Rotundus.com

Such was the title of a New York Times opinion piece today. The story concludes with the following line:

Mr. Pistorius, it would seem, is actually more typically South African than the exceptional story of his life might suggest.

South Africa certainly has extremely high rates of sexual assault, but one of the things that I was wondering was just how other crimes played out. South Africa also has an extremely high murder rate - it's currently ranked #12 in spite of the murder rate dropping 50% between 1994 and 2009. How likely are women to be murdered in South Africa? Here's what government data there shows:

An analysis of cases on the SAPS Crime Administration System (CAS), covering the period February 2002 to January 2003, for instance, indicated that 54% of victims of common assault, 40% of victims of assault GBH and 18% of victims of attempted murder were female.

Table 22 (p. 138) then shows that from the years 2000-2002 87% of murder victims were male. Those statistics are based upon police reporting. The following paragraph suggests that when victimization studies are conducted, males report being victims of assault more often than do women though, as the report indicates, it's unclear whether or not women are more likely to report such crimes.

In short, rape rates are extraordinarily high in South Africa. Similarly the vast majority of those convicted of murders are male. That said, while violence against women is unfortunately a common occurrence in South Africa, with women accounting for just 13% of murder victims the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp seems an exception to that particular pattern of violence rather than the norm.

Update: Apparently I should have kept skimming. Here's an excerpt of p. 139/140:

Based on 2001–02 murder rates, a recent paper indicates that the divergence between the male and female murder rates in South Africa is quite exceptional in global terms. Compared to a global homicide rate for women of four per 100 000, the South African rate for women at 12 per 100 000 was three times higher. By contrast, compared to the global homicide rate for men of 13,6 per 100 000, the South African rate of nearly 87 per 100 000 was more than six times higher. The implication is that men make up a far greater proportion of murder victims in South Africa than men do in most other countries.

A Matter of Perception

Will 3D headsets become commonplace? This New York Times piece argues that by using commonplace components like those in cellphones costs of $200-$300 are possible instead of the thousands of dollars now charged for the things. Of course, it seems that this particular outfit won't get anything out to consumers until at least next year.

Sex case defendants 'should get anonymity'

This topic has rearisen in the British press of late. I'm not quite sure why that's the country in which this topic seems to appear semi-regularly. As the article gets at, doing so would protect one set of innocents at the cost of less protection for another set of innocents. That's the inevitable quandry. Unfortunately, the BBC piece labels Jill Saward a "campaigner for victims' rights" rather than a campaigner for the rights of certain victim and an opponent of rights for other victims.

Going With the Flow

On the current Dutch strategy of controlled flooding as a way to manage excess water.

Relax! You’ll Be More Productive

"Paradoxically, the best way to get more done may be to spend more time doing less. A new and growing body of multidisciplinary research shows that strategic renewal — including daytime workouts, short afternoon naps, longer sleep hours, more time away from the office and longer, more frequent vacations — boosts productivity, job performance and, of course, health." Regular rest... could have swore that I've heard that idea somewhere before.

From the description:

On the 40th anniversary of the famous ‘Blue Marble’ photograph taken of Earth from space, Planetary Collective presents a short film documenting astronauts’ life-changing stories of seeing the Earth from the outside – a perspective-altering experience often described as the Overview Effect. ... The film also features insights from commentators and thinkers on the wider implications and importance of this understanding for society, and our relationship to the environment.

From an advice colum entitled My Wife Is My Sister:

When my wife and I met in college, the attraction was immediate, and we quickly became inseparable. ... She had sought out her biological father as soon as she turned 18, as the sperm bank her parents used allowed contact once the children were 18 if both parties consented. I never was interested in learning about that for myself, but she felt we were cheating our future children by not learning everything we could about my past, too. Well, our anniversary is coming up and I decided to go ahead and, as a present to my wife, see if my biological father was interested in contact as well. He was, and even though our parents had used different sperm banks, it appears so did our father, as he is the same person.

I think I've said this before - the biological parents belong on that birth certificate. Anything else is absurd. (And there's the question of whether or not paternity testing should be mandatory to consider as well - genes matter).