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LostArt
04-21-2007, 12:20 PM
This week has been a long one for me and the very day that this shooting happened, I had an emergency at work. I won't go into details about my ordeal, but working for a school or college does have it's stresses.

I took the time this week not to read about the WHYS or WHAT drove this 23 yr old student to go on a shooting spree and kill innocent lives, but to read bios about those that were killed. Those are the real story, not the killer.

Mental health laws protect those that have mental illnesses. Schools protect those with mental and educational disabilities. And this is only one aspect of the many issues that this one incident has caused. Others are gun laws, safety regulations and precautions at an educational facility, etc.

Yes, this has happened many times in the past. This is not the first rampage shooting of a young student. Yes, it's happened at a Post Office, McDonalds, and all across the USA. We talk about war, and it happens everyday right here in America. Senseless deaths happen right HERE folks. In our schools, in our towns, on highways, even in our backyards and we think it can't happen to us.

There is NO justification of a rampage killing. There is NO excuse to kill other people in a mall just because you had a "horrible life" at home or at school. I'm sorry, but I don't feel sorry for this student. That's like saying I feel sorry for Ted Bundy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18239633/

Hunt for meaning in a killer's hieroglyphics


Everybody has a theory why Seung Hui Cho wrote 'Ismael Ax' on his arm



By Libby Copeland
http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/SITEWIDE/PartnerColorBoxLogos/WaPost_333_GCH.gif (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/front.htm) Updated: 8:25 a.m. ET April 21, 2007


Tragedy abhors a vacuum.
"Ismael Ax" said the words on Seung Hui Cho's arm. Or maybe "Ismale Ax" or "Ismail Ax," depending on the news report.
In the absence of much understanding, we study these words, like cryptographers trying to crack enemy code.


After he killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, Cho died with some variety of this phrase penned to his arm. (It wasn't a tattoo, it turns out, despite earlier reports.) Then Wednesday, NBC News received the package Cho mailed between murders, and here was another clue. The sender is listed on the envelope as "A. Ishmael."

What could these words mean? Are they invoking the biblical Ishmael, born to a lowly servant, cast out by his father, Abraham? Are they an English major's reference to James Fenimore Cooper's "The Prairie," in which the outlaw settler Ishmael Bush sets west across the country with his axe? What about the loner who narrates "Moby-Dick"?
"It begins with 'Call me Ishmael,' " the crime writer Patricia Cornwell says. "The whole story is about an obsession that eventually drags you into the vortex of the sea."
Cho's pseudonym is our "Rosebud," the mysterious word that begins the movie "Citizen Kane," when it is uttered by the dying publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane. It is the phrase we hope to understand, to help a 23-year-old mass murderer make sense.

Wild speculation
Everybody's got a theory. The suggestions come in by e-mail, they are posted to online comments boards, they are posed by colleagues and bloggers, with Talmudic attention to detail. One person ruminates that "Ismale Ax" might be derived from a song Bob Marley performed, "Small Axe." Another person says the phrase might come from computer coding language. Another person mentions an alien named "Ax" from the children's science fiction series, "Animorphs."

Someone else: Could "Ismale Ax" be an anagram for "Islam Axe," suggesting some sort of religious vengeance? Could another spelling, "Ismail Ax," be an anagram for "Salami XI," derived from the Italian word for -- oh, never mind.

A guy named Bill McClelland, who lives on the west side of Cleveland, calls The Washington Post to offer some tips. He directs a reporter to the Web site for a "Gothic Male Model" who goes by the name of "Ax." Could the Web site somehow be connected to Cho's murderous rampage? McClelland wants to know.

"I've followed this story for three days now and it's intriguing," McClelland says. "What drove him? I think everybody would like to know that."
We would, we would. In mystery novels, the plot often turns on a single clue. Find the gun, find the killer. Motives are one-dimensional. (The wife did it for the life insurance!) Here we don't have such luck. Instead, what we have is wild speculation, with occasional input from a wacko. (Wackos always rise from their slumbers to send the media e-mail at times like this. As in: "Why is the media helping Bush hide the fact that this wasn't 'senseless random violence' at all, and in fact was clearly a suicide attack staged in protest of US Support for Israel?")

There's something very human in all this, something akin to our tendency to see faces in knots of wood. We look for reason in the nonsense. We look for ourselves. (Let's see, how would I justify the murders if I were Cho? . . . No, no, no.)

Cornwell has made several trips to England to study the letters allegedly written by Jack the Ripper, which were sent to police and newspapers during his lifetime. These letters are filled with hieroglyphs, she says; she studies them for clues as to who he was and why he was.

"Why did he choose this type of handwriting? Why did he draw this doodle?" she asks. "Is he simply making fun of us and it doesn't mean anything?" Each one might be a clue to the bigger why, the why that scares us, the why we'd like to answer and thereby emasculate. In the case of Jack the Ripper, Cornwell says: "Why do you cut someone open and dump their intestines to the pavement? Why do you flay somebody to the bone?"

Reading too much into it
What's scariest is that we can't see ourselves in Cho. The hieroglyphs are meaningless. If he was invoking the Bible or "Moby-Dick" with those words on his arm, it doesn't make any more sense than if he wasn't. Try parsing the sweeping rage in those writings he sent to NBC News, or in his violent plays. No way to reason with the anger. No one to blame but him. That's what's scariest.

"We cannot predict who is going to do this type of thing and who is not with any more accuracy than guessing and that's just a fact," says Jeffrey Schaler, a psychologist at American University. There are people who "write much more disturbing literary messages than this guy did and never commit acts like this."

Todd Cox, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, says it's misleading to search for too much meaning in the intricacies of a psychotic person's thoughts. Psychiatry was "led astray for decades" by those looking for such underlying symbolisms, Cox says. Sometimes a cigar is -- you know the rest.

"It is much more important to look at the form as opposed to the content of the illness . . . the fact that this is delusional, as opposed to, 'What is the delusion?' " Cox says.

Ismael Ax stands for nothing. Symbolism is cheap. In the video he sent to NBC, Cho compares himself to Jesus and Moses. So what?

tolex42
04-21-2007, 02:20 PM
This week has been a long one for me and the very day that this shooting happened, I had an emergency at work. I won't go into details about my ordeal, but working for a school or college does have it's stresses.

I took the time this week not to read about the WHYS or WHAT drove this 23 yr old student to go on a shooting spree and kill innocent lives, but to read bios about those that were killed. Those are the real story, not the killer.

Mental health laws protect those that have mental illnesses. Schools protect those with mental and educational disabilities. And this is only one aspect of the many issues that this one incident has caused. Others are gun laws, safety regulations and precautions at an educational facility, etc.

Yes, this has happened many times in the past. This is not the first rampage shooting of a young student. Yes, it's happened at a Post Office, McDonalds, and all across the USA. We talk about war, and it happens everyday right here in America. Senseless deaths happen right HERE folks. In our schools, in our towns, on highways, even in our backyards and we think it can't happen to us.

There is NO justification of a rampage killing. There is NO excuse to kill other people in a mall just because you had a "horrible life" at home or at school. I'm sorry, but I don't feel sorry for this student. That's like saying I feel sorry for Ted Bundy.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18239633/

Hunt for meaning in a killer's hieroglyphics


Everybody has a theory why Seung Hui Cho wrote 'Ismael Ax' on his arm



By Libby Copeland
http://msnbcmedia1.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/SITEWIDE/PartnerColorBoxLogos/WaPost_333_GCH.gif (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/front.htm) Updated: 8:25 a.m. ET April 21, 2007


Tragedy abhors a vacuum.
"Ismael Ax" said the words on Seung Hui Cho's arm. Or maybe "Ismale Ax" or "Ismail Ax," depending on the news report.
In the absence of much understanding, we study these words, like cryptographers trying to crack enemy code.


After he killed 32 people at Virginia Tech on Monday, Cho died with some variety of this phrase penned to his arm. (It wasn't a tattoo, it turns out, despite earlier reports.) Then Wednesday, NBC News received the package Cho mailed between murders, and here was another clue. The sender is listed on the envelope as "A. Ishmael."

What could these words mean? Are they invoking the biblical Ishmael, born to a lowly servant, cast out by his father, Abraham? Are they an English major's reference to James Fenimore Cooper's "The Prairie," in which the outlaw settler Ishmael Bush sets west across the country with his axe? What about the loner who narrates "Moby-Dick"?
"It begins with 'Call me Ishmael,' " the crime writer Patricia Cornwell says. "The whole story is about an obsession that eventually drags you into the vortex of the sea."
Cho's pseudonym is our "Rosebud," the mysterious word that begins the movie "Citizen Kane," when it is uttered by the dying publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane. It is the phrase we hope to understand, to help a 23-year-old mass murderer make sense.

Wild speculation
Everybody's got a theory. The suggestions come in by e-mail, they are posted to online comments boards, they are posed by colleagues and bloggers, with Talmudic attention to detail. One person ruminates that "Ismale Ax" might be derived from a song Bob Marley performed, "Small Axe." Another person says the phrase might come from computer coding language. Another person mentions an alien named "Ax" from the children's science fiction series, "Animorphs."

Someone else: Could "Ismale Ax" be an anagram for "Islam Axe," suggesting some sort of religious vengeance? Could another spelling, "Ismail Ax," be an anagram for "Salami XI," derived from the Italian word for -- oh, never mind.

A guy named Bill McClelland, who lives on the west side of Cleveland, calls The Washington Post to offer some tips. He directs a reporter to the Web site for a "Gothic Male Model" who goes by the name of "Ax." Could the Web site somehow be connected to Cho's murderous rampage? McClelland wants to know.

"I've followed this story for three days now and it's intriguing," McClelland says. "What drove him? I think everybody would like to know that."
We would, we would. In mystery novels, the plot often turns on a single clue. Find the gun, find the killer. Motives are one-dimensional. (The wife did it for the life insurance!) Here we don't have such luck. Instead, what we have is wild speculation, with occasional input from a wacko. (Wackos always rise from their slumbers to send the media e-mail at times like this. As in: "Why is the media helping Bush hide the fact that this wasn't 'senseless random violence' at all, and in fact was clearly a suicide attack staged in protest of US Support for Israel?")

There's something very human in all this, something akin to our tendency to see faces in knots of wood. We look for reason in the nonsense. We look for ourselves. (Let's see, how would I justify the murders if I were Cho? . . . No, no, no.)

Cornwell has made several trips to England to study the letters allegedly written by Jack the Ripper, which were sent to police and newspapers during his lifetime. These letters are filled with hieroglyphs, she says; she studies them for clues as to who he was and why he was.

"Why did he choose this type of handwriting? Why did he draw this doodle?" she asks. "Is he simply making fun of us and it doesn't mean anything?" Each one might be a clue to the bigger why, the why that scares us, the why we'd like to answer and thereby emasculate. In the case of Jack the Ripper, Cornwell says: "Why do you cut someone open and dump their intestines to the pavement? Why do you flay somebody to the bone?"

Reading too much into it
What's scariest is that we can't see ourselves in Cho. The hieroglyphs are meaningless. If he was invoking the Bible or "Moby-Dick" with those words on his arm, it doesn't make any more sense than if he wasn't. Try parsing the sweeping rage in those writings he sent to NBC News, or in his violent plays. No way to reason with the anger. No one to blame but him. That's what's scariest.

"We cannot predict who is going to do this type of thing and who is not with any more accuracy than guessing and that's just a fact," says Jeffrey Schaler, a psychologist at American University. There are people who "write much more disturbing literary messages than this guy did and never commit acts like this."

Todd Cox, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, says it's misleading to search for too much meaning in the intricacies of a psychotic person's thoughts. Psychiatry was "led astray for decades" by those looking for such underlying symbolisms, Cox says. Sometimes a cigar is -- you know the rest.

"It is much more important to look at the form as opposed to the content of the illness . . . the fact that this is delusional, as opposed to, 'What is the delusion?' " Cox says.

Ismael Ax stands for nothing. Symbolism is cheap. In the video he sent to NBC, Cho compares himself to Jesus and Moses. So what?

Well said Lost Art

LostArt
04-21-2007, 03:01 PM
Well said Lost Art

Well, I was like the writer above Tolex. The other day when they said this student used that word. I told my husband right then, "What does THAT have to do with WHY he killed innocent lives????? WHO CARES WHY he did it or what that word means....he MURDERED many lives!!! He is not the VICTIM here!!!" Ulgh.

By the time Friday morning came, I asked my husband while we were getting dressed for work, "Please do not turn on the news this morning." He complied by watching reruns of Gunsmoke.

dbrown20
04-21-2007, 04:12 PM
it go. We've heard enough about this subject. The guy was crazy.

Now let's talk about something important. What do you think is gonna happen to Anna Nicole's baby? dbrown20

tolex42
04-21-2007, 04:16 PM
it go. We've heard enough about this subject. The guy was crazy.

Now let's talk about something important. What do you think is gonna happen to Anna Nicole's baby? dbrown20

I like your wit.

LostArt
04-21-2007, 04:33 PM
it go. We've heard enough about this subject. The guy was crazy.

Now let's talk about something important. What do you think is gonna happen to Anna Nicole's baby? dbrown20

http://www.avowners.com/forum/smileys/smiley44.gif


LMAO! Or we can talk about the President......

CenterPointEX
04-24-2007, 09:10 PM
The first reports of this incident were calling him a resident alien. Since the first day I have not heard this repeated?
I read the plays he wrote and they seem to be the venting of someone who was molested as a child.
Both of the two friends I had who died of Aids had been molested in their adolescent years. Both of them carried some heavy scars from this and both were not ever able to shake the gay lifestyle. Both of them in fact were ashamed of their past, and their present lifestyles. They somehow shouldered some blame for what happened to them even though they had had no control over what happened.
.... I am going to say it again folks. If there is no God, there is no right and wrong... Because survival of the fittest has no heart, passion or need for external morality. In the jungle there are no rules... eat or be eaten... thats it... the strong survive and the weak die. Those are the only rules of Evolution. Pit Bulls have random sex and kill randomly not out of premeditation, but rather out of instinct.
... I am sorry, but I don't buy it. These acts are the result of society that has turned away from God. Without a God we are free to do as we please. Killing is not wrong. For a Lion it is survival... A Lion is not created in the image of God.

Trampbag
04-25-2007, 12:20 AM
Freedom comes at a price. That price is to exercise responsibility.

Each time we consider that an individual’s freedom is more important than someone else’s we lose a little more freedom collectively. Can we continue at this cost and for how long???