I watched the children scurry in circles around a two-way mirror

From a high enough perch, all of us are hypocrites.

Conservatives praise the power of the free market to fulfill desires, then rant about indecently dressed pop starlets and the drunken crowds downtown. Liberals insist that the government “keep its laws out of my bedroom,” unless, while in your bedroom, you enjoy consuming trans fats or homeschooling your children. Press either side on the apparent inconsistency and they can argue their way out of it (it’s a question of degree; this is an entirely different case; I’m not saying it should be illegal). And in many cases their arguments hold water. But inconsistency isn’t hard to find.

And I’m not excluding myself in this. I complain about how easy credit and cheap oil are ruining this country all the time. But I know how long I’d survive without my disposable contacts and allergy meds (smart money says nine months; I’m starting a pool).

So none of us are perfectly consistent.

I don’t raise this point to drag everyone down in the mud with me (“we’re all bastards; let’s own up to it; immanentize the eschaton; WAAAGH”). I raise it because I think consistency is a false flag. It’s not a useful tool for weighing ethics.

Break it apart: why is inconsistency such a bad thing? If I accuse someone of inconsistency, I say, “You chose one thing in one context and you chose another thing in a different context.” But we’ve already challenged the notion that there’s a single homonculus living in our brains that pulls the levers to make us go. Empirical science and the philosophy of consciousness suggest that our mind consists of multiple calculating modules. There’s not one “you” that’s “choosing” things, but several.

So if you wrote a six-part article series for the Globe exposing nursing home abuse, then sat on the subway today while an old woman with a cane stood, that’s inconsistent. But the latter action doesn’t make your former choice a mere posture. Maybe you were wrapped up in your reading and didn’t notice her. Maybe you were tired after a long day and decided that someone else ought to offer a seat before you did.

Not offering an old woman your seat is a dick move, to be sure. But it doesn’t render all your previous pro-elderly efforts invalid.

We make different choices when hungry, or tired, or surrounded by people we want to impress, than we do when we’re writing an essay, or watching the news, or driving past the scene of an accident. We do this because the human brain – the result of evolutionary processes – did not evolve to be consistent. It evolved^* to fulfill our needs, safeguard and propagate our genes, and to run a series of complex parallel calculations. But since it evolved into the form we recognize today, humans also invented a thing called culture. Culture changes a lot faster than the genetic makeup of its inhabitants, complicating the process even further.

We have a lot of competing data points that go into our decisions. Our declared ethical code is one of these points.

Consistency simply isn’t a natural behavior in the human brain. If it were, morality would be easy. You’d simply make the decision to adhere to a given code of ethics, once, and that would be it. Flip the switch to “Good” and keep walking.

But every code of ethics describes the process of “being tempted” or “acting irrationally” or “losing one’s way.” This is inconsistency rearing its head. A young priest vows eternal celibacy; ten years later, he takes notice of a statuesque blonde. A finance manager volunteers four hours a week at a soup kitchen; coming out of a train station on a business trip, he shoulders by a man asking for spare change. If we view the ethics as natural and humans as inferior, then these acts are frustrating lapses. It’s not useful to call behavior that every human being engages in a “lapse” (lapsing from what?). If we view ethics as an invention and humans as natural, then these acts make perfect sense.

The mind isn’t designed for consistency; it’s designed to constantly recalculate.

Why am I harping on this? Because I’m still curious about “what’s the best way for humans to behave,” and I don’t think “with perfect consistency” is part of it. Every ethical system has its inconsistencies. And even if someone invented a perfectly coherent and logical system of ethics, no human could consistently adhere to it.

We’re all hypocrites. We’re all struggling to figure out what’s right.

P.S. Of all the posts in the mind-body dichotomy series, I’m least happy with this one. But none of my thoughts on the matter have been fully polished, so why should I feel self-conscious today? That’s why it’s a weblog, not an article for the Atlantic: so I can get feedback from friends and ill-intentioned strangers. Hitting “Post”; have at it.

_______________________
^* When I say “it [the brain] evolved,” I mean “the human species evolved in such a way as to have a brain which possessed these characteristics.” Forgive me the shorthand, as we forgive the shorthand used by others.

play your part

I saw Girl Talk at House of Blues on Monday night.

I had nothing but good things to say about the venue before visiting on Monday; after, I had my doubts. When we got in line outside, one of the staff checked our tickets and sent Serpico, Kim and I to the upstairs mezzanine, RJ to the floor. We’d arrived early enough that there was still space on the floor, but our tickets dictated otherwise. Having to split up a party bugs me.

Serpico, Kim and I squeezed up to some space near the front of the upstairs mezzanine. Senior Discount, a punk band in that nasal style that the late 90s gave its sanction to, opened for Girl Talk. They rocked through a couple fast and loud covers and a few fast and loud original songs. I liked them better when they were called Lit, I texted.

After a long wait, the stage was cleared save for a long metal table with two rugged, plastic-wrapped laptops on it. Gregg Gillis danced out in a high-stepping jog, complete with cheap white sweatshirt and headband. He fired up one of the laptops. A horde of kids decked out in 80s gear, chosen in advance by the floor staff, swarmed him. Then the music started, and for ninety minutes straight it didn’t stop.

Even at the highest energy electronic shows (RJ and Kim later confirmed), you intersperse one or two downtempo songs just so the DJ can stop moving for two minutes. But Gillis kept up the pace of pop hits and fast beats throughout the entire set. I walked out of there aching, sweaty and exhausted.

streets like a jungle, so call the police

Avoiding All Work, ‘Cause There’s None Available
My new office looks down on the ceiling of a nearby parking garage. Every afternoon, between 2:30 and 3:00, a woman drives her SUV up to the top level. She lets out a small dog and then begins idling her vehicle in a slow circle around the roof. The dog follows her.

At first I thought she had a leash trailing out the window behind her. But when I got the attention of everyone in my office for a second opinion, we agreed she was just waving her hand or snapping her fingers. The dog follows unceasingly. She does one lap of the roof, maybe one and a half, and then lets the dog back into her SUV.

I considered the possibility that she’s handicapped.

You Go On Ahead! And Carry Me With You!
I got in an argument on the Boston Livejournal community yesterday about the ethics of requiring credit card machines in Boston cabs. My argument was that there was an ethical question involved; the poster’s, that there wasn’t.

His post, if you don’t want to click through, read as follows:

my cabbie last night was all like, “[the credit card machine]’s not working!” then i pointed out that it’s illegal for to drive a cab with a broken card terminal in boston and that he either take the $8 in cash i had for the $18 fare, or let me pay with my card.

cabbie: you put the tip on the screen
me: yeah, i know how to do it
—seconds later—
cabbie: you didn’t put a tip!
me: yeah, i’m aware. maybe you shouldn’t give your fares a hard time when they try and pay with a card
cabbie: they take 8% when you pay with a card
me: that happens in every industry, it’s called the cost of doing business. deal with it.

I responded:

You’re not doing a lot to diminish my sympathy for the cab driver here. It sounds like he doesn’t particularly want a credit card machine in his car, but was compelled by law to accept one.

To which he replied with some variant of, “Whatever; that’s the law, tough shit.” I realized the argument could not even be engaged, much less won, since anyone who thinks “that’s the law, tough shit” is a salient response must have slept through the 20th century. So I made one more cursory response (“convenience is not a sound basis for law”) and gave up.

But shit like this is what annoys me about Boston. The cab driver loses a portion of every credit card transaction to charge fees. He clearly doesn’t want a credit card machine in the car (since he lied about it being broken). But the law compels him to take one. Then, when he tries to hustle a way around it, some asshole gives him a hard time about it and stiffs him on the tip. And more than half of the people he told this story to agreed with him. I’d say at least three-quarters; someone want to count?

I don’t mind Boston’s liberal attitude. Hell, I’m more liberal than I was four years ago, so living in Boston suits me just fine. But that frustrating yet common blend of liberal attitude and consumer entitlement drives me up a wall. Consistency is all I seek. I can respect a guy who reads Worker’s World because he’s been in the IBEW for thirty years, but not if he’s a college student. And Boston is mostly college students.

(And I’m not generalizing that far here. I’ve been a member of the Boston LJ community for years. I know these people; I’ve seen them argue before)

For thinkers who spend so much time railing against “privilege,” Boston progressives loathe to surrender theirs.

Edit: several commenters on my LiveJournal have pointed out that, hey, Boston cab drivers are part of a state-enforced monopoly, so fuck them. And I agree with that: the taxi medallion monopoly in Boston is pretty ridiculous. It costs about $250,000 to legally drive a taxi in Boston. But I don’t buy the notion that accepting government license in one aspect of your life compels you to accept government regulation in every aspect of your life.

it is not dying; it is not dying

I Still Like Him Better Than Steinbrenner
For my Don Draper costume, I had to shave my sideburns off for the first time in at least six years. This took considerable effort, as attacking six years’ growth with a disposable razor will, and left the skin underneath a little raw. But it looks fine now. Shaving since then has been disconcerting, however, since I typically start at my ear line by muscle memory alone and have now had to start cutting even higher.

I put little effort into the costume itself (nicest suit I had, dress shirt, conservative tie); the accessories made it work. I showed up at the office Halloween party with a highball glass full of “scotch” (ginger ale) and a cigarette dangling between my fingers (unlit; borrowed). Most people identified me on their first or second try.

Full Dance Card
Counting work, I hit up five Halloween parties this weekend, including:

• 90s Night at Common Ground, which gave away $100 for the best 90s costume. Logistics proved an issue, as management couldn’t convince Allston’s drunkest hipsters to circulate before the judge’s table, parading their wares. A horde of kids surged at the DJ booth, waving their hands and squealing like teenage zombies. I thought the kids in the Nickelodeon GUTS outfits had it locked, but Carmen Sandiego stole it.

• Joanna and Brian’s Halloween party. I knew which subway station they lived nearest, but didn’t know if it was on the Cambridge or Somerville side of the border. I guessed Cambridge at first. My GPS promptly led me to a Jewish dorm outside Harvard.

• Katie and Sylvia’s Halloween party. I wore a different suit for the Don Draper costume – double-breasted, even less period than the first. But people still got it, especially after I borrowed another cigarette. Half the party circulated in the kitchen, eating delicious sweets; the other half planted in the living room, watching The Craft. Remember those quaint days when Wiccans and goths were exotic?

• The Gorefest cast party. I congratulated the players on another successful and blood-drenched show. Our host baked a plate of monkey bread – essentially, a massive pile of butter, cinnamon, sugar and dough. We picked at it like savages until Paul challenged everyone at the table to eat one last piece and then stop. An hour later, three people were sitting on the floor with chunks of butter-soaked dough clenched in their front teeth (but not swallowed) and there was a pot of sixty dollars. Let no one say improv people don’t know how to party

The Patriot Marked for Death is Hard to Kill Under Siege
After a brief hiatus, I returned to the Overthinking It podcast last night. We planned to talk about Halloween costumes, haunted houses and the cultural rituals surrounding scaring each other. Then someone brought up Steven Seagal. Guess what we spent most of our time discussing.

bow down before the one you serve

When I wrote last Friday about where my desires come from, I used the example of Laughing Cow cheese. My desire for this cheese went from non-existent (before I tried it) to compulsory (after). I thought that was pretty extraordinary.

Some folks, commenting on my LiveJournal, observed that the manufacturers of Laughing Cow cheese didn’t literally create my desire out of nothing. I had to have some predisposition for soft, sweet cheeses before I tried it. It’s not, as commenter phanatic put it, as if they handed me a ball of roofing tar and I lapped it right up. And I have been presented with free samples in the past – mango-kiwi juices, pre-packaged cookies, tequila shots served by women in cut-off tees – that have not compelled me to buy. So clearly these new experiences tap into some extant disposition in order to create a desire.

That makes sense but doesn’t satisfy. We run into the same problem here that we do with the Cartesian theater. Okay, so desire is created when a new stimulus taps into some extant disposition. Where did the disposition come from? “Evolution” answers some of that – I’m a mammal; I like salt and calories – but not all of it. The human race is similar enough to interbreed but different enough that menus have to warn people about spicy food.

So our predispositions have to come from somewhere. Did they arise in a similar fashion – a combination of exterior stimuli and even earlier predisposition? Let’s go with that for now, as I’m not sure what the alternative would be (god or aliens or ancestor spirits, perhaps) and it makes sense. We enter the world as creatures of pure instinct, survive on mothering until we start collating our experiences, and turn into complex calculating libraries. Makes sense.

Ultimately, then, every desire I have – and thus every action I take – comes from either biology or experience. What does this mean for the notion of free will?

“Free will” is one of those subjects that requires a lot of brush-clearing before two people can even start screaming at each other. No two people mean the same thing by it. So let me lay out what I mean when I talk about free will first.

In my head, it certainly feels like I have free will. Every action I take is either to fulfill some desire, which seems to arise as if from nowhere, or to respond to some instinct. I’m either closing the blinds to keep the light out of my eyes or I’m jumping in fear because something in the movie startled me. Instinct I can write off as subconscious reflex, but the choices feel free and uncoerced.

And yet we established a few weeks ago that the brain is an organ, and a hungry one at that. We also theorized last week that there is no mini-self sitting in our brain pulling levers – no central ego, soul or homonculus that’s the true core. So when I say “it feels like I have free will,” that might not be a useful statement, as “I” might not be a qualified judge. Who is the “I” saying what it feels like in “my” head? Which part of my decision-making process is the “I” evaluating?

Is there such a thing as a decision that doesn’t come from the brain? For purposes of my discussion, no. If I’m sleeping with someone and I kick them to stop them from snoring, that’s different than if I’m sleeping with someone and I kick them because my legs jerked in a dream. So everything that I intend to do, consciously, has to pass through the brain at some point.

Is there any part of the brain that does not have organic components? No. We can debate souls or homonculi if you like, but if you’ve followed the series so far you’ll know I place little weight on them.

Therefore, is there any decision that does not originate from an organic component? It would seem not.

Does this mean there’s no such thing as free will? It depends on what you mean by “free will.” If you mean that there’s an Aristotelian “unmoved mover” sitting in the brain that makes decisions for us, then yes, your notion of free will is in trouble. But if you mean that there’s a difference between consciousness and instinct – that there’s a worthwhile distinction to draw between kicking someone for snoring and kicking someone by leg spasms – then yes, “free will” makes sense.

But is the difference one of degree or one of type? Is consciousness a different process from instinct, or is it just a really complicated nest of instincts?

And if what I call “free will” is just an instinct, then what internal instincts and external stimuli are driving me to ask so many questions about it?

you told me again you preferred handsome men

And Who Are You Supposed To Be?
How good was this past Sunday’s episode of Mad Men (“The Hobo and the Gypsy”)? So good that I don’t know if I want to go as Don Draper for Halloween anymore. That’s how good it was.

I probably will, anyway, as I’ve reached that point in my life where I pick Halloween costumes by cheapness and the breathability of the fabric. I already own an appropriate suit: I just need to shave my sideburns, slick my hair into the part I wore for the first quarter century of my life, get a pocket square and walk around with half a glass of scotch. And I already do half of that the other three-hundred and sixty-four days of the year. You know I’m all about the pocket squares.

“The Gypsy and The Hobo” put me in such a mood that I not only questioned whether I want to adopt this fictional protagonist as a costume, but what I’m doing with my life. But that’s what happens whenever I watch a good TV show, or a well-framed movie or a really moving song. Good art has the power to throw me in profound and unexpected moods. I’m a blank slate on which media gets to draw.

Which is ironic, because not only is that what Don Draper’s about (advertising and shaping the popular consciousness), but that’s what “what Don Draper’s about” is about. Jon Hamm’s character is popular because he looks like an alpha male who gets to drink all the time, screw around, dismiss his underlings with casual contempt, and luck his way into the halls of power. Every guy wants to be That Guy. Don Draper is selling an image. Matthew Weiner, producer of Mad Men, is selling Don Draper. So I applaud this fictional character’s ability to sell because I myself have been so thoroughly sold.

All that aside, dressing as a tormented ad executive for the company Halloween party would be too meta to pass up.

I’m Not Here to Tell You About Jesus
I got my opportunity to play Don Draper at an on-site meeting for TVClient in New York yesterday. Our travel arrangements required that I be up by 5:00 to catch the Acela Express from South Station by 6:00. I’ve taken Amtrak several times in the last few years, but never the Acela Express, with its unfolding business class tables and spacious cafe car. The four of us did some rehearsing for the work presentation, then shared war stories for the rest of the ride.

My role doesn’t put me in regular contact with the clients; I’m more akin to Ken or Peggy than Don. But I still speak in meetings, and yesterday I spoke to a conference room full of website developers on how we could work better with them. I fielded some technical questions, improvised my way through some new slides, and avoided stammering. Things to work on: eye contact, not clearing my throat.

Our cabbie from TVClient to Penn Station murmured something under his breath the entire time he drove us. Every ten seconds, he would click a handheld counter that he cupped in his palm. Prayers? Pedestrians he refrained from killing? We’ll never know.

The Acela Express seats aren’t quite tall enough to support my head and don’t recline far enough to let me slump. I slept with a stiff neck on the train ride back. When I got back to Davis, the sky was as dark as when I’d left.

I’ve got something to tell you far outside the black and white

Sylvia called me up on Sunday and asked if I wanted to watch Helvetica, the 2007 documentary about fonts. “Do I ever!”, I exclaimed.

Helvetica is a very dry documentary about a very fascinating subject: the role that typeset has in introducing us to products or concepts. It covers this larger theme by recounting the story of the design of the Haas Neue Grotesk font, which we today call “Helvetica”: the most common typeset in the world of Roman characters in the 20th century. Every street sign in New York, most forms of U.S. government paperwork, and practically every corporation uses it.

The film raises the question of why Helvetica has become so ubiquitous. Does everyone use it because elements of its design seem so appealing: the firmness of the lines, the encapsulation and separation of white space? Or does Helvetica appeal to us because everyone uses it? This debate intrigued me, having started a conversation on Friday over whether mind/body unification means outside forces create our desires, or our desires look for outside forces to fulfill them. Which came first – the crossbar or the em?

The documentary as a film: good. The conversation, as I said, gets a little dry at times, with the individual words fading into the background like the strokes of a character fade into the word-picture it creates. Then you get a character like Erik Spiekermann, who compares the most common font in the world to McDonald’s, and you perk back up. Worth the 90 minutes of your time.

don’t throw stones; you don’t know

On Friday I had the neighbors, Ryan and Erin, over for wine and cheese. We sifted through each other’s movie piles to find good films to laugh over. Neither Erin nor Ryan had seen Road House, so we put that in first.

If marginal utility theory means anything, then I should get more value out of most purchases than I spend on them. But sometimes the ratio skyrockets so far out of whack that I give thanks to the healing power of capitalism. My Dickies messenger bag, for example: I spent $50 on it three years ago and it has easily brought a thousand dollars of convenience into my life. Or my copy of Mind Performance Hacks. Or the Bed of Ages: a Simmons model that the company no longer makes, that I dropped just over a grand on (including frame and headboard) five years ago. I spent enough on the Bed that it’s a close thing, but I still come out black.

Road House has vastly exceeded the $8 I paid for it in the Target discount bin. In the two years I’ve owned it, I’ve watched it at least six times. Maybe one of those times I watched it alone. Every other time, I’ve had friends over, cracked some beers and introduced them to Patrick Swayze’s magnum opus.

Why does Road House work on every level? The fight scenes are fun, as I’ve said before. The hayseed, outdated setting allows for some ironic laughs – particularly when the locals gawk over Swayze’s tanned bod. “He looks like he’s from a coast!”, Erin commented.

But what makes Road House so oddly great is that it’s a well-paced film on a picayune subject. You can almost watch the hero’s status rising and falling on screen, as if on a stock ticker. Anyone who wants to write an action movie should own this on DVD and watch it until it breaks. I am not kidding in any way.

Afterward, we watched Demolition Man, which has a similarly tight plot even if the setting makes us snicker. Stallone, Bullock and Snipes each have one setting (smart-aleck, perky and cocky, respectively), and the movie suffers whenever it asks them to deviate. The story shepherds our heroes from setpiece to setpiece, even if we have to swallow some improbable coincidences to get them there. Perhaps that’s one of the benchmarks for a good action movie: how easily we can believe the transition between car chase and shootout.

there’s someone in my head, but it’s not me

While visiting Chicago, waiting for a bus at Addison with my man Hawver, two street hawkers approached us. “Would you like to try some Laughing Cow light swiss?”

“Sure,” I said, being hungry. One handed me a sample pack of swiss cheese, about the size of my thumb; the other, a pack of crackers the size of a matchbox. I also got a coupon for $1.00 off a pack of said cheese.

It was tasty enough that I bought a pack the next time I went grocery shopping, to see how well it would complement my lunch. And that went so well that I’ve bought Laughing Cow several times since, even without a coupon.

I had next to zero consciousness of Laughing Cow cheese before this, my primary exposure being the yellow Vache Qui Rit bowl Fraley kept in our cupboard when we lived together. A free sample and a coupon converted me from agnostic to believer in about a week. Four months ago I had no desire for this product; now I have a modest desire. A corporation paid some marketers to sit around a conference table and instill in me a desire where none existed.

As a marketer myself, I find the process curious. As an amateur student of autoepistemology, I find it absolutely fascinating.

This desire for Laughing Cow cheese was created in me by someone else. I can track the steps that it took to happen. Which other desires of mine originated in someone else’s mind? What about my preference for Coke Zero over Diet Coke? My taste in beer? My willingness to drive a rusting import rather than trade up for a newer car? My desire to live in Cambridge? My impulse to live alone? My need to write? My preferred self-image? My religious beliefs, or lack thereof? Who put these thoughts in my head?

Really radical progressives blame modern capitalism for about half of the above. “The consumerist market,” one might say, “encourages people to buy things they don’t need. It touts conspicuous consumption as a way to distinguish yourself from your neighbors, or to alleviate the stress of your job. Consumerism obscures your true desires.”

The funny thing is: I’d agree with them. Up until the last sentence.

Most of us believe in some notion of an ego, or a soul, or some inviolate core that makes decisions. It sits inside our body, either in the center of our brain or in our (metaphorical) heart, and “watches” what happens to us, as if on a screen. When we make a decision, the ego or soul sends instructions to the limbs to move. Descartes didn’t invent this theory of consciousness, but, with the whole cogito ergo sum thing, he made it most popular.

The problem is: (1) the idea of an ego/soul that’s separate from the body it inhabits has no empirical grounding, and (2) it’s not even a satisfactory explanation.

I’m paraphrasing Daniel Dennett here: suppose there is an ego/soul, sitting inside our body, responsible for making our decisions. The answer to the question, “What’s going on in my head?” is “a mini-self is pulling the levers.” That doesn’t answer the mystery of consciousness, though. It merely raises another question: “okay, how does the mini-self make decisions? what’s going on in its head?”

Dennett offers an alternative: there is no one “seat of consciousness” within the brain:

The book puts forward a “multiple drafts” model of consciousness, suggesting that there is no single central place (a “Cartesian Theater”) where conscious experience occurs; instead there are “various events of content-fixation occurring in various places at various times in the brain”. The brain consists of a “bundle of semi-independent agencies”; when “content-fixation” takes place in one of these, its effects may propagate so that it leads to the utterance of one of the sentences that make up the story in which the central character is one’s “self”. Dennett’s view of consciousness is that it is the apparently serial account for the brain’s underlying parallelism.

“Interesting stuff, Professor,” you’re saying, “but what does this have to do with cheese?”

If what we call “consciousness” is really the body carrying out the instructions of different agencies of the brain at different times, then there is no central ego/soul. If that’s the case, then there’s no distinction between the “true desires” of the self and the “false desires” implanted in us by corporations, politicians, churches, peer groups, etc. They’re all equally legitimate inputs. My desire for Laughing Cow cheese, which I was barely conscious of six months ago, is no more artificial than my desire to hang out with a new friend, whom I hadn’t met six months ago.

I’m still not settled on what this means for my decision-making process, except that it makes my job as a marketer easier to swallow.

when you laugh and run free with the thought, pull the line in and try to see what you caught

When I’m not reading books or watching movies about Hating America by America Haters that promise to teach me How to Hate America Better^*, I’m getting some writing done.

In an ideal week, I stick to the following:

• Write one hour a night, two nights a week. This produces between 1500-2000 words each night.
  
• Write one or two nights a week, 1000 words each time. I can usually bang this out in 40 minutes.

I do this as many nights as I need to to produce 5000 words a week. If I gave up jiu-jitsu, a job with health insurance and a social life^** I could probably do more. But I think this is a fair pace.

My initial goal was to write a 60,000-word manuscript. I just wrote my 20,000th word tonight, though, and the story feels, at most, a quarter done. So I may clock in at closer to 80,000. Considering I’ll probably need to lop 5000 to 10,000 words off the top to make it saleable, that’s a good target to aim for.

As with all my writing projects, this one requires some interesting research and speculation. Asked and answered so far:

• What sort of court records could a person find just by walking in and asking at a city courthouse?
• What’s a half-assed but survivable way to disarm someone who’s waving a knife at you and shoving you with his free hand?
• What sort of clue could someone plausibly find if they only had thirty seconds to ransack an office?
• If you have injuries that require stitches but are conscious and lucid, will the paramedics immobilize you before carting you off to a hospital?
• Hell, would they even put you in an ambulance, or would they say, “Drive yourself; you’re fine”?
• Where would a middling Boston attorney (in practice on his own) take his family on summer vacation?
• What sort of information would cops withhold from the press about a murder in order to validate a legit confession?
• What does a photographer for a city paper do most of the day?
• What’s a survivable but incapacitating form of gunshot wound to the head?
• What does it taste like when you bite someone’s ear hard enough to tear it?

I came up with answers good enough for a rough draft. But if you have theories of your own, please shout them out.

______________________________
^* They all begin the same way: “Step 1: Subscribe to The Guardian.” Couldn’t make that up.
^** Because heaven forfend I give up this vital weblog.