The Police

The Police were an English rock band formed in London in 1977. For the majority of their history, the band consisted of Sting (lead singer, bassist and principal songwriter), Andy Summers (guitarist) and Stewart Copeland (drummer). The Police became globally popular in the late 1970s and are generally regarded as one of the first new wave groups to achieve mainstream success, playing a style of rock that was influenced by punk, reggae, and jazz. They are also considered one of the leaders of the Second British Invasion of the U.S. They disbanded in 1986, but reunited in early 2007 for a one-off world tour that ended in August 2008.

Their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d'Amour, reached No. 6 in the UK, and their second album Reggatta de Blanc became the first of five consecutive UK No. 1 albums.Synchronicity from 1983 was No. 1 in both the UK and U.S., selling over 8 million copies in the U.S. alone. The Police have sold over 75 million records, making them one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. They were the world's highest-earning musicians in 2008, thanks to their reunion tour.

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related. During his career, Jung furnished several slightly different definitions of it.

Jung variously defined synchronicity as an "acausal connecting (togetherness) principle," "meaningful coincidence", and "acausal parallelism." He introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but gave a full statement of it only in 1951 in an Eranos lecture.

In 1952, he published a paper Synchronizität als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhänge (Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle) in a volume which also contained a related study by the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli.

Jung's belief was that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality. This contradicts the Axiom of Causality in specific cases but not generally.

Murder by Numbers

Murder by Numbers is a 2002 psychological thriller film produced and directed by Barbet Schroeder. It stars Sandra Bullock, Ben Chaplin, Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt. It is loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb case.

The film was screened out of competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival.

Plot

Richard Haywood and Justin Pendleton, two wealthy, intellectual high school students, plan to commit the "perfect murder" to prove their superiority over other people. They kill a woman and set up Richard's marijuana dealer, janitor Ray Feathers. They then incinerate the evidence. The case is assigned to Detective Cassie Mayweather and her new partner, Sam Kennedy. They work together well, and begin a romantic relationship very early on in their partnership. Footprints found at the crime scene lead to Haywood, who has an alibi. Cassie becomes obsessed with the idea that Haywood is guilty, and refuses to pursue the case from other angles. This displeases Captain Rod Cody and Cassie's vindictive ex, Assistant D.A. Al Swanson, who fear that Richard's influential parents will end their careers.

Synchronicity I

"Synchronicity I" is a song by The Police, and the opening track from their album Synchronicity. Written by Sting, the track was also released as a Japanese-only single.

Background

"Synchronicity I," as well as its more famous counterpart "Synchronicity II," features lyrics that are inspired by Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity. Also included in the lyrics is a term from "The Second Coming," "Spiritus Mundi" (translating to "spirit of the world"), which William Butler Yeats used to refer to the collective unconscious, another of Jung's theories. Like other songs on Synchronicity, "Synchronicity I" is driven by a synthesizer riff.

Although it only served as an album track for Synchronicity in Britain and America, "Synchronicity I" was released as the second and final single from the album in Japan, backed with "Someone to Talk To," a non-album B-side which appeared as the B-side to "Wrapped Around Your Finger" in Britain and "King of Pain" in America. The song was also used as the opening track of the band's set-list during the Synchronicity Tour.