crackpot

If one subtracts the birther crackpots, froth-at-the-mouth zealots, overpopulationists, white supremacists, homophobes, misogynists and go-back-in-the-woods-and-survive-with-superior-firepower boys from the Republican Party, all that's left is a wrinkled, toothless mumbler with no agenda and no sense of direction.

But perhaps the major reason for the popularity of Utopian essays is that a large number of newspaper readers are crackpots themselves, and love to start their day by reading an essay proposing that the SEC be franchised, or that everyone on the planet reduce global warming by piggybacking on a neighbor's shoulders.

Grant for preserving the Union (he eventually published the statesman's best-selling memoirs); wrote in favor of rights for African Americans but was fond of telling racist jokes (and co-authored with Bret Harte the grotesquely anti-Chinese play Ah Sin); assailed the Gilded Age yet formed a close personal and professional relationship with the robber baron Henry Rogers; lampooned con men and scam artists yet went broke by investing in crackpot inventions and get-rich-quick schemes; and SO on.

Developed by mathematician John Baez (University of California, Riverside), the Crackpot Index can be found online at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html.

With a warped, expressive style and a fevered network of connections among idols and villains--as well as the fact of Mayerson's recent low profile, this being his first solo outing in seven years--the artist plays at being a crackpot. But like the original, this Hamlet only feigns madness; unlike the Dane, there's no hand-wringing about engaging his inheritances.

Particularly, the new understanding to be gained is that of an ethical sense that is developing within the fictional and theoretical writings of current crackpot realists.

Dear Editor, -I know Andrew Cowen's Big World of Rock was meant to be funny, but it is still crass and insensitive to use words like 'loony', 'crackpot' and 'fruitcake' to describe people with mental health problems.

Once progressive educators gave up academic content as the basis for the curriculum, they were prey to all sorts of crackpot fads.

Sheldon Hackney's apologia pro vita sua is an elegant, persuasive defense of a judicious approach to the culture wars, but it is also an indispensable study of the press, much of which played useful idiot to the crackpot right's crusade against what they took to be campus radicalism as they pumped themselves up for the Gingrich moment of 1994.

And then there was Fantasia's revelation -- Jose Mojica Marins, the Brazilian schlockmeister and performer whose crackpot visions of damnation make Bunuel's Chien Andalou seem almost Disneyesque.

These crackpot theories claim, "It's the weather; it's the water; it's Jerry Brown." One guy, head of Way Out Productions, a missing-persons search firm, record label, long-distance phone company, and talent agency, said, "It's the flavor of the day, the X-files waiting to happen." He's already pitching America's Weirdest Home Videos.

Hjalmar Ekdal is a weak, kindly, self - deluding man who believes himself to be about to discover a great invention; Gregers Werle, his old schoolfriend, is a crackpot idealist determined to free Hjalmar of his comforting -- and necessary -- illusions.

YESTERDAY'S SOLUTION WEE THINKER ACROSS: 7 Chateau 9 Peony 10 Overt 11 Trailer 12 Use 13 Crackpot 16 Pleasant 17 Tax 19 Basmati 21 Theta 22 Elite 23 Editors DOWN: 1 Octopus 2 Bakewell 3 Melt 4 Upmarket 5 Fowl 6 Lycra 8 Ultramarine 13 Charades 14 On the hop 15 Expanse 18 Ibsen 20 Swig 21 Thin QUICKIE ACROSS: 1 Close the gap 8 Loo 9 Rub 11 Instant 12 Trill 13 Net 14 Ali 15 Veteran 17 Rod 19 Owed 21 Odds 23 Acre 25 Site 27 Tug 29 Warrant 31 Lot 34 Foe 36 Swing 37 Forgave 38 All 39 Ten 40 Storyteller DOWN: 1 Cone 2 Lost 3 Seaweed 4 Titter 5 Extra 6 Aria 7 Pull 8 Liner 10 Blind 16 Nor 18 Dot 20 Wet 22 Dew 24 Central 25 Salsa 26 Profit 28 Green 30 Anger 32 Owls 33 Tilt 34 Fate 35 Over 8DA followed

I have the utmost confidence in my GP and feel this crackpot scheme undermines his competence and professionalism.

Assuming an average hospital doctor salary of PS50k and a population in Wales of 3 million, each man, woman and child is going to need to consume 83 litres of fizzy drink each year to finance such a crackpot policy.