Dear Boss – Jack the Ripper

These blogs will soon reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper. It will be a shocker! However, once the name and the abundant proofs are presented everyone will say, “That’s obvious. I suspected it all along.” There are so many clues practically screaming the name. Need I keep being so politically correct, leaving it sexless? His name.

The next clue comes from the creation of the name Jack the Ripper. Before this Dear Boss letter this particular set of murders was tagged to an unknown person called Leather Apron, which is mentioned at the top of this letter. However, it is unquestionable that with the publication of this Dear Boss letter that this serial killer became known as Jack the Ripper.

The clues I have been presenting so far have been soft clues but they are facts. At this point I am not even saying that the murder was the person who sent this particular letter. All that is being claimed is that the name Jack the Ripper was created at this exact time and place. I believe that even the most hardened skeptic of my eventual proclamation of identity will agree to the near absolute fact that the name Jack the Ripper did not exist before this particular letter and that after its publication it was widely known.

Another fact is that the writer of this letter was comfortable writing quickly and smoothly in the English language and that he is comfortable thinking in English is shown by the consistently smooth transition from one word to the next. The top several lines are particularly clear this way and the darkening and smearing of the lower left of the page seem to be artifacts of the photographic reproduction.

The Dear Boss letter signed by Jack the Ripper

The letter has a very personal quality about it. It is self consciously challenging, funny, and cute. It is clear that the author wants to be known and respected and is seeking this rather desperate way to gain fame. Of course he didn’t want to be buckled or he would be executed for these crimes so he couldn’t sign his personal name. Or could he? ha ha

This letter is dripping with clues that lead to one man!

A thank you to Nature.

Nature is the source of everything I am aware of and I feel respectful to the grandure of its existence. I recognize that I have come into my present conscious being through the powers and processes that it has provided. I have been wholly created out of its abundance and interact within its constraints. I am made of it. I am part of it. It is all of me. Nothing I can do or become is not latent within nature. What I can do with the opportunities which come to my attention is to make manifest those things which are already there waiting to be revealed. I am comfortable with this. This world is my home and come what may this is my destiny. I belong to this time and place.

The EarthArk Project Goals

EarthArk Project Logo

The EarthArk is a storage place for all of the good things that the Earth has provided and modern humanity has created. It is designed so that when the future brings changes to our present Earth the future people will be able to choose from those things and rebuild the best of what we now have.

The environment is changing, as it always has and it always will, but if we create a place where all of the good things about our present life are preserved then the world that will come into being in the future can become a much better place. For example, if we take small amounts of seeds from our currently vast agricultural supply and also from the wild things and store them in a very cold place they will remain viable for a very long time into the future. The EarthArk Project is an all inclusive plan that aims to ultimately store the genomes and seeds of every species on Earth. Also to be included are examples of modern technology and complete library of books. Because it is impossible to know exactly what will be needed in the future the aim is to store a sample of everything.

Seeds of agricultural plants like rice, wheat and corn will obviously be needed so should be stored in large quantities, including  some of every genetic variety. There should be enough of these commercial seeds to start a really substantial crop. Most of the living things of the Earth are not agricultural crops but these other living things also need to be saved. Every place on our planet has its own unique plants and animals that are adapted to that locality and they need to have their genomes and seeds stored if they are to be available in the future.

The goal of the EarthArk is to store seeds and soil from every square kilometer of the Earth because every place is unique. The way to do this requires that a few people from everywhere to travel about their local area and collect samples. They then deposit them to some local collection place, like a school, which in turn ships these items to a central shipping container. This container when filled is shipped to a designated cold storage spot. The best long term storage places are in Antarctica so the containers will be shipped to the ports on that continent’s shores and taken inland to remote high and permanently cold places.

The total cost for this enormous project is very small in terms of money or effort for any given person because all of the collecting is done by people living near where they collect their samples. The collection samples can be quite small because only a relatively few seeds of any particular item is all that is necessary from a given locality. The containers could be small plastic bags, either discarded local containers or heavier duty specially made containers. Every item should be labeled as to the exact locality where found but this isn’t a severe problem because when brought to the local collection station they will be placed in a larger container which is labeled for its general locality.

The cost of the shipping containers could be paid for by a general plea to the public for money in small amounts or by asking people to will their money, at death, to the project. That would be appealing, because most people want to be remembered for leaving a positive impact on the world. This can be done naming each container with the name of the donor who purchased the container and paid for its shipment. This naming of packages can  be carried all the way to each item which would have the name of the person collecting it. Their names could be attached to the larger package and that list copied onto the shipping container’s manifest. That in turn could be uploaded to a worldwide list of names of contributors.

Many people are interested in helping to preserve humanity and the Earth for the future and this EarthArk Project gives them a very visible and meaningful way to accomplish that end.

Help save the Earth for the future by supporting the EarthArk Project.

William Shakespeare – The Chandos portrait restored.

There is a well known portrait of William Shakespeare called the Chandos because it was owned at one time by the Duke of Chandos. It is available in a large size at the Wikipedia’s article about Shakespeare. I have seen this portrait several times in the past and was always annoyed by the crazed quality of face. Today I eased my annoyance somewhat by spending several hours cleaning up the paint crazing, canvas weave lines and other surface artifacts. From normal viewing distance there shouldn’t be much difference but when viewed up close and more carefully it looks better to my eye after the restoration. I left some of the paint crazing around the figure to add a little detail and depth which seems okay for a painted surface but it’s disturbing when the crazing is on the portrait sitters face.

William Shakespeare - Chandos - National Portrait Gallery, London

Field Guide to the San Andreas Fault – a review

The Field Guide to the San Andreas Fault by David K. Lynch takes us on a tour along California’s world famous fault. It is designed as a guide to be used for automobile travel with carefully detailed instructions on exactly how to get to many outstanding geological features along the fault. The book is  easily understood by the public without many technical terms and with many tables for comparisons with other energetic events.

The book is intended to be used as a field guide and has a spiral binding which in this case is a very good idea because the book will lie flat on the page to which it is opened. The book is clearly thought out as a touring guide but for Americans only because the directions are in miles and the local descriptions are in feet. However, I must complain at this archaic means of measurement when the rest of the world has moved on to the much more reasonable decimal based metric system. But, from my point of view, the book gets worse on this measurement issue. Why was the decision made to use a mixed system of notation for documenting the precise locations? The latitude and longitude numbers are an excellent way of finding things and can be used to any degree of precision desired. But, why scramble undocumented degree notation with undocumented minute notation and then decimalize the undocumented minute notation? It is confusing enough even if it were documented. There are many beautiful photographs such as this one on page 70 documented with this confusing notation.

33.613,-116.005 is a location along the San Andreas Fault.

This archaic notation would have been passably okay if it were properly written out as 33° 36.779′ ,116° 0.324′, 451 feet but even that is unnecessarily scrambled and wrong. It does load properly on  GoogleEarth but only if you insert the missing (-) sign in front of the 116. Without the missing minus sign you end up near Suzhou, China in a farmer’s field. The entire book is filled with this fundamental error, which amounts to several hundred errors. It is easily worked around but you must remember to insert the minus sign every time. Entering the numbers  33.613,-116.005 into GoogleEarth (download the program) is briefer with fewer numbers and much more importantly is fully decimalized and not a crazy mixture of degrees, minutes and decimal minutes, feet and miles.

The whole area near this photographed location is sprinkled with geologically interesting photographs on GoogleEarth which are made visible by checking Geographic Web box on the Layers, Options. While checking your Layers box also click the Street View because then you can tour the next canyon just a bit south at 33.592,-115.978 with 360° street view photographs which also shows some remarkable geographic features.

I physically tour about the world sometimes too but I must instill a little guilt into you people and discourage idly jaunting about just to look at some old rocks. It is better to do as much traveling on your computer as is reasonably possible. So, after buying this book I would recommend going to the locations first via GoogleEarth to see if you really need to go there in your car.

To salve my own guilty conscience on this needless travel issue, I have created some other web sites for virtual touring.

100 Top Museums of the World – with links

UNESCO – World Heritage Sites – with links

However, if you are going on a traveling vacation this tour of the San Andreas Fault would be a wonderful adventure and this book would be a great help in making it a life enhancing experience.

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Have some fun. Fly the length of the San Andreas Fault on GoogleEarth. Go to 38.3496,-123.0674 by cutting and pasting that number into the upper left box of GoogleEarth and then tilt the view by pressing the ^ just under the N in the upper right corner for about 5 seconds or until the horizon line appears at the top of the screen. Click the Terrain option to get a nice simulated 3-D view. Then press the N and pull it clockwise around the circle to about the 7 o’clock position until you are looking straight down the long bay. Place your pointer in the middle of the window and gently pull and release the mouse clicker towards you. With a little luck you will now be flying down the bay like you are in an airplane. You are now flying along the San Andreas fault. You will need adjustments occasionally to keep on the fault line. Just place your pointer in the center of the screen and pull the mouse a little in the way you want to go.

The fault line goes out to sea for a while and then reenters land just south of downtown San Francisco. When you get to long the long San Andreas Resivour you will know you are still on the major fault line. There are other fault lines running generally parallel to this one, such as the Hayward Fault. You will need a little help staying on the fault line.

Why are people good to each other?

Adam Smith and Charles Scamahorn

Adam Smith as a very young man in 1737 went off to University in Glasgow Scotland and soon fell under the spell of a warmhearted humanist professor Francis Hutcheson who believed in the innate goodness of human beings. This was at the dawning of what came to be known as the Scottish Enlightenment when everyone was aflame with intellectual quest. In part this flame was caused by their outrage at the execution of a student, Thomas Aikenhead. Thomas had been walking with some student friends down  High Street, Edinburgh one winter night, and said something like, “I’m so cold I could warm my hands on Hell’s fires.” His friend mentioned this to a priest and Thomas was called on the carpet. After a couple of weeks of haggling over various interpretations of his beliefs, Thomas was executed for blasphemy. Many people of Scotland were outraged at this vicious treatment of an otherwise respectable young man. The controversy created an intellectual fire which has raged to this day, not just in Scotland but worldwide. Perhaps Scotland was at a tipping point with their intellectual quest but when Smith went off to school things like Hutcheson’s lectures were filled with intellectual fire.

Then in 1734 David Hume another student of Hutcheson published his A Treatise of Human Nature which hit all of these Scotsmen as even worse than immoral, like Aikenhead, it was amoral. For Hume, self interest was the ultimate religious sentiment of the human being. Humans have no innate moral sense at all, they have only self interest and people behave as well as we do towards one and another because it serves their own personally perceived desires. The only reason society exists and functions as well as it does is to protect the personal property of its individual members. He saw people as a cesspool of conflicting passions and the function of a society was to channel those passions onto constructive paths. Societies and their governments channel human behavior with the ultimate Golden: Rule: I won’t disturb your self-interest, if you don’t disturb mine. Society is set up to implement this rule.

Adam Smith was stretched on an intellectual rack, being torn in one direction by Hutcheson’s innate moral goodness of humans, a quality given to us by a loving God, and torn the other direction by the non-moral humans described by Hume as being given to us by an uncaring mother Nature. Why are we good? Smith seems to place his hopes on what we now call empathy. We are good to one another because we feel the pain and pleasure of other people and when we help them feel good we feel good. This seemed to weld the two conflicting theories together and find a common ground between them, because both would be satisfied that self interest would feel good and if helping other members of society feels good that would fulfill the need for self interest. This is rather circular but we are dealing with humans and philosophy. We become moral judges of what makes other people feel good by observing ourselves and what makes us feel good. By judging others we place moral strictures upon ourselves and on our own behavior. We seek our own personal approval by behaving in ways of which we approve.

We are good people because we judge the behavior of other people.

What We Know about Emotional Intelligence – Review

Are there underlying human abilities to relate emotionally with other people which are genetically inherited? If there are these abilities, can they be defined, identified, measured and put to good use? And can this newly defined entity, Emotional Intelligence (EI), be given a simple number or other tag? Can there be a simple number for Emotional Intelligence (EI) similar to the one used for measuring human intelligence, the Intelligence Quotient (IQ)?

What We Know about Emotional Intelligence: How It Affects Learning, Work, Relationships, and Our Mental Health by Moshe Zeidner, Gerald Matthews, and Richard D. Roberts

This book explores those questions and others in an effort to determine in a scientifically testable way many factors underlying human interactions. First this book begins with a discussion of scientific methods and a brief description of statistics and how they intend to measure emotions and then there are several attempts to define Emotional Intelligence in a way which can be studied, tested, compared, verified and retested.

This is a very new field of inquiry and they admit early on that they are having trouble getting something really effective going. The exploration starts off seemingly well enough with what they call the five factor model (FFM). 1. Neuroticism – Anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability. 2. Extroversion – Warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement-seeking, positive emotions. 3. Openness – Fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values. 4. Agreeableness – Trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, tender-mindedness. 5. Conscientiousness - Competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, deliberation (from Costa and McCrae 1992). It is said that these are good factors because they offer 1. Heritability, 2. Consensual validation. 3. Cross-cultural invariance. 4. Predictive utility.

It all seems like the field is off to a reasonable start but when they try and define questions and give the questions to large numbers of subjects they don’t get very good results. It seems they get very low correlations between sought for relationships meaning the questions don’t mean much or alternatively they get extremely high correlations which means the questions are too self referential and are not discovering anything. For example, when these tests are set up in such a way as to be self reporting by the subjects on objectively rating their own Emotional Intelligence, using these questions, their scores were not predictive, compared to external observers’ analysis, and even counter predictive. People who thought they were superior were in fact inferior on those measures.

Everyone knows there are differences between people and their individual abilities to cope reasonably with their personal environments but the problem becomes what are these traits and how to label them for study. These scientists were rather condescending toward the common man’s analysis of the problem because the common man can not put their knowledge to scientifically reproducible tests. That may be true but I think the scientists should consider where the heritability of the traits which they seek to study came from. It is those very traits, if they are indeed heritable, which were created by the choices for sexual selection and artificial selection by our human ancestors. Those ancestors were common people and in most ways less informed about how the world works than toady’s common man. If these scientists are to create a verbalized list of traits and questions they should look to those qualities which young men and women were looking for in their selection of mates. If there is a heritability to these traits it is those ancestral people who created the traits. Those traits became part of the human genome because those ancestors valued them.

The scientists who sought for the traits valued by ancient people would find much better success, no doubt, than picking out ones which fit our modern culture.

A photograph of the Ripper in the victim’s eye.

One of the weirdest suggestions for discovering Jack the Ripper’s identity was to look deep into the dead victims’ eyes. The theory was that there would still be an image of the last thing the dead person saw still latent within their eyes. All that was needed was to figure out a method for developing that latent image. That would be similar to developing a latent photographic image from an exposed photographic film.

As with the clues from my previous blogs:

Jack the Ripper pursued by Sherlock Holmes and Dr. James Watson

Why is Jack the Ripper still famous?

This clue leads to one person who is multiply involved with that seemingly innocuous clue.

100 Top Museums of the World – with links

Museums • • •some • are linked	Other Links	GoogleEarth copy and paste	City/State
Louvre • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.861, 2.337	Paris
Metropolitan • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.779,-73.963	New York
Vatican • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	41.9065,12.455	Rome
Uffizi • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	43.769,11.256	Florence
Prado • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.414, -3.692	Madrid
Hermitage • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	59.941, 30.313	St Petersburg
Getty • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.077,-118.475	Los Angeles
d’Orsay • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.860, 2.327	Paris
US National • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	38.891,-77.020	Washington
Pompidou • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.861, 2.352	Paris
Tate • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.491,-0.127	London
MoMa • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.761,-73.978	New York
British Muse • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.519,-0.127	London
Guggenheim • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.783,-73.959	New York
Philadelphia • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	39.966, -75.181	Philadelphia
Art Institute • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	41.880,-87.624	Chicago
Cleveland • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	41.509,-81.612	Cleveland
Detroit • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	42.359,-83.065	Detroit
de Young • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	37.77,-122.469	SanFrancisco
Australian • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-33.87,151.217	Sydney
National • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-37.823,144.97	Australia
Imperial War • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.496, -0.108	London
London • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.518,-0.097	London
UK National • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.509,-0.128	London
Victoria & Al • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.497, -0.172	London
Wallace • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.517,-0.153	London
Portrait • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.5098,-0.128	London
Egyptian • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	30.048,31.233	Cairo
Giverny • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	49.077, 1.53	Giverny
Science • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.895,2.388	Paris
Versailles • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.804,2.123	Paris
Orsay • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.860,2.327	Paris
Pergamon • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	52.519,13.399	Berlin
Zeppelin • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	47.654,9.479	Germany
Ireland • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	53.339, -6.253	Dublin
Tokugawa • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	35.183,136.933	Nagoya
Tokyo • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	35.719,139.776	Tokyo
Van Gogh • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	52.358,4.881	Amsterdam
Scotland • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	55.951,-3.196	Scotland
Asian Civil • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	1.288,103.851	Singapore
Slovenia • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	46.052,14.5	Slovenia
Swedish • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	59.369,18.054	Stockholm
Lausanne • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	46.508,6.634	Lausanne
Tiapei Arts • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	25.072,121.525	Taiwan
Rijks • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	52.360,4.885	Amsterdam
Dali • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	27.760,-82.637	Florida
Dali • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	42.268,2.959	Catalan
Pinakothek • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.148,11.57	Munich
Coliseum • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	41.890,12.492	Rome
Museumsinsel • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	52.521,13.396	Berlin
National • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	37.989,23.732	Athens
Forbidden • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	39.916,116.391	China
Natural Hist • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.205,16.359	Vienna
Simon • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.146,-118.159	Los Angeles
Getty • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.077,-118.475	Los Angeles
Huntington • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.127,-118.11	Los Angeles
Valencia • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	39.479,-0.383	Spain
Cluny • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.850,2.343	Paris
Bilbao • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	43.269,-2.934	Spain
Sao Paulo • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-23.561,-46.656	Brazil
Cape Town • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-33.929,18.417	South Africa
Zimbabwe • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-17.825,31.049	Zimbabwe
MuseuMAfricA • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-26.202,28.031	South Africa
Christ Church • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.752,-1.254	UK
Oxford • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.754,-1.255	UK
Te Papa Tong • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-41.29,174.782	New Zealand
Bellas Artes • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-34.584,-58.393	Buenos Aires
Palacio Bellas • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	19.435, -99.141	Mexico City
de Janeiro • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-22.906,-43.226	Brazil
SFMOMA • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	37.786,-122.401	SanFrancisco
MAM Miami • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	25.774,-80.197	Florida
Bristol • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	51.456,-2.605	UK
Tretyakov • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	55.742,37.620	Moscow
Kunst • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	47.1395,9.5224	Liechtenstein
High • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	33.790,-84.385	Atlanta
Iraq • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	33.328,44.386	Iraq
Frost • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	25.754,-80.373	Miami
Pakistan • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	33.731,73.092	Pakistan
Santiago • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-33.435,-70.643	Chile
Cuban • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	23.140,-82.357	Cuba
Hong Kong • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	22.293,114.172	China
New Delhi • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	28.610,77.2344	India
National • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	28.612,77.219	India
Shanghai • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	31.230,121.470	China
Taiwan • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	25.102,121.549	China
Tokyo • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	35.719,139.776	Japan
Nara • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.684,135.836	Japan
Kyoto • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	34.99,135.773	Japan
Kyushu • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	33.518,130.538	Japan
Jakarta • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-6.1785,106.833	Indonesia
Acropolis • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	37.968,23.728	Greece
Topkapi • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	41.013, 28.984	Turkey
Frick • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.771,-73.967	New York
Whitney • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	40.7733,-73.964	New York
Legion • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	37.785,-122.5	SanFrancisco
Budapest • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	47.516,19.076	Hungary
Vienna Kunst • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	48.204,16.361	Austria
Warsaw • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	52.2317,21.025	Poland
Boston • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	42.339,-71.094	USA
Barnes • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	39.998,-75.241	USA – 100
Apartheid • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	-26.238, 28.009	South Africa
x • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	x	x
x • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	x	x
x • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	x	x
x • •	Flickr Youtube Wikipedia	x	x

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=National+Museum+Victoria+Australia+&m=text

Why is Jack the Ripper still famous?

Jack the Ripper is still famous. That’s a clue!

Once you Ripperologists start thinking clearly about some of the clues it becomes obvious who this very unusual person had to be. Here it is more than one hundred and twenty years after his murders and yet, Jack the Ripper is still famous. That simple fact is very informative. The simple fact is, he probably more famous now than many other killers who had vastly more impact with their homicides. For example, Gabriel Princip. I asked several college age people who that person was and only the graduate student in history knew that Princip assassinated Arch Duke Ferdinand and triggered the First World War. The history student hadn’t heard of Mary Kelley, however. Very few people, outside of the Ripperologist community, would know that name and yet she was the most famous of the Ripper murders and widely known to the public at the time.

Let’s get some perspective. Homicide isn’t all that uncommon if you include war causalities. It has been estimated that approximately five percent of humans have been killed by other humans. I have no idea if that is accurate but if we assume, for the moment, that it is approximately correct and assume that there have been about 30 billion people who have lived so far that would mean that about one and a half billion people have been killed by other people. If we accept a fudge factor of fifty percent on both of those figures, the population estimate and the rate of homicide estimate, that would give us an outside range of 60 billion people who lived times 10 percent homicides or six billion killed; Or going the other way towards a possible minimum number of killings, 15 billion people have lived and  “only” 2 percent being killed it would still give a figure of approximately 300 million. That is a very large number of intentional homicides! But, how many of these killers can you name?

An interesting experiment you can perform is to ask your friends to name a few people who have committed homicide. Some famous assassins like Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth and your favorite political villains like Adolph Hitler will probably be mentioned by name. But after those few most people will struggle with that little thought experiment. Most people will have trouble getting past ten or so even if you prompt them with the name of their victim but yet without prompting they will likely as not mention Jack the Ripper.

That memorability is what is so interesting!

There has been a minimum of 300 million homicides each of which had a killer and every killer had a name. People can remember only a few of those killers names but they still remember Jack the Ripper more than a century later.

WHY ? ? ?

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I saw in the news last night that the TV show House was currently rated as the number one series in total viewers.

WHY ? ? ? Because it is interesting.