Return of the return of crazy Wikipedia stuff: "The conflicts, in which vendors raided one another's vans and fired shotguns into one another's windscreens, were more violent than might be expected of turf wars among ice-cream vendors."

I'm sure I'm not the first to make this point, but: Both of the campaign advisors who have caused trouble for Obama lately, Austan Goolsbee and Samantha Power, are young academics rather than seasoned political pros. I think it's great that Obama is bringing in new thinking on economics and foreign policy, and Goolsbee and Power are two of the smartest people alive. But can you imagine Robert Rubin or Madeleine Albright getting into one of these distracting messes?

Fun fact I learned from Goolsbee's Wikipedia page: he and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick were debate partners at Yale, and were national runners-up in 1990.

Wikipedia edit of the day: Nicholson Baker's mom is a wikipedian as well.

It turns out that, if necessary, you can say "Batman is not just a river in Turkey." If it ever comes up.

Return of crazy Wikipedia stuff: A sitcom called Heil Honey I'm Home!, in which Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun have to cope with their new Jewish neighbors -- who could possibly have guessed that this would be canceled after one episode? "The plot of episode 1 involved Adolf telling Eva of the impending arrival of Neville Chamberlain, and begging her not to tell the Goldensteins."

Crazy Wikipedia stuff (blah blah blah series): Perhaps, like most people, you believe that the Church of Scientology is a dangerous cult that preys on the credulous and goes after its critics with a heavy hand. But what if, unlike most people, you also believe that the wacky sci-fi theology of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is a valuable body of religious teachings? Well, you might find some like-minded friends in the Free Zone.

Crazy Wikipedia stuff (3rd in a series): How do people measure the comparative spiciness of different foods? Why, they use Wilbur Scoville's eponymous Scoville scale, of course.

Crazy stuff you can find on Wikipedia (second in a series): You have 1,679 binary digits in which to communicate with aliens. How much information can you convey? Probably not as much as the authors of the Arecibo message.

Crazy stuff you can find on Wikipedia (first in a series): Is 90 percent of all television actually set inside the mind of an autistic boy? Why yes it is, according to the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis.