Scientists Link Sunlight To Homicide

"Sunlight As Pathogen"
"Sunlight Found To Be Homicide Vector"
"Sunlight As A Risk Factor For Homicide In The Home"
"Shady Or Peril?"

On Aug. 26, 2006, something unusual happened in New York City.

It was a Saturday in the heart of summer, the kind of day that averages more than two homicides. Yet the police reported no killings.

One other thing happened that day: It rained.

In fact, an analysis by The New York Times of rainfall and homicides for the last six years shows that when it rains substantially in the summertime, there are fewer homicides.

When there was no precipitation, there was an average of 17 homicides every 10 days. But when there was an inch or more of rain, the average dropped to 14.

That does not surprise Vernon J. Geberth, a former Bronx homicide squad commanding officer. He said that when there was a downpour, the police would sometimes joke, “The best cop in the world is on duty tonight.”

The story is from last July, but somehow I missed it.

Lost the referring blog. Can someone enlighten (no pun intended) me?

Vanished Persian Army Said Found In Desert

Very cool!

The remains of a mighty Persian army said to have drowned in the sands of the western Egyptian desert 2,500 years ago might have been finally located, solving one of archeology's biggest outstanding mysteries, according to Italian archaeologists.

Bronze weapons, a silver bracelet, an earring and hundreds of human bones found in the vast desolate wilderness of the Sahara desert have raised hopes of finally finding the lost army -- 50,000 strong -- of Persian King Cambyses II, buried by a cataclysmic sandstorm in 525 B.C.

h/t Maddened Fowl.

God Forgive Me, But This Is Funny!

It seems that a fistfight broke out at, of all places, The Washington Post newsroom a couple of days ago and the Usual Suspects (Aka media bloggers) have been having a field day with it.

Politico reports that 68-year-old feature editor Henry Allen had leveled some very harsh criticism on an article written by Monica Hesse, calling it "... the second worst story I have seen in Style in 43 years."

A colleague of Hesse's, Manuel Roig-Franzia, who was working with Hesse on another article, walked over to Allen and told him, "Henry, don't be such a c--- sucker."

Allen swung at Roig-Franzia, landing at least one punch before the two could be separated.

This has lead to some hilarious comments at Politico:

"Calling someone a c--- sucker at the ultra-PC Washington Post? Isn't that a hate crime?"

And

"Heet heem weeth choo purse, Manuel!!"

That's every kind of stereotyping, but still funny! Somebody somewhere is channeling Hank Azaria.

Open Carry Movement In Virginia

The Virginia GOP has, for years, held an important annual meeting at a venue that bans firearms. The Virginia Citizens' Defense League has complained about the poor choice of venue for all those years, without getting any results. So this year they decided to act.

From the Firearms Coalition:

On October 17^th about 250 VCDL protesters gathered in a shopping mall near the Innsbrook Pavilion, the private, anti-rights event center where the annual Republican Roundup was being staged. The well organized protest included a moon-bounce and other distractions set up for the kids, an airplane towing a "Guns Save Lives" banner, and even a hot air balloon proclaiming the same message. Local shops, restaurants, and hotels welcomed the protesters - who were mostly openly carrying sidearms - and even offered special discounts. A good and safe time was had by all.

Nice work!

Nice Shootin', Sister!

Military Police officer Kimberly Munley was directing traffic, heard the shots and entered the building, looking for the shooter. She had recently been trained in an "active shooter scenario". The training involved immediately entering a building where there was an active shooter, rather than surrounding the building and calling for backup. She went in there after him, spotted him coming around a corner, and she shot him four times. She was also wounded, but is expected to recover.

Great job!

Here's an update from the NYT:

Update | 1:30 p.m. A message posted on the Twitter feed @hope2forget30, which appears to be maintained by Kim Munley, the police officer who reportedly shot the suspected gunman and was wounded, contains this a wry answer to the question “What are you doing?”

still recovering from a long night of work from Saturday!

And a correction: I said she was a Military Police officer but she is apparently a civilian police officer assigned to Fort Hood.

The Police Blotter

Two interesting crime stories rise to the surface this morning.

The first involves the unusual death of a Census worker a month ago:

Investigators probing the death of a Kentucky census worker found hanging from a tree with the word "fed" scrawled on his chest increasingly doubt he was killed because of his government job and are pursuing the possibility he committed suicide, law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

His family still strongly believes he was murdered. The deceased's truck was found not far from his body, which raises questions: "If somebody else was there, how did they get away? Did they walk? Why walk when there was a truck there?"

The other story is of the terrible mass-murder in Cleveland. Local folks say the police didn't look into the disappearances of the women because they were poor and black.

Well, OK, you may have a point there.

But the families with missing relatives are reluctant to step forward. Why?

Police say there's only one way for the families of missing women to know for sure if their loved ones are among the victims found in suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell's house: Give DNA samples. But relatives with checkered pasts in the hardscrabble neighborhood seem reluctant to come forward.

People, please! You can't have it both ways. If you want the cops to look for your missing daughter, you have to cooperate. And you can start by at least telling them she's missing.

Census To Count Non-Citizens

That's not big news, really. The Census has always counted non-citizens. The very first Census counted slaves, fer cryin' out loud. The Constitution calls for an "actual enumeration" of "persons", which, the Supreme Court has ruled, means everybody, and it has to be an actual count, not a survey augmented by statistical estimation tools.

Today a Senate committee rejected a bill that would have required the Census Bureau to ask people if they are citizens. Some people saw this as a grandstanding play by the GOP, since it is obviously unconstitutional to reapportion the House except by an "actual enumeration" of "persons" - that cannot be changed by legislation, only by Constitutional amendment.

As a result of counting millions of non-citizens, several states would gain or lose Congressional districts. Projections are that after the 2010 Census, California will gain five new House seats, Texas will gain three, and Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada and Utah will gain one each. Since the number of seats in the House of Representatives is frozen at 435, some states would have to give up seats: Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

In my view, this is the biggest problem with our illegal immigration situation: their vast numbers are beginning to erode the mechanism of representative democracy. I'm not comfortable with the Census asking people about their citizenship, either, but it seems to be the lesser of two evils.

Here is a NYT article on it.

And here is the WaPo reporting on the Senate action today.

What's "aperçus"?

I read it here.

As in:

A more postracially robust version [of "Sanford And Son"] features Sanford père as the genius behind a community-based auction site, with his son, Lamont, the reluctant Webmaster. Think of the opportunities for fleet-footed banter and sophisticated, pun-based aperçus. Like “Frasier,” but postracial.

Ramblin'

On the web I found a local bicycling club that makes and publishes turn-by-turn routes in the Northern Virginia area. Yesterday I selected a 34-mile ramble that includes Lake Barcroft and Lake Accotink, and crosses the Capitol Beltway twice. It's a combination of rolling hills through quiet suburban streets, connected by bicycle trails (some paved and some not) and parks. I used this as a sort of orienteering exercise as much as anything else. Including the ride to and from my house, it was a total of 50 miles. I started at noon and didn't return home until after dark; more than six hours of pedaling. I probably burned over 3,000 calories.

I only averaged about 8 mph due to the hilly terrain and frequent stops to check directions - there are about a hundred turns with directions like "BR TRO Queensberry 0.3 L T@SS Bristol", i.e. "Bear right to remain on Queensberry Drive for 0.3 miles, then turn left onto Bristol Street at the stop sign at the T intersection."

Had a blast! Got stopped by a Fairfax County patrol car; the officer admonished me for deliberately and flagrantly running a traffic light (guilty!), but fortunately it was only a warning and I didn't have to surrender my piece. Brother! That would have been an imbroglio!

Here's a GPS map that I made along the way. The route begins in Bluemont Park in the Seven Corners area and proceeds clockwise. The yellow lines indicate where the GPS unit "lost lock".

Elvis Molests Nun, Escapes In UFO

From today's "Yeah, Sure" file comes this report of a home invasion in Detroit:

Home intruder shot, killed in Detroit

A 67-year-old Detroit man said two robbers may have been after his gambling proceeds before one of them was shot dead on the city's west side this morning, according to police. The elderly man who was shot in the shoulder by a gun pulled out during an ensuing struggle, told police two robbers broke into his apartment door at 6:15 a.m. Investigators on the scene this morning said they found scales, baggies and other indications of drugs in the apartment. One of the robbers, a 45-year-old Detroit man was shot. Investigators are still searching for the other suspect.

"But, your Honor, surely the thieves brought the scales and baggies with them!"

Seriously, though, still dealing dope at 67? That's my definition of "gambling."

Link.

Shooting Back

Author Charles Remsburg interviews firearms instructor Dave Spaulding in Remsburg's new book, Blood Lessons: What Cops Learn from Life-or-Death Encounters, available from Calibre Press.

[Police Officer] Katy Conway, in her twenties and still fairly fresh to patrol, had just pulled away from the stationhouse in her marked unit one winter night when a stranger with a boom-box flagged her down. “He ran up to her lowered window, dropped the ’box, pulled a .357 magnum, and shot her point-blank multiple times,” Spaulding says.

“The highest round struck her vest, but others drilled into her pelvic area and thigh, bad wounds. She was momentarily in shock. He yanked her door open, shoved her into the passenger seat, and started to drive off.

“She radioed for help on her lapel mic, her voice exceptionally controlled. He told her, ‘Bitch, shut up or I’ll shoot you more.’ But she was the one who pulled the trigger. She was able to reach her 9mm and she blasted him into oblivion.”

Spaulding says she later told him: ‘I knew someone was going to die that night, and it wasn’t going to be me.’

More here.

Faster Than A Speeding Bullet

Ammunition sales up 42%, says the Washington Post. The stuff is just flying off the shelves.

The Post points out that these increased sales of ammo and guns are coming at a time when violent crime is low and actually declining, drawing the inference that gun owners are acting irrationally.

Yet the Post is quick to offer sympathetic coverage (and editorial endorsement) to every slipshod academic study that links increases in violent crime to increases in civilian firearms ownership.

Cheney, Wilson, Novak and Perjury

Sounds like a law firm, but the AP has an article up about a summary of an FBI interview with VP Dick Cheney back in 2004. They were trying to figure out who leaked Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak. Lying under oath to a federal agent is a crime, and to avoid it, deponents are advised to say they "don't remember" rather than flatly deny something. And the AP article takes Cheney to task for this:

Cheney's denials that he talked about Plame are among the few things in the lengthy interview with the FBI that Cheney appeared certain about. He repeatedly said he could not recall key events. Among them, he said he did not recall discussing Wilson's wife with Libby before her CIA employment was publicly revealed by conservative columnist Robert Novak in mid-July 2003.

Problem is, we now know that Cheney's answers were mostly truthful: he was asked if he mentioned Valerie Plame's name to Karl Rove. He answered that he didn't remember mentioning her name to Rove. In fact, it now seems certain that he did not mention her name to Rove. The AP article sounds skeptical; how could Cheney not remember these key points? Well, the obvious answer to that is that we now know that these things never happened. Cheney never mentioned Plame's name to Rove, so how could he be expected to "remember" something that never happened?

The AP article never mentions Richard Armitage, the man who was the real source for Novak's article. It was Armitage who told Novak that Plame was a CIA analyst; not "Scooter" Libby, not Cheney and not Rove.

Cheney did the right thing by saying he did not remember giving Plame's name to Rove; after all, if Rove had told the FBI that Cheney did in fact give him Plame's name, and the prosecutor decided to believe Rove, because it moved the ball down the field, then Cheney could be charged with perjury, even though he told the truth.

Ridiculous article that conceals as much as it reveals.

Here's a link to the CNN story in which Armitage admits all.

Nation's Boyfriends Reluctant to Move In

h/t TSLR.

It's A Corvair, That's What It Is!

I drove one of those things once. This one must be, oh, forty-five years old.

Spotted this one in my 'hood this afternoon.

Two Views On Afghanistan

And they're pretty much the same:

What if we shrink our presence in Afghanistan? Won’t Al Qaeda return, the Taliban be energized and Pakistan collapse? Maybe. Maybe not. This gets to my second principle: In the Middle East, all politics — everything that matters — happens the morning after the morning after. Be patient. Yes, the morning after we shrink down in Afghanistan, the Taliban will celebrate, Pakistan will quake and bin Laden will issue an exultant video.

And the morning after the morning after, the Taliban factions will start fighting each other, the Pakistani Army will have to destroy their Taliban, or be destroyed by them, Afghanistan’s warlords will carve up the country, and, if bin Laden comes out of his cave, he’ll get zapped by a drone.

I beg to differ. I think that when bin Laden comes out of his cave and declares victory, he'll immediately be murdered by rivals, saying, "Who are you to declare victory? You hypocritical, cowardly bastard! You hid in a cave for eight years while we did all the fighting!"

Link.

And this:

The highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.” He went on to request extra troops and equipment. “Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time,” he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union’s Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

Link.

From My Cold, Green Hand ...

Would a cup of Starbuck's be sufficient to cause Margaret Hamilton to melt-down? Not if she had her flintlock!

"Alcohol Is A Stupidity Force-Multiplier."

Quote of the day, from TOTWTYTR.

(Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire)

Crunchy 5.56-millimeter Goodness

A Marine's account of an ambush in Iraq:

I flipped the selector switch on my M-4 rifle from SAFE past FIRE to BURST. I had never been allowed to use BURST mode during training. This seemed like an appropriate time to start. I peered through my EOTECH optical sight, looking for the source of the fire. I heard a Marine from First Recon open fire with his M-249 SAW machine gun from the roof of the house, applying 800 rounds per minute of crunchy 5.56-millimeter goodness to some unknown target. From my vantage point I could only see some houses about 300 meters distant, but no muzzle flashes or indications of the gunfire. I considered putting suppressive fire on the rooftops of the buildings, which was the most likely location of our assailants. However, I could not positively identify my target, and our rules of engagement required that before I opened fire.

NYT.

Intergalactic Race Ends in a Virtual Tie

Albert Einstein still champion.

Astronomers said the gamma-ray race was one of the most stringent tests yet of a bedrock principle of modern physics: Einstein’s proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, or energy; direction; or how you yourself are moving.

NYT.