14 people are dead following a shooting at a suburban Denver movie theater and 50 others were injured.
Calls to police about the shooting started coming in about 12:30 a.m. Friday from a mall theater that was showing the Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises, the office said.
One person has been arrested but police did not have any other details. Depending on the name of the shooter, this could move to WOT. Unless he's a Mormon.
Gunman in a gas mask shoots dead 14 people - including children - at midnight screening of Batman premiere in Denver
Police estimate 50 people are injured - 10 victims died at the cinema and four at nearby hospitals
The 6ft tall man, thought to be in his early twenties, dressed in black and wearing a gas mask opened fire in a mall in Aurora, Colorado
Fired indiscriminately at audience with a rifle and two handguns after setting off a smoke bomb 30 minutes into the screening
Man with two firearms, was arrested in a car park nearby and told the police that explosives were stored at his home
Apartment block in the north of Aurora had been evacuated
Confusion as witnesses thought shooting was part of the film
FBI are working with the local police and there is no terrorism link so far
#9
That's just incomprehensible and bizarre. Really sad. How did he get the weapons into the movie theater - was security nonexistent at the midnight showing? Most people don't carry a backpack to see a movie.
#10
Snuck in a back exit door down by the screen. Usually locked from the outside, sometimes chained on the inside.
Posted by: Andy Snore6171 ||
07/20/2012 10:01 Comments ||
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#11
Seems the guy had more in common with school shooters than anything else. That and the usual dose of journistic guesswork and opportunism are already muddling the story.
My question is: initially they thought he had an accomice. Now they say no. He entererd through the Emergency exit. Do those open from the outside? If so, why?
And still no picture of the guy? Theyve got name and description but no picture maybe im just impatient and curious but i thought they generally flog the the picture around pretty quickly.
#12
Unarmed people, women and children killed, babies wounded. Speedy trial, televised hanging next week, burn the body. Who ARE these people? This madness has GOT to stop!
#14
per AOSHQ sidebar - there are 30 listings for a Jim Holmes in CO, one of which is a Tea Party member, so of course, Brian Ross, ABC's intrepid "journalist" says that must be the guy. DailyMail UK says he was an OWS guy and the apartment was boobytrapped.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/20/2012 10:49 Comments ||
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#15
You've got to be more than a bit of a sociopath to make your first reaction to the news to be how can I help my political allies.
#19
The journalist profession is not known for being well-connected to reality,
Oh, I think they're connected to the reality they think they know.
But Lord, most of them aren't too bright.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/20/2012 12:34 Comments ||
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#20
@#12: Speedy but fair trial. Fair is important so that we don't create a martyr. Ensure he has an experienced, capable lawyer who has done capital cases before.
A month should do it.
One proper appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court so as to ensure that the law was properly followed and applied.
Another month for that.
In a just universe this fellow, properly and fairly convicted, would be executed within three months.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/20/2012 12:39 Comments ||
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#25
Obsessed with Batman, highly complex juryrigged explosives in his apartment, and needing to withdraw from doctoral work. Yup - either schizophrenic (he's at the age when it often manifests openly) or a related disorder, maybe schizoaffective ....
#26
Holmes shooter couldn't have done it by himself. He stood on the shoulders of others such as the road builders, movie theater owners, his apartment complex owners, The University of Colorado and the government who made it all possible (sarc).
#29
OK ... let's get this straight. He was at the Neurosciences Dept, he had some sort of disorder, he dropped out, and NOBODY diagnosed this problem (or reported it)? And in addition his Mother is not surprised at this outcome (if that news report was correct)? And he was still ALLOWED to purchase weapons. There's a big FAIL in the system somewhere. I'm guessing the FBI is gonna be looking at that.
Someone else on this forum also had a good comment. Why was the exit door able to be opened from the outside - or was there an accomplice?? It's the little stuff you know, but it's so important.
#30
It's possible he bought the guns BEFORE whatever happened to him turned his brain into swiss-cheese. The story now is he bought a ticket, opened the exit from the inside (probably to get guns stashed by the door), then started shooting up the place. 70+ wounded, 12 dead, Romney/Obama have made remarks on this that are both appropriate yet starkly different. "joker" connection looks false.
Yet it's the victims and their families who should be in our thought. Over at Hot Air, there's a link to , run by Jessica Ghawa, or Jessica Redfield. She had a near miss at the Toronto shooting last month that would 7 and killed 1. One month she dies from this...madman.
Posted by: Charles ||
07/20/2012 16:01 Comments ||
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#31
At Ace of Spades, they linked to a site with side-by-side pics of Holmes and Jared Loughner. My daughter and I had noticed the similiarity even before then ... both of them have this smug, creepy half-smile and dead eyes. My daughter described it as "Lights are on, no one at home."
Posted by: chris ||
07/20/2012 17:19 Comments ||
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#35
Too much ganja
This is entirely possible. I've read about a link between narcotic drugs and schizophrenia. Susceptibility is apparently hereditary, although I don't think there's a test for it.
#37
Chris' comments notwithstanding, I don't believe in monsters.
My point is is it takes one helluva a leap to go from being mentally ill to going into a crowded theater locked and loaded, and gunning down more than 70 unarmed strangers..
He almost certainly had help in the form of chemicals, legal or otherwise, to enable him to plan and execute this mayhem.
He either was high when he did it, or he got high and it fried his brains.
I happen to know for a definitive fact that chemicals are 90 percent a factor in homelessness and joblessness.
A young student as a PhD candidate with at least a bright future doesn't just break down and become a monster unless he has had assistance in the form of chemicals.
#38
He almost certainly had help in the form of chemicals, legal or otherwise, to enable him to plan and execute this mayhem.
You're going against the flow. The zeitgeist is that rat poison can kill you, cigarette smoke can cause cancer and alcohol can cause liver failure but mood-altering drugs are all harmless fun, mon...
#40
Based on our national history of no drug prohibition prior to 1910 to where we are today with schedules and prohibitions, it is possible that while marijuana (or other drugs) that seem harmless (or at worst addicting) for most people, there may be some small percentage of people who after many years of drug use end up bat-shit crazy and kill people. That our ancestors figured this out and banned these drugs is plausible.
I am looking for some evidence about this guy's drug use, but as an advocate for drug decriminalization, I am becoming concerned.
#43
I am looking for some evidence about this guy's drug use, but as an advocate for drug decriminalization, I am becoming concerned.
Plenty of things are poisonous to certain classes of individuals but not banned. Peanuts will kill certain people. But peanut butter is carried in every grocery store in the country. I support legalization of all narcotic drugs, simply because drug prohibition has failed to make drugs either scarce or prohibitively expensive. And by prohibitively expensive, I mean $1000 a hit. As a non-narcotic drug user, I view drug laws as a waste of law enforcement resources that would be better diverted towards investigating and prosecuting property and violent crimes.
#44
Ignore the damage if you want. They'll be using the drugs to create more 'incidents' like this one, in hopes of ridding the rest of us of self-defense for the rest of our lives.
#45
"My point is is it takes one helluva a leap to go from being mentally ill to going into a crowded theater locked and loaded, and gunning down more than 70 unarmed strangers.. "
Agree with that statement.
Even with mental illness (as a possible factor), putting bullets in over 70 people in a movie theater is way over the top.
The thing I notice is this ... he apparently had a good grasp of "pain and suffering" when the police arrested him outside in some parking lot. He sure didn't want to experience pain and suffering when it came to his own body. But inside that movie theater - he was prepared to dish it out. I don't see how anyone's state of mind changes that much in 30 mins.
[An Nahar] A revolutionary discovery is rewriting the history of underwear: Some 600 years ago, women wore bras.
The University of Innsbruck said Wednesday that archeologists found four linen bras dating from the Middle Ages in an Austrian castle. Fashion experts describe the find as surprising because the bra had commonly been thought to be only little more than 100 years old as women abandoned the tight corset.
Instead, it appears the bra came first, followed by the corset, followed by the reinvented bra.
One specimen in particular "looks exactly like a (modern) brassiere," says Hilary Davidson, fashion curator for the London Museum. "These are amazing finds."
Although the linen garments were unearthed in 2008, they did not make news until now says Beatrix Nutz, the archaeologist responsible for the discovery. You're kidding, right?
Researching the items and carbon dating them to make sure they were genuine took some time. She delivered a lecture on them last year but the information stayed within academic circles until a recent article in the BBC History Magazine.
"We didn't believe it ourselves," she said in a telephone call from the Tyrolean city of Innsbruck. "From what we knew, there was no such thing as bra-like garments in the 15th century."
The university said the four bras were among more than 2,700 textile fragments -- some linen, others linen combined with cotton -- that were found intermixed with dirt, wood, straw and pieces of leather.
"Four linen textiles resemble modern-time bras" with distinct cups and one in particular looks like today's version, it said, with "two broad shoulder straps and a possible back strap, not preserved but indicated by partially torn edges of the cups onto which it was attached."
And the lingerie was not only functional.
The bras were intricately decorated with lace and other ornamentation, the statement said, suggesting they were also meant to please a suitor.
While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.
Women started experimenting with bra-like garments in the late 1800s and the first modern brassiere was patented in the early 19th century. It is thought to have been invented by New York socialite Mary Phelps Jacob, who was unhappy with the look of her gown over a stiff corset.
Also found at Lemberg Castle in Tyrol was a linen undergarment that looks very much like a pair of panties. But Nutz said it is men's underwear -- women did not wear anything under their flowing skirts back then.
"Underpants were considered a symbol of male dominance and power," she said.
Medieval drawings often show a man and a woman fighting for a pair of underpants in a symbolic battle to see who "wears the trousers" in the family.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
The picture i saw looked like the tattered top of a blouse ow whatever. I think when the dust settles and jounalistic malpractive set aside we will find this story is less than it seems.
#2
There's a statue from Pompeii showing Venus adjusting her sandal; the remaining paint on the statue (they painted them life-like colors) shows she was wearing something very much like a bikini.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
07/20/2012 12:06 Comments ||
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#3
Rjschwarz, in the 1400s women didn't tend to wear unbleached linen as outer garments. They did however wear unbleached linen shifts or slips beneath outer garments, so I'd suggest the likelihood is that these are indeed the equivalent of bras or perhaps bras-slips rather than dress tops.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
07/20/2012 14:14 Comments ||
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#6
The tattered top of undergarments would fit just as well. Comparing to bikinis is somewhat different, the romans were a bit less prudish with their public baths and all. The concept of a bra, seperate from a nightshirt or night clothing doesn't fit in with my knowledge of the times.
So if you smoke and get lotsa exercise you're okay...
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2012 00:00 ||
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#1
Call me when the demographic life expectancy numbers start to drop, if you can get the word out beyond the food riots and rolling black outs in the metro areas.
[Al Ahram] In Ramadan amnesty, President Morsi orders release of 572 Egyptians detained by military since last year's Tahrir Square uprising, including 530 already convicted
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2012 00:00 ||
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Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor has appealed his conviction for war crimes in Sierra Leone and a 50-year jail sentence imposed, the international court handling the case said Thursday.
Keep pleading Chuckles, right up to the moment you die in your prison cell...
"Charles Taylor respectfully requests that the appeals chamber reverse all the findings of guilt and conviction entered against him and vacate the judgement," said the defence request made public by the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Taylor was found guilty in April of war crimes and crimes against humanity over the 1991-2001 civil war in Sierre Leone, the first former head of state to be convicted by an international court since the Nuremberg Nazi trials in 1946. The former warlord, 64, was sentence in May to 50 years in jail after his conviction on 11 counts for arming Sierra Leone's rebels in return for "blood diamonds" during war which claimed 120,000 lives.
The court found that Taylor was paid in diamonds mined in areas under the control of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front rebels, who murdered, raped and mutilated their victims while forcing children to fight and keeping sex slaves. Taylor maintained his innocence during the trial at the court outside The Hague.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/20/2012 00:00 ||
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h/t Gates of Vienna
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has a reputation for avoiding conflict. But as the euro crisis has worsened, his power has increased. He is one of the few winners of the problems facing Europe's common currency. Never let a crisis go to waste, eh?
[Dawn] The by-poll for the National Assmebly's seat NA-151 (Multan-IV), vacated by former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani after being disqualified by the Supreme Court, has been won by his son Abdul Qadir Gilani, DawnNews reported on Thursday.
The main candidate, beside Gilani, who was contesting on Pakistan People's Party (PPP) ticket, was independent candidate Shaukat Hayat Khan Bosan, who had informal support of both Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI).
According to unofficial results, Gilani narrowly defeated the independent candidate by securing 64,628 votes. Bosan secured 60,532 votes, defeated by merely 4096 votes.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/20/2012 00:00 ||
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Rooters. Hat tip from Ace Excerpt:
(Reuters) - Electronic books more than doubled in popularity in 2011, with ebooks outselling hardcover books in adult fiction for the first time, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
Net sales of e-books jumped to 15 percent of the market in 2011 from 6 percent in 2010, according to a report by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group. The groups compiled data provided by nearly 2,000 publishers.
Total overall U.S. book market sales declined 2.5 percent to $27.2 billion in 2011 from $27.9 billion in 2010, the report said.
While ebooks increased in strength, bringing in more than $2 billion in 2011, the majority of publishers' revenue still came from print books, with $11.1 billion in 2011.
#1
I can vouch for that: I have six volumes of historical fiction out there, all available as print and e-book format. The ebook sales have been gradually creeping up all this year, and when I got an Instalaunch late in May, sales of the print editions barely hiccupped ... but sales of ebooks quadrupled at once. A lot of people have gotten into the e-readers this year, for the convenience of carrying around one slim little reader with dozens of books on it. They have become much less expensive, and I think that one reason that older people (unexpectedly!) like them is that the font size can be made larger, and the high-end ones have a text-to-speech function, which is very handy for people with visual impairments.
#3
E-book content from the major players in the literary-industrial complex is way overpriced, Nimble. We kicked around the topic of pricing our own ebooks a couple of years ago, in the indy-authors group that I belong to, and pretty much agreed that $3-5 was the sweet spot, and .99 was way undervaluing the writer's time and effort, unless it was for a novella. (Although a lot of writers have broken into the big time by selling in volume at that price.)
The big-name publishers trying to charge close to the same price for an ebook as they would for a paperback edition were essentially pricing themselves out of the market. There are no printing costs involved with an ebook, no warehouse costs, no transportation costs, no retail costs ... but the mainline publishers are still coasting along under the old paradigm.
We indys figured that pricing our books at about the same as a cup of good gourmet coffee would be a was for us to enter into the market. A reader who would take a chance on one of our books wouldn't be out that much if they didn't like it. And if they did like it ... well, then they'd look at our other books, and shazam, ka-ching, we have a loyal fan.
I suspect a lot of the increase in ebook sales was for ebooks at less than $5. When Big Publishing bites the bullet and lets go of old habits, they might well catch up to where the indys have been going all this time.
#4
Sgt Mom, agreed. $3 is clearly a sweet spot for Kindle books.
PS: bought your trilogy, now just need time to read them.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/20/2012 14:11 Comments ||
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#5
As I understand it, the cost of the physical book is surprisingly small. The larger portion of the publisher's expense is marketing and administrative bloat, starting with being located in New York.
I agree that $3-5 is a fair price for the whole book, but I expect to see prices of $0.99 for parts. If you pay that little you won't mind paying it to find out if you are interested. And if you are interested, you won't mind paying the same amount to get the next two or three parts. Weren't Dickens' novels all serialized?
#6
Thanks, Steve - when you have the time, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy. And I hardly had to make anything up ... well, maybe the bit about Christmas Eve and the provost marshal. And the local resistance during the Civil War ... that last is just my informed guess.
#7
Nimble: I worked one summer selling Collier's Encyclopedia door to door (hey, it was the recession of '74 and there were NO jobs otherwise). I learned then just how cheap it was to print books; the expense was all the work required to get the books ready for printing.
Dickens: yes, most were serialized, and he was a master of it. Unlike other writers at the time who would write the entire book and then have it serialized a chapter at a time, Dickens wrote on the fly -- thus he had the ability to change his plot, characters, etc in response to feedback from his readers (and he did, and he clearly was interested in what his readers had to say).
He was also one of the first authors of that time to commission artwork to run with the serialized work. To that point the publishers had commissioned the work when it suited them, and the art was generally pretty bland. Dickens insisted on sitting with the artists to tell them what he wanted, and the artists in turn worked to his specifications. The result was more sharply drawn scenes that looked the way Dickens wanted them to look.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/20/2012 17:23 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
A revolutionary discovery is rewriting the history of underwear: Some 600 years ago, women wore bras.
Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor has appealed his conviction for war crimes in Sierra Leone and a 50-year jail sentence imposed, the international court handling the case said Thursday.
The by-poll for the National Assmebly's seat NA-151 (Multan-IV), vacated by former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani after being disqualified by the Supreme Court, has been won by his son Abdul Qadir Gilani, DawnNews reported on Thursday.
