As I remarked in a comment below, after I logged off yesterday I regretted my previous post on con artists, because I know some of them are really slick and plausible. It's just, the ones I was thinking of were the ones who spin patent bullshit that a moment's thought would see through. You are a cardiothoracic surgeon who is never on call? The first thing you tell me on a date is that you're related to the Royal Family? You own several homes in Florida but when we go to visit them you've forgotten the keys so we all have to sleep in the car? This just doesn't make sense.

In other news, a while back I posted about villains who make sense, and mentioned a story in which anti-nuclear activists had to be stopped before they blew up a reactor as an object lesson. I was reminded of this last night when the CBC late night movie was an Inspector Jericho movie, one of several that's been run this summer. A man is murdered in circumstances that look like the work of a female serial killer. However, he was involved in "the H-bomb project" (the story is set in the late forties or early fifties, I guess) and one young detective-constable is convinced it's the work of a "Ban-the-Bomb group."

"Really?" says Chief-Inspector Jericho, looking rather old-fashioned. "And who becomes members of Ban-the-Bomb groups, I wonder? Professors? Writers? Mothers of small children? Young men in duffle coats who know all the words to 'Kumbaya'? They're pacifists, Constable! Which means they don't like to kill people! That's the point!"

Now, there is a big difference between one nutter killing an individual in the name of stopping research (kinda plausible, actually) and a group devoted to averting nuclear holocause trying to do so by means of a... nuclear holocaust. And I didn't watch the whole movie so I don't know how it turned out. But bless you, Inspector Jericho, for saying so!