O-Bits: Times of Death Edition

There are any number of things that people complain aren’t as good today as it was when they were younger: popular music, baseball teams, newspapers. We’d like. to add one more to that list. The names popularly given to mass murderers. Jack The Ripper. Son of Sam. The Zodiac. Those were names that could fear into the hearts of tabloid readers across the centuries. But Jago The Poacher? As the name of a villain in a Wallace and Gromit toon, fine, but a cold-blooded killer, no.  Cornwall Live reminds its readers that Jago was no criminal mastermind, either. He only killed one, but he had a list of many others. But even though he had things planned out, he loses points for neatness and style.   Jago was not the best speller, so there still remains some mystery about that list.  Some of the names on his list were indecipherable.

On the other hand, contract killings are keeping up with the times. CNBC reports an Italian woman is now in jail after using bitcoin to pay a hit man to kill her boyfriend. We’re sure she’s kicking herself. For one, she got caught. For another, at the time of the transaction, the 4.1 bitcoin she paid was worth around $4,000 dollars; today it’s worth more than $80,000.

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.