1432 The Physics of Law

The words in the title are not out of order. Lawyers are among the leading physicists in America.  They take atomic and subatomic particles, rearrange them and turn lead into gold.

Eat your hearts out, alchemists.

Here’s what happens.

“A” is murdered.  “B” is suspected, arrested and charged.  Then the lawyers get to work.

You know how these cases go.  The defense makes a monster of someone who may have been the killer. Man into monster alchemy.

The defense admits “B” is not a saint, but is good to his children or his mother or was almost an Eagle Scout or worked in the soup kitchen and therefore couldn’t possibly have committed murder.

The prosecution will produce a fingerprint.  More magic.  The defense will say it’s only a 70% match.  The magic of diminished science.

The prosecution will use security cam video and the accused will suddenly appear at the crime scene.

The defense will say the videos have been altered.

This magic show will continue until half the jurors believe one side or the other has turned lead into gold.

Like modern day physicists, modern day lawyers work in the world of atomic and subatomic particles.  

Instead of cyclotrons and colliders, they use human powered wind machines, themselves.

Members of the jury are the peer reviewers academics depend on for reputation and confirmation.  Except the jury doesn’t have the credentials of a scholarly journal so they have to go on belief, the most volatile and unstable element on the periodic table.

Maybe the trial judge dozes off for ten seconds every once in awhile or is caught texting while the alchemists are on stage.  Grounds for appeal if “B” is convicted?

After a not guilty verdict, the defense alchemist passes out business cards.  “Hey! Let Whiplash Willie turn your lead rump into gold, too! Call 1800-4 Magic2.

At his sentencing, “B” will invoke the national anthem of the convicted, telling judge Snoozy: “I’m not a bad person.”

Yeah, probably, you are.  Not-bad-persons don’t commit murder.

Okay, alchemists, line up those protons and neutrons.  There’s always room for the wind accelerator at the appeals court.  

Shrapnel:

--Speaking of magic, the NYPD has made thousands of arrests and tickets disappear.  But they’ll soon tire of it.  So don’t try going 90 on 92nd street.

--Turning potential tickets into antimatter is the beat cops’ way of Charlie Hebdo-ing the mayor whom they believe is a key player in the Great Anti Police Conspiracy.  He isn’t.  He’s just taken too many public foot in mouth lessons from Biden or Bush.

--Cop wannabe George Zimmerman has been arrested again, this time for aggravated assault.  Police say he flung a wine bottle at his girlfriend in Seminole County, Florida.  Possibly after draining it mouthward.

Grapeshot:

-Question for Chris Christie: did you think you looked good in that orange sweater at the Cowboys game or are you just picking out a color for your minimum security jump suit.

-Question for the AP writer of this headline SEARCHERS HONE IN ON BLACK BOXES FROM AIRASIA PLANE: will you please learn the difference between “hone” and “home?”

-Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like hone.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1431 Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues

1431 Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues

Two things you can say about the French -- maybe the only two things -- are that they understand the sheer ridiculousness of life and treasure freedom of speech as much or more than we do here.

It’s a country where the people eat snails and frogs’ legs, where it’s okay for a married public official to have a lover, where fermented grapes and goose liver are considered high art, where they can’t make a car that can go 20-thousand miles without a breakdown, where a tiny man had big power and enormous kings didn’t.  They can take a ribbing.

Oh, they sputter and snort about hurt feelings, and  act insulted.  But then they go out and buy 130,000 copies of Charlie Hebdo each week.

(Al Jazeera Photo)

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier

Not exactly L’Express in circulation.  But apparently enough to scrape by, and easily as influential as its milder direct competitor, Le Canard enchaîné.

Charlie mocked everything.  Rude, for sure. But when it came to radical Islam, rude and dangerous.  The critics say they went too far, and got what was coming to them.  What came to them was a murderous attack in which three gunmen “avenged the Prophet.”

You know who Charlie is.  Do you know Ahmed?

Ahmed Merabet, 28, was one of the French cops shot dead at the magazine’s building. Died defending the people who mocked his faith.

(The Guardian via Twitter)

For many cops, copism trumps everything else: home, family, religion, diet, love, hate. The second killed cop was Franck Brinsolaro, 42, assigned bodyguard duty for Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.

There are too many terrorists and not enough Ahmed Merabets.  There are too many people deluded into believing their prophet needs avenging… who hear voices telling them to kill.

There are too many people convinced that they are doing God’s work, imposing their interpretation of their holy book on everyone else and killing the infidels. And the Koran lets them off the hook:

8:17 (Asad) And yet, [O believers,] it was not you who slew the enemy [18] but it was God who slew them; and it was not thou who cast [terror into them, O Prophet], when thou didst cast it, but it was God who cast it: [19] and [He did all this] in order that He might test the believers by a goodly test of His Own ordaining.

(http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/)

Who is the enemy?  Anyone who wants to live after the seventh century.  Surely they are entitled to want to turn back the hands of time. They are not the only religion to try.

But there’s a difference.  They’re the only ones who believe that you must go along. Not may, not can, not should, but must. It’s a matter of life and death.

Meantime, here where it’s 14 centuries later, the French are showing some backbone.  And we should be too.

Committing acts of speech should not be a capital offense.  And the people who insist on silencing their critics by killing and maiming and threatening? They are showing not bravery and devotion, but cowardice and weakness. As Reinhold Niebuhr once said they show fear, not faith.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1430 Call Your Doctor Right Away

1430 Call Your Doctor Right Away

We’re all familiar with the never- ending ads for new pharmaceuticals.  Smiling faces and pounds of side effect warnings.  Many end with “if you develop these symptoms, stop taking (name of med) and call your doctor immediately.

Sure.

Calls to docs at off hours used to go to an answering service and if it was an emergency, you got a call back, often pretty quickly.

Today, lots of luck.

You dial the number, worried sick that you’re about to have a stroke or heart attack, and you get to climb the phone tree.

“If this is a life threatening emergency, hang up. Then call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.”  If you listen only as far as “hang up,” you hang up… and nothing happens and maybe you croak.

If you call 911, and tell the operator your moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis is acting up, be assured they’re not going to activate a rescue mission in the middle of the night.  A heart attack, maybe. But not your irritable bowel syndrome.

When we were sick, really really sick, we still hesitated to call a doctor’s answering service.  After all, he or she was probably the busiest person any of us knew. The doctor was an authority figure, a pillar of the community, not to be disturbed for frivolous reasons.

But now, kindly old doc is just another businessman. We’ll call at all hours for all kinds of things.  And while it would take a fever of 102 or more to provoke a call in earlier days, we now will jump on the phone at 2am for a reading of 99.

We call because

--We itch.

--We sneeze

--We cough

--We have a hangover

So why are we surprised to collide with that phone tree and come away with Excedrin Headache #2?

Of course, there’s no way of reversing today’s tech-soaked, MBA-forged, bureaucratic non-communication systems.  The toothpaste is out of the tube.

So, in the quest for physical stability, we become our own doctor, especially if we have an eyelid that twitches and it’s not between 8am and 4:30pm on a weekday.

Shrapnel:

--John Boehner has won another term as House Speaker, showing the tea-punks that the old guard still has some clout.  Now, are you going to govern or just go gunning for Obama again?  Have another 5th, John,  and think about it until you pass out.

Grapeshot:

-Question for the participants in the Consumer Electronics Show: how much more of your stuff do we really need?

-Question for Sarah Palin:  As the dog and the boy grow older and larger, are you still encouraging one to stand atop the other, and if so, which?

-Question for former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell:  You getting a two-year supply of that diet supplement you seem to love so well for use in the slammer?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1429 The Accused Pleads Goo Goo

News Item: a two year old boy in Idaho shot his mother dead.  They were in a Wal-mart and he was searching through her purse, unzipped a hidden carry compartment, pulled out the 9 mm semi automatic and it went off.

Well, you know… terrible twos.  Cute, usually. Bad age, almost always. They’re forever sticking their fingers in light sockets, painting the rug or the dog with peanut butter and jelly.  Easily breaking easily breakable anything.

And curious.  At two, they start asking questions.  And quickly expanding a vocabulary of about 50 words.

The mother, Veronica Rutledge, 29, was shot once in the head.  She was “a responsible gun owner,” her father in law said. She and her husband, Colt Rutledge -- that is not a typo, Colt -- agrees.  They both have hidden carry permits.

He bought her that special purse for Christmas.

Just in case she should be hiking with their kids and came upon a mugger, or an FBI SWAT team which we all know are frequent occurrences in rural Idaho.

Those Special Agents could have mistaken her for Randy Woods.  You never know.  And a woman with little kids needs protection.

According to news reports, Mrs. Rutledge worked as a “nuclear scientist,” or “chemical engineer” which if true indicates considerable brain power, but not necessarily considerable sense.

So far, the following has not happened.

--The District Attorney wanting to try the toddler as a adult.

--The NRA defending the right of a two year old to shoot.

--The kid taken into an interrogation room and questioned without a lawyer.

--A Lawyer claiming the shooter was not read his Miranda Rights.

--A psychologist or social worker testifying that a two year old doesn’t typically know right from wrong.

--A gun control group claiming the mother should not have let a baby have access to a gun.

--A lawsuit against Wal-mart because it doesn’t have metal detectors at the entrances.

None of this yet.  But be patient.  It’s 2015 in America where anything is possible.

Meantime, at his arraignment the kid pleaded “Goo goo. Mama hole in head.”

Grapeshot:

-Question for the shopping channels:  when will you be offering those handbags with the pistol compartments along with the overpriced overweight  Dooney & Bourkeses?

-Question for outgoing PA Gov. Tom Corbett: Now that you’re going to have to buy your own gasoline, are you still happy with that new 10 cent a gallon tax increase you just had to have?

-Question for all newly elected politicians: Which campaign promise are you planning to break first?

-Mario Cuomo (1932-2015) to Tim Russert on why he never ran for president: “I didn’t think I was good enough.”

-Earth to Mario:  Yeah, you were.

Shrapnel:

--Rest in peace Hamlet on the Hudson. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, 82, a good leader and brilliant orator, died on the day his son Andrew was sworn in for a second term as governor.  As Shakespeare’s King Claudius said of his own Hamlet, “he benefited the whole kingdom.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them.  ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

Happy New Year

Wessays will resume Monday, 1/5/15.  A safe and happy New Year everyone.

1428 WestraDamus for 2015

With 2015 upon us, we offer the 26th anniversary edition of the WestraDamus antidictions, those for the year 2014 presented each December or January for the year gone by and generally wrong. 'Damus started as a parody of the forward looking astrological year-enders appearing in the supermarket tabloids, almost always wrong but never acknowledged. The Non-Prophet has grown into an American institution, like the Tea Party, the Heritage Foundation, Ted Cruz, the Public Television begathon, global warming, the Kardashians, Reality TV and the war in Afghanistan.  So, we continue...

Top of the Year:

President Romney will score a health care hit.  Better than the Romneycare he brought to Massachusetts as governor, the presidential version is a single payer system similar to those of every other first world nation.  

At first there will be some doubt about approval in Congress.  But the President will offer his fellow Republicans the tax cuts they seek thus winning them to his side on health care.

Also surprising will be the smoothness, simplicity and efficiency of the sign up process.

On the warfront, the US will achieve success in several areas.

--Ukraine: we will help our good friends the Russians in their takeover of all territory except the city of Kiev.

--Iraq: At last, a democratic government, freely elected and supervised by the Carter Center.  Former President Jimmy Carter, speaking from his cell will say he's being well treated by his “hosts” and expects to be home by June, 2023.

--Iran: The newly elected moderate president will agree to end his country's nuclear weapons program provided the US supplies long range ground-to-ground missiles for the pre-existing atomic warheads.

--Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will say all those settlements were really just a joke, then push a button and cause the entire project to implode like an abandoned and bankrupt Las Vegas hotel casino.

--palestinians will continue to honor their faith by sacrificing themselves with Improvised Explosive Devices, but will apologize for collateral deaths because "the Jews won't sell us the technology to be more efficient and therefore less deadly when we set off a suicide bomb in a bus station or shopping mall."

--The stock market will completely eliminate human beings from the buying and selling processes, finally reaching a decades-long goal of freezing out individual investors.

--There will be a sudden and unexplained epidemic of tonsillitis that breaks out in St. Helena, a small island off the west coast of Africa. It will affect the entire population of 5,000 people, and all eight of the American medical workers.  Republicans will demand a travel ban to the US to avoid spreading the dread disease here.

--And the website "Snopes.com" will finally expose climate change and global warming as urban legends and announce they've received a donation of $3.4 billion from "a couple of rich brothers from the lower Midwest."

So, quite a year coming into our rearview mirror.

Now, the month by month anti-dictions:

JANUARY:   

It'll be a big month for the Russians.  The Olympic Games in Sochi are but a month away and so far, the facilities look like a movie set with nothing behind them.  President Putin says they will have at least ten flush toilets available by the time the flame reaches the end of its journey.

Cartographers are eager to route the flame runner through Ukraine. That would slow him down because the country is in the midst of a three way fight for its heart and assets. If the delay is long enough, Putin's promise can be kept. Meantime the fighting between Ukraine and Russia will continue as completely independent "rebels" side with Moscow, not Kiev.

At home... conservatives will continue their decades- long attempts to co-opt Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech by gathering on Washington's National Mall to stage a group recitation by 10,563 invited guests.

FEBRUARY:

CBS News will announce that since Walter Cronkite is still dead, it remains okay not to mispronounce the name of the month.

Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman will fake his death and hide in Michigan which has been hospitable to allegedly dead celebrities Tupac Shakur, Elvis Presley and Ronald Reagan.

The Scottish Parliament will legalize same sex marriage but will fail to mention that it remains illegal to look under the kilts.

Jay Leno, scheduled to leave the Tonight Show this month, will surround NBC's Los Angeles area studios with his car collection and refuse to leave the building.

January's plans to delay the arrival of the Olympic torch by routing its journey through Ukraine will fail and the games will begin on schedule despite the delayed installation of the tenth toilet.

MARCH:

Wedding bells for Fyffes and Chiquita creating a banana cartel the likes of which have not been seen since United Fruit owned two thirds of Latin America. No one outside of Ireland ever heard of Fyffe's or knows how to say it.

President Romney will announce sanctions against Russia for its bad behavior in Crimea.  Romney says he will double the tax on beets, thus depriving Moscow of borscht, its second- most important plant product after the grain used in making Vodka.

Somali pirates will seize a beet-carrier, believing it can extort ransom from three countries: the exporter (USA), the importer (Russia) and the country under whose flag the ship operates (Panama.)

Turkey un-bans Twitter and can't figure out why it can't post its 142 character announcement.

Kim Kardashian will be reported resting comfortably at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angele, recovering from a broken finger nail. Doctors say she'll be released sometime in early April.

APRIL:

Scientists will discover a lake on a moon of Saturn, but later realize it was only raindrops on the lens of their telescope.

Secretary of Health and Human Services and former US Senator John Barrasso, MD (R-WY) will say he has no plans to step down following the overwhelming success of the healthcare.gov website.

With election fraud rampant across America, the US Supreme Court will approve voter ID laws, but restrict their issue to Democrats. Twenty million Democrats, mostly of minority heritage switch registration to Republican.

MAY:

Monica Lewinsky's new book on her dalliance with Bill Clinton will be remaindered before its debut.

Oscar Pistorious will throw himself on the mercy of the court in South Africa where he is charged with pumping his girlfriend full of lead.  He'll say "You have to let me go. I have no feet to run away with, and no ankle on which to place a locator bracelet.”

Climatologists will declare this is the hottest May on record. In response, climate change deniers will propose eliminating the month and extending April and June by two weeks each.

JUNE:

In another stunning decision, the US Supreme Court will rule cops need a warranty and receipt to search a cell phone. So if you're stopped on the street for, say, selling loose cigarettes or being black, the police cannot search your phone unless you are carrying the proof of purchase.

Somewhere, a tour bus carrying senior citizens or college kids will overturn or receive the sheet metal accordion treatment by trying to fit under a low hanging underpass.

Or maybe that'll be a ferry operating at 230% of capacity sinking in a mud puddle in a country you never heard of and can't pronounce.

Mexico will announce reduced penalties for kidnapping, saying "we never catch any of these guys anyway, so why bother with harsh sentences?"

JULY:

Historians will discover that due to a quirk in the calendars of the day, the United States was actually born on July 7th.  The Texas board of education will reject high school textbooks that are revised to show this error.

In a related development, climatologists will declare July, 2014 as the hottest month since they started collecting statistics in 1887.  Or maybe the coolest.  Or the wettest?

The CIA will admit it hacked the email accounts of United States Senators.  But a spokesman for the agency will say "we weren't snooping. We just wanted to find a home phone number for Kirsten Gillibrand without paying Intellicheck."

AUGUST:

The United States this month will begin attacking Iceland.  Unsurprisingly, Icelanders will find this offensive.  Its president will cable American authorities suggesting the B-52s took a wrong turn and might mean to attack ISIS.

Comedian Robin Williams will sign a new multi-year contract with Sony Pictures.  Concerns for his health and mental well being will be shown to be unfounded.  Fans will express relief.

An outbreak of the deadly West African Toe Fungus will be reported and US hospitals and foot clinics, unprepared for the influx of patients will rush to put on extra staff.  Meantime, Republicans in Congress will agitate for a ban on travel from the fungus-torn countries.

Megamart will start decorating for its Christmas sale.

SEPTEMBER:

A man in a chicken costume will breach the White House fence and run toward the building.  Secret Service agents will open fire and kill the intruder, thus passing a pop quiz. The Secret Service training bureau will withhold the name of the chicken for reasons of national security.

Television personality Betty White, 92, will lodge a formal complaint with the hackers who posted nude celebrity pictures on the internet because hers were excluded.  Asked for reaction, Nancy Reagan, 93, said "those young girls like Betty White and Debbie Reynolds are just feeling their oats.

Tennis star Victoria Azarenka of Belarus will miss the rest of the season because of an undisclosed injury. Doctors in Minsk will later disclose Azarenka has contracted the much-feared West African Toenail Fungus.  Republicans in the US will renew their call for a travel ban.

OCTOBER:

How about those Mets! Third consecutive world series win for the Forceful Fluishingistas.  And here you thought they were nothing but an expansion team struggling to make up for the loss of the Dodgers and Giants.

The Japanese industrial giant Takata will sign a consent agreement to stop using recycled ShopRite grocery bags and bubble gum in its airbags.  Takata will state "We did nothing wrong and we'll never do it again."

Megamart will start decorating for its January White Sale.

The director of the US Secret Service will be admitted into the witness protection program and issued her own chicken costume.

NOVEMBER:

Megamart will start decorating for its Presidents Day sale.

Democrats will retain control of the Senate and regain control of the House in a shocking repudiation of conventional wisdom.

China and the US will reach a landmark decision on climate change.  Both will agree there will be little land left to mark if global warming trends continue.  At the same time, both countries will agree to trade coal mining technology.

New York's One World Trade Center will reopen, reclaiming its spot at #2 on the list of the world's ugliest man-made structures and presenting a new target to the next hijacker of an aircraft.

DECEMBER:

Attorney General Holder will announce new plans to hide racial profiling, believing police, the Border Patrol and the TSA have been too open about picking on Middle East freedom fighters, religious and minorities, Mexicans and other innocents.

A New York Grand Jury will indict a police officer for the choke-hold death of a seller of illegal individual cigarettes on a street corner, leaving Al Cardinal Sharpton with nothing to rabble-rouse about for the rest of the year.

Benyamin Netanyahu will declare himself the messiah.

And Yahoo! will announce it's buying Russia for two billion rubles ($32 million USD,) spinning off its search engine, its news division, and Crimea in hopes recouping about half its investment.

Happy 2015, everyone.  See you next year.

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Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015