the counted

I am a huge fan of the Guardian's interactive database "The Counted" which has listed all people who died at the hands of US police since the beginning of 2015. It goes to show what a powerful statement you can make just by compiling data.

No matter if you look at the stats per time (3 people killed every single day) or per population, with vast differences according to skin colour, or if you read individual stories behind the photos. Whichever way you look at it is deeply distressing and very powerful.

Set against the dark mood, I was a tiny little bit cheered to see that the total number of deaths has dropped slightly in 2016 against 2015 (1091 and 1146, respectively). While both numbers are equally horrifying (for comparison, the equivalent number for Germany, with 1/3 of the population, is typically in single digits), I'd like to think that the 5.5 % decline is due to the growing awareness thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and also perhaps thanks to the monitoring efforts of this database. The relative incidence of deaths among black citizens has also dropped from 7.69 per million to 6.64 (white: 2.95 to 2.9). Still scandalous but at least moving in the right direction. So maybe compiling data can save lives.

On the other hand, Native Americans have suffered a much higher incidence of police killings than the previous year, which might support the argument that historic crimes are allowed to continue under the cover of law enforcement.

screenshot taken on Jan 3rd. Update: checking back on Jan 14th, the count has gone up to 1091. I've updated the figures above, but the conclusions still hold.

dial M for Milly

Dial M for Murdoch

Tom Watson and Martin Hickman

Like many others, I suppose, I only really started paying proper attention to the phone hacking scandal when the Milly Dowler story broke on July 4th, 2011. Until then, the hacking saga was mainly about royals and some football people being hacked, and I’m not interested in either group of people, and didn’t have a high opinion of the papers involved and their editors to begin with, so there was no surprise element. The Milly moment changed everything, as it demonstrated very clearly how the tabloid folk trampled even on the people they pretended to stand up for (such as victims of crime). And it was immediately clear to me (if not to Rupert M) that this time they would not get away with it.

Luckily, a few brave investigators and reporters including the authors of this book and the Guardian’s Nick Davies pursued this story relentlessly from the beginning and worked hard to make the rest of us pay attention too. For us who missed all or parts of the beginnings, this book is a great way to catch up with the story and learn how all the different threads, including not just the phone hacking but also an unsolved murder case and multiple cases of police corruption, fit together and feed into the tangled web of inquiries we are witnessing today.

Up to and including the Milly moment, the book reads like a gripping thriller, as the quest for the truth looks very much like a lost cause for the fearless investigators who suspected that criminal actions were widespread at NI but couldn’t prove it yet. After the closure of News of the World, as our heroes are clearly on the winning stretch, the book loses momentum a little bit. It quotes from relevant inquiries in detail, even though at least today’s UK readership will remember the crucial moments of the last few months, so they could have been summarised a bit more concisely. It will be different for readers in a few years time, but by then the book will have to be updated anyway, to include new findings and those that are at the moment blocked by legal concerns.

Those lucky enough to live in a country whose media are not dominated by News Corp can read it as a fascinating tale of media power and corruption, essentially a modern day Macbeth. The moral is, if you give someone a bit of power, they will want more, and they will begin to think they can get away with murder.

amazon.co.uk

PS after posting this review on amazon, I immediately got two "unhelpful" votes, which is very untypical (I've been at 84% helpful votes for years now). I deleted the review and reposted an improved version, thinking maybe it was really not helpful enough, and got a fresh unhelpful vote within 12hours. I can only conclude that some NI-friendly troll is keeping an eye on these reviews and marking down those that praise the book.

not the end of the world

I'm loving the front pages of the UK newspapers today, after the coyote had to bite off its paw to get out of the trap ... Loving them so much I made a little collage:



(I tried a couple of news agents to see whether I could get a proper photo of the papers nicely arranged, but they all had them in very unphotogenic places and arrangements.)

I have to disagree with the headline writers who seemed relish the idea that the NOTW is "the world." I think the world at large will be a lot better off without that paper, thank you very much, and rather than the end, it is hopefully going to be the beginning of a new, better world. I think this is a historic opportunity for the UK to rebuild a democracy where elections are decided by the electorate, not by Rupert M.

PS I'm also blogging and reblogging on tumblr these days - more pics, less text than here, check it out.

nine megabikes at the edge of the Universe

I just found out that my next book is going to come out earlier than I expected, on Feb 23rd. So now I have to get going building a web page for it (under construction here) and spreading the word ...

The book is in German, and it is a collection of my humour and opinion pieces from the last ten years, mostly published in Nachrichten aus der Chemie or Spektrum der Wissenschaft. Some previously unpublished gems are included as well.

The title of the book, 9 Millionen Fahrräder am Rande des Universums (9 million bicycles at the edge of the Universe) comes from a piece I wrote about Simon Singh's objections to the lyrics of Katie Melua's song 9 million bicycles back in 2005. The gist of it is obvious from my letter to the Guardian, which is online here.

The book will look like this:



I love the cover a lot. Never mind the text, buy it for the cover! Oh, and there are 14 cartoons by Roland Wengenmayr inside as well.



PS (4.3.) It's now listed at amazon.co.uk with the correct title!