Wizards news of the weird returns

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 13 May 2010, 09:22

In mid-April, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Jennifer McCreight responded on Facebook by urging women worldwide to dress provocatively on April 26 to create "boobquake" and test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women promised they would reveal serious cleavage on that date. On April 26, following a several-day drought of earthquakes, a Richter-scale-measuring 6.5 quake hit just south of Taiwan. (Slight advantage to the ayatollah, since a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region.) [Courier-Mail (Brisbane)-AFP, 4-17-10; Indianapolis Star, 4-28-10]

Cultural Diversity

One of the world's longest-running TV comedy shows (according to an April Reuters dispatch from South Korea) is the weekly North Korean production "It's So Funny," with its undynamic format of a man and a woman in military uniforms talking to each other (though they sometimes sing and dance). The latest episode "extolled the virtue of beans," wrote the Reuters stringer, "while avoiding any flatulence humor." "If we soldiers see beans, we become happy," said the man, leading both hosts to laugh. According to Reuters, "The two talk about how bean-fed North Korean soldiers were able to fight off U.S. imperialist troops during the Korean war." [Reuters, 4-12-10]

Latest Religious Messages

John Ridgeway, 45, filed a federal false-imprisonment lawsuit in March based on his 2005 trial over a traffic charge. According to a report in Michigan's Bay City Times, just before the jury returned with a verdict, Ridgeway opened a vial of oil, rubbed some on his fingers and then around the defense table, and he later shook hands with court personnel. Ridgeway was arrested when the prosecutor, a bailiff and the ticketing police officer became ill. Ridgeway explained that the virgin olive oil had been blessed by a Colorado pastor, specifically to "cast evil" from government facilities. [Bay City Times, 3-16-10]

In March, leaders of the St. John's Lutheran Church in Baraboo, Wis., voted to fire the principal of its elementary and middle school because of his "question(ing) the church's teachings." The church had held a contentious meeting of members on March 21, but few spoke out for the principal, largely because female members were banned from speaking at all. (According to the Baraboo News Republic, women cannot vote on the church's business but generally are allowed to talk at meetings until now.) [Baraboo News Republic, 3-23-10]

Questionable Judgments

Under Britain's Department of Health guidelines, prisoners about to be released, and who had previously taken drugs but cured their addiction while incarcerated, are being purposely re-addicted by wardens, using methadone. According to researchers, the former addicts will then be less likely to overdose when they get back on the street. Reportedly, more than 460 prisoners have thus been "retoxified" in the last five years. [Daily Telegraph, 4-16-10]

In March, the European Union's Trade Marks and Designs Registration Office granted a trademark to two German entrepreneurs to market a beer called **** Hell. Under the office's reasoning, "hell" is simply German slang for "light ale," and the other word is the official name of a town in neighboring Austria. However, according to a March report in Der Spiegel, the applicants for the trademark have no connection to the town, and there is no brewery there, or even plans for a brewery. [Spiegel Online, 3-29-10]

Judge Robert Benjamin of the Hobart branch of Australia's Family Courts ruled in a March custody case that sisters, aged 10 and 8, must spend weekends with their father, even though he is a convicted sex offender with a child-porn habit. The judge attached some restrictions that Dad must install a lock on the girls' bedroom door that he cannot control and, if the girls stay overnight, the father must have "an adult friend" spend the night, too, so that Dad will be less likely to offend. [The Australian, 3-14-10]

In March, an employment tribunal in Sydney, Australia, awarded pilot Bryan Griffin damages of $160,000 (Aus.) (U.S. equivalent, $208,000) because Qantas, for which he worked from 1966 to 1982, had allowed him to continue flying from 1979 to 1982 with depression and anxiety attacks that caused him nearly to deliberately crash his aircraft. As a result of continuing to work, he had several more episodes which exacerbated his condition (and, obviously, placed his passengers in jeopardy). [New Zealand Herald, 3-24-10]

News That Sounds Like a Joke

In January, the principal of D. Roy Kennedy Public School in Ottawa, Ontario, banned "ball-playing" anywhere on school grounds, declaring that it is too dangerous. [CTV.ca (Ottawa), 1-21-10]

Ricardo West, 22, who performs as a Michael Jackson impersonator, was arrested in April in Allen Park, Mich., on 12 counts of sexual misconduct with an 11-year-old boy. [WXYZ-TV (Detroit)]

We Require Hundreds of Hours of Training for Barbers, But None for Parents

Delmer Doss, 19, and his girlfriend, Amber Burgess, 19, were arrested in Stanley, N.C., in February on child abuse charges after police found a video made by the couple of their 11-month-old son. The toddler was blindfolded, and the parents were shown laughing at him, over and over, as he bumped into walls and fell down. [WCNC-TV (Charlotte), 2-18-10]

In March in Dallas, Krystal Gardner, 28, confronting a repo man driving off with her SUV, tossed her 1-year-old baby through an open window to stop the moving vehicle. (At that point, the repo man stopped and got out, but moments later, a teenager emerged from Gardner's house and began firing a 12-gauge shotgun. [Dallas Morning News, 3-24-10]

Fetishes on Parade

A 27-year-old man reported to Oklahoma City police in April that he was sexually assaulted by a man who had perhaps misunderstood the first man's intentions. According to a story in The Oklahoman, the first man had fully disclosed his "fetish for flatulence," but when the two met, the hijinks were interrupted by the second man's tying up and sexually assaulting the first man. The first man said he wanted only for the second man to "fart for me." The first man's name was not disclosed because he claimed to be the victim of a sex crime. [The Oklahoman, 4-7-10]

United Kingdom Ninnies

Macdonald Portal Golf and Spa Hotel (Cheshire, England) declined to provide a toothpick to a dinner guest on New Year's Day (to dislodge a piece of meat between his teeth) because the facility's manager said she believes that toothpicks are safety hazards. [Chester Chronicle, 1-21-10]

Citing restrictions of Scotland's Strathclyde Fire and Rescue force, a supervisor ordered firefighters on the scene not to attempt to rescue the 44-year-old woman who had accidentally fallen into a well. The restrictions require that only certified "mountain rescuers" are authorized to climb into wells. The nearest squad did not arrive for six hours, and the woman died. [BBC News, 3-3-10]

Mirko Fischer, 33, filed a lawsuit against British Airways in January for separating him from his wife, even though they had valid tickets for adjacent seats. BA regulations forbid seating an adult next to an unaccompanied minor, and thus Fischer, with wife on one side and 12-year-old boy on the other, was removed to the only open seat, far away from his wife. [Daily Mail, 1-16-10]

A News of the Weird Classic (February 2004)

About once a month, the owners of the Marina del Rey (Calif.) Sportfishing bait shop reap a windfall. According to a January 2004 Los Angeles Times story, a Tibetan Buddhist study group drops by in a convoy after meditating on the "liberation of beings" and plunks down $1,000-$2,000 cash to buy as much live bait as they can, after which they go to Marina del Rey Harbor and, in their terms, "free" the bait (whereupon, of course, much of it is promptly eaten by fish). [Los Angeles Times, 1-18-04]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 17 May 2010, 21:04

Our Expanding "Rights":

In April, a high official of the European Union called for member-nations to subsidize "vacations" for seniors, the disabled and those too poor to afford one. Said Commissioner (for enterprise and industry) Antonio Tajani, "Traveling for tourism today is a right." [National Post (Toronto)-Times (of London), 4-19-10]

In April, the town of Olathe, Kan., became the second city in two years to settle lawsuits filed by citizens who were arrested for flashing their middle fingers at police officers, thus appearing to acknowledge that flipping the bird contemptuously at a cop is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. (Philadelphia paid out $50,000; Olathe, one-sixteenth the size, paid out $5,000.) [KSHB-TV (Kansas City), 4-16-10]

Can't Possibly Be True

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., famously pickets targets around the country with explicit anti-homosexuality signs and recently chose as venues the funerals of deceased U.S. soldiers and Marines (calling such deaths God's punishment for America's acceptance of gays and lesbians). One grieving Marine family in York, Pa., filed a lawsuit accusing Westboro of "intentional infliction of emotional distress" by picketing their son's 2006 funeral, but a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in March that such protests are protected by the First Amendment. Piling on, the Court added that the grieving family must also pay Westboro $16,510 to cover its costs in having to defend the lawsuit. [Baltimore Sun, 3-29-10]

Michelle Taylor, 34, was sentenced in Elko, Nev., in April to life in prison, solely for the crime of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts, twice. The sentence was mandatory under a certain state law, but, said her lawyer, "She is getting a greater penalty ... than if she killed (the boy)." (She could be eligible for parole after 10 years.) [Elko Valley Daily Press, 4-14-10]

Inexplicable

Baltimore County (Md.) Judge Darrell Russell Jr., presiding over a March domestic violence case in which the woman obviously had changed her mind about blaming the boyfriend, performed the couple's marriage ceremony in his chambers after temporarily halting the boyfriend's trial. Earlier, Judge Russell had informed the woman that she could not refuse to testify based on "marital privilege" because she and the boyfriend were not married. Consequently, as the trial started, she asked the judge to marry them. After the ceremony, she was then granted the "marital privilege," and the judge dismissed the charge for lack of evidence. (Russell has now been reassigned to less important cases.) [Baltimore Sun, 3-18-10]

When Joseph Velardo, 28, was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in April after shoplifting items from a Staples store, he for some reason expressed relief that the charges would prevent him from being accepted by law schools. He explained that, since the value of the goods was over the $300 line that separates a mere misdemeanor from a 3rd-degree felony, law schools, thankfully, could no longer accept him. While officers were busy being puzzled about all that, the Staples manager told the police that the actual value of Velardo's take was $276.88. [WPTV (West Palm Beach), 4-7-10]

Justin Massler, 27, charged with criminal stalking of 28-year-old businesswoman-heiress Ivanka Trump, was released on bail in New York City in April but explained to a New York Daily News reporter that he intended to alter his approach. Instead of imposing himself on Trump, he said he would "become like a big-time millionaire, real estate mogul, so that she's the one who contacts me." [New York Daily News, 4-5-10]

Unclear on the Concept

At press time, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is considering declaring veteran comedian Guy Earle guilty of discrimination against two uncloseted lesbians who were heckling him in a night club. According to Earle, the women were loud, rude to the waitress and contemptuous of Earle, and thus opened the door to combat-type comedy of insult-exchange, except that some of his insults referred to the women's sexual orientation and frisky behavior at the table. Earle said his job requires him to be "offensive" and that the traditional verbal jousts between comedians and hecklers are not the same as illegal "hate speech." [Canadian Press, 3-28-10]

More Fuzzy Thinking:

Schools' conventional "zero tolerance" policies prohibiting guns or weapons on campus not only apply (as they have recently) to drawings of guns and to a 2-inch-long toy charm in the shape of a gun, but, at an Ionia, Mich., school, to making the familiar, thumb-up hand representation of a gun, for which Mason Jammer, 6, was suspended in March. [Grand Rapids Press, 3-4-10]

Carly Houston, 29, was arrested in Naperville, Ill., in March after a rowdy early-morning dispute with a taxi driver, and, given her customary "one phone call" to ask a friend to post bond for her, she chose instead to call 9-1-1 and report that she was "trapped inside a detention facility" (thus causing police to add "abuse of 9-1-1" to the charges). [Naperville Sun, 3-23-10]

Erlyndon Joseph Lo, 27 and a graduate of Southern Methodist University law school, was arrested in April after threats against a Dallas women's clinic that performs abortions. Police were tipped the day before when Lo appeared at the federal courthouse in Plano, Texas, and sought a formal judicial ruling that would protect him from harm, even if he were to use deadly force "to defend the innocent life of another human being." [Dallas Morning News, 4-6-10]

Latest Protests

In April, outdoing the recent partisan spats in the U.S. Congress, several dozen members of the Ukrainian parliament squared off over a cooperation-with-Russia bill that eventually involved headlocks, punching, a smoke bomb, glue (in the voting machines) and cartons of eggs tossed at the speaker's platform. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev called it the chamber's "traditional elegance." [Voice of America News, 4-27-10]

Sweden's Metro newspaper reported in March that a 21-year-old inmate at Kirseberg prison in Malmo faces discipline for continuing his protests against jail conditions by aiming his gas-passing directly at guards. [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-25-10]

Recurring Themes

Federal agents in April uncovered an elaborate bestiality ring (involving horses) in Washington state. Facility operator Douglas Spink is suspected of using the site to make pornographic videos for perverts, and a visitor from England was arrested as a suspected paying customer. This farm is near Bellingham, Wash., and the operation is completely separate from the 2005 raid on a similar facility near Enumclaw, Wash. (about 110 miles away), in which one man died of a perforated colon following penetrative sex by a horse. The state had no specific anti-bestiality law in 2005, but one was enacted after the Enumclaw episode. [KING-TV, 4-15-10]

Readers' Choice

Albert Bailey, 27, and a 16-year-old buddy were charged with robbery of a People's United Bank in Fairfield, Conn., in March, after they made it much too easy for police by calling the bank beforehand and demanding that money be set aside for them to pick up at a certain time. Police were waiting in the parking lot. [Connecticut Post (Bridgeport), 3-24-10]

Megan Barnes, 37, was arrested in March after being spotted driving erratically in Cudjoe Key, near Key West, Fla. After several implausible explanations, Barnes admitted she had a razor and was giving herself a "bikini shave" as she drove. Several traffic charges were filed against her. [Key West Citizen, 3-5-10]

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 19 May 2010, 15:04

io9 wrote:Nancy Marks, a psychic from Lafayette, Colorado, was arrested for fraud after telling clients their "money [was] evil" and that she'd take their cursed cash so "the money would suffer" instead. Marks made at least $290,000 using this scam.
<..>
If Marks told you Vigo the Carpathian was exercising demonic influence over your bank account, you can contact detectives at

vigo and xenu sitting in a tree
counting on mankind's stupidity....

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 19 May 2010, 15:41

(May 18) -- Police in Chicopee, Mass., have charged a 24-year-old man with reckless endangerment of a child after he allegedly offered to swap his 3-month-old baby girl for two 40-ounce bottles of beer.

"For two 40s, you can have her," Matthew Brace, the infant's father, told an employee at a Pride gas station and convenience store, Police Chief John Ferrao Jr. said.

According to police, Brace and his girlfriend entered the gas station Monday afternoon. When an employee asked the couple how old their child was, Brace made his offer, then placed his child and her stroller in the employee's truck, police said.

The employee then called police, a Chicopee police spokesman told AOL News. When officers arrived, Brace was discovered with his daughter behind the gas station near a trash bin. His girlfriend, who has not been charged, was inside the store buying cigarettes.

The Republican newspaper of Springfield, Mass., reports that the couple live at the Econo Lodge that abuts the gas station. Brace, his girlfriend and the baby were placed at the hotel by the state as part of a program to house the indigent.

After his arrest, Brace was sent to Baystate Medical Center for an evaluation, The Republican reported.

At a news conference, Ferraro said Brace's offer to trade his baby for beer was no laughing matter. "It's not a joke; this is very serious," he said.

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 24 May 2010, 05:08

Briton Robert Dee, feeling humiliated at being called the "world's worst tennis pro" by London's Daily Telegraph (and other news organizations) sued the newspaper for libel last year. After taking testimony in February 2010, the judge tossed out the lawsuit in April, persuaded by Dee's having lost 54 consecutive international tour matches (all in straight sets). Fearful of an opposite result, 30 other news organizations had already apologized to Dee for disparaging him, and some even paid him money in repentance, but the Telegraph had stood its ground (and was, of course, humble in victory, titling its story on the outcome, "'World's Worst' Tennis Player Loses Again"). [The Guardian (London), 4-28-10]

The Continuing Crisis

Mexican police, raiding a suspected hideout of drug kingpin Oscar Nava Valencia in the city of Zapopan in December, found the expected items (weapons, drugs, cash) but also 38 gold- or silver-plated guns emblazoned with ornate designs and studded with diamonds, which it placed on public display in May. Included were seven bejeweled assault weapons. [Guadalajara Reporter, 5-4-10; Luxist.com (America Online), 5-5-10]

In war-torn Gaza, with little relief from the tedium of destruction and poverty, the Mediterranean Sea offers some relief, especially for about 40 people who belong to the Gaza Surf Club, riding waves on secondhand, beaten-down boards. While the waves might not be as challenging as those in Huntington Beach, Calif., the surfers nonetheless must be skilled enough to avoid the estimated 60 million liters of raw sewage that Gaza city, with no practical alternative, has routinely emptied into the sea. [BBC News, 4-22-10]

An April ABC News TV report featured a Westford, Mass., couple as the face of the "radical unschooling" philosophy, which challenges both the formal classroom system and home schooling. Typically, home-schooling parents believe they can organize their kids' educations better than schools can, but "unschoolers" simply put kids on their own, free to decide by themselves what, or whether, to learn any of the traditional school subjects. There is no punishment, no judgment, no discipline. The key, said parent Christine Yablonski, "is that you've got to trust your kids." For example, "If they (decide that they) need formal algebra understanding ... they'll find that information." [ABC News, 4-19-10]

Bolinas, Calif., north of San Francisco, is famously reclusive, even to the point of residents' removing state highway signs pointing to the town, hoping that outsiders will get lost enroute and give up the quest. It limits its population to about 1,500 by officially fixing the number of municipal water hookups at 580, but in April, one of the meters became available when the city purchased a residential lot to convert to a park. The meter was to be sold at a May auction, with a minimum bid of $300,000. [New York Times, 4-14-10]

Uh-Oh!

A recent French documentary in the form of a TV show called "Game of Death" mimics the notorious 1950s human-torture experiments of Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram, who would coax test subjects to administer increasingly painful jolts of electricity to strangers to assess their obedience to an "authority figure," even if contrary to their own moral codes. As in Milgram's experiments, the Game of Death "victims" were actors, unharmed but paid to scream louder with each successive "shock." According to a BBC News report, 82 percent of the game's players were willing torturers, a higher percentage than Milgram found, but the TV show's subjects had greater encouragement, cheered on by a raucous studio audience and a glamorous hostess. [BBC News, 3-18-10]

According to an April lawsuit filed by an employee of the five-star Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Fla., the hotel complied with a February request by a wealthy British traveler that, during their stay, his family not be served by "people of colour" or anyone who spoke with a "foreign accent." The hotel has apologized to the employee, but denied that it had complied with the traveler's request. (Lawyers for the employee told the Associated Press that nine witnesses and a copy of a computer entry prove their claim.) [The Times (London), 4-23-10; Miami Herald-AP, 4-29-10]

Good News/Bad News: Based on April federal indictments of organized crime members in New York and New Jersey, it appears that any "glass ceiling" to management in the exclusively male Gambino family has been cracked in that at least one woman, Suzanne Porcelli, 43, was indicted among the 14 family members and associates. However, the Gambino "farm system" is apparently weak, in that with the imprisonment of John Gotti and other experienced capos, the organization appears headed in historically unfamiliar directions, most notably in child prostitution. Until now, even the most vicious of Mafiosi historically, heroically, protected women and children from the families' "business." [CNN, 4-21-10]

Oops!

Spectacular Errors:

Milton High School beat Westlake, 56-46, for the Georgia 5A boys' basketball championship in March. Westlake's chances evaporated during the pre-game warm-ups, when their Georgia-player-of-the-year candidate Marcus Thornton was forced to sit after spraining his ankle leaping to ceremonially hip-bump a teammate. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3-12-10]

Two North Carolina surgeons were issued official "letters of concern" in January for a 2008 incident in which they performed a C-section on a woman who was not pregnant. (They relied on an intern's confused diagnosis and followed an ultrasound with no heartbeat and several obviously failed attempts to induce labor.) [WTVD-TV (Raleigh-Durham), 4-1-10]

Bright Ideas

Frustrated customers frequently challenge bills, and occasionally, "rescission" of the original deal is a suitable remedy. However, it's not suitable for some services. Deborah Dillow was late with the $150 she allegedly owed to The Bomb Squad dog waste pick-up service in Bend, Ore., in April, and appeared to be avoiding calls at her home. The Bomb Squad owner, frustrated by the delays, simply returned all the work done to that point on Dillow's property in one big pile, in her front yard. [KTVZ-TV (Bend), 4-28-10]

Alcohol Was Involved

The Wonder Drug:

Donald Wolfe, 55, was charged with public drunkenness in March in Brookville, Pa., after neighbors spotted him giving, as he described it, mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a roadkill possum along Route 36. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3-26-10]

A 62-year-old man suffered second-degree burns after launching himself on a makeshift, rocket-powered sled in Independence Township, Mich., in January. Witnesses said he put on a helmet, then strapped a contraption consisting of a motorcycle muffler, a pipe, gunpowder, match heads and gasoline on his back, and had someone light the wick to send him blasting through the snow. [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 2-1-10]

Least Competent Criminals

Overconfident "Artists":

Clair Arthur Smith, 42, of Cape Coral, Fla., was charged with forgery in May after he allegedly tried to doctor the amount of a check he had received from Bank of America. Converting the "$10.00" check to $100, or even $100,000, would seem plausible, but Smith tried to deposit the check into his account after he had marked it up to "$269,951.00." [Fort Myers News-Press, 5-4-10]

A 17-year-old was arrested in College Station, Texas, in January and charged with trying to pass a homemade $5 bill at a restaurant. Police said the bill's front and back had been computer-scanned and then pasted together but that the front of the bill was longer than the back. [KHOU-TV-AP (Houston), 2-1-10]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 03 Jun 2010, 17:58

American families from certain Asian and African cultures continue to ritually "circumcise" their young daughters, though the practice is illegal in the U.S. and most of the world. In May, the bioethics committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics changed its policy from absolutely banning such surgery to one which would sanction a minor "pinprick" on girls' genitals (comparable, it said, to ear-piercing), with the hope of satisfying parents so they would not opt to send the girls to the home countries for full genital "mutilation." U.S. anti-female-circumcision support groups were outraged. Said one advocate, "We don't let (husbands) beat their wives a little bit" just because their cultures permit wife-beating. (On May 26, following that storm of criticism, the academy rescinded the policy change.) [New York Times, 5-6-10]

Government in Action!

The local government of Bolton, England, responding in March to a citizen's report of a discarded mattress on the side of a road, sent an official to assess the scene. He wrote a work order for four men (a driver, an assistant and two supervisors) and a 1.7-ton construction vehicle, and the pickup was scheduled for the following week, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. (When a Bolton councilman saw the schedule, he, with the help of a friend, drove a council van to the scene and hauled the mattress to a dump site.) [Daily Telegraph, 3-30-10]

A Hollywood, Fla., leukemia patient on Medicaid had endured six months of grueling chemotherapy in order to be healthy enough for a long-awaited bone marrow transplant when, in March, a Social Security Administration caseworker called her up out of the blue to inform her that her son was eligible for disability payments, which the woman immediately signed up for. However, almost as immediately, Medicaid removed her from its rolls because the disability check raised her income beyond the qualifying maximum, and her transplant was, life-threateningly, canceled. (In April, the hospital persuaded Medicaid to cover the transplant.) [WFOR-TV (Miami), 4-12-2010]

In April, officials in Hudson, N.Y., proudly unveiled their state-of-the-art water fountain for the disabled in the county courthouse, a fixture whose installation was agreed to in a 2003 settlement with federal officials enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, the fountain was installed on the courthouse's second floor, which is accessible only by stairway. In defense, county officials said the fountain had several features for handicapped people other than those in wheelchairs. [Register-Star (Hudson), 4-28-10]

Apparently, the death penalty is so important to Californians that they spend $125 million a year administering it, plus $400 million recently for a new death row and execution chamber even though the state is notoriously nearly bankrupt and even though, in a death-row population of more than 700, only 13 have been executed in the past 30 years. (As News of the Weird mentioned last year, one killer demanded the death penalty instead of life in prison because death row has better facilities and because, like nearly everyone on death row, he expects to die of disease or natural causes before the state can execute him.) Said the outraged mother of a raped-and-murdered teenage boy, of her son's killer, "(Scott Erskine) is (in) there watching television knowing I am going to die before he does." [San Diego Union-Tribune-AP, 4-25-10]

Great Art!

Susan Collis' conceptual art, "Since I Fell for You," debuted at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England, in May, consisting of an empty room with pieces of lumber on the floor, along with a broom propped against a wall and an empty laundry bag. Though the Birmingham Mail quoted several annoyed visitors, Collis defended her work. "Often a work that looks very careless ... takes a long time to produce." [Birmingham Mail, 5-6-10]

Just finishing up in May at New York City's Museum of Modern Art is a tribute to performance artist Marina Abramovic for her lifetime achievements in making patrons uneasy. Videos played, including one in which the artist screams at the top of her lungs until such time as she loses her voice, and visitors faced unsettling live demonstrations, including being asked to enter a room by squeezing between a naked man and woman facing each other in the doorway. The artist herself planned to attend the entire run sitting at a table in the museum's atrium, silent and motionless, all day long, during which time patrons could stare back at her. [New York Times, 3-20-10]

Police Report

A 2009 Minnesota law gives local police the authority to make traffic stops to enforce the stand-alone offense of failure of a passenger to wear a seat belt. According to a report in the Pioneer Press, police in the St. Paul suburb of Maplewood take it seriously. An undercover cop, posing as a homeless man with a "will work for food" sign, roamed an intersection, peering into cars and secretly signaling colleagues, who subsequently pulled over violators, and all unbelted passengers were issued $108 tickets: $25 for the violation, $75 for a brand-new "surcharge" for petty misdemeanors, and an $8 general state fee (none of which, according to the legislative history, represented a "tax increase"). [Pioneer Press, 2-25-10]

Veteran Dallas attorney Sandra McFeeley, 67, was arrested in April after refusing to stop pruning the excess vegetation and dead tree limbs at her neighborhood's Wynnewood Parkway Park, which she had been doing regularly for three years, thus violating a municipal trespass ordinance. McFeeley remained upbeat. "I met some neat people (at the police station). I'd never been in a perp walk before. It was cool." Said a supporter, "It's hard enough to keep that neighborhood nice without having the police haul people off for felonious gardening." [Dallas Morning News, 4-20-10]

Chutzpah!

Galena Park, Texas, high school teacher Fernando Gonzalez, 35, was sentenced to seven years in prison in March as a result of his being caught using his classroom computer to watch child pornography from his many disks. He tried to explain that he had no other choice, in that his wife had already banned him from watching child porn at home. [Houston Press, 3-31-10]

Mary Merten, 43, pleaded guilty in March to four felonies in connection with an eight-year-long spree in which, as bookkeeper for a two-lawyer firm in Kingston, N.Y., she stole over $800,000 via embezzlement and theft of the lawyers' identities. However, as she awaited sentencing, she wrote her former bosses: "I would ask that you consider keeping me employed. ... I truly enjoy my job and want to continue to work for the both of you to make up for my imperfections." (At press time, she was still awaiting sentencing.) [Times Herald-Record (Middleton, N.Y.), 3-17-10, 5-5-10]

Everyday Prophets

James Fall, 58, told police in Mound, Minn., in March that his "marriage" to his 10-year-old niece was perfectly acceptable in that he is a "prophet of God," citing Corinthians 6:12. [Star Tribune, 3-14-10]

Terrill Dalton, 43, who refers to himself as the Holy Ghost, moved his small congregation to Fromberg, Mont., in March as the latest stop in avoiding law enforcement investigations in Utah and Idaho. He credits his holiness to his collection of rocks, several of which he said are powerful "seer stones." [Billings Gazette, 3-26-10]

Adam Disabato, who said he is "the Messiah," was arrested in Pittsburgh in April after he drove his car into the Poale Zedeck synagogue, causing about $30,000 in damages. "I'm not crazy, and I don't hear voices. I just got a feeling sent by God to drive real fast for some reason." [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4-29-10]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 10 Jun 2010, 09:43

America What a Country! In 2007, after a stay in the United States distinguished mainly by his acquisition of a long police record, illegal immigrant Cecil Harvey, 55, was deported to his native Barbados. However, according to records revealed by the New York Post in May, Harvey received, in late 2009, one last remembrance of America: $145,000 from the city of New York in settlement of his lawsuit over having once been held at Rikers Island jail for about a month longer than the law permitted. [New York Post, 5-9-10]

Ironies

Betty Lou Lynn, 83, was mugged and had her wallet stolen in her new hometown of Mount Airy, N.C., in April. Lynn is the actress who played Barney Fife's best girl, Thelma Lou, in the Andy Griffith TV show and had lived in Los Angeles until she became alarmed at the city's crime rate. She decided in 2007 to move to the quieter, peaceful Mount Airy, which was Griffith's birthplace and the model for the TV town of Mayberry. [USA Today-Mount Airy News, 4-30-10]

Gary Null filed a lawsuit in New York City in April against the maker of a nutrition supplement called Ultimate Power Meal, alleging that he had suffered constant pain, kidney damage and internal bleeding from the product's recommended daily regimen. Ultimate Power Meal is one of the "health" supplements packaged under the label of ... Gary Null, a nationally prominent pitchman for homeopathic remedies. Null is suing the manufacturer who supplies the product on which Null affixes his Ultimate Power Meal label. (According to consumer advisers at Quackwatch.org, Null is "one of the nation's leading promoters of dubious treatment for serious disease.") [New York Daily News, 4-28-10]

According to court records cited by The Washington Post in April, Rene Fernandez, 45, will plead guilty to one count of a DUI-caused injury in connection with a 2009 traffic accident in Montgomery County, Md., that severely injured a retired county judge and his wife, both in their 80s. Fernandez and the judge, Edwin Collier, had met previously, in 1998, when Judge Collier pronounced sentence on Fernandez for DUI. At that time, Judge Collier released Fernandez on probation, even though Fernandez had been arrested for DUI twice in the previous three months. [Washington Post, 4-10-10, 4-14-10]

Compelling Explanations

Paula Wolf, 41, was arrested in Stevens Point, Wis., and charged with hitting four pedestrians at random with projectiles on April 21. In Wolf's car, police found a blow gun, a slingshot and a bucket of rocks, and after questioning, Wolf told police that she just "liked to hear people say 'ouch.'" [CBS News-AP, 4-22-10]

Lame:

The reason career criminal Kevin Polwart gave for his brief February escape from New Zealand's Auckland Prison was to demonstrate that he posed no threat to society on the outside (and thus that he should be parolled). (Instead, authorities added nine months to his sentence.) [New Zealand Press Association, 2-8-10]

A judge in Scotland went lenient on George McIntosh, 53, who had been convicted of embezzling the equivalent of about $87,000 from two pro golfing organizations. McIntosh claimed that his medication for Parkinson's disease had made him "compulsive(ly)" generous so that he needed to embezzle money in order to buy gifts for his friends. [BBC News, 4-7-10]

The Litigious Society

In April, George Black's lawsuit to be compensated for his injuries was permitted to proceed to trial, following an Ontario Superior Court decision. Black was playing third base (the "hot corner") in a softball game in Hamilton when he lost track of a line drive in the sun. The ball hit him in the head, smashing his glasses into his face and causing serious trauma to his eye. Black figures his injury is the fault of the owner of the softball field for failing to put up any kind of shade to block the late afternoon sun. [Globe and Mail, 4-2-10]

Melanie Shaker filed a lawsuit recently against the Fases Salon in Chicago for her 2008 injuries, which she incurred when she fell through the salon's front window and badly slashed herself. She fell after losing her balance while attempting to kick her husband during a quarrel along Sheffield Avenue following dinner (and, of course, drinks). Shaker suffered deep cuts to her arm, back and feet, which she now says was the salon's fault in that they had neglected to use "safety glass" in their front window, which would not have shattered into glass shards. [Sun-Times Media Wire, 5-1-10]

Jo Ann Fonzone's four-year quest to divorce the rock singer David Lee Roth (of Van Halen) continues, according to a May report in the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa. Roth, through his publicist, denied any connection whatsoever to Fonzone, who has filed nearly two dozen lawsuits against various people who she claims have done her wrong, including Hollywood executive Cary Woods and MTV CEO Judy McGrath, who each has been accused of trying to steal Fonzone's identity. Judges have noted that Fonzone's claims are unaccompanied by any "evidence" (such as a marriage license to Roth, or even photographs of the "couple" together), and most judges who have heard her claims regard the lawsuits as "frivolous." Said a court records chief of Fonzone's prolific filings, "When (the clerks) see her, they all want to run." Fonzone actually has a law degree, from Western State University in Fullerton, Calif. [Morning Call, 5-9-10]

I Demand My Rights

In April, warehouse workers at the Copenhagen, Denmark, brewery that makes Carlsberg beer went on strike after the company cut back on its allowance of providing up to three free beers per shift, which workers thought made their mundane jobs easier to take. As of April 1, only one beer per shift was provided, and only at lunch. (The previous "right" belonged also to delivery drivers, according to a Reuters report, but it was not clear how that right squared with drunk-driving laws.) [The Province (Vancouver, B.C.)-Reuters, 4-8-10]

Least Competent Criminals

Not Ready for Prime Time:

John Campana, 18, was detained by police after they found him with several pieces of expensive jewelry in Gainesville, Fla. As they were questioning him about where he got the jewelry, Campana (according to the police report) started shaking and sweating, and then fainted. (He was charged several days later with burglary.) [Gainesville Sun, 5-3-10]

Jason Robinson, 22, was arrested at a Burger King in Pine Bluff, Ark., in May after robbing the restaurant manager at gunpoint. As the manager handed over the day's proceeds, Robinson set his gun down on a counter to grab the money. Not surprisingly, the manager picked up the gun and shot Robinson in the leg. [KFSM-TV (Fort Smith)-AP, 5-19-10]

People With Issues

Recurring Theme: Police in Austin, Texas, executing a search warrant in May, discovered an elaborate, three-story tunnel complex extending as far as 35 feet underground, beneath the home of Jose Del Rio, 70, which he apparently dug over at least a two-year period. Police also found 19 guns, plus ammunition, batteries and compressed gas (which presented a serious safety hazard). The property showed signs of caving in and posed a threat to adjacent property, as well. Police noted that Del Rio (who neighbors said "kept to himself") was cooperative during the search although he offered no particular explanation for the tunnels. [Austin American-Statesman, 5-12-10]

GreyWolf · Post by **GreyWolf** » 01 Jul 2010, 12:10

Ban Twilight now! Before more of this happens!

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 01 Jul 2010, 14:49

New York state school officials had promised to crack down on soft test-grading to end the near-automatic grade-advancement by students unprepared for promotion. However, a June New York Post report found that the problem lingers under the current grading guideline called "holistic rubrics." Among examples cited by the Post (from a 4th-grade math test): How many inches long is a "2-foot-long skateboard"? (Answer: 24; "half-credit" answer: 48). Also, if you have 35 book boxes, and each contains 10 books, how many books are there? (Answer: 350; "half-credit" answer: 150). [New York Post, 6-6-10]

Can't Possibly Be True

According to a May report by Seattle's KOMO-TV, former Oregon National Guardsman Gary Pfleider II is awaiting the results of his latest appeal to end the garnishment of his disability checks to cover $3,175 for gear he supposedly "lost" when he was shot in Iraq. Pfleider was hit in the leg by a sniper in 2007, bled profusely and was evacuated (and is awaiting his ninth surgery on the leg), but the Oregon Guard apparently believes that, despite the trauma, Pfleider somehow should have paused to inventory the equipment he was carrying and to make arrangements for its safekeeping during his imminent hospitalization. [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 5-28-10]

To ease the crowds entering the Texas Capitol building in Austin, officials recently opened an "express" line, bypassing most security precautions, for selected visitors and personnel. Obviously, members of the legislature use the express line, along with Capitol employees presenting ID. A third category of favored visitors: anyone with a Texas concealed-weapons carry permit. The Houston Chronicle reported in June that the lobbyists frustrated with the long security lines have been applying for concealed-weapons permits even if they expect never to touch a firearm. [Houston Chronicle, 6-2-10]

Though he reportedly hacks more frequently lately, 2-year-old Ardi Rizal of Banyuasin, Indonesia, continues to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, according to a May dispatch in London's Daily Mail and other news reports. Local officials offered Ardi's parents a new car if they convinced him to quit, but the mother warned that her son throws massive, head-banging tantrums if deprived of his smokes, and his fisherman father, noting Ardi's generous girth, says the kid looks fine to him. (Unfortunately for the parents, Ardi prefers only a certain high-end brand, which costs the equivalent of about $2.75 a pack.) [Daily Mail, 5-26-10]

Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported in May that Qantas Airways has acknowledged re-using plastic knives and forks from its in-flight meals as many as 30 times before discarding them. One supplier who visited Qantas' Q Catering center in the Sydney suburb of Mascot was told that the Qantas cutlery's plastic is "more robust" than ordinary plastic utensils and is completely safe (after special cleaning). [Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 5-17-10]

It took until spring 2010 (eight years after the invasion of Afghanistan) for the U.S. Army to realize that enemy fighters in that vast, mountainous country were difficult to shoot at because they are often so far away. The Associated Press reported in May that the Army is only now reconsidering its reliance on standard M-4 rifles (whose effective range is under 1,000 feet), in favor of M-110 sniper rifles (effective at more than 2,500 feet). (Shorter-range rifles work well in Iraq, since the fighting is closer-in.) [ABC News-AP, 5-21-10]

Unclear on the Concept

Psychologists generally discount that children at age 6 can form a specific intention to "sexually" molest anyone (as opposed to roughing someone up or being obnoxious), but the principal of Downey Elementary School in Brockton, Mass., nonetheless suspended a first-grade boy in 2006 for "sexual harassment." The boy admitted putting two fingers inside a girl's waistband, but his parents sued, livid that a "sexual" motive had been assumed. In February 2010, Brockton's daily Enterprise reported that the school would pay the boy a $160,000 settlement for the principal's overzealousness. [The Enterprise, 2-12-10]

The Year of the Blind!

In Urfa, Turkey, in April, pop singer Metin Senturk set the world speed record for an unassisted blind driver (in a Ferrari F430, at about 175 mph), an experience he called "like a dance with death." [Reuters, 4-2-10]

In March in Watertown, Mass., two blind teenage fencers from local schools for the blind squared off in what was believed to be the first such match ever. [USA Today-AP, 3-29-10]

The Edinburgh (Scotland) Arts Festival announced in June that it would display, beginning in August, an exhibit of images taken by the blind photographer Rosita McKenzie, 56. [BBC News, 6-3-10]

Sucker Nation

The New Living Expo in San Francisco in May showcased such "healthy-living" breakthroughs as a $1,200 machine promising to suck toxins out of your body; a $249 silver amulet to protect you from "deadly" cell phone radiation; and a $15,000 Turbo Sonic if your red blood cells need to be "de-clumped." A Canadian study at the same time found that 97 percent of people who admitted buying "anti-aging" products did not think they would work but nevertheless confessed their need to hope like those who "hope" the viper-venom-derived $525 Euoko Y-30 Intense Lift Concentrate will prolong their lives. [San Francisco Chronicle, 5-12-10; Montreal Gazette-Canwest News Service, 5-21-10]

Recurring Theme: Once again, the larger question in a "swindling psychic" case is not how Portland, Ore., "psychic" Cathy Stevens managed to separate Mr. Drakar Druella, 42, from his $150,000 (which she needed, to cure Druella's "negative energy"). The larger question is how did a man so totally lacking in street smarts manage to amass $150,000 to begin with. Explained Druella, "(Stevens) could cry @ will. (She) becomes what you want and need her to be." [Austin American-Statesman, 5-14-10] [The Oregonian, 5-7-10]

People With Issues

At her arraignment in Missoula, Mont., in April, Jackiya Ford, 37, refused to enter a plea to various fraud charges because, she explained, "Montana" is not a legal entity. According to the prosecutor, after Ford was shown a house for sale by a local agent, she tried to cut out the middleman by filing an ownership claim to it and all the land within 20 miles of it (although she generously offered to sell it to the current residents, aka the legal owners, for $900,000, but only in "silver or gold"). Armed with her (fraudulent) ownership document, she broke into the home and posted a no-trespassing sign (the only visitors allowed: people authorized by "our Lord and Savior Yahushua"). (As if she weren't busy enough, she also disclosed that she is pregnant.) [The Missoulian, 5-3-10]

Armed and Clumsy (All New!)

In this latest collection of men who accidentally shot themselves recently, private parts were the center of attention. University of Illinois campus police officer Bryan Mallin accidentally shot himself in the butt while shopping in Chicago (March), and Timothy Davis, 22, digging through a drawer in Fort Myers, Fla., last October, also accidentally shot himself in the butt. And four other men (a shopper at a Lowe's Home Improvement store in Lynnwood, Wash., a 17-year-old in Vallejo, Calif., 20-year-old Jeffrey Disney in Hamilton, Ohio, and 50-year-old David Blurton, in Dillon, Colo.) accidentally shot themselves in what for men is their most cherished spot. [Chicago Tribune, 3-24-10] [Fort Myers News-Press, 10-8-09] [Seattle Times, 5-30-10] [Contra Costa Times, 3-5-10] [Oxford (Ohio) Press, 5-5-10] [Summit Daily News, 5-8-10]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 01 Jul 2010, 14:51

Catholic Youth Organization coach Michael Kman, 45, was charged in May with various misdemeanors regarding an alleged attempt over a several-month period to fix kids' basketball games for Kman's Our Lady of Lourdes church team in East Pennsboro Township, Pa. According to police, Kman sent multiple text messages to referees Jay and Jon Leader, offering them as much as $2,500 if certain games reached the "right outcome." The Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg has suspended Kman from coaching. In Kman's day job, he is a financial consultant. [Patriot-News (Harrisburg), 5-14-10]

Cultural Diversity

In May, Britain's Norfolk District Council banned the traditional barroom game of "dwile flonking" just as the inaugural "world championships" were to take place at the Dog Inn pub in Ludham, Great Yarmouth. The game, which some believe has been played since "medieval times," calls on players to fling a beer-soaked rag from the end of a small stick toward the face of an opponent, and in the event the tosser misses the target two straight times, he must quickly down a half-pint of ale. The council called the game a "health and safety" problem. [Daily Telegraph, 5-29-10]

Among the unique dining experiences of the Beijing Zoo is the ability of patrons to view an exhibit of frolicking hippopotamuses and then step into the zoo's restaurant and dine on such dishes as toe of hippopotamus. Also available: kangaroo tail, deer penis, ant soup and other delectables. Animal welfare activists condemned the dining experience, according to a dispatch in London's Guardian. [The Guardian (London), 5-21-10]

Latest Religious Messages

Virginia state inmate Kendall Gibson, who is serving 47 years for abduction and robbery committed at age 18, has spent the last 10 years in the prison's "hole," 23 hours a day in a cell "the size of a gas station restroom" (wrote an Associated Press reporter), not because he's a danger to the prison population, but because he won't cut his hair. Gibson is a Rastafarian and says his dreadlocks are devoutly authorized by the spiritual Lord, Jah. (A 1999 Virginia prison regulation requires administrative segregation for long-hairs.) [The Sun News (Myrtle Beach, S.C.)-AP, 5-7-10]

In May, in a news reverberation heard around the Arab world from the city of Al-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia, as a "policeman" from the notorious Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice approached a young couple in public to demand the woman's ID, the woman beat up the cop. Charges are pending against her, but women's rights activists across the Muslim world are reporting the incident as a watershed moment, according to the Media Line (Middle East) news agency. [Jerusalem Post, 5-17-10]

Nelson Derbigney's second wife, Laura, is a Hispanic Catholic, but the first wife has a court order that Nelson's and her joint-custody son from that first marriage will be raised as an Orthodox Jew like his mother. That means that stepmother Laura must learn to create a strict kosher lifestyle when the son stays with his dad. (Said Laura's lawyer, of the logical extension of the court order, if one substituted "fundamental Islam" for "Orthodox Judaism," Catholic Laura might have to wear a burqa in public.) [WMAQ-TV (Chicago), 5-18-10]

Questionable Judgments

Standing firm under severe local criticism, John Chianelli (the chief mental-health administrator of Milwaukee County, Wis.) has begun housing aggressive males and vulnerable females together in the same unit. Chianelli defended his decision with research showing that, in similar facilities, female patients provided a civilizing influence that reduced males' propensities to violence -- at least males' violence against other males. [Journal Sentinel, 5-8-10]

Bucket Lists: Patricia Edwards, 51, was arrested in Sanford, Fla., in March after being identified as the woman who walked into a Bank of America branch, handed over a robbery note and walked out with money. After being quickly nabbed, she explained: "There was no plan, no nothing, just impulse. I think everyone should have a list of things they want to do before they (die)." [WOFL-TV (Orlando), 3-30-10]

Still stuck on the Bucket List (until recently) of great-grandmother Rosemary Douglas was her regret that, at 81, she had still never collected child support payments for her son, who is now 60, from the "boy's" father, Urban Joseph Grass, now 82. In a Los Angeles court filing in April, she claimed $50 per month from the date of the 1951 court order (totaling, including interest, $57,000). [Houston Chronicle, 4-5-10]

"A Brave Man's Solution to Baldness" (read an April Toronto Star headline): Philip Levine, 28, working with artist Kat Sinclair, initially solved the problem of his "boring" shaved head by having her paint original murals on his dome, with the result that he became a star in the London (England) club scene. Since then, Levine has upgraded -- to painstakingly laying jewelry designs on his bald head, employing hundreds of thumbtack-sized Swarovski crystals to create a "swooping, shimmery, rockabilly" dome that dazzles in the light. The crystals shed after about a day, creating the opportunity for more designs. [Toronto Star, 4-9-10]

Fine Points of the Law

Scottish TV personality Drew McAdam, a professional body-language reader who advises the "Five's Trisha" talk show on whether guests with fabulous stories are telling the truth or not, was rejected for jury duty in May after being called by the Livingston Sheriff Court. (Obviously, at least one of the lawyers thought his side would have a better chance without an "expert" lie-detector evaluating witnesses.) [Scottish Daily Record, 5-27-10] [

Restaurateur Ted Bulthaup told WRTV in Indianapolis in May that he had finally convinced the Internal Revenue Service of a rare, "five-figure" income tax reduction based on years of unusual "disaster" losses. Bulthaup proved to the IRS that he was making good money until Conseco Fieldhouse was built in his downtown neighborhood (occupied 40 nights a year by the mediocre Indiana Pacers NBA team), which caused his business to fall off sharply. WRTV, 5-18-10]

People With Issues

Walter "Butch" Rubincan, 46, was charged in February in Newark, Del., as being a serial thief with perhaps a 20-year habit, specializing in men's shoes. When not out taking things, Rubincan (who "kept to himself," according to neighbors) is a medical technologist at two local hospitals, a part-time actor, and a one-time championship figure-skater. When police investigators first visited Rubincan's home, they discovered 3,900 shoes in about 150 boxes and bags (along with a few more upscale items and stolen photographs of young men), and Rubincan finally admitted he needed help. [News Journal (Wilmington), 2-9-10]

Thinning the Herd

Their Getaways Hit a Dead End: Noah Comer, 39, crashed his motorcycle and was killed as he tried to flee sheriff's deputies in San Diego in January after allegedly stealing a pack of cigarettes from the AM/PM minimart. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 1-8-10]

Gordon Wright, 58, and two associates were killed in January going the wrong way on Interstate 94 in a Detroit suburb after allegedly stealing $45 worth of Axe beauty products from a CVS store. (Police said they were not pursuing Wright but that he was merely in a hurry to get away.) [Sacramento Bee, 3-9-10]

Post by **Stuart** » 01 Jul 2010, 16:40

News24 wrote:A 75-year-old woman attacked a 17-year-old youth with an axe after he allegedly raped her in Dutywa, Eastern Cape police said on Thursday.

Captain Lingisile Magama said the boy allegedly pushed open the door of the woman's house on Tuesday and raped her.

"He then got tired and fell asleep. The woman got the chance, took the axe and assaulted him."

Magama said police were called to the scene and arrested the youth before taking him hospital for treatment for his injuries.

He was expected to appear in the Dutywa Magistrate's Court soon.

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 08 Jul 2010, 09:19

In the midst of World Cup fever, readers might have missed Germany's win over host Barbados in June for the Woz Challenge Cup, following an eight-team polo tournament with players not on horses but Segways. The sport is said to have been created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whose Silicon Valley Aftershocks competed again this year in Barbados (but last won the Cup in 2007). Wozniak told ESPN.com that his own polo skills are fading, but the San Jose Mercury News reported in May that Woz's fearlessness on the Segway seems hardly diminished. (The Mercury News report, on the Aftershocks' local, nerd-populated league, described the players as "the pudgy and the pale" and "geek chic.") [San Jose Mercury News, 5-18-10; ESPN.com, 6-18-10]

The Continuing Crisis

Stories of epic sportsmanship warm the public's heart, but there is also epic "cutthroat," such as by Monrovia (Calif.) High School girls' track coach Mike Knowles. Knowles' team had just been defeated for first place in the last event of the April league championship meet -- by a record-setting pole vault by South Pasadena High School's Robin Laird, edging her team over Monrovia, 66-61. But then Knowles noticed that Laird was wearing a flimsy, string "friendship" bracelet, thus violating a national high school athletics' jewelry rule. He notified officials, who were forced to disqualify Laird and declare Monrovia the champion, 65-62. "This is my 30th year coaching track," Knowles said later. "I know a lot of rules and regulations." [SI.com (Sports Illustrated), 5-11-10]

Universal health insurance cannot come soon enough for uninsured Kathy Myers, 41, of Niles, Mich., who, suffering an increasingly painful shoulder injury, has been continually turned away from emergency rooms because the condition was not life-threatening. In June, as a last resort, she took a gun and shot herself in the shoulder, hoping for a wound serious enough for ER treatment. Alas, she missed major arteries and bones and was again sent home, except with even more pain. [WSBT-TV (South Bend, Ind.), 6-14-10]

Britain's Countess of Wemyss and March, now 67, is a hands-on manager-fundraiser for the Beckley Trust -- UK's leading advocacy organization for legalizing marijuana, according to an April profile by the Daily Mail. However, she has not forsaken an earlier psychotropic-promoting campaign. In her early 20s, when she was Amanda Feilding, she extolled the virtues of trepanation (to "broaden ... awareness" by increasing the oxygen in the brain, directly, by drilling a hole in one's head). Feilding's first boyfriend wrote the book on the process ("Bore Hole"), and her husband, the flamboyant 13th Earl of Wemyss, has also been trepanned. The Countess still expresses hope that the National Health Service will eventually cover trepanning. [Daily Mail, 4-10-10]

Great Expectorations

People who live or work in New York City believe themselves to be among the world's toughest and hardiest, but at least 51 of them are apparently legendarily soft: the 51 city bus drivers who between them took 3,200 days of paid leave last year to "heal" over the single workplace "injury" of being spit on by passengers. (Thirty-two other spit-upon drivers did not request leave.) An official with the Transport Workers Union called spitting "physically and psychologically traumatic" and requiring "recuperat(ion)." [New York Times, 5-25-10]

The prominent Howrah bridge in Calcutta, India, has become a serious safety risk, according to a May report for the Calcutta Port Trust, because the steel hoods protecting the pillars holding up the bridge have been thinned by 50 percent in recent years. Engineers believe the corrosion has been caused almost entirely by the chemicals in gutkha, the popular chewing tobacco/herb concoction, which produces expectorants routinely hocked onto the bridge by the 500,000 pedestrians who cross it every day. [The Telegraph (Calcutta), 5-24-10]

Politicians Who Need to Wash Their Mouths Out With Soap

At a public meeting of the Dixon, Calif., City Council in May, Councilman Michael Ceremello refused to yield the floor to a colleague ("(Y)ou don't have the floor. Please sit back and shut the (F-word) up"). [KOVR-TV (Sacramento), 6-3-10]

Paul Gogarty, a Member of Ireland's Parliament, during a public session in May, answering the criticism of an opponent ("With all due respect ... (F-word) you, Deputy Stagg, (F-word) you."). [Sky News (Isleworth, England), 5-25-10]

Fine Points of the Law

Inventor Jiro Takashima, 75, maintains that his Pro-State massager is a serious medical device (retailing for about $80), but his daughter-partner Amy Sung, 35, simultaneously markets it as a prostate sex-play toy called the Aneros at adult novelty stores (retailing for about $50). According to a June Houston Chronicle report, Takashima's booth at medical conventions is popular, but at sex expos, he and his daughter are "rock stars." However, since the Pro-State/Aneros was intended as a medical device, competing sex-toy makers have felt free to copy Aneros' design, and Takashima's lawsuit to stop them is now before a federal court in Houston. [Houston Chronicle, 6-5-10]

The District(s) of Calamity

Washington, D.C., Attorney General Peter Nickles ordered an investigation in June after learning that the city's payroll office had, over a seven-year period, failed to remit the life-insurance premiums deducted from the paychecks of at least 1,400 employees. Already, one employee had been told that her policy had been canceled because of the unremitted premiums. (Until the investigation is finished, it is impossible to say which of the two usual explanations of chronic D.C. bureaucratic dysfunction -- theft or "large-scale human error" -- is applicable.) [Washington Post, 6-16-10]

Vying in recent years with Washington, D.C., as the nation's "district of calamity" is Detroit, whose previous mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was in May ordered to prison to serve 1-1/2 to 5 years after repeatedly violating his probation on his conviction for obstruction of justice. In June, Detroit's school board president Otis Mathis resigned under fire, then tried to un-resign by offering to cure himself of the behavior that started his downfall, specifically, Mathis' touching and fondling himself during several one-on-one meetings with the school system's General Superintendent, Teresa Gueyser. [Detroit Free Press, 5-25-10] [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 6-17-10]

The Aristocrats!

In the space of about 30 minutes on a June morning, according to a Dayton Daily News report, Brian Horst, 35, shoplifted several packages of meat and a jug of Mad Dog 20/20 wine from a store, inexplicably rolled a stainless-steel tank of carbon dioxide on wheels away from a restaurant, and disabled an ATM by pounding it with a rock (after several witnesses spotted him in conversation with the screen, apparently trying to reason with the machine or possibly with an imaginary employee inside it). [Dayton Daily News, 6-14-10]

The Jesus and Mary World Tour (all-new)

Recent Playdates: (1) Old Forge, Pa., February (Jesus appearing in a bucket of sauce at Brownie's Famous Pizzeria). (2) Lockport, N.Y., December (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary in an orange, sliced open on Christmas morning). (3) Rockford, Ill., April (Jesus appearing in the MRI of a thoracic spine examination). (4) Brownsville, Texas, May (Mary appearing on bark from a tree toppled during a storm). (5) Salford, England, February (Jesus appearing on a frying pan following the burning of a pancake). (6) Old Hatfield, England, February (Jesus appearing on a partially burned log in a fireplace). [Times-Tribune (Scranton), 2-25-10] [WGRZ-TV (Buffalo), 1-12-10] [Improbable.com (Annals of Improbable Research), 4-25-10] [Houston Chronicle-AP, 5-19-10] [United Press International-Daily Mail, 3-11-10] [Welwyn Hatfield Times, 2-17-10]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 12 Jul 2010, 09:53

A severe but underappreciated American drug problem (sometimes deadly and often expensive) is patients' failure to take prescribed medications -- even to save their own lives (such as with anti-coagulants or cholesterol-regulating statins). In recent pilot programs, according to a June New York Times report, compliance rates have been significantly improved -- by giving patients money ($50 to $100 a month, sometimes more) if they remember to take their drugs. Data show that, indeed, such compliance subsidies reduce society's overall health care costs by preventing expensive hospital admissions. Beyond health care costs is the social benefit when violent schizophrenics take their meds and refrain from attacking people. [New York Times, 6-13-01]

Government in Action

Labor unions' sweet, recession-proof contract with the New York City area's severely cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year provided 8,074 blue-collar workers (conductors, engineers, repairmen, etc.) with six-figure compensation, including about 50 who earned $200,000 or more. Researchers cited by The New York Times in April found that one Long Island Rail Road conductor made $239,148, about $4,000 more than the MTA's chief financial officer and about $48,000 short of being the highest-paid person in the entire system. Included in some of the fat payouts for LIRR locomotive engineers was special "penalty" pay (about $94,600 in one case) for engineers who are required to move a train to a different location from its normal assignment. [New York Times, 6-3-10]

Arizona (viewed by some as hard-hearted for its April law stepping up its vigilance for illegal immigrants) showed a soft side recently, implementing a $1.25 million federal grant that it believes will save the lives of at least five squirrels a year. The state's 250 endangered Mount Graham red squirrels risk becoming roadkill on Route 366 near Pima, and the state is building a rope bridge for them to add to several existing tunnels. [ABC News, 6-17-10]

Great Art!

At a June concert in Australia's Sydney Opera House, American musicians Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performed Anderson's 20-minute, very-high-pitched composition, "Music for Dogs," an arrangement likely to have been largely unmelodious to humans, who generally cannot hear such high pitches, but of more interest to dogs, who can. (Dogs were permitted in the audience, but news reports were inconclusive about their level of enjoyment.) [New York Times, 6-3-10]

Many jihadist recruiting pitches are dry and pious, but in May, the Somali activist Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, 26, who was born in Alabama, began streaming Internet rap "music" videos to encourage warrior sign-ups. (Sample verse: "It all started out in Afghanistan / When we wiped the oppressors off the land / The Union crumbled and tumbled / Humbled, left them mumbled / Made a power withdraw and cower.") Actually, there was no music but merely al-Amriki singing, presumably because in the version of Islam favored by Somali jihadists, "music" is not permitted. [ABC News, 5-18-10]

West Virginia's Division of Culture and History announced in June it would hold a state-sponsored art exhibition, showcasing the state's arts talent. Until now, the state has refused such projects because the last one, in 1963, turned out badly. The grand prize that year, supposedly representing the character and tradition of the state, went to "West Virginia Moon," which was a collection of broken boards and a screen door. [Charleston Daily Mail, 6-16-10]

A Professional All the Way

In May, the chief media spokesman of the Nye County, Nev., sheriff's office, Det. David Boruchowitz, announced to the press the arrest of a man charged with burglary and assault. The suspect's name, he reported, was Det. David Boruchowitz. The chief investigator on the case, Det. Boruchowitz told reporters, was Det. David Boruchowitz. (Three days later, the charges were dropped, but that announcement was made by someone else.) [Las Vegas Sun, 5-24-10]

Fine Points of the Law

In Rehoboth Beach, Del., it is illegal for men and women to publicly reveal their genitals and for women to reveal their breasts, but Police Chief Keith Banks, confronted in June with complaints about some beachgoers flouting their shapely breasts, said there was nothing he could do. Banks said the offenders were actually biological males in the midst of hormonal transgendering. As Banks explained, "(T)hey had male genitalia. Therefore, they were not guilty of a crime." [News Journal (Wilmington), 6-3-10]

In April, Prince Edward Island (Canada) judge John Douglas acquitted minor league hockey player Chris Doyle of assaulting his former girlfriend, though Doyle had arrived at her home uninvited, had annoyed and berated her, and would not leave. The girlfriend was injured when Doyle punched a door, causing it to smash against her face, but Judge Douglas accepted that Doyle honestly did not know she was behind the door. Said the judge, "If he was charged with being a colossal *******, I would find him guilty. Of 'assault causing bodily harm,' I find him not guilty." [Canadian BroadcastingCorp. News, 4-9-10]

In Two Cradles of Bizarre Politics

Russia: On television in May, the governor of the Russian republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, recounted that he had been abducted in a spaceship in 1997 and forced to communicate with aliens telepathically, and later entertained some in his apartment. One opponent seized the moment and called for an inquiry into whether Ilyumzhinov had telepathically spilled government secrets while under the aliens' spell. Then, former world chess champion Anatoly Karpov announced he would challenge Ilyumzhinov for the position of head of the World Chess Federation (which Ilyumzhinov has been since 1993), but yet another Russian chess icon, Arkady Dvorkovich (who is President Medvedev's chief economic adviser), said he still backed Ilyumzhinov because of the latter's superior managerial talent. [ABC News, 5-5-10; Agence France-Presse, 5-22-10]

Florida:

While still chairman of the Florida Republican Party, Jim Greer was revealed to have ordered the continuous shuttling of emergency "notes" to him during a Republican National Committee meeting, and according to an April Orlando Sentinel profile, the "notes" were all blank. A Florida RNC official concluded that Greer was simply trying to make himself appear important to his colleagues. (In June, Greer was indicted on six felony counts related to raiding the state party's treasury.) [Orlando Sentinel, 4-17-10]

At a forum in May for county school board aspirants in Orlando, candidate John Mark Coney took the floor to read passages from the Bible and then to emphasize his suitability for office by announcing that he, at age 53, is a virgin. [Orlando Sentinel, 5-19-10]

Update

In 2007, News of the Weird reported what looked like the bizarre dreams of an attention-seeking Muslim cleric: that contrary to popular belief, strict, Wahhabi Islam allows unrelated people of the opposite sex to meet, unchaperoned, provided that they were both breastfed by the same woman (thus symbolically making them "siblings"). In June 2010, two more-prominent Muslim clerics in Saudi Arabia reintroduced the debate, according to an AOL News report, by agreeing that the workaround could be used by a boyfriend and his girlfriend's mother. However, they disagreed on whether the Quran requires the boy to take the milk directly from her breast or allows him to feed from her stored milk. [AOL News, 6-5-10]

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 19 Jul 2010, 06:44

"Why are you still alive?" is the question doctors ask Ozzy Osbourne, the hard-rock singer and reality-TV star, who says he is now clean and sober after a lifetime of almost unimaginably bad habits. In June, he started two new ventures: undergoing the three-month process of genetic mapping (to help doctors learn why, indeed) and becoming a "health advice" columnist for London's Sunday Times. At various points in his life, the now-cholesterol-conscious, vegetarian Osbourne said he drank four bottles of cognac a day, smoked cigars like they were cigarettes, took 42 prescribed medications and many more "backstage" drugs that he could not even identify. Osbourne also has a Parkinson's-like genetic tremor, was once in a medically induced coma after an accident, and endured anti-rabies shots after famously biting into a bat on stage ("I thought it was a rubber toy"). [Sunday Times, 6-6-10]

Ironies

An intense lightning storm on June 14 around Monroe, Ohio, destroyed the iconic 62-foot-high statue of Jesus (the "King of Kings" structure of the Solid Rock Church) alongside Interstate 75. While townspeople mourned, it was also noteworthy what the lightning bolts completely missed: the large billboard, on the other side of the road, advertising the nearby Hustler Hollywood pornography store. [Springfield News-Sun, 6-15-10]

Despite a scary moment in May, Massachusetts state Rep. Mike Moran said he still supports "comprehensive" immigration reform (taken to mean that restrictions on illegal immigrants be tempered with a special "path to citizenship" for those already here). Rep. Moran's car was rear-ended (though he was not seriously hurt) by illegal immigrant Isaias Naranjo, who was charged with DUI and speeding. According to police, Naranjo, 27, who was dressed in a Mexican party costume, laughed when told of the charges, informing officers that they could do nothing to him since he had already made plans to return to Mexico. (Furthermore, Massachusetts is forbidden by state law from even notifying U.S. Immigration officials of Naranjo's case.) [WFXT-TV (Boston), 5-31-10]

Over the years, according to a June Chicago Sun-Times report, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois has freely used "swagger and braggadocio in talking about his 21 years of military service" as qualification for office. When one contrary fact after another about his record was pointed out by reporters, Kirk explained, "I simply misremembered it wrong." He admitted that, contrary to his numerous public statements, he was not actually "in" the Iraq Desert Storm war; did not actually "command the Pentagon War Room" when he was assigned there as a Navy Reservist; and was not actually once Naval "Intelligence Officer of the Year." He is now vying for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Barack Obama. [Chicago Sun-Times, 6-4-10]

In May, Douglas Ballard and Joseph Foster were indicted for allegedly selling fraudulent loans in exchange for bribes, while they were vice presidents of the Atlanta-area "faith-based" Integrity Bank. The bank opened in 2000, touting Christian principles, giving Bibles to new customers, and encouraging prayer at employee gatherings. (The bank closed in 2008, thought then merely to be the victim of sour real-estate loans, and in fact the bank's more-spiritual founder, Steven Skow, had left the bank by 2007.) [New York Times, 5-8-10]

Not My Fault

British actor Nicholas Williams, 33, was acquitted of domestic assault in June even though he had, among other things, "waterboarded" his girlfriend by pulling her shirt over her head and holding her under a shower during a two-hour rampage. Williams persuaded the judge that the anti-smoking drug Champix made him unable to control himself or even to remember the events of that evening. [Daily Mail (London), 6-9-10]

Laith Sharma, 49, admitted in June that he had stalked and fixated upon, "for marriage," a 14-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario, but doctors' testimony won him a sentence of mere house arrest. Sharma, they said, suffers from the popularly known "maple syrup urine disease," so-called because the excreted scent is a marker for brain damage that prevents impulse control. [Calgary Herald-Windsor Star, 6-19-10]

Compelling Explanation: Tony Chrum was the one apprehended for allegedly buying $160 worth of cocaine from a man who turned out to be a police informant in Lincoln County, Mo., in May, but his brother, who is Winfield, Mo., police officer Bud Chrum, 39, was the mastermind. According to police and unknown to the informant, Bud had needed to replace 2 grams of cocaine from the police evidence locker because he had accidentally spilled something on it, and Tony agreed to help. [Riverfront Times (St. Louis), 5-25-10]

Our Litigious Society

"If Google told you to jump off a cliff, would you?" asked a Fortune magazine columnist, describing the lawsuit filed in May by Lauren Rosenberg, asking for damages of more than $100,000 against Google Maps after she was struck by a car. Rosenberg had queried the map service for a "walking route" between points in Park City, Utah, but a short stretch of the suggested route lacked sidewalks. Rosenberg was hit while walking in the street. Though Google and other map services "warn" users against walking in the street, Rosenberg's route was delivered on her small Blackberry phone screen. [Fortune, 5-29-10]

What About Our "Human Rights"?

Update: News of the Weird reported in 2005 on a Welshman's invention of the "Mosquito," a device that emits an irritating, pulsating, very-high-pitched noise and is marketed to shopkeepers to drive away loitering children and teenagers, since the pitch is audible to them but rarely to anyone older than in the mid-20s (because audio range contracts as we age). In June, following an investigation, the Council of Europe (which oversees the European Court of Human Rights) declared the Mosquito a "human rights violation," in that the sounds it emits constitute "torture." [The Guardian, 6-19-10]

Britain's Crown Prosecution Service announced a proposed anti-social behavior order against Ellis Drummond, 18, to prohibit him from wearing low-slung trousers in public that allow his underwear to show, but Drummond challenged it in Bedford magistrates' court. In May, Judge Nicholas Leigh-Smith ruled that such an underwear-suppressing order would violate Drummond's "human rights." [Agence France-Presse, 5-5-10]

Least Competent People

Jihadists: They blow themselves up by mistake (such as Pakistani terrorist Qari Zafar did in June); they botch airline shoe- and underwear-bombing and buy the wrong fertilizer for urban car bombs; they brag too much; and they watch far too much Internet pornography. Evidence amassed by Daniel Byman and Christine Fair, writing in the July/August issue of The Atlantic, has led them to suggest that America and its allies should treat jihadists as "nitwits" rather than as "savvy and sophisticated killers" (the latter being an image that helps them with recruiting). It is possible, the authors conclude, that there has not been a truly competent jihadist terrorist since Mohammad Atta led the Sept. 11, 2001, missions. [The Atlantic, July/August 2010]

Matadors: Christian Hernandez, 21, making his big-time bullfighting debut at Plaza Mexico in Mexico City in June, ran from the ring trembling in fear at the first sign of his bull. He was then coaxed to return and man-up, but once again fled and immediately submitted his resignation. Though Hernandez was contrite ("I didn't have the ability. I didn't have the balls."), he was arrested for violating his contract and released only after he paid a small fine. [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-15-10]

DarkRedAngel · Post by **DarkRedAngel** » 19 Jul 2010, 09:55

[quote="wizardofid"]The Continuing Crisis

Mexican police, raiding a suspected hideout of drug kingpin Oscar Nava Valencia in the city of Zapopan in December, found the expected items (weapons, drugs, cash) but also 38 gold- or silver-plated guns emblazoned with ornate designs and studded with diamonds, which it placed on public display in May. Included were seven bejeweled assault weapons. [Guadalajara Reporter, 5-4-10; Luxist.com (America Online), 5-5-10]

I've seen this actually on an email with photos of all the fire arms

doo_much · Post by **doo_much** » 19 Jul 2010, 19:18

You mean this?

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 25 Jul 2010, 10:22

While the morbidly obese struggle with their health (and society's scorn), those who eroticize massive weight gain are capturing increased attention, according to a July ABC News report. Commercial and personal websites give full-bellied "gainers," such as New Jerseyan Donna Simpson, and their admiring "feeders" the opportunity to express themselves. Simpson became a 602-pound media sensation in March, when she began offering pay-per-view video of herself to an audience of horny feeders. Wrote another gainer-blogger, "Lately, I've been infatuated with the physics of my belly ... how it moves with me." When he leans to one side, he wrote, "I feel a roll form around my love handle." One sex researcher called it a "metaphor of arousal." In the end, though, as a medical school professor put it, "The fetish may be in our heads, but the plaque is going to be in (their) arteries." [ABC News, 7-1-10]

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

The dating website BeautifulPeople.com, supposedly limiting its reach only to the attractive (though claiming 600,000 members worldwide), announced recently that it would sponsor a companion egg and sperm bank for its members to sell their essences for a fee. However, as managing director Greg Hodge told Newsweek in June, homely customers were welcome. "Initially, we hesitated to widen the offering to non-beautiful people. But everyone -- including ugly people -- would like to bring good-looking children into the world, and we can't be selfish ...." [Newsweek blogs, 6-21-10]

The video company EA Sports sells sports games based on real-life professional leagues, with its biggest moneymaker "Madden NFL 11," which allows joystick-using "coaches" to compete with each other based on actual pro football players' abilities. In June, EA Sports announced a new touch of realism: Just as football teams "scout" opposing players, EA Sports will sell joystickers complex "scouting reports" on the talents and tendencies of their fellow joystickers. [ESPN.com, 6-3-10]

Weird Science

Life Imitates a Drew Barrymore Movie: Michelle Philpotts of Spalding, England, and her husband, Ian, and their two children have adjusted, since a car crash 20 years ago, to her anterograde amnesia, which, every day, robs her of short-term memory, forcing her to constantly re-learn her life. According to a June profile in London's Daily Mail, that includes Ian's convincing her that the stranger in her bed every morning is her husband, which he does by showing her their wedding photographs. [Daily Mail, 6-11-10]

An April National Geographic TV special tracked "Silvano," an Italian man for whom sleep is almost impossible. He has "fatal familial insomnia," making him constantly exhausted, and doctors believe he will eventually fall into a fatal dementia. Only 40 families in the world are believed to carry the FFI gene. [ABC News, 4-26-10]

Cleverest Non-Humans:

Wild elephants recently rampaged through parts of Bangladesh, and according to the head of the country's Wildlife Trust, those super-intelligent animals "are quick to learn human strategies." For example, he pointed to reports that elephants (protecting their migration corridors) routinely swipe torches from hunters and hurl them not randomly but directly at the hunters' homes. [Agence France-Presse, 6-7-10]

Recent research on the "cat virus" (toxoplasma gondii) acknowledges that, to be viable, the virus must be passed in rodent feces but can only be hosted in a cat's stomach -- and thus that the "toxo" somehow tricks the rodents to overcome their natural fear of cats and instead, amazingly, to entice cats to eat them. Scientists are now studying whether, when human dopamine goes haywire, such as with schizophrenia, a toxoplasma-gondii-type phenomenon is at work. [The Economist, 6-3-10]

The Trials of the Cricket-Sex Researcher: Biologists from Britain's Exeter University who set out to study the sexual behavior of field crickets in a meadow in northern Spain reported in June that they set up 96 cameras and microphones to cover a population of 152 crickets that they individually identified with tiny, numbered placards on their backs (after DNA-swabbing each one). Publishing in the journal Science, they claimed the study is important in helping us understand how "climate change" will affect habitats. [Agence France-Presse, 6-4-10]

Career Downgrades

In May, Jim Janson, a 20-year veteran "carny" (who ran the games of chance at Canada's traveling Bill Lynch Shows), graduated from the law school at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and has set out on his new calling. [Chronicle Herald (Halifax), 5-28-10]

Downgrade Cut Short: Eduardo Arrocha, whom News of the Weird mentioned in 2008 when he was "Eak the Geek," the "Pain-Proof Man" at New York's Coney Island Sideshow (eating light bulbs, putting his tongue in a mousetrap), completed his first-year studies at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Michigan but decided not to return and said he would concentrate on publishing his poetry. [AOL News, 6-24-10]

Fine Points of the Law

Things looked grim for Carlos Simon-Timmerman, arrested by U.S. border agents in Puerto Rico while bringing an "underage-sex" video home from a holiday in Mexico. The star of "Little Lupe the Innocent" looked very young, and federal prosecutors in April called an "expert witness" pediatrician, who assured the jury, based on the girl's underdevelopment, that she was a minor. However, Simon-Timmerman's lawyer had located "Lupe" via her website, and she cheerfully agreed to fly in from her home in Spain with her passport and other documents to prove, at a dramatic point in the trial, that she was 19 when the video was made. Simon-Timmerman was acquitted. [New York Post, 4-24-10]

Least Competent Criminals

Questionable Judgments:

Austin, Texas, police issued an arrest warrant in June for Jose Romero, who they say robbed a Speedy Stop clerk after demanding money and menacingly pointing to his waistband, which held a caulking gun. [Austin American-Statesman, 6-18-10]

Steven Kyle took about $75,000 worth of merchandise from Cline Custom Jewelers in Edmonds, Wash., in June, but as he left the store, employees shouted to passers-by, several of whom began to chase Kyle. Almost immediately, Kyle dropped his gun and the jewelry and fell to the ground exhausted. (Kyle later revealed that he had only one lung.) [The Herald (Everett), 5-29-10]

Thinning the Herd

Police in Houston said the man killed when he drove his 18-wheeler into a freeway pillar on July 6 was part of a two-man scheme to defraud an auto insurance company. Police said it was the other man who was originally scheduled to drive but that, citing the "danger," he (wisely) backed out. [KTRK-TV (Houston), 7-6-10]

Inmate Carlos Medina-Bailon, 30, who was awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges in El Paso, Texas, escaped in July by hiding in the jail's garbage-collection system. Medina-Bailon's body was found later the same day under mounds of trash in a landfill. [KVIA-TV (El Paso), 7-9-10]

Armed and Clumsy (all new!)

Men Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: Robert Stewart, 55, a police academy instructor, during class (Liberty Township, Ohio, April). Lazaro Flores, 50, practicing quick-draw at his girlfriend's house (Cape Coral, Fla., January). Michael Webb, 22, showing friends how to disarm a gunman (Camp Lejeune, N.C., February). Michael Randall Jr., 19, outside a convenience store, preparing to rob it (Athens, Ga., December). Vincent Medina, 19, waistband-as-holster mismanagement (hit in the groin) (Fontana, Calif., June). Brandon Boyce, 24, waistband-as-holster mismanagement (hit in the groin) (Omaha, Neb., July). Stewart: [Oxford (Ohio) Press, 4-9-10] Flores: [Fort Myers News-Press, 1-18-10] Webb: [Jacksonville (N.C.) Daily News, 2-22-10] Randall: [Athens Banner-Herald, 12-29-09] Medina: [Fontana Herald News, 6-22-10] Boyce: [Omaha World-Herald, 7-6-10]

Tribble · Post by **Tribble** » 25 Jul 2010, 10:37

Strange organisms we share this world with

Post by **Stuart** » 04 Aug 2010, 21:16

Yahoo NEws wrote:An Atlanta woman who used her feet to type a computer message to her boyfriend asking for help after she was robbed and bound says she persuaded the robber not to steal her laptop.

The woman, 39-year-old Amy Windom, appeared on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday and described her ordeal.

She says a robber entered her home early Tuesday and bound her to her bed. Windom says the robber left her computer after she told him it has a tracking device.

She says she propped up the laptop and after realizing she couldn't type with her feet, wedged the power cord between her toes and produced messages. She got her boyfriend's attention with an instant message and he sent the police to her home.

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 09 Aug 2010, 06:30

The Outer Frontiers of U.S. Immigration Policy: The $125 million Jay Peak ski resort in Vermont, with 120-room hotel, ice arena, golf course and the Northeast's largest water park, is just months away from completion, thanks to half-million-dollar investments from each of 250 foreign nationals from 43 countries who, as part of the deal, were given conditional U.S. "green cards" (for permanent residency). At the other end of America's immigration conundrum, prosecutors in Snohomish County, Wash., dropped the rape charge in July against illegal immigrant Jose Madrigal-Lopez, 46, for lack of evidence and released him back onto the street. Madrigal-Lopez has been deported from the U.S. 10 times already but keeps returning. [ABC News-AP, 7-8-10] [Seattle Times, 7-9-10]

Can't Possibly Be True

Two-year-old Ardi Rizal of Banyuasin, Indonesia, has developed a two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, according to several news organizations that splashed his story around the world in May, with video of Ardi casually puffing away as he frolics on his tricycle. Said Ardi's mother, "If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall." Ardi's father, noting the kid's pudginess, seems not to sense the problem: "He looks pretty healthy to me." An additional concern is financial: Ardi will smoke only one particular premium brand, at a cost of the equivalent of about $5.50 a day. [New York Daily News, 5-26-10, Daily Mail (London), 5-27-10]

With heroin too expensive for many African addicts, some ask an addicted friend for a temporary fix -- withdrawing a teaspoonful of the friend's heroin-tinged blood and injecting it into their own bloodstream. Evidence of this practice (called "flashblood") comes from anecdotes from health officials in Tanzania, Zanzibar and Kenya, reported in The New York Times in July. Doctors said they question the euphoria-producing quality of such tiny amounts of heroin, but are certain that flashblood will potently deliver any HIV present in the donor's blood. [New York Times, 7-13-10]

Motherly Love:

Ranay Collins, 49, was arrested in Las Vegas in June and charged with beating her 16-year-old daughter with a cane. The arresting officer quoted Collins' explanation: "That (expletive) owes me $50 for rent." [KTNV-TV (Las Vegas), 6-25-10]

Police arrested Christina Muniz, 29, in Surprise, Ariz., in June, after being summoned to the home by Muniz's son, 11. Muniz had just informed the boy and his brother, 6, that she was abandoning them to move to California with her boyfriend to fulfill her dream of becoming a stripper. With police watching, the older boy approached Muniz for a hug, but Muniz slugged him in the stomach. [ABC News, 6-15-10]

Inexplicable

Colin Hall, Lord Mayor of Leicester, England, visiting the Southfields library for its Summer Showcase on global understanding in June, apparently at some point experienced his pants falling down. His spokesman later said, "He was not wearing a belt, and the trousers came loose and fell." (Reports in The Guardian and other newspapers emphasized that nothing indecent occurred.) [Sydney Morning Herald-Press Association (London), 7-1-10]

Jammie Harms, 34, who had been executive assistant to CEO John Smith of the developer Hearthstone Homes, filed a lawsuit against the Omaha, Neb., company in June for wrongful firing. According to the lawsuit, Smith told Harms that, after consulting with psychics, he was troubled by her pregnancy. He said he was feeling "negative energy" from her fetus, sensing that it was "hostile" toward him and causing him to be reminded of his own unpleasant experience as a fetus. [KFAB Radio (Omaha)-AP, 7-1-10]

Spectacular Clumsiness

An internal police inquiry concluded in April that it was an accident that an officer in the Utica, N.Y., courtroom of Judge Randal Caldwell shot Caldwell in the leg with his Taser gun. Investigators concluded that the officer was merely trying to re-holster the weapon to make it less uncomfortable, and it slipped. [Utica Observer-Dispatch, 4-9-10]

Youth worker Cherie Beekman, 33, took a group of her kids to a bowling alley in Didsbury, England, in April for a diversion but got her thumb stuck in her bowling ball. She was taken to a fire station, where, for over two hours, rescuers used an electric saw, hacksaw and chisel to free her. [Daily Mail, 4-20-10]

Things Aren't What They Seem

Fine Point of Florida Law: David Lowe, 47, was convicted in Brooksville, Fla., last year of "lewd or lascivious exhibition" after he sat in his car, masturbating, outside a convenience store while ostentatiously holding a large dildo to his mouth in front of a woman and her child. In July 2010, a Florida appeals court reversed the conviction and freed Lowe, pointing out that conviction under that particular statute requires "sexual activity," which is defined as occurring between two or more persons. [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 7-7-10]

Vietnam's Version of an "Innocence Project": "Traditional medicine" practitioner Pham Thi Hong is credited with freeing three men who had been convicted of a rape in 2000 and were serving 16-year prison sentences. According to Hong, men with certain small spots on their ears are virgins, and since the men still have their spots, they could not have committed rape. (Although Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet was reportedly impressed with Hong's work and thus ordered the case re-opened, discovery of additional errors by police and prosecutors contributed to the recent decision to release the men.) [Yahoo News-AP, 7-2-10]

Mark Seamands, 39, went to trial in May in Port Angeles, Wash., accused of second-degree assault and two lesser charges for the hot-iron "branding" of his three children, aged 13, 15 and 18. Each of the kids bore the mark "SK," for "Seamands' Kids." At trial, however, the kids testified that they not only consented to the branding but thought it was cool (despite the second-degree burns), and as a result, the jury dismissed the assault charge and deadlocked on the two lesser ones. [KIRO-TV (Seattle)-AP, 5-14-10]

Redneck Chronicles

In July, Mike Morateck, 46, a self-described "man of science," won the Jefferson (Wis.) County Fair's annual cricket-spitting contest with a hock of 21 feet, 2 inches. His two main "scientific" secrets (he told Milwaukee's Journal Sentinel): "pick a big cricket" and "feet first on its back with the head pointing out because you don't want the legs dragging on the way out." [Journal Sentinel, 7-7-10]

Juliana Bryant, 33, was arrested in Florala, Ala., in July after police were called to her home on a disturbing-the-peace complaint and discovered several open gasoline containers throughout the house. Bryant explained to the officers that she "like(s) the smell." [Mobile Press-Register, 7-22-10]

Least Competent Criminals

Crime Scene Escapades:

Allen Dawes, 28, and Jimmy Lee, 43, were charged as burglars in, respectively, York, Pa. (June), and Blackburn, England (July), after having inexplicably left clues behind. For reasons unreported, Dawes had left his birth certificate at the scene and Lee his DNA-laden false teeth. [Yahoo News-AP, 6-23-10] [Blackburn Citizen, 7-19-10]

Officials at the Synergy Credit Union in Lashburn, Saskatchewan, have the surveillance video but not the perp. On April 13, a man in black with a curved sword jabbed at the ATM, then smashed his way through the glass front door, then roamed around, leaping over counters and jabbing at more things with the sword before departing empty-handed (and bleeding). [CNews (Toronto), 4-22-10]

Tribble · Post by **Tribble** » 09 Aug 2010, 06:41

rustypup · Post by **rustypup** » 17 Aug 2010, 09:33

nypost.com wrote:Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson -- make that barista -- for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules.
<..>
Yesterday's breakfast-bagel tussle heated up when the barista told the prickly prof that he wouldn't serve her unless she specified whether she wanted a schmear of butter or cheese -- or neither.

"I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' " Rosenthal said.

"The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!' "

Post by **Stuart** » 17 Aug 2010, 11:04

Lol, this is pretty epic, even if it is from JB.

Evil teen Bieber finds revenge is a dish best served on Twitter

Saturday night, from the depths of his subterranean cave, teen idol Justin Bieber took revenge on someone (who seems to be a minor so we're not going to bother naming names) who had allegedly hacked the Twitter account of the star's childhood friend. How best to get back at someone who has wronged you in your world 2.0? By Tweeting their phone number to your four and a half million followers, of course! We've seen this nerd fleeing throngs of girls on a Segway in the past -- which made him seem rather cool in our eyes -- but now we must ask ourselves... is Justin Bieber as innocent as he appears to be? Either way, nice burn.

wizardofid · Post by **wizardofid** » 24 Aug 2010, 06:43

A recent surge of neo-Nazism in several countries -- including, improbably, Israel, and Mongolia (where some dark-skinned natives are rabidly anti-Chinese) -- has generally been denounced, but Corinna Burt credited it with rescuing her from a life of acting in pornographic videos. According to a hate-group watchdog, the Portland, Ore., woman is "the most prominent National Socialist Movement organizer in the Pacific Northwest." In an August interview with Gawker.com, the white-supremacist Burt (a mother of two and a professional embalmer who is also into bodybuilding) said she terminated her porn career (as "Cori Lou," doing mostly bondage and "torture" films) because, "If we (Caucasians) consider ourselves a master race then we have to act like a master race, not degenerates." [The Guardian (London), 8-2-10; Gawker.com, 8-3-10]

Government in Action

Though volunteers got the project started in May, Ventnor City, N.J., continued through the summer to seek financial donations to finish the new restrooms that provide relief for those visiting the town's Atlantic shore. Said Commissioner Stephen Weintrob, "How would someone like to have a toilet named after themselves, or a urinal or sink?" [Shore News Today (Seaville, N.J.), 5-13-10]

A Treasury Department inspector general reported in June that, out of 2.6 million applicants for federal mortgage relief, 14,000 "home buyers" wrongly received tax credits and that in fact, 1,300 of them were living in prison at the time of filing, including 241 serving life sentences. Sixty-seven of the 14,000 received tax credits for the same house, and 87 more potentially fraudulent tax-credit applications were filed by Internal Revenue Service employees. [ABC News-AP, 6-23-10]

Things That Shouldn't Get Backlogged:

California requires that if a sex offender's GPS tagging device signals that he's in a prohibited area, parole agents must immediately respond, but that law was easier to pass than to implement. As of June, according to a San Diego Union-Tribune investigation, the state had fallen about 31,000 responses behind. [San Diego Union-Tribune, 6-16-10]

A July Illinois law requires that all hospital "rape kits" on victims be tested for blood and DNA (in that finding a rapist, and certainly convicting him, without such evidence is often hopelessly difficult). Until now, 80 percent of the rape kits taken in the state had sat, untested. (As TV police dramas emphasize, many rape victims are reluctant to submit to the indignity of swabbing and photographing so soon after being violated and comply only because detectives assure them of the rape kit's importance.) [New York Times, 7-8-10]

It is common knowledge that American corporations avoid taxes by running U.S. profits through offshore "tax havens" like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, but a May Bloomberg Business Week investigation traced the specific steps that the pharmaceutical company Forest Labs takes to short the U.S. Treasury. Although Forest's anti-depressant Lexapro is sold only in the U.S., the company's patent is held by an Irish subsidiary (and since 2005, shared with a Bermuda subsidiary in a tax-code hocus-pocus that insiders call the "Double Irish"), which allows the vast majority of the $2 billion Forest earns a year on Lexapro to be taxed at Ireland's low rate (and at Bermuda's rate of zero). Bloomberg estimates that the U.S. Treasury loses at least $60 billion annually by corporations' "transfer pricing" -- enough to pay for the entire Department of Homeland Security for a year. [Bloomberg Business Week, 5-13-10]

Great Art!

Time magazine reported in August that among the entrants in this year's "Detroit Hair Wars" (showcasing 34 stylists working with 300 models) were The Hummer (stylist: "Little Willie"), in which a mass of extensions is shaped to resemble the vehicle, including four large tires -- with "metal" wheels and front grid added -- sitting upon the styled hair of model Sharv Bailey; and Beautiful Butterfly (stylist: Niecy Hayes), featuring extensions thinned, teased and stretched into four artistic "wings" arising from the styled hair of model Taja Hiu. Both stylings appear to be at least 2 feet long, dwarfing the models' heads, and take at least 10 hours to prepare. [Time, 8-2-10]

Featured at London's Royal College of Art in June was Hiromi Ozaki's "Menstruation Machine" -- a wearable contraption that enables men to experience the two primary symptoms of the "curse." It periodically generates abdominal pain, and its reservoir permits liquid ("blood") to be stored and released over several days' time. [Wired.com, 6-28-10]

Police Report

In July, Manuel "Lefty" Hernandez, 28, was charged in Springfield, Mass., with snatching a man's wallet (which he probably did with his left hand, which is his only hand). (If he had had a weapon, police could have charged him with a felony, but it was only a misdemeanor because Hernandez was unarmed.) [The Republican (Springfield), 7-14-10]

A frightening August headline in The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.): "S.W.A.T. Team Requested for Violent Midgets." In fact, they were steroid-using, bodybuilder midgets, headed by an apparently particularly dangerous "lead female." [The Union, 8-5-10]

Least Competent Police

In March, four NYPD officers, acting on department intelligence, went to the home of Walter and Rose Martin in Brooklyn, N.Y., looking for a suspect, and broke a window as they worked their way inside. The Martins, retired and in their 80s, were clean, and a police spokesman later admitted that officers had wrongly visited or raided the Martins' home more than 50 times since 2002 because of a stubborn computer glitch. When the software was originally installed, an operator tested it by mindlessly typing in a random address, but that happened to be the Martins' house, and thus the visits and raids began. The Martins say they have been assured several times that the problem had been corrected, but evidently their address has wormed its way too deep into the system. [New York Post, 3-19-10]

Least Competent Criminals

Recurring Themes: Eugene Palmer, 40, wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun, was arrested in Brunswick, Ga., in March as he tried to rush into a SunTrust bank during business hours but became frustrated by the locked doors -- in that it was a drive-thru-only branch. [Florida Times-Union, 3-7-10]

Danny Spencer, 31, and a partner were arrested in Bridgeport, Conn., in December as they called attention to themselves by driving through the city dragging a half-ton safe they could not crack open at the Madison Auto store they had just burglarized. [Connecticut Post, 12-22-09]

Ethan Ayers, 18, and a partner were arrested in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in March after an alleged mugging. Police found them easily, as their transportation that night was a relative's van advertising in large lettering, "Big Earl's Gold Mine," a Des Moines strip club. [WCRG-TV (Cedar Rapids), 3-19-10]

Thank Goodness for Researchers

After surveying 374 waitresses, professor Michael Lynn, who teaches marketing and tourism at Cornell University, concluded that customers left larger tips to those with certain physical characteristics such as being slender, being blond or having big breasts. Lynn told the Cornell Daily Sun in May that his study was important in helping potential waitresses gauge their "prospects in the industry." [Cornell Daily Sun, 5-7-10]

Perhaps more usefully, University of Central Lancashire (England) researchers writing in a recent Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that women achieve orgasm more often during foreplay than intercourse but that they more frequently emit orgasm-signaling "vocalizations" just before, or simultaneously with, male ejaculation. [PubMed (National Institutes of Health), 5-18-10]

Post by **Stuart** » 02 Sep 2010, 16:28

WeAreCentralPA.com wrote:Police have arrested a third person in connection with the murder of Samuel Boob.

Boob was shot and killed at his home in Potter Township, Centre County, on the morning of August 23rd, 2009.

Kermit Butts, 26, of Madisonburg, is accused of driving the suspected killer to and from the crime scene on the morning of the killing. He was charged with aggravated assault and assisting a murder suspect and placed in the Centre County Prison.

Police believe that Butts drove Ronald Heichel to the Boob home and picked him up later in the day on August 23rd, 2009. Police believe Heichel shot Sam Boob twice with a shotgun and killed him. Heichel was charged with 1st degree murder.

The victim's wife, Mirinda Boob, is accused of working with Heichel to have her husband killed. Police say they have text messages that were sent between her and Heichel, proving that the two were working together to kill Samuel. She has been charged with conspiracy to commit murder.

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