An estimated 3.2 million kids aged 5-12 take mixed-martial-arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults\u2019 Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the mohawked Derek \u201cCrazy\u201d Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina \u201cThe Black Widow\u201d Awana, 7. Kids younger than 12 fight each other without regard to gender. Blows above the collarbone, and on the groin, kidneys and back are prohibited. \u201cCrazy\u201d delivered merciless forearm chest smashes before the referee intervened. And The Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via \u201carm-bar submission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who TPd The Roads?<\/strong><\/p>\n In November, the Littleton, Colo., city government was faced with the need to blot sticky tar on 120 streets whose potholes it was filling. The city bypassed expensive \u201cdetackifiers\u201d in favor of putting toilet paper over the tar.<\/p>\n The Rich Get Richer …<\/strong><\/p>\n Long-time Mississippi environmental activist Tennie White is 27 months into a 40-month sentence on the grounds that she falsified three $150 tests in her laboratory. But high-ranking executives at the Kerr-McGee chemical conglomerate made millions on the case White helped expose, which involved leakage of cancer-causing creosote into communities, including White\u2019s Columbus, Miss., neighborhood. A detailed investigation by TheIntercept.com in November noted the executives\u2019 brilliant response to the 25,000 creosote lawsuits nationwide: put all the liability into one outlying company, which eventually went bankrupt, but sell off, at a high profit, the rest of the firm.<\/p>\n Compelling Explanations<\/strong><\/p>\n Texas is among the most enthusiastic states when it comes to jailing low-income defendants who make bail. Four Houston bail magistrates are particularly harsh, according to a recent report of the Texas Organizing Project. After hearing one financially overwhelmed woman sarcastically state that $1,000 bail is \u201cnothing\u201d next to her other bills, the unsympathetic magistrate Joe Licata shrugged, \u201cIt\u2019s nothing to me, either. It\u2019s job security.\u201d<\/p>\n Alarming Headlines<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 \u201cMan Mixing LSD and Cough Syrup Saves Dog From Imaginary Fire\u201d (WNYT-TV, Albany, N.Y., 10\/15). Panicked, the man sought help from neighbors, who saw no fire.<\/p>\n \u2014 \u201cSanta Claus Speaks Out Against North Pole Ban of Marijuana Sales\u201d (KTUU-TV, Anchorage). Cannabis is legal in Alaska unless towns ban it. Mr. Claus (his real name) needs it for cancer pain.<\/p>\n Another Animal Survives With Mouth-To-Mouth\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n In November, an 18-year-old man who allegedly tried to steal koi carp fish from a holding tank (pending their return to a pond at Castle Park in Colchester, England) botched the job, resulting in the deaths of most of them, including some of the oldest and most visitor-friendly of the species. Park rangers managed to rescue several, and one ranger even gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to three carp. (A biologist told BBC News that carp are noted for surviving on low oxygen and might not have needed the mouth-to-mouth.)<\/p>\n Weird Quantities In The News<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Price tag for one round of a 155mm projectile shot from the Navy\u2019s USS Zumwalt: $800,000.<\/p>\n \u2014 Trees killed in California by the now-5-year-old drought: 102,000,000.<\/p>\n \u2014 Recent finding of water farthest from the Earth\u2019s surface: 621 miles down (one-third of the way to the Earth\u2019s core).<\/p>\n \u2014 Odds that Statistics Lecturer Nicholas Kapoor (Fairfield University, Fairfield, Conn.) said he played against in buying a $15 Powerball ticket: 1 in 913,129. He won $100,000.<\/p>\n \u2014 Speed police calculated Hector Faire, 19, reached in an Oklahoma police chase: 208 mph. They got him, anyway.<\/p>\n \u2014 Different languages spoken by children in Buffalo, N.Y., public classrooms: 85.<\/p>\n Not Really Perverts<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 When police in Port Orange, Fla., arrested Anthony Coiro, 76, he admitted that he had a stash of \u201ccrazy\u201d pornography, some featuring children. However, he adamantly insisted, \u201cI\u2019m not a pedophile. I\u2019m just a pervert.\u201d He added that he was \u201ca law-abiding pervert.\u201d He faces 52 counts.<\/p>\n \u2014 In November in Osaka, Japan, an unnamed arrestee had his sexual molestation charge against a woman on a crowded train dramatically downgraded. \u201cActually,\u201d the man indignantly told the judge, he was not a pervert, but just a pickpocket. The victim had testified that the man had brushed against her.<\/p>\n No Breathalyzer Needed\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Michelle Keys, 35, was among those joyously caught up in Iowa\u2019s upset win over highly ranked Michigan and celebrating that in Iowa City. She was slurring and incoherent. She told police she was certain she was in Ames, Iowa (120 miles away), and had just watched the \u201cIowa State \u2014 Arizona\u201d game (a matchup not played since 1968). She registered .225.<\/p>\n \u2014 A 38-year-old woman was arrested in Springwood, Australia, when police stopped her car at 3 am at an intersection. A children\u2019s swing set was wedged onto the roof of her SUV. Shortly before, she had mistakenly driven through someone\u2019s back yard and through the swing set.<\/p>\n How To Run Over Yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n In October in Orlando, William Edwards, 28, left the Dancer\u2019s Royale strip club at 2:30 am. He started his truck; drove a short distance; fell out; felt the truck run over his leg; and saw it drift down a street and into a home, where it injured the occupant. Earlier in October, a 25-year-old man in Scugog, Ont., backed his car down his driveway with the door open. He fell out and the car ran over his leg. He watched it as it hit two mailbox posts. In both cases, alcohol was involved.<\/p>\n Latest Animal Rights<\/strong><\/p>\n A judge in Argentina ordered the reluctant Mendoza Zoo to release a chimpanzee to a sanctuary in Brazil, claiming that the zoo had denied the chimpanzee the \u201cright\u201d to her \u201canimal essence.\u201d The judge defined \u201canimal essence\u201d as the ability to socialize with other chimps. The chimpanzee\u2019s last two playmates had died more than two years earlier. Mendoza Zoo was heavily criticized following the death last summer of Arturo, who was dubbed the \u201cworld\u2019s saddest polar bear.\u201d He had had no playmates for 22 years.<\/p>\n Court-Ordered Duplex<\/strong><\/p>\n Divorcing couples who can\u2019t decide who gets to keep a treasured family home leave the decision to a judge. In October, a court in Moscow ordered a couple to build a brick wall dividing their expensive house in two. The members of the couple have assumed dominion over their respective areas, even to the extent that a friend of the wife once became \u201ctrapped\u201d on the husband\u2019s side and could not figure out how to leave. So she called emergency services. The court ordered the wife must have a second stairway built, as the existing one is on the husband\u2019s side.<\/p>\n Product Testing<\/strong><\/p>\n A 23-year-old man in Tampa, Fla., was hanging out with his cousin. Nearby were a gun and a bulletproof vest. According to police, the first man donned the vest and said he wondered whether it \u201cstill worked.\u201d The cousin picked up the gun and said, \u201cLet\u2019s see.\u201d The cousin, Alexandro Garibaldi, 24, was charged with manslaughter.<\/p>\n The Limitations Of Pig Latin<\/strong><\/p>\n Among details revealed at a November murder trial in Sydney, Australia, was that members of the \u201cBrothers 4 Life\u201d gang may have used \u201cpig Latin.\u201d In a phone-tapped conversation played in court, one of the men on trial was overheard cunningly telling a henchman that a colleague had been \u201ccaught with the un-gay in the ar-kay.\u201d A helpful witness then took the stand to explain to the jury that the defendant thus knew there was \u201ca gun in the car.\u201d At press time, the trial was still in progress.<\/p>\n Not A Great Place For A Good Time<\/strong><\/p>\n An \u201cacademic\u201d paper composed entirely of gibberish was accepted for a lecture at the International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics in Atlanta last month. Prof. Christoph Bartneck of New Zealand\u2019s University of Canterbury said he used an Apple iOS to write the paper by entering the words \u201catomic\u201d and \u201cnuclear\u201d into his tablet and \u201crandomly\u201d following whatever \u201cautocomplete\u201d suggestions emerged. A sample sentence read: \u201cThe atoms of a better universe will have the right for the same as you are the way we shall have to be a great place…\u201d The conclusion of the paper read: \u201cPower is not a great place for a good time.\u201d<\/p>\n Injured By Flying Animals<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 Victims in News of the Weird stories have been hit by \u201cflying\u201d animals that should not be airborne. These included a cow that fell off a cliff and a horse that fell from a trailer onto a highway overpass. On Nov. 17, in Clarksville, Tenn., a pedestrian on Dover Road was smacked by a deer that sailed into him after it collided with a minivan. The pedestrian was taken to the hospital with broken bones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An estimated 3.2 million kids aged 5-12 take mixed-martial-arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults\u2019 Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the mohawked Derek \u201cCrazy\u201d Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina \u201cThe Black Widow\u201d Awana, 7. Kids younger than 12 fight each other [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,40],"yoast_head":"\n