There’s something that I’ve long wondered if it’s true or not, but don’t know.
Whenever I watch police procedurals, like say… NCIS or “The Rookie”, I’m always surprised at how the people being questioned, arrested, arraigned or whatever by the law enforcement or court people are some weird combination of dismissive, angry, condescending, disrespectful or smartassed.
My usual thought is that there’s no way I’d be doing anything except being as courteous and accommodating as I could be; if I’m somehow a suspect, I wouldn’t want to give them any reason to detain me any further, and if it’s an investigation and I’m helping, then I would want to help. At no point would being late to lunch (or whatever trivial thing these people are doing) be a consideration.
Oh lord… that one cracks me up. I have a snub-nose 38 (inherited it; wouldn’t actually buy something so worthless), and after about 10 yards or so, it’s not uncommon for two things to happen. One, it’s woefully inaccurate- at 30 feet/10 yards, we’re talking being lucky to consistently hit a man-sized target. Two, the barrel is so short that the bullet isn’t spun enough to be stable, and it sometimes wobbles enough to hit the paper sideways. And this is with wadcutters, which are generally supposed to be a bit more accurate than your average 38 round.
According to the BBC, the small coastal town had about 5.3 murders every year. That would make the murder rate for the town of 3,560 people about 1,490 murders per million people. That’s 60 percent higher than Honduras, where a violent death occurs every 74 minutes.
It really depends on the school and department I’m sure. I mean, my intro courses in my major were taught by lecturers and/or grad students, but once we got into the upper level courses, we got the big guns for that stuff.
I do know that the famous profs often do like teaching undergraduates, even if it’s not literally intro courses. I took a course in Classical Archaeology as one of my humanities electives, and we had a professor who is known as the “Father” of nautical archaeology (i.e. excavating wrecked ships and what-not on the seafloor) teach the course. (well shit… turns out he passed away a little over two weeks ago)
I’m sure he wasn’t teaching a classical archaeology course to undergraduates in 1994 because he had to.
Someone told me I just “had to” watch ‘Justified’. So I did, for a season and a half. I guess it checks all the right boxes of the nerves of steel laconic federal marshal rooting out the bad guys boxes, and it was OK to watch. I know well rural USA has its drug/crime problems too, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of someplace in the greater Hogfart area of Appalachia having such a huge sophisticated network of strong brutal drug cartel members.
I told her it was just because of the way the camera works … it takes lots of little pictures at different times. In other words, the strobe effect.
To get back on topic, I just watched the episode of Columbo in which George Wendt whacks his brother and another guy without so much as batting an eyelash. I’ve always been amazed at how calm and collected such amateur murderers are when they pull the trigger. A real hit man who’s offed dozens of people in cold blood might not show any emotion. But Janet Leigh blowing Sam Jaffe’s brains out while he’s asleep? If I were even capable of doing such a thing, I think I’d be trembling the whole time.
In The Godfather, even Michael, who served in the Marines during WWII, was nervous as hell during his first hit. The sound of the El rumbling by in the background just accentuated it. But on TV? This never seems to happen.
And after the deed is done, the murderer manages to go on normally with his or her life, and act casual when interviewed by the cops (at least at first). How many people do you know who could do this?
We have to assume these murderers have been cherry-picked from among lots of murderers Columbo apprehends. They have to be super cool-as-a-cucumber types to make them challenging for Columbo to unnerve.
It’s not just on Columbo. It happens all the time on murder mysteries, which is why the murderer is normally the last person you’d suspect. Unless they’re nailed outright by someone like Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, they don’t crack until they’re being grilled on the stand by a Perry Mason or Ben Matlock.
I was once a witness to a car accident, and because of where I was positioned, I saw everything, and also called 911. So, I stayed until the police came, and then the police requested that I stay until I could make a statement and give them my information.
I was on my way to work, and was already going to be breezing in just under the clock had I left right then. So I called in and explained what was going on.
After the cops were done with me, they produced a form, already filled out, with time, date and case number, a phone number to call to confirm, and the cop’s signature. Something like “Work Excuse” was written across the top. So, police in at least some places carry a form for people whom they make late to work with their questioning.
My work was actually cool, and didn’t require the form, but if it had, I had it.
You could probably do a whole separate thread on phony tv and movie sound effects— like the beep boop sounds when someone is doing something on a computer, or a sound effect that accompanies a progress bar when someone is say, surreptitiously downloading top secret computer files onto a thumb drive.
Or one of my favorites— the “shiiing!” sound when someone pulls a sword out of its scabbard. Metal against metal makes that sound, not metal against leather.
Or the Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack! when soldiers are marching. If your rifle clicks and clacks, it’s either defective or you haven’t been taking care of it. In that case, your sergeant will tear you a new asshole.
I’m always amazed at how sound effects vanish when somebody like Rambo is sneaking up behind a sentry, and the poor slob never so much as turns around to see what’s coming. Combat boots slogging through sand or mud make a LOT of noise!
It seems curiously strange to me that the use of Foley Artists still remain in these times where more accurate diagetic sounds, or at least electronically synthesized versions thereof for a more true to life sound, even if the volume might need to be raised on it to “sweeten” it a bit to make it more audible.
I remember when I was stationed at Woomera, South Australia in the mid-80s. We had one single line from the site to call back overseas (calls within site were not affected–just the trunk line to overseas). And we always had to be careful to hang up when done, or no one else could make or receive a call from the States. If a phone wasn’t hung up, folks were screwed until it was.
Well, one morning I had received a call from the States, and one of the gals in the office let me know. I took the call, and when I was done I hung up. Later I was in meeting and the switchboard announced someone’s phone was of the book and no one could make calls. I said I had gotten a call and had hung up, but went back to my office and checked–yup my phone was on the hook.
Anyway–two hours later (and way past when anyone in the U.S. would be making calls to or receiving from us due to the time zone difference, the operator heard what sounded like a typewriter. Eventually it was tracked down to my office. The gal who had told me I had a phone call had kept the phone off the hook until I had picked it up, and had forgotten to hang it up.
Lots of pissed people, especially the site commander.
