Among the ensembles witnessed by a New York Times critic at the Paris Fashion Week this year were a hat with objects resembling steroid-enhanced stalks of peas; a shoe that appeared to sprout \u201ctwig-studs\u201d; \u201ca flexible cage covered in doughnuts of black satin\u201d; and a pillow clutch with its own porthole.<\/p>\n
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Recurring Themes<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2014 News of the Weird first reported successful \u201cstool implants\u201d among family members in 2007. They were intended to cure infections such as C. difficile by introducing the donor\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d microbes to overcome an imbalance of \u201cbad\u201d bacteria in a relative\u2019s intestines. In 2012, two University of California, Davis, neurosurgeons extended the cutting-edge treatment for three patients with a highly malignant brain tumor unresponsive to treatment. The doctors tried infusing bowel bacteria directly into the tumor. The patients died, nonetheless. Although the patients had given informed consent, the school pressured Drs. J. Paul Muizelaar and Rudolph Schrot to resign for having violated internal and FDA procedures.<\/p>\n
\u2014 It\u2019s well known that hospitals charge for medical supplies far in excess of what the products would cost at drugstores. An August New York Times investigation of \u201csaline drips\u201d vividly demonstrated the disconnect. While Medicare reimburses $1.07 for a 1-liter plastic bag of saltwater, White Plains (N.Y.) Hospital charged patients\u2019 insurance companies $91 per bag. Other hospitals decline to charge per-bag, listing only \u201cIV therapy\u201d of, for example, $787.<\/p>\n
\u2014 The world\u2019s cosmetic-surgery capital is South Korea, where one woman in five has had at least one procedure. The \u201cSmile Lipt,\u201d offered by Aone Plastic Surgery in the city of Yongin, is designed to produce a permanent smile, which is associated with success in South Korea. The Smile Lipt turns downward-drooping lip corners upward to create a persistent smile that resembles that of Batman\u2019s nemesis the Joker.<\/p>\n
\u2014 The Dayton Daily News reported in September that an audit of Dayton lawyer Ben Swift (the highest-paid court-appointed public defender in Ohio, at $142,900 in a recent year) revealed several invoices demanding government payment for work days of more than 20 hours \u2014 in one case, 29 hours. Swift\u2019s attorney said his client was guilty of nothing but bad record-keeping.<\/p>\n
\u2014 In some cases, a tumor is heavier than the patient it\u2019s removed from. A 63-year-old man in Bakersfield, Calif., had surgery after his set of tumors grew to 200 pounds. Bakersfield surgeon Vip Dev noted that the tumors dragged on the floor when the man walked. The surgery was complicated by the patient\u2019s shape, which couldn\u2019t be accommodated by the hospital\u2019s MRI and CT scan machines.<\/p>\n
\u2014 In 2010, Chinese agencies stepped up \u201cbirth tourism\u201d packages for rich pregnant women who wanted to book vacations in America that were timed to their due dates to exploit the U.S. Constitution\u2019s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born here. A September USA Today report indicated that Chinese mothers now prefer to land in the U.S. territory of Northern Mariana Islands (where birth also bestows citizenship). Islands officials would prefer traditional Chinese tourists instead of the \u201cbirthers.\u201d Historians agree that the 14th Amendment birth right was aimed at assuring citizenship for freed slaves.<\/p>\n
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Updates<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2014 At Hong Kong\u2019s traditional hungry ghost festival in August, people burned fake money on top of ancestors\u2019 graves. A weak economy and inflation seem to have upped the ante for the gifts that are bestowed on the dead. An August Wall Street Journal dispatch noted that the denominations of burnable \u201ccurrency\u201d sold in stores have appreciated, including one that is given a value of one trillion Hong Kong dollars. Some festival-goers ask how the ancestor could expect change from such a bill if he needed to make a small afterlife purchase.<\/p>\n
\u2014 The family of the great Native American Olympic athlete and Oklahoma native Jim Thorpe (1888-1953) was so disappointed that the governor of Oklahoma wouldn\u2019t properly honor Thorpe on his death that one faction of Thorpe\u2019s family moved the body to Pennsylvania, where municipal officials eagerly offered to name a town after him. Since then, Jim Thorpe, Pa. (current population, 4,800), has withstood legal challenges by those who seek to return the body to Oklahoma. A recent federal court decision holds that the Pennsylvania town is a Native American \u201cmuseum.\u201d A grandson said Thorpe spoke to him at a sweat lodge in Texas in 2010, telling him to leave the body in Jim Thorpe, with \u201cno more pain created in my name.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 Anthony Alleyne appeared in News of the Weird in 2003 for turning his Hinckley, England, home into a replica of the command center of Star Trek\u2019s starship Enterprise. The center included a \u201ctransporter control,\u201d \u201cwarp core drive,\u201d \u201cinfinity mirror,\u201d etc. When he later tried to sell the home, he learned that potential buyers didn\u2019t value the house as much as he thought they would. In September 2013, Alleyne was back in the news as Leicester Crown Court sentenced him to 34 months in prison for viewing child pornography. He blamed that habit on years of depression caused by his marital difficulties and the real estate market.<\/p>\n
\u2014 The Raelian sect initially made News of the Weird in 1998 when \u201cBishop\u201d Brigitte Boisselier ran a human-cloning start-up operation, planning to charge $200,000 to make identical twins. Raelians\u2019 core belief is that humanity descended from extraterrestrials who explained to Raelian founder Claude Vorilhon that life\u2019s purpose is to experience sexual pleasure. Recently, a Raelian \u201cpriestess,\u201d Nadine Gary, has turned the sect\u2019s attention to counseling victims of the genital mutilation, which remains traditional among some African societies. She has enlisted a prominent U.S. surgeon to undo the procedure pro bono. Wrote London\u2019s The Guardian, in an August dispatch from the surgeon\u2019s San Francisco clinic, \u201cJust 12 minutes of delicate scalpel work removes a lifetime of discomfort.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014 The story of Kopi Luwak coffee is by now a News of the Weird staple. It began in 1993 with the first reports that there was a market for coffee beans digested by Asian civet cats, then washed and brewed. In June, news broke that civets were being mistreated \u2014 captured from the wild and caged solely for their bean-adulterating usefulness. In August, the American Chemical Society reported that a \u201cgas chromatography and mass spectrometry\u201d test had finally been developed to assure buyers that their $227-a-pound Kopi Luwak beans had, indeed, been excreted by genuine Asian civets. Thus, Kopi Luwak drinkers, who pay up to $80 a cup in California, can sip their brews without fear of being ripped off.<\/p>\n
Among the ensembles witnessed by a New York Times critic at the Paris Fashion Week this year were a hat with objects resembling steroid-enhanced stalks of peas; a shoe that appeared to sprout \u201ctwig-studs\u201d; \u201ca flexible cage covered in doughnuts of black satin\u201d; and a pillow clutch with its own porthole. Recurring Themes \u2014 [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n