The mayor of Whitesboro, New York, recently talked with a Village Voice reporter about the town seal, which features a white settler pushing down an American Indian man. The mayor denied there was any racism. He said the image “actually” portrays a typical “friendly wrestling (match) that took place back in those days.” According to Whitesboro’s website, after the “match,” the Native American supposedly uttered, “UGH. You good fellow too much.”
Police Report
— A court in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, fined a 23-year-old man in July after he admitted that one evening last year he put “four or five drops” of a sedative into his girlfriend’s tea without her knowledge. He said he did this so that she would doze off for the evening and not bother him while he played video games. She had come home after a hard day at work, expecting peace and quiet. Immediately, he said, she had started complaining about the machine-gun-fire game.
— The Washington Post’s running tally counts more than 400 people shot to death in the United States by law enforcement already this year — with five months still left to go. The 2014 figures from Norway reveal that officers there shot at people only twice all year. There are 64 times as many people living in the U.S. American police would have fired only 128 rounds last year if they showed Norway’s restraint. (Bonus fact: Norway’s cops missed their targets both times.)
A Successful Parent
Scott Birk, 31, was arrested in New Berlin, Wisc., in July, thanks to a tip the police got from his 6-year-old daughter. A Wal-mart security guard noticed someone breaking into a jewelry case and pocketing earrings. He approached Birk in time to overhear the girl tell her dad “several times” to stop. Officers running an ID check found no driver’s license on Birk. They asked how he had gotten to the store, and he said they walked. “But Daddy,” said the daughter, “we came in our car.” She cheerfully pointed it out to police. A search turned up items stuffed in Birk’s shorts. He was charged with theft.
The 90-Minute Day
Following anesthesia and a root-canal treatment, a patient of Dr. Gerald Burgess was left with a memory span of only 90 minutes. He awakens each day believing it is the day he is to report for the root canal. He has been examined by numerous specialists, including neurologists who found no ostensible damage to the usual brain areas associated with amnesia. The patient is able to manage his day only by using an electronic diary with prompts.
Can’t Possibly Be True
Apparently, “uncooperative” child dental patients (even toddlers) can be totally restrained on a “papoose board” even during tooth-pulling as long as the parent has signed a consent form. In a recent case in Carrollton, Ga., a Georgia Board of Dentistry spokesperson told Atlanta’s WSB-TV. The father of the “screaming” girl in the case said he was initially barred from the exam room. He said he was led to believe that when he signed the consent form, he was merely authorizing anesthesia.
Compelling Explanations
— In April, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to stop relocating whistleblowing employees to abandoned jail cells. The bureau had insisted that the transfers were not punishment for reporting agency misconduct. One of the “offices” had no desk, computer or phone, and required the employee to walk past prisoners’ cells to get to work.
Recurring Themes
Summer is state fair season. Here’s a sampling of foods sold at recent state fairs around the country: caviar-covered Twinkie (Minnesota), mac-and-cheese cupcake (Minnesota), deep-fried Oreo burger (Florida), deep-fried gummy bears (Ohio), deep-fried beer (Texas), chicken-fried bacon (Texas), spaghetti ice cream (Indiana), Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich (California) and the hot-beef sundae (Indiana, Iowa).
A News Of The Weird Classic: Oct. 2010
Playboy magazine has long published an audio edition, and the Library of Congress produces a text edition in Braille. A Houston Chronicle reporter learned in August, 2010, that Suzi Hanks, a volunteer reader for a Texas organization called Taping for the Blind actually describes the photographs — even the Playmates and other nudes. “I take my time describing the girls. Hey, blind guys like pretty, naked girls, too.”
Outsourcing
Among the protesters at New York City’s Gay Pride Parade on the Sunday after the Supreme Court’s historic gay-marriage decision was a group of men outfitted in Jewish prayer garments who represented the Jewish Political Action Committee. They carried signs that read, “Judaism prohibits homosexuality.” The men were in fact Mexican laborers who had been hired to protest for the day. A representative of the committee told The New York Times that the Mexican workers were necessary because the committee’s rabbis would not permit their students to be exposed to the sights of same-sex activity in the parade.
Government In Action
WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Mich., reported that the heating and cooling systems at 19 schools in the Grand Rapids public school system are controlled using a Commodore Amiga computer that was released in the 1980s. The system operates on an early Internet modem. It was installed by a computer-savvy student. According to the maintenance supervisor, the student still lives in the area and is available if problems arise.
Animal World
— A June entry in Wired.com’s “Absurd Creature of the Week” series warned of the Beaded Lacewing, which preys on termites by immobilizing them with a “vapor-phase toxicant.” The silent-but-deadly gas is reportedly powerful enough to disable six ordinary termites for up to three hours, which is plenty of time to eat them. Wired.com also learned of the related species Chrysoperla Comanche, who lift their abdomens so they can drop their solid poison directly on their victims’ heads.
— The “parasitic ways” of the cuckoo bird were remarked upon “as far back as Aristotle,” wrote a Wall Street Journal book reviewer in May. But some biologists may not have believed in the behavior because it is so cold-blooded. According to Nick Davies’ book Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature, the cuckoo bird lays its eggs in other species’ nests to trick those birds into incubating them; then they hatch and the cuckoos kick the eggs of their host out of the nest. The mother cuckoo, it is said, times her mating schedule so that her eggs mature just before the victims’ eggs would. Hence, according to Davies, she is “nature’s most notorious cheat.”
Suspicion Confirmed
In June, 2015, research scientists from Britain’s University of Exeter and Queen Mary University of London warned that owners of domestic cats seem not to appreciate what vicious killers their pets are. The scientists urged that cats be kept indoors more often lest they decimate the neighborhood’s bird and small-mammal populations. Estimates of the yearly death toll generated by housecats are “in the magnitude of millions” in the United Kingdom and “billions” in the United States.
Perspective
— The average hospital mark-up for patient care in the United States is about 3.4 times the actual costs of the care. This is according to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report in June. However, 50 of the nation’s 5,000 hospitals charge more than 10 times the cost. The North Okaloosa Medical Center near Pensacola, Fla., bills at 12.6 times costs. According to the co-author of the study, professor Gerard Anderson, the 50 hospitals “are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can’t.” (Forty-nine of the 50 are for-profit hospitals, and 20 are in Florida.)
— Pharmaceutical companies justify huge drug price mark-ups on the grounds that the research to develop the drug was hugely expensive. In February, a Canadian company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, decided to raise the price of two heart-saving drugs — Nitropress, Isuprel — by 212 percent and 525 percent, respectively, even though it had conducted no research on the drugs at all. This was done, reported The Wall Street Journal, because Valeant bought the rights to the drugs from another company, which had done all the research and felt the lower prices were fair. Said a Valeant spokesperson, “Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize the value of our products.”
People With Issues
— Former British Navy sailor Alan Reynolds, 55, of Porthleven, England, was convicted of a burglary in which he stole items from the home of a colleague to pursue his fetish for waterproof clothing. He told a judge he uses the clothing to imagine himself a prisoner of war. Photos and videos taken from his home show him in bright yellow waterproof trousers and a green waterproof poncho, removing layers of clothing from underneath and smelling them.
Least Competent Criminals
— Christopher Furay, 33, pleaded guilty in Pittsburgh to six bank robberies. In the first four, the surveillance video revealed him to have a reddish beard; but in the last two, the video revealed him to be wearing a fake red beard covering his reddish beard. Furay did not explain.
— In June, police in Roseville, Minn., quickly located J&J Construction’s missing equipment trailer, which had been parked near the Washington County Courthouse. The thief apparently left the trailer while he answered a court summons. WCCO-TV reported that the man was jailed on a separate charge.
A News of the Weird Classic: Nov. 2010
After her fourth-grade son was allegedly slapped by his teacher at a Kansas City, Mo., elementary school, Lisa Henry Bowen submitted a 40-page list of reparations she expected from President Obama and two dozen other officials. These included $1.25 million cash, $13,500 in Wal-mart gift cards, a free college education, Disney World vacations, private tennis lessons, an African safari, home remodeling, nine years of free medical and dental coverage, and a nine-year “consulting contract” with the school district at $15,000 a month.
The Continuing Crisis
In February, the Office of Residential Life at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.), intended to tout its dedication to inclusiveness and the creation of a “safe space” for minority students. The office posted a notice on its site inviting applications from the “LBTTQQFAGPBDSM” communities. The alphabet soup is thought to represent such terms as lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, “flexual,” asexual, polyamorous, bondage/discipline and sadism/ masochism.
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