group of academics set out to collect the oral history of Northern Ireland’s combatants, they say to record the truth, before it was too late.
…
Interviewees like William Smith were promised that their testimony would remain confidential until their deaths. And that’s how it went for years, the tapes hidden away under lock and key on Boston College’s campus.
But in 2010, that all changed, after infamous IRA commander Brendan Hughes died and his interviews were released.
…
And then, last summer, a bombshell: The U.S. Department of Justice, acting on behalf of United Kingdom law enforcement, subpoenaed the tapes of several interview subjects who were still alive.
This is a hard one. The piece points out that these legal acts can cause (and, in fact, are causing) future informants not to cooperate. But then, how do you balance the desire and need for justice?
Traveller arrested smuggling live hummingbirds in his trousers
Traveller arrested smuggling live hummingbirds in his trousers
Wil Longbottom writing for the Daily Mail:
This Dutch traveller was caught trying to smuggle more than a dozen live hummingbirds in special pouches sewn into the inside of his underwear at Rochambeau airport in Cayenne, French Guiana.
The birds were individually wrapped in cloth and taped up to prevent them from ‘escaping’ from their sweaty travel container.
There are pictures. Whether you want them or not.
China’s wealthy and influential sometimes hire body doubles to serve their prison sentences
China’s wealthy and influential sometimes hire body doubles to serve their prison sentences
Geoffrey Sant for Slate:
The practice of hiring “body doubles” or “stand-ins” is well-documented by official Chinese media. In 2009, a hospital president who caused a deadly traffic accident hired an employee’s father to “confess” and serve as his stand-in. A company chairman is currently charged with allegedly arranging criminal substitutes for the executives of two other companies. In another case, after hitting and killing a motorcyclist, a man driving without a license hired a substitute for roughly $8,000. The owner of a demolition company that illegally demolished a home earlier this year hired a destitute man, who made his living scavenging in the rubble of razed homes, and promised him $31 for each day the “body double” spent in jail. In China, the practice is so common that there is even a term for it: ding zui. Ding means “substitute,” and zui means “crime”; in other words, “substitute criminal.”
W-w-w-w-what?
“Did I ever lie to you?”
You may have heard that Jerry Sandusky of Penn State was convicted on forty-five child sexual abuse counts last week. I was reading an article on it from the Associated Press in the paper and this passage jumped out at me:
The accuser known in court papers as Victim 6 broke down in tears upon hearing the verdicts. Afterward, a prosecutor embraced him and said, “Did I ever lie to you?”
I kind of choked up a bit.
Justice Breyer’s D.C. home hit by burglary
Justice Breyer’s D.C. home hit by burglary
Bill Mears, CNN:
The Supreme Court confirms the 73-year-old justice’s Washington home was burglarized earlier this month. It follows a February incident in which Breyer, his wife and a guest were robbed in his Caribbean vacation home by a machete-wielding intruder.
I hadn’t heard about the machete incident until now. Poor guy.
Ohio deputy fired for making inmates dance
Ohio deputy fired for making inmates dance
Kantele Franko, Associated Press:
A northeast Ohio sheriff fired a deputy for ordering five jail inmates to dance to a song by Usher in exchange for privileges such as using a phone or microwave, the sheriff’s office said Thursday.
AAAAAARGH
Police spot stolen truck being buried in giant sandpit in New York state
Police spot stolen truck being buried in giant sandpit in New York state
Sean Federico-O’Murchu, msnbc.com:
Thieves snatched a truck from a business in an Upstate New York town — and the evidence almost disappeared into the sands of time.
But a week after it was taken, the vehicle was discovered by eagle-eye investigators flying around Wayne County, according to local media.
“Jeffery Paul was in the process of burying the box truck,” Investigator Corey Black told the Batavia News, referring to the son of David Paul, who owns Country Construction, where the truck was spotted. “He was bulldozing it under in a sand pit.”
Article has a great pic. MY FLAWLESS PLAN HAS COME UNDONE
Facebook ‘friend’ offer exposes man’s other wife
Facebook ‘friend’ offer exposes man’s other wife
Manuel Valdes, AP:
Facebook’s automatic efforts to connect users through “friends” they may know recently led two Washington women to find out they were married to the same man, at the same time. That led to the man, corrections officer Alan L. O’Neill, being slapped with bigamy charges.
According to charging documents filed Thursday, O’Neill married a woman in 2001, moved out in 2009, changed his name and remarried without divorcing her. The first wife first noticed O’Neill had moved on to another woman when Facebook suggested the friendship connection to wife No. 2 under the “People You May Know” feature.
“Wife No. 1 went to wife No. 2’s page and saw a picture of her and her husband with a wedding cake,” Pierce County Prosecutor Mark Lindquist told The Associated Press.
Wife No. 1 then called the defendant’s mother.
There’s a lot more to the story, but I’m ending the quote at this point because this is how it ran in yesterday’s paper. I’m not sure why the editors chose to cut it off at that exact point, but it was a hilarious place to do so.