Maybe This is How Skynet Started

Nobody wanted it to be accurate. Contradictory to everything that bracketology represents -- speculation, scouting, team loyalty, soothsaying -- the Coin-Flip Algorithm also doubled-down on the suckage by predicting Duke would win it all. That's like picking Johnny to beat Daniel-san or rooting for Clue Heywood to go yard on Ricky Vaughn in the playoffs.

But there it is. After sixty-three brutal games (the play-in game wasn't included), the Coin-Flip bracket claimed a dominant second-place finish in the office pool amid thirty-six entrants. Earning 109 total points, the bracket was only three points shy of first place but a full twenty-six ahead of third place.

Highlights included the prediction of St Mary's over Villanova in the second round and early exists by Kansas, Syracuse, and Ohio State. Lowlights abounded -- Oklahoma State in the Final Four? Florida State in the Regional Final? -- but the math still wins. CBS evidently doesn't track how many entries they received overall (WTF?) but ESPN estimates a staggering 4.78 million brackets were submitted. The Coin-Flip bracket's ranking worldwide: 27,279^th (That's fifty-three points behind the overall winner, a grizzled old sports guru named "PrettyBritt3", who likely reasoned that actual devils could kill actual bulldogs. NTTAWWT.)

The only portion of the Coin-Flip method that relied on pure prognostication was the tie-breaking final-game, final-score total. I predicted 119 points; the score was 61-59.

Missed it by that much.

Also, "Scottéric Bastiat" Was Already Taken

Judging by the way several people -- upon making my personal acquaintance -- mispronounce the name of this blog, a bit of appellative exposition is in order.

The name "Scotticus Finch" is a barely-creative take on Atticus Finch, the protagonist in Harper Lee's 1960 masterpiece To Kill a Mockingbird. Finch was peerlessly portrayed in the 1962 film version by Gregory Peck, a performance that netted Peck an Oscar and (forty years later) cemented Finch as the greatest hero in 100 years of American cinema (edging out such icons as Superman, Indiana Jones, and James Bond).

Today, writing a progressive character who fights against racist ignorami is just lazy. In 1962, it was contemporary. In Mockingbird, Finch, a southern lawyer, represents a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. The book is written from the perspective of Finch's young daughter, so some of the lessons aren't exactly groundbreaking -- "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." -- but Finch was a practical idealist, a crack-shot pacifist, an eternally-patient single parent, and an anti-authoritarian agent of the state. We don't get heroes like that every day.

Finch on democracy: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

Bastiat himself couldn't have said it better.

Incidentally, today would have been Peck's 94^th birthday.

Maybe One Day They Will Make a Book Version of the "Lord of the Rings" Movies

I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about exactly what I would wish for, given the opportunity. Much depends on the exact circumstances: Is it a standard three-wish genie situation? A four-wish monkey paw? Just one wish like Ray J? And what if it turns out I'm being taught an "important lesson", and everything I wish for turns out horribly wrong?

It's a lot to consider. A constant thread to the fantasy, though, is that one way or another, I would use my wish(es) to permanently remove a single phrase from the collective human lexicon:

"Yes, I saw the movie. The book was so much better."

That sentence has never been additive to any conversation in the history of human dialogue, and 9999 times out of 10,000 it could be replaced by saying "I'm fairly certain I'm intellectually superior to you" instead.

What exactly is the sentiment behind such a declaration? What was "better" about the book? Did our pretentious speaker deftly perceive that characters developed more over 400 pages of descriptive third-person narrative than in 100 pages (mostly white space and stage direction) of a script? Is it that sixteen paragraphs describing the feelings, thoughts, memories, smells, and history associated with a particular location provides a broader context than a five second establishing shot? What is the consistent set of measurable values through which this comparative assessment becomes valid?

Movies and books are such vastly different media that claiming Puzo's The Godfather is "better" than Coppola's The Godfather is as sensible as claiming Pope Benedict is better than eggs Benedict. (Never mind the fact that -- separately and independently -- Coppola's film is fantastic and Puzo's book is lousy.)

Most books cannot emotionally accomplish in two hours what movies can. And very few movies can envelop the consumer and create the kind of sensory investment that books can. Comparing them side-by-side demeans them both.

More unfortunate still, most people who make these claims don't even have a lukewarm basis for it in their own minds. Instead it serves as a way to boldly declare "I READ A BOOK!" in the middle of an entirely orthogonal conversation.

While we're all very proud of you for reading Marley and Me all the way through, your decision to hijack my conversation for the purposes of misplaced self-aggrandizement hath triggered my wrath.

Two wishes left. Maybe I'll wish for innocuous observations to stop making me so grumpy...

More than One in 3,921,568 Americans Visited this Blog in March

The obsequious team of semi-competent Scotticus Finch interns put together some information about the site's March 2010 traffic.  (That was the first full month during which we employed fancy-schmancy analytic software.)  The interns shall be rewarded with an extra ration of Bakon; the rest of you will be rewarded with the cold, hard numbers.

In March, the site delighted the senses of 102 unique visitors who generated 745 total page-views.

Twenty-four curious souls meandered over from a Facebook plug; nine drove by on their way to Hit & Run; two stumbled in from a comment on Consuming Louisville (Looks like a lovely little town!); and two sought refuge from the Über-Troll Urkobold (don't ask).

Of the sixty-eight Googlers who found us, twenty-seven used some combination of the following search terms: owl city, firefly, terrible. One visitor somehow came over by Googling the phrase "bubba the punch sponge", though independent experimentation has failed to recreate this anomaly.

Disappointingly, out of 745 page-views in thirty-one days, only twenty-four visitors clicked on any of the ads in the upper-left corner. We here at Scotticus Finch would never violate the Terms of Service by encouraging people to click the ads. We would also never remind you how much baby formula costs.

(Gross revenue for the month of March: $5.73. Booyah!)

Many sincere thanks to those of you who frequent the site, especially those who have been around since the austere (and a bit odd) beginning. Some exciting changes are in the works for the upcoming months, so stay tuned!

No Word Yet on Film Adaptations of "McDonald's" or "Uno"

Fingers... cramping. Eye... twitching. Teeth... grinding.

Must... Contain... Fury...

Apologies in advance for my lack of commentary on the following link. There simply isn't much to be said.

Obviously Hollywood has reached the point where the only question that matters in getting a movie made is: "Have people heard of this thing?" No layered characterization, no subtle symbolism, no triumphant story arc can trump the simple reality that people no longer want to go to the movies unless they know beforehand exactly what their $12 is buying.

So, rather than marvelous films (but potential risks) like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Memento, or Moulin Rouge, the future of American Cinema instead looks like this:

The Marmaduke Movie

It's the bed we've made, America.  Now go lay down!

The One Most of You Can Skip [Working Title]

The Internet's greatest asset as a social tool is its ability to simultaneously allow users to be anonymous, yet onymous. Pseudonymity, once the pretense of literary atychiphobics, is now the favored bloviation tool for everyone from Publius to Perez Hilton.

But did you know that you too can wax philosophic under a semi-clever name of your choice, be it "Muffintopless", "YouHadMeAtHalo", "BabysatByPolanski", or "Steve"?

By popular singular demand, here is a quick tutorial on navigating the Comments section of Scotticus Finch:

First, select the Name/URL option from the drop-down menu.

Next, enter the name of your choice. Ignore the URL section; that's far too advanced for you.

Finally, jabber away. This ain't Twitter, so there is no 140-character limit. (But for the record, anything more than about three sentences triggers my fight-or-flight. Sheesh, get your own blog!)

That's all there is to it. Now stand up and be heard with no possibility of accountability whatsoever! It's why Al Gore invented this crazy series of tubes!

Japan to New York Times: "All Your Job Are Belong to Us"

One of the long-standing excuses for journalistic bias is that reporters are "only human".

Well, problem solved:

Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds.

According to the article, the robot can "detect changes in its surroundings", determine their relevance, interview bystanders, take photos, use the Internet to "round out its understanding" of the story, and publish directly to the web.

Surprisingly, researchers have not named the bot. I humbly submit: w00dward.

This is fantastic progress. Most cable news networks have already abandoned the charade of objectivity, and focus instead on naked opinion-driven analysis, something that even Skynet can't synthesize. But fact-finding and reporting should be a rote process, and it is my (now-encouraged) hope that future societies will wax nostalgic about reporters the same way we do about chimney sweeps and elevator operators.

And just in case you were thinking: "Robot reporters? Bah. I was promised a future with jetpacks, dammit! Where are my jetpacks?!" Well, your time has come as well.

Reporter-bot link via Pro Libertate and the Über Troll Urkobold.

Snarky Before it Was Cool -- Scotticus Talks to God in 2004

In a stunning display of laziness and general contempt for my reader(s), I am going to reprint an op-ed that originally ran in my hometown newspaper in April 2004. The only part that feels especially dated is the John Cusack fawning, but remember that prior to 2004, one could still appreciate the High Fidelity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Pushing Tin, Say Anything Cusack without knowing that those of us in the distant future would have to endure the Must Love Dogs, Martian Child, War Inc, 2012 Cusack.

Speaking of Cusack, join me in our very own Hot Tub Time Machine:

Dear God: it’s me, Scotticus. First off, I want to thank you for so many things -– springtime, basketball, The Sopranos, John Cusack movies -– so as not to seem overly critical. As for Earth, I love what you’ve done with the place. Your sense for drama is absolutely Scorsese-esque, especially that bit with Saddam Hussein coming out of the spider-hole with his Lyle Lovett hair and Jim Belushi demeanor:

"I wish to negotiate." Classic.

Having said that, I’ve got some pretty serious clergy-stumpers that I’d feel much better having answers to. For instance, I saw Mel Gibson’s new movie about your kid, and it got me to thinking: that was your kid. Yeah, yeah, "part God" and all, but if I have my theology right, when Deus Jr. was on the cross –- bleeding, bruised, broken -– he was flesh, blood, scooped-him-up-when-he-fell-off-his-bike human. So from there I began to wonder, was that really justice?

The way I learned it in Vacation Bible School, Jesus had to die in my place because he was perfect. For me to die wouldn’t have paid even the interest on my debt, having once lied to my mom about drawing on the furniture with permanent markers, so you called in a Holy Ringer. That’s where the logic gets muddy to me. Why am I absolved through the breaking and destruction of the only perfect human you ever made? In which part of your wonderful universe is that just?

If I saw a man murder my family, I wouldn’t sigh the great sigh of closure by seeing his sweet, elderly, Wal-Mart-greeter aunt writhe in the electric chair in his place. People point to your fourth-quarter Messiah substitution as proof positive of just how much you love us, but that doesn’t feel like justice at all; in fact it kind of makes my stomach churn.

I want to be on your team. Believe me, I love Max Lucado books as much as the next guy, and Mike Breaux can flat-out preach. Your theme songs are always catchy, and your pleasant promises of paradise take the acid-reflux out of life, but I’m not the first who needed to put his finger in the wounds to believe -– and Thomas used to fish with the guy.

I see your chosen people getting sand kicked in their face by everyone from Pharaoh to Hitler to Arafat, and that leaves me almost as dumbfounded as the fact that you have a "chosen people" to begin with.

But all digression aside, my overall point is so disturbing that I cannot be content to fully claim it without begging, pleading, even praying to be shown the light which so many insist is there; so here goes:

I think maybe you’re wrong.

Now hear me out. I know the Bible says you are infallible, but to be fair it was your book. Richard Clarke practically claims he foresaw terrorist attacks in tea leaves in his book. If I wrote one, I’d be the coolest character in it too. I’d see the future, possess a perfect sense of justice, love everyone, and be able to pull off that trick where Superman could see Lois Lane’s undies through her nightgown.

It’s not that I don’t think you are who you say you are. Evidence and instinct screams that there is a creative, even artistic force behind the universe, and I believe that force is most certainly you. But I was created with a mind capable of astounding feats of reason (in fact it is my gift just as bears have claws and puppies have cuddliness) and there are moments among your record where you and I seem to simply disagree. Remember that time when you and Moses commanded the Israelites to pike the heads of the Midianites, scolded the army for leaving the women alive, then ordered them to take the virgins -– most likely preteens -– for themselves (Numbers 31:3-18)? I wasn’t on board for that. And earlier, when you put Pharaoh up as a patsy to show off your best tricks, one of which was killing firstborn children (Exodus 10:1-2), well you left me with a little head-scratching then too. But the real rub is the crucifixion. What parent expresses love to his naughty children by nailing the one who behaves to a tree?

In the end, it’s your world. Even if you are wrong, you wrote the rules and you pick the winners. But you created this brain in my head, and if the ultimate gesture of humanity as you created it is to deny the very rationality and morality that sets me apart from the gerbils in favor of blindly following you, then I’m afraid I cannot suit up this time. Give my regards to Walter Matthou, and if I’m wrong, then I truly pray you help me piece it together before the final horn blows.

PS – Thanks again for the springtime.

BREAKING NEWS: Teenagers Unpredictable!

Out of 36 entries in my office NCAA bracket pool, the Coin-Flip Algorithm entry is in sole possession of second place after one day of games.

My fortunes now hinge on a player from UCSB finding magic shoes hanging from a power line.

Jury Cat, Penny Pursuers, Racist Rhyming, and Mind-Reading Policemen

It's NCAA tournament time, so here's a few quick stories you can skim while Verne Lundquist struggles to pronounce "Mouphtaou Yarou" and "Othyus Jeffers".

• A Boston couple's cat is summonsed for jury duty. The owners filed the appropriate paperwork for disqualification, but were denied exemption. Reminder: These are the people we're being asked to trust to run our health care system.



• IRS agents (multiple) descend in person last week to collect past-due taxes from a Sacramento businessman. Tax amount: four cents. Penalty amount: $202.31. The taxee has an October letter from the IRS stating his taxes were already paid in full.



• An East Sussex (UK) man was arrested, fingerprinted, and DNA-sampled after someone else in his office used the phrase "do-as-you-likey attitude" in an email to the district planning department. Sussex Police said the man was arrested on "suspicion of committing a racial or religious-aggravated offence" because "likey" rhymes with "pikey", which is a derogatory term for gypsies.
  
  Think the US will never slip down this slope? Really? Really? Really? Really? Really:



• Oregonian David Pyles woke up to two SWAT teams pointing guns at his home and demanding he surrender himself. Police admit he had committed no crime. But, Pyles had recently been placed on administrative leave from work, then legally purchased firearms (which he collects) with his recent income tax return.
  
  Police say Pyles was "disgruntled", but did not bother to seek a warrant for either the arrest or the search of Pyles's home. Chillingly, Oregon State Police Sgt. Jeff Proulx proudly explained: "Instead of being reactive, we took a proactive approach."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I need a drink. Enjoy the games!

Accepting the Award on Behalf of the Internets Will be Ted Stevens

According to those tea-sipping pitch-joggers over at the BBC, the Internet has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "But Finchy! The Nobel Peace Prize is an honor traditionally reserved for tempered humanitarian activists or elder global statesmen with a long history of working toward a more peaceful world!" Well, gentle reader, that attitude is so 2006.

It's 2010, and the Barack Obama GoDaddy.com™ Hope & Change© Warm Fuzzies Award® has a new reputation to uphold. Never mind those boring doctors treating rape victims in the Congo, imprisoned electricians championing Democracy in China, or mountaineers building secular schools in rural Pakistan. No one has even heard of those people. But everyone knows Perez Hilton and LOLcats.

In addition to the Internet, I say it's high time we nominate hugs. Or rainbows. Or the very concept of peace itself. Why not nominate a fictional amalgamation of Jesus, Buddha, Captain Stubing from The Love Boat, and long summer afternoons sippin' lemonade? No matter what, Nobel Committee, you've already been bested in the race to the bottom.

Enjoy your newfound irrelevance.

St Paddy's Day tip o' the hat to "Andrea" for the link.

It's Like Hoosiers Meets Dungeons and Dragons

I like college basketball. I like it almost as much as I like math. So what could be more fun than devising a seed-weighted coin-flipping algorithm for completing my 2010 NCAA bracket?*

After a couple false starts using systems which refused to produce any first-round upsets, I enlisted my most nerd-tastic adviser** to help tweak the details. The result was a copacetic waste of nearly three hours, followed by the most maddening conclusion I could ever have feared.

Teams begin their matchups with 100 points each. I flip a coin*** according to the team's seed number -- thrice for a three-seed, eleven times for an eleven-seed, et cetera -- and for every flip that comes up tails, the team loses three points. To give the underdogs a fighting statistical chance, the final two flips are always worth ten points instead of three. We'll call that the Rock n' Jock Factor.

For example, Texas A&M and Utah State meet in Round One. The Aggies are a five-seed, which means they have five coin-tosses coming their way. Tosses one, two, and three all come up heads. No points deducted. Now, the final two tosses are worth ten each, so I take myself very seriously for those. Toss four lands on tails, and just like that, A&M is down to 90 points. The final toss goes back their way, giving them only one bad toss out of five.

Now Utah State is up, and it's time for the fighting-- Wait... Goddammit. Utah State is also the Aggies?! So the University of Utah are the Utes, and the Utah State Agricultural College are the Aggies? Utah's most famous resident made up a whole religion based on magic invisible golden plates that he got from angels, and the most creative his descendants can get is "Utes" and "Aggies"? Weak.

Anyway, now the Utah State Fighting Narwhals are up. As a twelve-seed, they get twelve coin-tosses. Seven out of the first ten come up tails, and at three points each, that puts USAC down 21 points. Of their final two tosses (the ten-pointers), one more comes up tails, pushing USAC down to a humiliating total of 69 points. Texas A&M wins; dozens of people briefly celebrate.

Everybody got it?

In Round One, a few underdogs managed to find a bone, most notably Minnesota over Xavier, Sam Houston over Baylor, and -- wait for it -- University of California Santa Barbara over Ohio State! I can only assume Evan Turner missed the game while saving a busload of orphans from falling into a crevasse.

Florida State makes a deep run, knocking out top-seeded Syracuse and Butler before succumbing to Kansas State in the Regional Finals. Villanova can't match up with the mighty mighty Gaels**** of Saint Mary's College, and Oklahoma State (now that's more like it) hands Kansas its surprise third loss of the year, setting up a Final Four of Duke(1), Kentucky(1), Oklahoma State(7), and Kansas State(2).

Kansas State can read a map, so they top Oklahoma, but Duke is not to be denied. After six consecutive coin-flip ties, they rip out Kentucky's heart once again.  The Blue Devils then change the "K" in K-State to "Krzyzewski" before finally cutting down the nets in Indy.  (Click to enlarge.)

*Nothing
**Commenter "Ryan", who at age nine submitted an alternative energy proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers
***A 1913 Liberty Head Nickel, since you asked
****Seriously? What ever happened to Bears, Wildcats, and Tigers?
*****HA! There was no fifth footnote!

"Excuse Me; Meryl Streep Could Play Batman and Be the 'Right Choice'."

A friend recently emailed me a breathless lamentation concerning a random Twitter update by comedian / actor Dane Cook claiming that he was auditioning for the upcoming Captain America movie. The wildly unpopular rumor was confirmed, though it is still unclear if Cook was actually auditioning for the title role.

Fear not, gentle reader; I have no intention of writing yet another speculative piece on who will play Cap. Instead, I am writing in defense of acting.

There was a time in Hollywood when a role was created, then James Stewart played it. Need an earnest bumpkin raging against the machine? Call Jimmy. An alcoholic who cynically chooses to be pleasant rather than smart? Call Jimmy. Hard-nosed loner? Acrophobic cop? Pacifist lawyer assassin? Jimmy, Jimmy, and Jimmy. Casting wasn't an epochal event in those days because Jimmy Stewart & Co were all professional actors. These days we're lucky to get someone whose chops range from skinny wisecracking schlub to fat wisecracking schlub.

The art isn't dead. In the span of two decades, Dustin Hoffman went from Rain Man to Hook to Wag the Dog to Meet the Fockers. Tom Hanks has been believable as gay, stupid, and super-duper lonely. Hell, Robin Williams was Mork and Professor Keating.

Acting -- if it is indeed a craft at all -- is the craft of communicating inauthentic emotions authentically, and traditional comedians have lately proven themselves surprisingly adept at that particular skill.  Just ask Bill Murray, Adam Sandler, Jamie Foxx, Jim Carrey, Monique, Jeff Daniels, or Hugh Laurie. If Dane Cook knocked the audition out of the park, I'd cast him as Harriet Tubman.

And remember, not that long ago somebody suggested this guy be cast as The Joker.

Coffee? Tea? Diet Ski?

A quick timeline:

• November 2008 - Social/foreign-policy liberals, angry at social/foreign-policy conservatives, elect Barack Obama as the 44th President. Optimism ensues.
  
  
• February 2009 - Fiscal conservatives, angry at fiscal liberals, form the Tea Party Movement and help elect Scott Brown as a United States Senator. Optimism ensues.
  
  
• April 2009 - Social/fiscal liberals, angry at all the anger, initiate the reliable Nanny-Nanny Boo-Boo offense, normalize network-television references to testicles being put in people's mouths.
  
  
• February 2010 - Social/fiscal/foreign-policy nihilists, angry at the anger over all the anger, form the Coffee Party. Their platform (not to be confused with kindergarten curriculum) includes hugs, sharing, and following the leader.
  

Clearly, grassroots political organizations are the new black, and for once I intend to finally be on the inclining end of the graph. Therefor, I am proud to announce the formation of the Scotticus Finch Diet Ski™ Party.

For those of you who have never been in a situation where it was necessary to purchase a beverage from a service station out of a foam bait cooler labeled "POP - 50¢", Ski is like Mountain Dew infused with Ted Nugent's sweat. In 2005, Diet Ski changed its slogan from "Ain't Y'all Thirsty?" to "Sip it with Supper!", and in 2008 they celebrated the first confirmed purchase of Ski by a black person. But I digress.

There are three major planks of the Diet Ski Party platform. First, we demand that the Federal Government finally take responsibility for forcing NBC to cancel Bonanza after a mere 14 years. (And just when Little Joe was beginning to get into his stride as a character!) Second (as envisioned by blogger Pro Libertate), we will create a (budget-less) Office of Skepticism headed by James Randi, whose only responsibility will be to shame superfluous governmental agencies into voluntarily disbanding. Lastly: Congressional term limits, measured in "hours remaining" and continuously displayed on an LED lapel tag.

The symbolism is appropriate. The Diet Ski Party, like Diet Ski itself, is just another knock-off of the two major brands that are, themselves, practically identical. Despite the fact that it's a cheap imitation of a branch of a branch of a branch of a major brand, thousands of yokels would inevitably become Diet Ski Party fans, create Diet Ski Party Facebook groups, organize Diet Ski Party marches, and blog endlessly about the tragic underexposure-treatment the Diet Ski Party is getting from Big Media, which is of course snugly in the pocket of every party except the Diet Ski Party. The point is that Internet connectivity and 24-hour news cycles lend a misleading implication of ubiquity to even the silliest of communities. Some of us have learned that "revolutions" most often... aren't.

I appreciate anything that puts a bee in the bonnet of either major party, but to affect real change it's going to take something with a lot more kick than tea.

Leading Saudi Scientists Say Earth "Probably Less Flat" than Once Believed, Possibly Toroidal

Check out this interesting translation from a 16th-Century Babylonian manuscript. The ancient text chronicles the journey of a Lebanese fortuneteller named Ali Sibat, who was something of a celebrity in his day:

[W]hile on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was spotted by religious police in the holy city of Medina. Their job it is to battle vice and uphold virtue in the ultraconservative kingdom. So they arrested Sibat in his room at the Medina Hotel on charges of sorcery.

...Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft.

Sibat’s fate is common in Saudi Arabia.

Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft.

Wait a tick. Did that last line say Falih has been on death row since 2006? As in Anno Domini?

Indeed it did. Because -- believe it or not -- the whole passage is actually from a 2009 Los Angeles Times piece about contemporary human beings and a 21st-Century state that still murders its citizens on suspicion of devilry. So what constitutes evidence of buddying up to Beelzebub? Bilingualism, apparently:

Take the case of Muhammad Burhan, who carried a phone booklet with writings in the Tigrinya alphabet from his native Eritrea. Perhaps it was his way of protecting himself against the evil forces out there. Maybe it was his lucky charm for a little extra success in his love life or in business.

But the booklet convinced Saudi authorities that Burhan was a black magician and charged him with "charlatanry," for which he was lashed 300 times and sentenced to 20 months behind bars. He was then deported after having served more than double the prison term he was sentenced to, according to Human Rights Watch.

As I've pointed out before, Saudi Arabia is still considered among the least-free places on Earth. Evidently, their goal is to move up that list, rather than off of it.

Munich Motel Sign: "Heisenberg Might Have Slept Here"

Any closeted fan of junky extreme TV science like SpikeTV's Deadliest Warrior (Tonight: who would win in a real-life fight between a 1st-Century Gallic Warrior and a tweeked Aerosmith roadie with nunchucks?!?) or ESPN's Sport Science (As this graph shows, the centripetal force of LeBron's dunk could literally kill a vampire!) will appreciate this cartoon from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (Click to enlarge.):

Changing Hearts and Losing My Mind, Volume 2

[Catch up with Volume 1 here.]

Election finance is a minefield. My campaign fund-raising sources consisted entirely of people who had once tussled my hair and/or used their thumb to wipe chocolate from my face, and I still narrowly escaped a $5000 fine for late paperwork -- the third consecutive required pre-primary finance report showing that I still had an operating budget of $0 for the primary election in which I had no opponent.

So I welcomed the navigational assistance of a sitting City Councilman, even after it became abundantly clear that he was certifiably insane.

A is A

Dear Radley Balko,

First off: huge fan. In a world of stenographers, you remain a journalist; and without journalists, the Republic falls.

Having said that, I take issue with the issue you've taken over the use of the word "looting" in the aftermath of Chile's massive earthquake Saturday. You say, instead, these people are simply "surviving", as long as what they purloin consists of food, water, and clothing. Lifting iPods would be another story, you concede.

Two points of contention, one semantic and one ethical: First, whether the storefront is open, vacant, abandoned, or not, that storefront and the goods within -- Evian and iPods alike -- have a rightful owner. I would hope that the owner gives his absentee blessing to those who steal his property as an alternative to dying -- and shame on him if he does not -- but that decision is his. If he were standing there, present and defiant, as people disregarded his rights and confiscated his goods, what else would be dismissed as "survival"? Trespassing? Assault? Murder? And if he were to defend himself with lethal force, which one then is the "survivor"?

Which brings me to the semantics. A lie is a lie, even if it eases someone's pain. Speeding, in a legal sense, is still speeding even if you're trying to escape a pursuing Decepticon. How individuals (and the state) choose to react to others' actions can -- and should -- vary based on circumstances, but to redefine those actions as not only moral, but also beyond reproach is a step too far, especially in such a broad sense where individual motives are indiscernible.

I would steal to keep from starving. It doesn't make me less of a thief.

(Image via NY Daily News.)

Brother-in-Law Links™

• Canada is now the world's number-one importer of American-style paranoia.
  
  
• It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a... OK, frankly, it's a dick.
  
  
• Seven-year-old child looks on as police officers forcibly enter home, fire seven rounds into his two dogs (including a corgi), and confiscate a misdemeanor amount of pot from Mom and Dad. Now guess which characters in this story are charged with child endangerment?
  
  
• Nothing more after the link, but check out this survey from a 1970 issue of Detective Comics:
  
  
  

If Only We Could Identify the Addictive Chemical Which Makes Me Crave it Fortnightly

My position as a massively influential member of the media is not a mantle I bear lightly. With a keystroke, I could release the obsequious ScotticusFinch horde and likely topple even the most stubborn of institutions, yet I am tempered by perspective. No failing bank, no Haitian earthquake, and no case of kitsch larceny had yet been dire enough for me to fully wield the awesome power of my pulpit.

But that threshold has been breached. Friends, there is a chicken-wing shortage in America.

According to USA Today, skyrocketing demand for the ambrosial avian appendages fueled a 39% increase in the wholesale price of wings over last year.

The primary factor driving up wing prices is the growing number of restaurants, including many national chains, that are adding wings to their offerings, says Richard Lobb, spokesman for the Washington-based chicken industry trade group the National Chicken Council.

(On a side note, the National Chicken Council once mistakenly booked the same convention space as the American Egg Board, and the two groups spent six weeks trying to decide who should go first.)

Lobb says it's not a matter of simply raising more chickens. The nation's chicken producers turned out 9 billion birds in 2009, he says. Other than for wings, the recession has slowed demand, and the overall price for chicken has been soft. "As expensive as wings are, they cannot carry the entire bird," he says.

How true, both ornithologically and metaphorically. The problem is vexing. While I'm pheasantly pleased (Man, I'm on a roll!) to be able to grab a box of mediocre wings from every Rally's, Little Caesars, and KFC, I also have to face the reality that 20¢ Wing Night at Buffalo Wild Wings is as likely to make a comeback as Rod Blagojevich.

Ken Moran, owner of Rochester, NY's "Jeremiah's Tavern", remembers the halcyon days of cheap chicken:

"Chicken wings once were so cheap. ...It was an attempt to use all the parts of the bird. Now it's reversed. They've gotten pretty crazy in terms of popularity."

Most of you have probably already noticed the end-around that restaurants have been running:

To offset wing prices, numerous restaurants are adding "boneless chicken wings" made of breast meat, he says.

"The boneless wing is a much higher profit margin and it also attracts a lot more people who don't care to eat things on bones," he says.

"Boneless wings". Ever heard a boat salesman say he has a great deal on "wheel-less cars", or a paper company selling reams of "wordless books"? Still, if it lowers the price of my delicious dark-meat treats (Can I say that?), then KFC can call its spicy breast chunks whatever it wants. Until they start taxing napkins, I'll be at the bar.

(See the unparalleled scene that inspired the headline here.)