My Dreams v. The Dark Knight Returns

This was my dream last night:

Somehow, the Joker seemed to be killing people in the dream realm. I, as batman, could only get to where he was causing a ruckus through dreams, as could my father. Once we got there we found that the Joker had done some diabolical shit and gotten away, but he had left clues and the cure for the Joker Virus in an old car. He also left clear instructions that the only way to get to the second part of the adventure was to play through the Batman video game on the PS3 in the beater. One of the things you could do in the video game was gain a bunch of different weapons through mastering the hammer throw, including a Green Lantern ring.

Apparently I did what I needed to do, because it flashed forward to the second part, which was entirely nautically based. The Joker was terrifying people on the beaches along the coast, because he had gained Aquaman-like powers. I/Batman managed to catch him at one point by firing a grappling line horizontally, hitting a big pier, and pulling myself through the water at high speed, grabbing him on the way by. The Joker wasn't too put out by this, though, because somehow he lassoed me when I got on the pier so I couldn't get away. I was above him, but he was climbing up towards me and it was clear he could easily overpower me, but that wasn't his plan.

His plan turned out to be, there was a cruise ship right by the pier with a bunch of people with high powered rifles. When I thought it couldn't get any worse, it turned out he had planned the whole thing so that a giant submarine breached and smashed up the pier and the cruise ship. The waves/tide pushed everybody into a canal, which was lined with more dudes with high powered rifles. I remember calculating that there was like a one percent chance that someone could swim by those riflemen without getting shot at such close range, and sure enough I did get shot twice, because I wasn't batman any more, just Bryan. 

But I did survive to advance to part 3 of the dream, where people started getting washed up in this Mad Max-type setting, except it was on the beach. All of a sudden this dervish of light and evil started charging around the beach looking for stuff to kill. I tried to hide behind some old tires in the garage, but the dervish found me. Turns out it was the spirit of the Joker, and he was unkillable and all powerful. He rode me around and extended his tendrils trying to latch on to humans, from whom he could draw power to reincarnate stuff. He did that for a while and it looked like it would be really bad.

Luckily, somehow we ended up on an elevator. As the elevator rose, it revealed a cat and Russell, the bassett hound. the cat turned into Batman and Russell turned into Superman. Superman flew out, grabbed the Joker, snapped his neck, and threw him to the bottom of a pool, so that the real Aquaman could handle him.

Your move, Mr. Nolan.

Why the NCAA Shouldn't Punish Penn State

Andy Staples at SI just posted an article that nails it.  Read it now.

Staples spends most of the article running through the only needed justification why Penn State shouldn't get any NCAA punishment: because there's no NCAA bylaws against anything anyone at Penn State did. Do you think the NCAA should get in the business of making up what it sanctions on the fly?

As Staples points out, worrying that no NCAA punishment lets Penn State off the hook is completely misguided.  "Besides, Penn State may have bigger problems. While this case doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of the NCAA, it does fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Education. A Department of Education investigation that results in a termination of Penn State's accreditation would essentially amount to the Death Penalty for the entire university. Given the fact that such a punishment would put thousands of people out of work, Penn State might fall into the "too big to fail" category. Still, the possibility must fray the nerves of the thousands in State College who had nothing to do with this atrocity."

Far, far worse penalties are coming for all individuals involved and the institution as a whole. Penn State is not going to lose its accreditation, but ED is going to hit us with restrictions and sanctions with no precedent in American history.

The one set of punishments which Staples doesn't address but is very real are financial. In no way do I believe that any financial penalty can offset the harm Sandusky committed and Penn State ignored, but we often use financial penalties to penalize horrific deeds, because they serve as a deterrent to future offenders. By the time this ordeal is over, Penn State is going to have to write a nine-figure check, and the first digit might not be a one. ED is going to fine us at least 50 million dollars. I would say at least that much money and probably closer to 100 million will be needed to compensate Sandusky's victims. Then there's legal fees. By the end of this, it's very conceivable that we have to pay a total of 200 million dollars. That's more than 10 percent of our endowment. And that is a far, far greater penalty than losing the football team for a year or two.