Like almost everybody else at the time who was paying only moderate attention to the case, I just assumed that JonBenet Ramsey's parents were the ones responsible for her fate, so I was surprised when somebody else who seems quite plausibly guilty was arrested.

But my barber, a great font of wisdom, tells me that Karr isn't really guilty, and that he is cleverly tricking the authorities into thinking that he killed Ramsey in order to get himself moved from Thai prison to an American one. Plus, if he gets lucky in playing the criminal procedure lottery, he may be able to get himself off on some blunder. You heard it here first; and probably last.

U.S. News and World Report rankings were always a matter of grim entertainment at Chicago, since they fed the general U of C psychosis that for every smart U of C student out there, there was a Harvard student doing the same work half as well for twice as much fame.

So I am particularly amused to learn that Chicago hadn't bothered to count or dress up its data properly, and that getting with the program kicks them four spots up the rankings back into the top ten-- particularly amused since there was so much talk during the late 90s about what the college could do to buff its popular image. More from Maroons Alec Brandon and Phoebe Maltz.