Good Will Hunting again

Well what's in the news? President Obama visits Vegas today to a chilly reception I'd bet. This because he's lately been using Vegas and the 'gaming industry' as a metaphor for financial foolishness. So the speech should start something like, "Hello Vegas! I just flew in from D.C. and boy, are your middle fingers tired!"

And Ms. Palin seems to have moved on from attempts to define proper terms for use of the word "retarded" for now anyways. Was a misstep for sure; her base support is reflexively anti-language police.

And there are always lawsuits in the news. In West Virginia a lady wants to sue GW, Oprah and Laura Bush for $50B. Her petition claims these three caused a tiny video camera to be implanted in her brain, recording data that will later be used to reincarnate her. I try to keep an open mind, but I don't see anything to that case. Oprah, I can believe it of her, but GW & Laura are Methodists, and they don't believe in reincarnation.

And in Florida an inmate is suing to ensure prompt delivery of his Penthouse magazines. He's serving 13 consecutive life sentences, so one might expect a politically ambitious Judge to rule "Get out of my court, you maggot." But I predict this one will wind its way through. There's a sector of the legal profession who are fascinated with defining rights of the incarcerated.

But to me, most interesting thing in this week's news was permission to use fiber optic camera inside Fulke Greville's coffin. Yep, we're gonna drill a tiny little hole, run that camera in there and see what; Fulke Greville's bones? Nope, he's buried elsewhere. Turns out he had this beautiful thing built at cost of $500K in 2010 money, and he's not in it. But something is.

Ground imaging radar has already shown three box like shapes inside the coffin, and that scan was run in the first place with strong expectations about the contents. The believers think one of those shapes is the original manuscript of "Anthony and Cleopatra" in Greville's handwriting. That will make Fulke the strongest yet contender for having been the 'real' Good Will Shakespeare. After that, the big debate will be over. In about another 150 years I mean of course.

The controversy's always broke along one firm line. A butcher's son who never left England couldn't know so many details of other places. So that's why some scholars think Will wasn't the 'real' Will. But that ignores many inaccurate things in plays attributed to Shakespeare. Things from simple geography to that ancient Rome didn't have chimneys, that any ghost writing nobleman would've known.

But we'll have one more piece of the puzzle soon, and I bet Dan Brown will write a swell book about it where Tom Hanks zips around Europe in itty bitty cars. Hey, you know what I think's inside that coffin? Bunch of Penthouse magazines.