The man accused of assaulting and kidnapping Elie Wiesel -- attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, elder abuse and hate crimes, to be exact -- changed his not guilty plea to one of insanity today. Earlier this year, if you recall, Eric Hunt, 23, stalked and dragged the Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor from an elevator at the Argent Hotel (recently re-branded Westin San Francisco Market Street, even though it's totally located on......

After winning the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature today, reporters asked Doris Lessing how she felt. Her response? "Oh Christ...I couldn't care less." That famous dry British wit! Congrats, Doris. We've yet to read one word of your feminist-fiction oeuvre, but...kudos. We guess.......

No longer just for cute Aryan stoners, Albert Fert of the Scientific Research National Center in Paris -- who just received the Nobel Prize for physics alongside Peter Gruenberg for their massive brainpower to help shrink hard drives so that they fit into your iPods, or whatever -- is a Dell user. We'll go one step further by suggesting that Fert has dabbled in Linux use when he was young, too. Shame on you,......

Currently on sabbatical at the psychiatric unit of San Francisco County jailhouse for trying to beat the holy hell out of Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel -- and also hopped up on meds to soothe his lack of mental clarity , which supposedly triggered the violent incident -- the apologetic 23-year-old Eric Hunt will go to trial on September 4. Staring down the barrel of six felony charges -- i.e., attempted battery, stalking, kidnapping,......

Emergency: are these caffeinated strips available anywhere in SF? We're dying of sluggishness without them. The black-sheep Safeway on King and Fourth Streets used to carry them, but -- poof! -- now they're gone? What the hell? Caffeine in convenient strip form is nothing short of Nobel Prize-worthy genius. Sigh.......

The Nobel Prize that was recently stolen was found and the thief arrested. The thief was Ian Michael Sanchez, 22, a senior majoring in biology who worked at the museum the Nobel Prize was displayed it. His act of physics prize pilfering earned him charges of felony grand theft. And yes, that's his Facebook entry that a reader sent us. Unfortunately, the profile is blocked so we couldn't discover more about the dude. ...

For all you E-Bay fanatics out there, better start checking because someone done gone stole a Nobel Prize from UC Berkeley. The prize, won by late physicist Ernest O. Lawrence in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron, was taken last Tuesday from the locked glass case it was held in. As of right now, there are no suspects but whoever gets caught (if they get caught) will be up for grand theft charges. ...

Nobel Prize winning author and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel was assaulted in a San Francisco hotel on February 1st by a Holocaust denier. Wiesel was in town-- irony alert-- for a Peace Conference. He was staying at the Argent Hotel and was apparently being stalked. When the man got into the same elevator with Wiesel, he asked to talk to him and when Wiesel told him he'd do it in the lobby instead of the elevator, the man dragged him out of the elevator and tried to drag him into a room. When Wiesel started screaming for help, the man ran off, freeing the author. Soon after, the cops came and escorted Wiesel to the airport where he promptly got the hell out of town. ...

Ever since the Examiner has been bought by religious arch-conservative Philip Anschutz, everyone has been waiting to see how the Examiner would fit it's publisher's political views into a free daily in the most liberal city in America. Sometimes they manage to do it (sort of) but every once in awhile, the veil is lifted as it were and the Examiner goes a little nutty. Like today. For their main editorial, they implore San Francisco to honor economist Milton Friedman. ...

-A 51 year old Nuclear Power Plant engineer from Sacramento is in custody for sending a letter containing a powdery substance to a Country Club President Bush is scheduled to appear at today. Did Homer Simpson just threaten the President?...

Frankly, we sometimes find it hard to sign off on that whole Tough Guy motif that so many comic books shoot for. Yes, a surly squint, trusty sidearm, and simple machismo are familiar hero-ingredients, but after a while it can be a bit numbing and silly. Which is why we were pleased that Isotope Comics pointed us to The Annotated Mantooth, by Matt Fraction, Andy Kuhn, and Tim Fisher, in which the alpha-male dialogue is......

As many legal observers expected, Gov. Schwarzenegger denied Stanley "Tookie" Williams's request for clemency, ">stating that (.pdf) there was strong evidence supporting the jury's guilty verdict, and that he doesn't really believe that Tookie has really reformed (various Nobel Prize nominations notwithstanding) because Tookie has never apologized for the killings for which he was imprisoned, and has never explicitly apologized for the murders committed in the name of the Crips. (Also, Tookie still supports George Jackson, who the governor says shows that Tookie continues to advocate for "violence and lawlessness."). Williams's attorney will file a renewed petition for clemency this afternoon, and can still appeal to the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, his supporters are planning a 8 p.m. rally outside San Quentin. There's also a "walk for abolition," which started at 7 a.m. today at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and will end at San Quentin at 6. They should be around St. Paul's Church in San Rafael right about now if you want to meet up with 'em. We can't find any info on any pro-death penalty rallies but presumably, they'll be happening around the same time and at the same place as the anti- ones. ...

Since there’s so many places that went to all the trouble of getting a liquor license, Barrespondent Drew feels like it’s his responsibility to try them all out. And even if he doesn’t get a Nobel Prize for it, getting drunk is an acceptable consolation. Since we live in such an unfortunate time when most people have to work for a living, the ‘after work’ bar is an unfortunate necessity of life. All those ‘nine......

Week roundup....