Their Pain is what got us here in the first place: that's what I learned from my troll

Here are a few items related to our Detective Fiction themes to kick off the new round on this course:

• Free-floating hate: Jezebel and now GQ writer Lindy West talking about being massively and constantly trolled, and what happens when your troll has a change of heart and takes you inside the trolling mind.  This is a rebroadcasted segment on the always excellent This American Life (first from January 2015). 
• Sexual assault: Propublica did a detailed investigation of an 18 year old woman who accused someone of rape, and then recanted, and then . . . 
• World War on Drugs. From close to home, "Devils, Deals and the DEA."  A must for Chapo Guzman buffs.

Welcome back to the class where there's no clear boundary between fiction and truth

War Comes Home

One of our course themes--and Cause 1 of the Noir crime genre and accompanying social changes--appears literally in the title of this article, "When War Comes Home."  In it, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the story of a horrific random murder committed by a returned vet.  Here an apparent case of PTSD may have been caused by a physical brain injury suffered by Staff Sgt Dwight L. Smith, pictured here, and that went untreated.  It's a story worth reading in part for confirmation of some of our discussions and also for a sense of the ongoing currency of the problem.