Why do people like to kill other people so much in America? (Which, much like Cardiff, is the stabbingest and shootingest place in the better parts of the world, except, unlike Cardiff, America is actually in one of the better places in the world.) And we mean besides the obvious reasons, such as being surrounded by bad smells and dirty looks and not enough parking spaces and hating other races and stuff. In a look this week at historian's attempts to make sense of our murder rate, some ideas are tried on and discarded: "The homicide rate appears to correlate with Presidential approval ratings. If [American Murder author Randolph] [...]

You know what obscures facts sometimes? Opinion-free, neutral language. True! Here is the soothing language from yesterday's Times: "Nearly a year after the federal rescue of the nation's biggest banks, taxpayers have begun seeing profits from the hundreds of billions of dollars in aid that many critics thought might never be seen again…. These early returns are by no means a full accounting of the huge financial rescue undertaken by the federal government last year to stabilize teetering banks and other companies…. But the mere hint of bailout profits for the nearly year-old Troubled Asset Relief Program has been received as a welcome surprise." So, wait, what are they saying? [...]