Is it better to die by axe or machete?

“…The police quickly arrested about 200 people in connection with the killings, and many of them were crouching anxiously in rows on a bare concrete floor, outside the police headquarters on Wednesday morning. The police have confiscated 14 machetes, 26 bows, arrows, 3 axes, 4 spears and 44 guns. Victims, many of them women and children, were cut down with knives, short and long; few survived…” Here.

“Slaughter slaughter by a knoxy daughter”

Rushed today. Condensed text block ahead (see the Sun): Goody squeaker devoted daughter dark fantasies of–rape  fear of AIDS (so many lovers didn’t pull out in time) knoxy knoxy quite contrary killed a girl who wasn’t as scary perfect knoxy performed [sexy?]cartwheels and handstands in the street after murder then kissed boyfiend  [sic] and stuck her tongue out at him French style no doubt loved that machine gun (smiling) ‘You have to show it to them. Trust me’”  (As in murder no doubt) and lied to her mum…….

Note: new descriptive words and phrases from knoxy now possible: inknoxiated… knoxed up…  knox syndrome… committed a knoxy…thrill of the knox…death by knoxy… knox of a crime…………

Update: more knoxy text block coming in as we speak… dreamed we were married …I was leading the tournament [I figure symbol here with horse-race context "best of the runners" ]…I came home…excited to see you  in the bedroom getting fucked by Derek [Jeeter--that's Jeeter as in Jeeter with a peter] and David [Boreanaz]. Some part of me thinks you would like that… I can’t get back to sleep…My body is tired, but my mind is awake. Need an Ambien…” ———–Wait, my mistake, that wasn’t Foxy Knoxy text block stuff… it was Tiger–doin’ it in the–Woods with Jeeter’s peter yeah yeah squeaky cleany Golfer had a dreamee in an  emailee and wasn’t even leery.

Nice to know we’re not alone

Take New York. No, you are not alone, not by a long shot even on these cold, anonymously crowded concret sidewalks. You are among the thousands of murder victims over the last six or so  years. No matter what race, gender or age you are, you’re in damn good social company:

If you’re black then you are among 61% of victims; hispanic, 27%, white 8%; Asian, 4%. Who commits these crimes? Interestingly,  the perps-to-victims ratio is almost exactly the same as that for victim percentage: 61% black; 29% hispanic; 7% white; 3% Asian. As you might expect most murder victims are commited by men, 83%; women–17%. Again the ratio is very close to the victim percentage: 92% and 8% respectively.

Can we conclude that most kill from their own group? Even perp-victim percentages hold up, at least roughly, with age differentiation: Under  the age of 18 the victims were 8%, the perps 9%.

Of course if you’re murdered it doesn’t really matter who from what group did it, or how hold he/she is, or what gender: on the purely personal bottom line you’re dead meat.

You can view this interactive chart in the NY Times.

A fun comparison with numbers

“…Let’s go to the numbers: Caracas, with about 3.2 million people, is in a bloody league of its own, with an estimated murder rate of 130 per 100,000 residents according to government figures. Cape Town is about the same size as Caracas but nearer to Baghdad’s murder rate with 62 violent deaths per 100,000 people. New Orleans, with an estimated post-Katrina population of just over 300,000, is tiny in size compared to its rivals. But the number of murders is huge; figures vary, but even the low estimate puts the city on a par with Cape Town. By way of comparison, Moscow, one of the most violent cities in Europe, has an estimated murder rate of just 9.6 per 100,000 residents. New York City’s murder rate is 6.2, Washington D.C.’s about 32…” Read article here.

The headless state of Mexico

“There’s a peaceful aura about the lifeless faces lined up on the video, death having drained the tension from their cheeks, their eyes wide shut above thick moustaches and square jaws. But as the shot pans out, the horror of their end is revealed: The dead men’s heads have been roughly hacked away from their torsos, which the camera finds hanging upside down across the room on meat hooks, their blood draining away onto white floor tiles…Decapitations have become as commonplace in the increasingly vicious narco turf battles as stabbings are in London. During August alone, gangsters hacked off 30 craniums across the country — adding to the total of almost 200 beheadings in 2008 so far. Heads have been stuck on crosses, shoved into iceboxes and left in car trunks along with snakes… ” Continue reading Time article.