Evil Appearing Where You Don't Expect It

In this case, it's the front page of the Sunday New York Times, which yesterday ran a huge, horrifying investigative piece on Internet-based child abuse material (access it through the link in the first paragraph of this story).  I mentioned evil in lecture on Thursday as the bad thing that seems to have (1) no explanation and (2) no cure.  We'll be investigating these features in the course: can we explain the worst things? Can we really not cure them?  (Photo: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.)

One of the lead authors, Gabriel Dance, has a Twitter thread with interesting background, including his own distress while researching and writing the piece.  In one tweet he writes, "every single image or video is documentation of a crime, and all are beyond the pale. i've read descriptions of abuse that were previously unfathomable to me. they've rocked me to my core. they raise fundamental questions about humanity."  Can't emphasize that last sentence enough.  He ends by warning, "this is just the start. we have more coming - lots more. and while it's not easy to read (or write), the @nytimes is committed to this line of reporting. i'm grateful for the opportunity to help children who need it, and to you all for reading."

This is an important piece, but take care reading it, and take good care of yourself.

Slavery and Voting

One of our course's 6 causes of "noir culture" is the legacies of slavery.  Here's one example--Black voting rights--from deep in the heart of Texas. My first teaching job was in Texas (at Rice University in Houston), and I try to keep tabs on the place.  In my experience, Texans were the most hospitable and partying bunch of Americans I've ever lived with.  The politics? another story.

Summer of Blood

This fall, Detective Fiction is yet again going to be wresting with the psychological, political, and cultural factors behind the U.S.'s off-the-charts levels of gun death--far higher than any other country in the world that is not actually at war or in a civil war.  The New York Times has a good overview of the summer's shootings that involved three or more deaths at a time.  26 mass shootings between Memorial Day and Labor DAy left 126 people dead.

I turned the page and there was a new mass shooting in a South Carolina bar that didn't quite make the Times' 3 person cutoff.

I taught this course last fall in the midst of multiople wildfires and the Thousand Oaks bar shooting that affected a number of students in the course. 

Better luck this year. R.I.P to the victims, whom we never forget. Vivos voco, mortuos plango.