“Another time a customer who sold me drugs stole a twenty carat emerald ring right off my desk, just put it in his pocket when I was out of the showing room for a moment. I was busy with other things and didn’t realize until he was out of the store. I bluffed him and said “we observed something odd on the security cameras”–we hadn’t replaced the tapes in months–and he brought it back in the next afternoon. Many more stories of this kind.” – Clancy Martin. (More author interviews like this, please.)
“Eric’s was what you would expect. It’s ‘hate hate hate.’ It’s all Eric. It sounds like a murderer in the works. Dylan’s is — he’s literally talking about love on almost every page, and he’s growing up. You can take his journal, and just take your thumb and just flip through it and it will shock you. You see these hearts all the way. It’s like, ‘What is this killer drawing hearts for?’ And they were not ironic or anything like that. He has entire pages filled with hearts. He draws out, literally, the road to happiness, with a dotted line dug down the middle, with a big heart at the end.” – Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, on misconceptions about the most famous school shooting in history.
The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist. (via.)
When I saw this headline — “Downturn may turn techies to crime” — I immediately pictured bloods vs crips gangbanging geek squads. Rather the “credit crunch will drive some IT workers to use their skills to steal credit-card data using phishing attacks, and abuse their privileged corporate computer access to sell off valuable financial and intellectual information, forensic experts have warned…Both PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and security vendor Finjan are forecasting that the recession will fuel a significant rise in insider fraud and cybercrime in 2009.”
2 1/2 years in the slammer for scribbling your name in wet cement? The Boston Globe today reports on strongly enforced graffiti and vandalism laws, “critics say that while a marred sidewalk can be smoothed over, it’s not so easy to remove the scars of an arrest. In making such pinches, some argue that authorities are creating even more desperate people who may see crime as an alternative to being rejected from a job for getting another mark on their records.” Even chalk drawing was cited as “damaging public property.” Do foursquare playing kids need to worry? “City officials answer: Many of them wouldn’t need a permit because they’re on their own private property. But if they’re not, the officials say, they’re not going to get busted, because they’re playing a children’s game.”
“Technology does not change human nature; if anything, it amplifies it.” – Owen Thomas on the Facebook status WTF murder.
“In the previous year, nearly twenty defendants in other Baltimore cases had begun adopting what lawyers in the federal courthouse came to call ‘the flesh-and-blood defense.’ The defense, such as it is, boils down to this: As officers of the court, all defense lawyers are really on the government’s side, having sworn an oath to uphold a vast, century-old conspiracy to conceal the fact that most aspects of the federal government are illegitimate, including the courts, which have no constitutional authority to bring people to trial.” – Washington Monthly. (via.) “None of these arguments had a prayer of overturning the charges. But they had an impact nonetheless. They made a long, complex trial longer and more complex still. Seeking the death penalty is rightfully arduous–it requires legal justifications for the penalty itself, enhanced scrutiny over jury selection, an additional penalty phase after a conviction, and so on. Conspiracy charges create further legal burdens.”
“‘Is this your first time in Detroit?’ Mary inquired. ‘You’re going to love it! It’s just like Paris.’” – Washington Post travels to the “Most Miserable City in America” and declares it “beguilingly authentic — gritty and romantic.” (via.)
Melissa Gira Grant on why a rape survivor might take her case to YouTube rather than the authorities, “when less than 5 percent of rape cases ever make it to prosecution in Crystal’s home state, including her own, a girl might want a broader audience for her outrage.”
“Late last week there were several busts of professional BDSM dungeons here in NYC …which leaves the question: what is ’sex’? How broadly can it be defined? And if a broad definition is used, does this mean that a hell of a lot more acts could be classified as prostitution?” – Naked City
-
A collection of interesting ideas curated by
Joanne McNeil. About ➚
Sponsors
