Unsolved Murder Mysteries

By definition, murder is the unlawful calculated killing of one human being by another.

In reality, most murders are not committed with premeditation, but the product of one manic moment. They are often the result of pent-up emotions waiting to erupt like a volcano when one's restraint finally snaps.

The murders that horrify the public the most are the ones caused by greed, hatred, sadistic urges, or those which are the result of a twisted mind that seemed to be caused by nothing but bloodlust.

Murderers have been known to pick out their victims by specific characteristics like the color of their hair, their sexual orientation, or even their resemblance with how they look with someone in their past that did them wrong.

Serial killers on the other hand, they carry out a series of murders, usually with no apparent reason, but they always follow a predictable behavioral pattern.

Today, I'm going to type about two of the most infamous unsolved murder mysteries of all time. I'm going to touch lightly on them as they are very lengthy.


Lizzie Borden

Poor Lizzie Borden was portrayed as the fiendish axe-murderer who 'gave her mother 40 whacks, her father 41'.

Although Hollywood labelled her a killer and gossips insisted that she was a cruel murderess, she was acquitted by a jury and lived to a ripe old age. But till her passing in 1937, she was insulted by one of the most cruel jingles in history,

"Lizzie Borden took an ax

And gave her mother 40 whacks

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father 41."

On the morning of 4 August 1892, Lizzie found her father, Andrew Borden, pounded in to 'an unrecognizable pulp'. He was laying on a blood-soaked sofa, where he was apparently having a short nap when the murderer struck.

Meanwhile, Lizzie's stepmother had supposedly been called from the house to the sickbed of her friend, but in the end she hadn't gone after all. She was found on the floor of a guest room upstairs. Her skull, a mass of blood and flesh, and splintered of bone.

Inescapably, Lizzie Borden was the main suspect of the murders that happened in The Borden House. Lizzie told the police that she had been in their barn looking for line-sinkers when the murders took place.

Bridget Sullivan, the Borden's hired girl had been upstairs sleeping through the heat of the day. Lizzie's older sister, Emma Border had been out of town, and a visiting uncle of Lizzie's had been put that time, making business calls. 

This left Lizzie to herself, to be the main suspect.

She was brought up to trial in June 1983, as the evidence began to stack up against her. There was no bad blood between the family members, so there had not been a specific reason as to why she did it. 

A suggestion came up that Lizzie had butchered her parents in an epileptic seizure and had no recollections of the crime that she had supposedly committed. But in the end, the police could not unearth a murder weapon, no witnesses, no shreds of bloody clothing, and even the circumstantial evidence provided was just too flimsy and vague.

Surrounded by rousing cheers, Lizzie Borden was declared innocent to the murders of her father and step-mother was free.

They were suspicions of the three people who testified against her, but for reasons unknown, the police failed to crack the case open again.

As the years passed, the old jingle haunted her life and wax museums around the world continued to portray her as an ax-wielding fiend. 

Gentle in life and forgiving in death, she had said nothing about the agonies and torments that she had once suffered.

Lizzie Borden

Death of The Black Dahlia

A savagely mutilated corpse had been found on an underdeveloped building site in Los Angeles suburb on the 15th of January 1947. 

It was the body of a young female, cut in half at the waist with the initials 'B.D.' carved unto her thigh.

It was these initials that gave this it's popularity. They stood for 'Black Dahlia' which was the nickname that was given to an actress named, Elizabeth Short, which the body of the corpse was identified to be hers through the help science.

Her life was a short but unhappy one. Elizabeth had been a juvenile delinquent, but found love and a chance of a new life when she met a young servicemen who proposed. But they parted ways when he was posted overseas for World War 2.

His eventual death led Elizabeth on a downhill path. She turned to drinking, working as a waitress at sleazy bars and clubs, and she also tried her luck as a small-time actress in Hollywood. 

She eventually became known for her black apparel - especially her black silk underwear.

Elizabeth had one further chance in love when a second lover proposed, but grimly, he too died.

When the discovery of her butchered body was splayed across newspapers, a strange reaction set in. It incited an extremely surprising amount of false reports and confessions.

The first came from a waitress who said she had heard two killers discussing the murder at a table. She gave the police a description which then led to the arrest of a pair. Detectives took them in for questioning, which eventually led to the discovery of their innocence.

One piece of evidence that the police took more seriously was a package sent to a newspaper company in Los Angeles. It was enclosed with a message cut from press headlines. 

Sure enough, the package contained her social security card, birth certificate and an address book - with one page torn out. 

Police said that they believed that the personal belongings of Elizabeth was taken form her body, as there was no clothing was found at the scene. Fingerprints were also taken from the social security card but none of them matched anyone from the police files. 

Later, a small underworld figure gave himself up to the police, saying that he killed the Black Dahlia. The detectives working on the case thought that they finally cracked it because in Elizabeth's address book had been the name of the firm that the suspect worked for, but eventually a lie-detector test proved him to be a liar.

Years later, an army corporal was held on suspicion as he knew many details of the killing. But in the end, he was finally released as being mentally unstable.

All in all, about 50 men have came up to confessed that they have committed the notorious murder of the Elizabeth Short - but till this day, the case of the Black Dahlia would remain unsolved.

Elizabeth 'The Black Dahlia' Short

The effects of media on children

There are many effects of media on different kinds of people. One of the main groups of people that the media effects are children.

Children are more prone to absorb the things that they see than other people. The only other group of people that absorb things more than children are teenagers and adolescents, but we are here today to talk about the effects of media on children.

The influence of media on children has always been an ongoing process throughout the years. 

Some of these effects could either be beneficial or harmful to both the mental and physical state of the child.

Television

Television is a powerful teacher as it could teach toddlers and young children about many social issues and, sometimes even how to read and write. Shows such as Sesame Street and Bill Nye The Science Guy have been used as powerful pro-social teaching tools that have been shown to improve the learning and reading skills of its viewers, which are mainly consisting of toddlers to young children.

Besides television being used as a teaching device, it could also be a medium to transmit bad habits to young children.

One of such negative habits is the implementation of aggressive behavior that could be instilled. 

The amount of violent acts that are shown on television has shot up over the past couple of decades. This actually shows in the increase amount of aggressive behavior especially among the male children. 

Music Videos

Up to 75% of the music videos in the world include the use of sexually explicit themes, and more than half of them portray violence mostly against women. Lyrics of the music of this millennia often include many references to sex, drugs, alcohol, and even violence.  

A comprehensive analysis on the effects of music videos against the children who are watching them is alarming. This is because it shows that music videos definitely played a role on how a children's perspective against social conflict resolutions, race, and also male-female relationships.

There are definitely more impacts and effects of the media on the lives of children, especially in this day and age.

The link that I would be providing below is a more comprehensive and elaborated article that explains in detail about the effects media would have on children.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2792691/

There are a few ways that different parties could help solve these problems.

First and foremost, families of the children should limit the usage of television and video games of the child. The parents of said child could also monitor and supervise to make sure the programs that they're watching are appropriate.

Next, the schools of the children could do talks and lessons on how media would effect them. These talks would have to be simplified as they are being explained to young kids.

Differences between printed media & broadcast media

The term 'media' is originally the Latin plural term for the word 'medium'. It is also the main means of communication that is looked on collectively. Examples of such are the television, radio, newspapers, and even the Internet.

Today, we're gonna discuss the differences between two different kind of media; printed media and broadcast media.

Printed Media

First and foremost, the definition of printed media. Printed media is basically a medium that circulates printed matter to the public. It is also a way to store, or communicate information, through people.

Examples of print media that are still here to this very day and age are newspapers, journals, magazines, and even outdoor advertisings. Other kinds of printed media (that slipped my mind at the time of typing this) are also included in this category.

The main purpose of printed media, you ask? To be accountable for reporting the latest and most factual news and information as of that time.

I'm going to take the newspaper as an example of print media and describe how it is chosen to be advertise.

The first physical criteria to consider is the size of distribution of the newspaper.

This will help to see and check the budget for the ink and paper that would be used when the newspapers are being printed. It would also help to estimate the amount of readers that would read the newspapers.

Secondly, the size of the newspapers is taken into contemplation.

By the size of the newspapers, I mean the amount of pages and literally, the physical size of it. this would come to play when dealing with the targeted reader of said newspaper, and it also applies to other printed media.

Last but not least, the third physical criteria that comes to play is the targeted audience or readers of the distributed newspapers. By doing so, one could estimate the content that should be published in their newspapers to attract more people form that specific category of an audience that they have.


Broadcast Media

Now, we move on to broadcast media. Broadcast media, by definition, is one of the most convenient ways to transmit information immediately to the widest possible audience that it's targeting.

Examples of broadcast media are radios, televisions, and the Internet. The commercials and advertisements aired on radio channels and on the televisions are crucial members of broadcast
advertising.

I'm going to use the television as an example for the medium for broadcast media, but instead of listing the criterias for it to be able to be shown as a broadcast media, i'm going to list down the advantages and disadvantages of it.

The first advantage of television is that it could be captivating and it will capture the audience's attention fast. This is because the creativity that comes on board could create and impact on the viewers.

It's also coverage and cost effective. This means that the cost to advertise and to broadcast something costs less than it should to cover the specific target group, and probably even more.

And now, to the disadvantages of television as a medium for broadcast media.

The first disadvantage of television are the fleeting messages that they portray. This could be due to the clutter that the advertisements are showing. It could sometimes be confusing for the viewers as they sometimes don't understand what us going on in the commercial or advertisement.

Secondly, the distrust that may come across the minds of the viewers. This may be caused by the negative evaluations that critics or other news broadcasters would spread. Wariness would arise in the minds of the viewers that would eventually make them have trust issues against the television broadcasters.

Printed vs. Broadcast Media

There has always been a debate between the advantages of using either printed or broadcast media, and how one is somehow always better than the other.

The first difference would be that printed media has been one of the oldest forms on how information would travel. Broadcast media is faster and it saves time, just to deliver and receive information. An example of a situation for this is journalism.

After the evolution and progress of technology in the past decades, broadcast journalism has almost taken over printed journalism. Not to fret, there are still jobs in the printed journalism field but there are way more jobs available in the broadcast journalism field, especially with the existence of countless of news broadcasting channels and radio shows, to name a few.

The second difference would be, the easy access that broadcast media offers, especially with applications that could be downloaded into your phone. You could check updates on the news or the stock market, for example.

Meanwhile, printed media is more beneficial in countries or places where there are no access to electricity or modern technology. For example, there are certain cities in India and the countries in Africa where poverty has become a main issue, and this has lead to an extreme lack of of electricity and modern technology.

This is where printed media would come to play. Newspapers and other types of printed media are cheaper and way more accessible to the public in specific places than broadcast media.


That is basically it for today.

Thanks for tuning in on your weekly dose of  'The Life Of Shan'.

Till next week, my readers.

Good Blogging Practice

Hi everyone! My name is Shannalyn Shanmugam, and I am a student studying at INTI International College Subang. This blog is made to to evaluate my progress for my Digital Communications class. I will updating this blog weekly with the fixed topics for that specific week. This will continue for 3 to 4 weeks.

I would love to start the blog with the topic that was given for my first week of this evaluation.

Essentially, blogging is all about updating by typing and writing an event, or a specific topic to a personalized website that are mostly published online in an informal diary entry. There are many benefits that comes with being a blogger. Opportunities to travel and financial incomes are one of them.

To be a good blogger there are certain practices and applications that you must use to achieve a successful blog that would actually attract other bloggers and visitors to engage on your blog.

To demonstrate good blogging practice, as the title states, I would use a blog that I have been following for some time that I find to follow such beliefs and practices.

http://www.faiiint.com/faiiint/

This particular blog features gothic-infused lifestyle, fashion, places, etc. I found this blog very interesting as it focuses its attention on a specific genre of lifestyle that isn't commonly portrayed in real life.

The first thing that you must do to start a successful blog is to choose a domain name and a theme that you want your blog to be about. This is extremely vital especially when you're aiming to have a specific type of audience. Your audience has to know on the spot that the blog that they're engaging in, is something that would capture their attention and would entangle them to keep on reading and viewing your blog.

Another consideration for a successfully well-made blog is the content of the blog. The blogger has to come up with original riveting and captivating content and posts to ensure that their viewers would return over and over again to view your themed blog. By content, I meant compelling stories, an appropriate use of vocabulary, beguiling pictures, and maybe a link to another related content that is not available to be placed into the blog post.

As seen in the above picture, using even simple but appropriately arranged words could manage to make the viewer's interest piqued, and make them to carry on reading your blog.

Another practice is to find your niche and be original about it. Finding something that interests you and going with it is usually one of the best ways to ensure that your blog would be more unique and more distinctively yours. Your enthusiasm and passion will show when you're describing and posting your entries. This, will make your blog genuine and authentic which will draw the attention of other viewers and bloggers.

You could mention the reason and interests that drove you to start a blog about it.

By doing so, your viewers would have a more in-depth understanding of your blog.

These pointers could determine and decide what a good and successful blog is. I find that the blog that I have related with such implementations is doing a good job in doing so. I hope that this would help you to build a spectacular blog, as I hope that it would help me.