On those days when I think about turning from librarianship to piracy, attacking an oil tanker with a motorboat is definitely not what I imagine. What fun would it be without billowing sails, eye patches, and Johnny Depp?
Yet modern-day piracy has recently made a lot of headlines and The International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center has produced a new tool for tracking pirate attacks. The Live Piracy Map 2008 pinpoints successful and attempted piracy on an interactive Google map. The waters near Africa and Southeast Asia are particularly risky; the Caribbean, not so much anymore.
Meanwhile, in Why Do Pirates Have Us Hooked?, NPR explores our current cultural fascination with pirates and the motivations for today’s pirates, including the tough question of whether contemporary pirates will make the pirate of popular imagination uncool.
Hat tip for the piracy map: BeSpacific.
Image credit: Nick Humphries
The Law of Piracy in Popular Culture: http://lii.org/cs/lii/view/item/27269