Where In the World Is Osama bin Laden?, a documentary by Morgan Spurlock -- the man who ate McDonald's cuisine for 30 days straight for Super Size Me -- took on the task of finding al Qaeda's leader. As Spurlock explained in a Seven Questions interview with FP last week, sometimes a comedic film can get an audience to pay attention to a serious topic.

This week, Harold and Kumar -- those two guys from Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle -- take on the subject of Guantánamo Bay, though their purpose doesn't seem to have anything to do with prompting serious discussion about the controversial prison. In Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, debuting this Friday, the pair board a flight to Amsterdam with a bong. That gets them sent to Gitmo. The duo make a wild escape, of course. Politically incorrect humor is abundant.

Some reviews say the movie falls short of White Castle's charm, but it currently has a 78 percent on the tomatometer. So, if you need something to do this weekend, you have two choices: Gain a bit of enlightenment with Spurlock, or lose a few IQ points with Harold and Kumar.

Marcelo Singer/AFP/Getty Images

Uruguay and its 3.4 million people entered the big leagues of culinary feats Sunday by organizing the world's largest barbecue. Snatching the title away from Mexico, Uruguay has triumphed -- at least for now -- in a global cookout war that has been raging for years.

Namibia tried but failed in 2006 to beat Australia for the world's largest sausage. The Philippines set up the world's longest barbecue in 2003, though I believe Uruguay just showed them up by about half a kilometer.

The small South American country pulled off the stunt to highlight its beef exports (at least $800 million worth in 2007). To give you an idea of the size and scope of the operation, army personnel set up the grills, firefighters lit 6 tons of charcoal, 1,250 people cooked up a storm, and roughly 20,000 people watched as 13.2 tons of beef were prepared.

When all was said and done, Uruguay had beaten Mexico's record by 4 tons. One of the grillers told Reuters: "I'm very proud to be Uruguayan. We have the best beef and now we have the world's biggest barbecue." National pride can be tied together by many things -- even apron strings.

In a speaking engagement today at my alma mater Skidmore College, former Attorney General John Ashcroft confused Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden while talking about the importance of the Patriot Act. The former attorney general then waited patiently as students booed and jeered:

Beware folks, Skidmarks--as the locals in mostly conservative Saratoga County call Skidmore students--are a tough crowd.

U.S. President George W. Bush (L) pauses to embrace a person dressed as the Easter Bunny during the annual Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House. The annual event was started by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878.

Mohammed Abbas of Reuters reports on the ever-expanding influence of Chuck Norris:

Norris' appeal is not restricted to U.S. troops either. At an Iraqi police graduation ceremony in Falluja, graduates called out for their "Chuck Norris" to pose with them for photos.

"Truthfully, I didn't know who he was. I asked the Americans, and they said he was a great fighter, and that's why they named me after him. They showed me a video, and it's true, he's a great fighter" said police trainer Mohammed Rasheed. With his handle-bar moustache, Rasheed has a vague resemblance to Norris.

Another police trainer said Chuck Norris was a role model for the police in Falluja, which until 2007 was an al Qaeda stronghold and the scene of fierce battles with security forces. "I've seen his videos, he's a hero. He saves the city, he protects women and children and he fights crime wherever it is. We should all be like Chuck Norris," Khaled Hussein said.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may think they have their hands full with NAFTA, but just wait until it's time to renegotiate DSFTA, the Deep Space Free Trade Agreement. In the latest issue of Astropolitics, political scientist John Hickman thinks where no social scientist has thunk before in his new article, "Problems of Interplanetary and Interstellar Trade."

Hickman believes that interplanetary trade could be one of the primary economic drivers for space exploration in the future. The potential problems are by no means minor, however. First of all, the vast distances between solar systems would probably prohibit the transportation of tangible goods. (Though, as Hickman points out, transatlantic trade probably seemed just as fanciful to traders in renaissance Europe.) There may however be potential for trade in non-tangible goods such digital entertainment, or scientific information with newly discovered alien species. But even this is not without dilemmas that would give Austan Goolsbee a migraine.

How will we enforce contracts or copyright laws on a civilization 20 light-years away? How will we set up a banking system or transferable currency without any tangible goods to trade? How will we protect ourselves from strange new ideas and ideologies that may destroy the fabric of our society? Worst of all, how will we trade with a species that may not even have a concept of trade?

Economic exchange itself might be "alien" to the aliens. Members of an alien species may not experience the same intense sense of self that is exhibited in rationally self-interested economic exchange among humans. Instead, a collective identity could be dominant. Money might not exist and without it neither would complex markets or banking. If they do engage in economic exchange it might take a form akin to potlatch, the competitive gift-giving for status solely among members of the same tribe traditional among societies in Melanesia and the Pacific Northwest. Moreover an alien species might not live in separate societies and could thus have no conception of trade between different societies with different cultures.

Can we maintain our free-market values and still trade with these hippie space communists? Hickman proposes establishing a "solar system monetary union" or publicly administered "planetary clearinghouse" under which interplanetary merchants could operate. The good news is, even after discovering alien life, we would still need to decode their language and acquire a basic cultural understanding before we can even think about initiating trade. This should give us enough time to bone up on all 285 Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.

Travis Daub contributed to this post.

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen weighs in --

[R]eciprocal, tit-for-tat exchange would work just fine, provided that a) relativity did not slow down the exchange of information too much, and b) not too many Ohio voters watched that movie where the aliens send us their genetic information, embedded in an apparently innocuous transmission, and trick us into downloading those instructions and then cloning them en masse...  In other words, we probably cannot trade with aliens.

There's a long tradition of news organizations borrowing titles of popular films for use as headlines. Just recently, Newsweek used There Will Be Blood for its cover story about John McCain's troubles with the Republican base. But we can expect more such wordplay as the year progresses. Here's a sneak preview of how editors will be using and abusing movie titles in the weeks and months ahead:

There Will Be Blood

Stories about infighting among Hillary Clinton's advisors, the Democratic and Republican conventions, various controversial bills before Congress, Zimbabwe's elections, the fight to publish Bush's memoirs, etc.

No Country for Old Men

Stories about John McCain's age (oops, too late), demographic and social trends in various countries around the world, various sports teams, etc.

Superbad

Stories about Dmitry Medvedev's impending crackdown on dissent and Hillary Clinton's campaign strategy.

Iron Man

Stories about John McCain's astonishing stamina on the campaign trail.

The Golden Compass

Stories about Barack Obama's political antennae or those of his advisors.

The Dark Knight

Stories about advisors to the Democratic and Republican nominees or various corrupt oligarchs around the world.

Horton Hears a Who

Various egregious puns involving The Wharton School, Hu Jintao, and/or the writings of Edith Wharton.

Launched as a cheap, safe alternative to illicit home brews, a beer nicknamed "Obama" (real name Senator Keg Lager) has proven popular in Kenya, the country where U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama's father came from.

Meanwhile, when asked by Us Weekly about whether he wears boxers or briefs—the same question asked of Bill Clinton when he was a candidate in 1992—Obama decided to keep his undies a secret, responding:

I don't answer those humiliating questions. But whichever one it is, I look good in 'em!

The world's best-selling board game is finally going global. Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, are creating a version wherein instead of snatching up the deeds to Atlantic Avenue or Park Place, players can build up property in global cities such as Moscow or Tokyo.

The company is letting people vote online through Feb. 28 on what cities to include. Originally, the cities listed on the game's Web site included the countries where they are located -- "Dublin, Ireland," for example.

An early version of the site listed "Jerusalem, Israel" as a potential place on the board. But then pro-Palestinians wrote in to complain, because Jerusalem, they hope, will be the capital of a future Palestinian state. So, a mid-level employee dropped the word "Israel" from Jerusalem's place name. Then pro-Israelis complained because of the inconsistency, since other country names were still there.

In a truly Solomonic feat, Hasbro decided to drop all country names (though the company claims they were only there in the first place "as a geographic reference to help with city selection"). And now capitalism is free to run amok without any borders. At least in Monopoly.

As more people all over the world -- mostly notably in China and India -- enter the ranks of the middle class and are able to afford the calorie-rich diets of the Western world, their increased appetites have helped drive up prices of foods such as bread, milk, and chocolate, notes FP Editor in Chief Moisés Naím in his latest column, "Can the World Afford a Middle Class?"

Chocolate companies such as Nestlé, Mars, Ferrero, and Hershey are eager to satisfy the cravings of budding chocoholics in Asia, where consumption of the sweet stuff lags far behind that of Europe, as shown in the following table, based on numbers from a recent BusinessWeek article. To boost sales, these companies have sometimes had to adapt flavors to Asian tastes, such as with green-tea Hershey Kisses and azuki-bean Kit Kats, which the slide show here details.

Chocolate consumption, per capita annually	24 lbs. (11 kg), in Britain and Switzerland	3.5 oz. (99 g)	5.8 oz. (165 g)
Annual sales	$35 billion	$813 million	$394 million
Sales growth	1-2% annually	nearly doubled in past 5 years	64% in past 5 years

Photos: SEBASTIAN WILLNOW/AFP/Getty Images; MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images; SEBASTIAN D'SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images

I'm not thinking to cut my beard, because I'm accustomed to my beard and my beard means many things to my country. When we have fulfilled our promise of good government I will cut my beard."

— Castro in 1959, interviewed by CBS's Edward Murrow

A contestant lines up for the Partial Beards Freestyle category

More Photos: <-- Back | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next -->

All photos by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

The new world champion in the Full Beard Natural Category, Jack Passion holds hiswinning prize mug during the World Beard and Moustache Championships at the Brighton Centre on September 1, 2007 in Brighton, England. The World Beard and Moustache Championships is a biennial event participated by beard and moustache wearers from all over the world.

Contestants are presented to the audience in the sideburns category.

More Photos: <-- Back | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next -->

All photos by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

A Japanese town shares the same name as the U.S. presidential candidate:

As fanciful as it may seem, leaders in Obama — which means "Little Beach" in Japanese — are serious about forging a relationship with the candidate.

The mayor, Toshio Murakami, sent Obama a letter a year ago with a gift of lacquerware chopsticks, a DVD introducing the city, and a guidebook, but no one knows if the package arrived because they never received a response.

The town 250 miles west of Tokyo is undaunted. Murakami plans to send Obama another care-package, this one with a fist-sized lacquerware good-luck "daruma" doll with the word "victory" written across the chest in Japanese calligraphy.

"We want to ask him to stop by Obama as president if he visits Japan," Sadakazu Tsubouchi, an official at city hall.