The nine stories

Scott Adams, the cartoonist who created Dilbert, likes to say that there are only nine news stories, constantly re-written.

Every once in awhile I like to check the newspaper with his list in mind, to see if he is right. I'll start withhis wording unmodified by examples.

1. EXTREME WEATHER BATTERS SOMEPLACE

2. IDIOTS KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE

3. POLITICIAN DOES SOMETHING ILLEGAL

4. PRIMATE ATTEMPTS INAPPROPRIATE SEX

5. EXPERTS WARN OF FINANCIAL CALAMITY

6. BIG COMPANY BUYS ANOTHER BIG COMPANY

7. FAMOUS PERSON DOES SOMETHING INTERESTING

8. A SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MIGHT BE USEFUL IN TEN YEARS

9. GOVERNMENT FAILS TO ACHIEVE A GOAL

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This week, selecting nine actual headlines to fill this template is almost too easy.


1. Winter storms have covered (or "battered") most of the eastern US, the President has joked about his daughters' school closing, his family's Chicago toughness, etc.

2. Idiots kill the innocent? ALWAYS too easy. Phil Spector is the idiot in question this time, his (second) murder trial in the death of Lana Clarkson is underway. Then there is Casey Anthony, the darling mother of Caylee, who is still apparently blaming Caylee's disappearance on a mystery babysitter.

3. Political corruption? The Illinois Senate just voted to remove that state's Governor from office for trying to sell a seat in the US Senate, apparently to the highest bidder.


4. Inappropriate sex? Ted Haggard is back in the news all of a sudden.

5. Financial calamity? Since calamities continue to unfold around us, no one needs to "warn" us about them. But the grave experts gather in Switzerland this week, the annual Davos conference, again to confer, converse, and hobnob like wizards.

6. Even in the present credit-starved climate, some big companies are still busily engaged buying other big companies, so there is this headline with Pfizer buying Wyeth.

7. The seventh headline is the excuse for the mandatory specimen of celebrity news.

8. Scientific discoveries of dubious practical significance are always fun -- we may take as example a story about a new (purely theoretical) design for a nuclear reactor that would combine fusion with fission somewhere someday.

9. Government "fails to achieve a goal"? Heck, according to today's newspapers you can't even rely on government as a tester of peanuts.