Physics Academia and Murder

i almost don't want to post these - because they're awful - but it's an interesting couple of articles. "dark matter" is a film (part biographical and part deliberate fiction) about gang lu, a university of iowa physics graduate student who in 1991 opened fire in a physics department meeting, killing five people and himself, because his doctoral thesis hadn't won a prestigious award. here is the nytimes article about the film and its basis in gang lu's life. the film was presented at the sundance film festival in january, and received the alfred p. sloan prize. here is a related article about other graduate students (and professors!) who have committed murder in the face of academic troubles. though certainly not intentionally, julianne delcanton over at cosmicvariance posted this today, which almost seems inappropriate in light of the nytimes articles. as an end note, in reality the student didn't study cosmology (which he does in the film), but plasma physics. (image credit: here)