University of Kentucky professor Buck Ryan disclosed that he had been punished by his dean for singing the Beach Boys classic “California Girls” in a lesson comparing American and Chinese cultures. The university alleged that song contained “language of a sexual nature.” Even though there were no student complaints, the school’s “coordinator” on sexual harassment issues made the ruling, citing Ryan’s lyric change of “Well, East Coast girls are hip” to “Well, Shanghai girls are hip.”
Leading Economic Indicator
Fans pay dearly for Golden State Warriors whiz Stephen Curry’s used mouth guards when they are retrieved from the arena floor after a game. One used, sticky teeth-protector went for $3,190 at an August auction. And SCP Auctions of California is predicting $25,000 for another, which was expelled during the NBA championship series last June. ESPN Magazine reported “at least” 35 Twitter accounts dedicated to Curry’s mouth guard.
Too-Much-Reality TV
Russian producers are planning the ultimate survivors’ show, which will take place in the Siberian wilderness for nine months, with temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees. Thirty contestants were selected after signing liability waivers that protect the show even if someone is murdered. The show — Game 2: Winter — will be telecast live, around the clock, beginning in July. A total of 2,000 cameras will be placed in a large area full of bears and treacherous forest. The last-person-standing prize is $1.6 million. The production company’s advertising lists the “dangerous” behaviors participants can engage in. These include “fighting” and “murder.”
Round-up From The World Press
— With the number of collisions between car and camel increasing in Iran’s two southern provinces, an Iranian government ministry is in the process of issuing identification cards to each camel. Eventually, each camel will wear a license plate. Authorities told the Islamic Republic News Agency that registration numbers are needed when an accident victim needs to report the camel or to help trace smugglers.
— Martin Shkreli became the Wall Street bad boy in 2015 when his company Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the right to market the lifesaving drug Daraprim and promptly raised its price of $18 a pill to $750. In November, high schoolers in the chemistry lab at Sydney Grammar School in Australia created a molecular knockoff of Daraprim that went for $2 a tablet. Their sample of “pyrimethamine” (Daraprim’s chemical name) was judged authentic by a University of Sydney chemistry professor. Daraprim fights deadly attacks on immune systems.
— To serve restroom users in a public park in China’s Hunan Province’s picturesque Shiyan Lake area, architects gave users in toilet cubicles a view of the forest through ceiling-to-floor windows. To discourage sightseers who believe the better view is not from the cubicles but into them, the bottom portion, up to the level of the toilet, is frosted. However, that stratagem probably blurs only the pair of legs. CNN reported in October that China has at least one other such restroom, in Guilin Province; it offers a view of distant mountains.
Undignified Deaths
— A 24-year-old woman who worked at a confectionary factory in Fedortsovo, Russia, was killed in December when she fell into a vat of chocolate. Some witnesses said she was pouring flour when she fell; others say she fell while trying to retrieve the cellphone she had dropped.
— A 24-year-old man was decapitated in London when he leaned too far out the window of one train and struck an extension on a passing train. Next to the window he leaned from was a sign warning people not to stick their heads out.
Cultural Diversity
In parts of Panama, some men still fight for access to women with ferocity. The indigenous Ngabe people mostly keep to themselves in rural areas. But they’ve surfaced in towns like Volcan, near the Costa Rican border, where a reporter witnessed two men fist-fighting to bloody exhaustion on the street in a typical “mi lucha” (“my struggle”), with the loser’s wife following the winner home. As the custom loses its cachet, the wife now only complies about a third of the time, according to the website Narratively. It’s often an easy divorce for the Ngabe, when a fed-up wife taunts her husband into a losing fight or a fed-up husband picks a fight and takes a dive.
Monkey Man
In November, 2015, Tokyo’s Kenichi Ito, 29, bested his own Guinness World Record for running the 100-meter dash on all fours, setting a best time of 15.71 seconds. Ito runs like a Patas monkey. He has long admired this skill and his monkey-like face, which inspired him nine years ago to take up four-legged running. He reported trouble only once — when he went to the mountains to train and was shot at by a hunter who mistook him for a boar.
The Continuing Crisis
— Over a six-year period, drug companies and pharmacies distributed 780,000,000 pain pills in West Virginia — averaging 433 for every man, woman and child. Though rules require dispensers to investigate suspicious overprescribing, little has been done, according to a recent Drug Enforcement Administration report. Half of the pills were supplied by the nation’s “big three” drugmakers. Year-by-year the strengths of the pills prescribed increase as users’ tolerance builds. West Virginia residents disproportionately suffer from unemployment, coal mining-related disabilities and poor health.
— Because the 2015 San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack that killed 14 was a workplace injury — in that the shooters fired at fellow employees — any health insurance the victims had was superseded by coverage under the state’s workers’ compensation system — a system largely designed for typical job injuries, such as back pain and slip-and-falls. Thus, one San Bernardino victim with hundreds of pieces of shrapnel in her body and in constant pain, must nevertheless constantly argue about her level of care with a government bureaucracy.
Bubbly On The Go
The only U.S. vending machine for champagne is now operational in the 23rd-floor lobby of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Las Vegas. Moet and Chandon bubbly can be purchased with $20 tokens sold at the front desk.
Wait, What?
— The Las Vegas Sun reported in December that Nevada slot- and video-machine gamblers left almost $12 million on the floor during 2012. These winning tickets — if they remained uncashed for six months — reverted to the state. The five-year total of uncollected winnings ran to nearly $35 million.
— The pre-game injury report for college football’s Dec. 31 Citrus Bowl included two University of Louisville linebackers, Henry Famurewa and James Hearns, who were out of action against Louisiana State because of “gunshot wounds.”
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Passengers who are waiting for trains in 35 stations in France can now use kiosks that dispense short stories to pass the time. A wide range of selections in suggested reading-time lengths of one, three and five minutes, can be printed out for free.
Recent Awkward Apps
(1) The Kerastase Hair Coach (a “smart” hairbrush with Wi-Fi, monitoring brush strokes “on three axes” to manage “frizziness, dryness, split ends and breakage”);
(2) The still-in-prototype “Kissenger” (with a “meat-colored” rubbery dock for a smartphone that the user can kiss; the kissing sensation is transmitted to a lover’s receiving dock over the internet;
(3) The Ozmo smart cup (to “effortlessly” “empower you with a platform for better hydration choices” in your water and coffee consumption — with software for other drinks coming soon! Old-school users can also just drink out of it.
(4) The Prophix toothbrush (with a video camera so you catch areas your brushing might have missed);
(5) Spartan boxer briefs that stylishly protect men from Wi-Fi and cellphone radiation.
Unclear on the Concept
The European Union’s 28 nations reached what members called a historic agreement to thwart terrorists: a ban on private citizens’ possessing semi-automatic weapons. However, the EU exempted terrorists’ firearm of choice, the Kalishikov assault weapon or AK-47. Finland vetoed inclusion of the AK-47 because of concerns about being unable to train its reservists without it.
Least Competent Criminals
A post on the Marietta, Ga., police department’s Facebook page chided a shoplifter still at large who had left his ID and fingerprints and gotten caught on security cameras. The police, noting “how easy” the man had made their job, “begged” him to give them some sort of challenge: “Please at least try to hide.” Suspect Dale Tice was soon in custody.
Never Give Up
Convicted fraudster Kevin Trudeau, who pitched magical remedies for countless ailments on late-night TV for almost 20 years, dodged investigations and lawsuits until the feds caught up with him in 2014. He was turned down in what some legal experts believe might be his final judicial appeal. Still, he never gives up. From his cell at a federal prison in Alabama, he continued to solicit funding for appeals via his Facebook fans, promising donors they could double their money. He said he would soon share “two secrets” that would allow donors to “vibrate frequencies … to create the life they want.”
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