Japan and much of the world is in shock after an arsonist entered a Kyoto animation studio, doused the interior with gasoline and set it on fire, killing at least 33 people and injuring dozens of other people who were in the building.
Kyoto Animation Company (KyoAni), where the attack took place, creates anime and manga, much of it about teenage school life. They are known for paying their animation staff a regular salary, unlike other anime houses that pay a stress-inducing per-frame rate. It's suspected that famed director Yasuhiro Takemoto is among the dead.
The alleged attacker, who survived, is a 41-year-old man. Witnesses say he was yelling about his work being copied or stolen by KyoAni. He did not work for the company.
“I’m speechless,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a tweet. “I pray for the souls of those who have passed away. I would like to express my condolences to all of the injured and wish them a speedy recovery.”
(Tweet translated from Japanese to English)
Image: Kyoto Animation Company Read the rest
It's not often that police will post video directly from the scene of a crime or emergency, but this footage from Nicholasville, Kentucky's Officer Baker offers a harrowing and instructive warning about the dangers of poorly-secured shipping containers in transit. It's hard going: twelve casualties, all crushed beyond human hope. Read the rest
At the BBC: "New details have emerged about the air crash on 27 March 1968 that killed Yuri Gagarin - the first man in space." Read the rest
Richard Swanson, 42, set off from Seattle on May 1 hoping to dribble a soccer ball all the way to Brazil. A truck hit him in Lincoln City, Oregon, less than two weeks into his trip. [BBC] Read the rest
A 6.3 earthquake and one with a magnitude of 7.8 hit Western Iran in the course of just a week. These are largely rural areas, with a lot of mud brick buildings that tend to collapse when the earth shakes. It's hard to say how many casualties there are, in total. Scientifically speaking, the earthquakes were also fairly interesting, writes Chris Rowan at Highly Allochthonous. They happened in different — in fact, totally opposite — ways, with the smaller one happening as plates crashed into one another and the larger caused by tectonic plates moving away from each other. This was along the same plate boundary. How's that work? Rowan has the details. Read the rest
Last winter, I found out something really fascinating: Cows kill more people than sharks. It's true. Here's Popular Mechanics on the statistics:
Between 2003 and 2008, 108 people died from cattle-induced injuries across the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's 27 times the whopping four people killed in shark attacks in the United States during the same time period, according to the International Shark Attack File. Nearly all those cow-related fatalities were caused by blunt force trauma to the head or chest; a third of the victims were working in enclosed spaces with cattle.
Pretty impressive for an animal usually described as mellow and passive.
It also throws some sharp relief on the way we talk about sharks. (And, for that matter, on the way we think about risk.) Much like the dichotomy between not-terribly-dangerous-but-highly-feared airplane travel and highly-dangerous-but-not-terribly-feared car travel, cows sneak in under our cultural radar—they kill effectively and relatively often, while we save up all our terror for the much, much less deadly shark.
I found out yesterday that August 12 through August 16 is Shark Week on the Discovery Channel. So I thought I'd provide a nice counterbalance here. From now through August 18 I will provide you with one example of cow-related killings every day. I should note that I'm not trying to make light of the incidents I post here. These are all very real deaths. People were hurt emotionally and that's not funny. What I'd like to do, though, is use these incidents to get us all thinking about how we assign risk to certain situations, and why some things are terrifying and others aren't and why that distinction is often entirely independent of the actual risks. Read the rest
Four years ago, Jana Mackey, one of my college roommates at The University of Kansas, was killed by her ex-boyfriend. When I lived with Jana, I knew her as a music major and a really fun person. But she had a serious side that came to the forefront over the next few years. Jana went to law school, got involved in domestic violence activism, and became a lobbyist at the Kansas State Legislature trying to bring attention to women's health and safety.
Her work made her death tragically ironic, but it also drives home a point. Domestic violence (whether physical or emotional) isn't just something that happens to the naive, or the weak. It's not something you can write off as "somebody else's problem."
There's a picture going around Facebook right now, of a young woman holding a sign that says, "Society teaches, 'Don't get raped' when it should teach 'Don't rape.'" I think the same thing is true here. There's too much focus on finding reasons to criticize or distance ourselves from women who have been abused, and not enough of a focus on preventing abuse from happening—by teaching kids how to have healthy relationships, by encouraging family and friends to step in when they see someone they know being abusive, and by making sure cops and courts take domestic violence seriously.
Jana's family is trying to rectify this through a nonprofit called Jana's Campaign. The Campaign put out this video last winter. On the anniversary of Jana's death, I wanted to share it with you. Read the rest
Almost two years ago, 21 people died when they were crushed to death in the crowd at the Love Parade music festival in Germany. Now, scientists have been able to pinpoint exactly what lead to those deaths. Here's a hint: It wasn't a stampede, there's no evidence of intentional pushing, and it doesn't look like mass hysteria had anything to do with the deaths. So how did those 21 people die? Physics. (Via Jennifer Ouellette) Read the rest
A long line of climbers follow each other up Mt. Everest. Image: Ralf Dujmovits.
1996 was the deadliest year in the history of modern climbing on Mt. Everest. In one May weekend, eight people died when they were caught on the mountain in a storm. Over the course of the year, the death toll climbed to 15 total.
In the wake of that year, people tried to make sense of what had happened—particularly when it came to the May 10/11 deaths. All the reporting brought some internal mountaineering debates into the public eye in a big way for the first time. Is it really a good idea to treat Mt. Everest as an adventure-minded tourist attraction, suitable for anyone with a little climbing experience and enough money? What are the risks of having lots of inexperienced, guided trekkers up on the mountain at the same time? Do those climbers have enough climbing instincts to make the right decisions about going on or turning back when they're exhausted and under the influence of a low-oxygen environment? What can their guides do, under those circumstances, to force a right decision? Remember: This isn't a place where help is readily available if you get into trouble. Helicopters can only go so high up the mountain. And if you collapse, the chances of somebody else being able to carry you down are pretty slim.
These questions are likely to come back into the spotlight now. Between May 18th and 20th—last weekend—four people died on Mt. Read the rest
