Window Cleaner Amuck

Remember when Daffy Duck got erased by a giant pencil? I'm sure that's the real explanation of what happened to this fellow.

Death Wish

Police in North Vernon, Indiana say it is obvious this man had a death wish. That may not be so uncommon for men his age and perhaps in his profession, but he accomplished it in a very disturbing fashion. I've followed the events in The North Vernon Plain Dealer & Sun, but I do find it somewhat unnerving that the story is making the rounds through many newspapers in central and southern Indiana, as I fear widespread dissemination of the story may open the door to copycats.
UPDATE: Meth, unsuprisingly, played a role. Greensburg Daily News

Unrelated bonus mugshot from the same paper of Nikkiah C. Weddle, a loving mother, that just appears slothful. I feel that her having smoked marijuana three weeks earlier will play a heavy role in her defense, since we've all smoked a joint that we took almost a full month to recover from.

Beyond Belief – Weirdness in Religion

First up, a UK judge has spoken out to say children should be allowed to take knives to school. Not all children mind you, just Sikh children. Justice Mota Singh, a Sikh himself, is talking about the kirpan, a ceremonial three-inch knife worn as a show of faith by devout Sikhs, the wearing of which by one boy was banned by a North London school earlier this year. Singh later supported the boy's family's decision to withdraw him rather than accept their compromise offer that he carry a 'disabled' equivalent claiming the school's refusal was discriminatory (BBC News).

Meanwhile another UK court last week ruled that particularly pious Hindu Davender Kumar Ghai can have the open-air cremation he fervently desires. It's been a long battle for Ghai, who found his proposal to site traditional funeral pyres on land outside Newcastle blocked by the city council in a decision later upheld by England's High Court. Now the UK Court of Appeal has said that the open-air ceremonies can go ahead, and that the requirement that all cremations occur 'within a building' could be met by any reasonable structure and did not dictate that structure have walls or a roof. Davenda Kumar Ghai, who is 76 and in poor health, can now go ahead and build his roofless crematorium, once he gets planning permission to do so, from Newcastle City Council (Times).

And in yet another landmark decision, the councillors in Reading, England have given the local Muslim community permission to carry out their own burials in the borough's cemeteries at weekends, which council gravediggers do not work. Many Islamic traditions favour burial very soon after death, and the delays caused by the weekend closures was cited as a significant cause of stress for relatives. In response, the council have agreed to dig some graves beforehand for later use in a pilot scheme expected to last one year, or until the first Saturday night drunk falls in one and sues (GetReading).

Mind you, even once you're in the ground you're not always safe. A row over the siting of a new museum on a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalen has boiled over this week with families who claim to have relatives buried there petitioning the UN. The cemetery, which dates back several hundred years, is due to be excavated to make was for a new “Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance” being built by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who dispute the families' claims. “The Museum of Tolerance project is not being built on the Mamilla Cemetery. It is being built on Jerusalem’s former municipal car park, where every day for nearly half a century, thousands of Muslims, Christians and Jews parked their cars without any protest whatsoever from the Muslim community,” said founder Rabbi Marvin Hier (Telegraph).

More >>

Shaking Hands With Death

Each year the BBC broadcasts the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, a 50 minute speech by a well-known figure on a topical subject they feel strongly about. Previous speakers include Richard Dawkins, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bill Clinton and the Prince of Wales; this year the lecture was by author Sir Terry Pratchett, and read for him by actor Tony Robinson. Read for him because Pratchett has a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease called PCA, and is facing a future where his mental faculties will desert him piece by piece until all language, memory and reason are gone. Ranged against that ending is Pratchett’s own wish, to die in a chair in his garden, with a brandy in one hand and Thomas Tallis playing on his iPod. Hence his lecture is a frank, powerful and impassioned call that he and others in similar situations be allowed to die their way, and that those who assist them to do so not be prosecuted for their cooperation.



For those not able to sit through all 6 parts, an edited transcript is available here.

The Return of Dr. X

Do you think Humphrey Bogart proudly highlighted this film on his CV?

The Bells

At first one imagines that the weepy singer of this doo-wop song is lamenting his dead woman. But when he says that the bells are "ringing out for me," you begin to wonder if the lyrics are narrated by a corpse at its own funeral. In any case, it's a weird, over-the-top performance.

Follies of the Mad Men #77

How do you advertise the death car that made Ralph Nader's reputation? Here's how!

An Apple a Day…

A 68-year-old Swedish man, Ingemar Westlund, was cleared of murder charges when elk hair and saliva were found on his wife's clothing. It all happened back in September of 2008, when his wife took their dog for a walk in the woods and never returned. When she didn't come back, Mr. Westlund went looking for her and found her body next to a lake near Loftahammer. Even though elk normally steer clear of humans, apparently "the animals can become aggressive after eating fermented fallen apples in gardens." BBC

Lions And Tigers And Bears, Oh My!

A couple visiting a safari park in Johannesburg, South Africa got a bit closer to nature than they expected after one of the Lions, a juvenile male, calmly got hold of the rear door handle in his teeth and pulled it open. After a shocked moment, the driver gunned the engine and the vehicle took off with the lion in hot pursuit. It was finally driven off by wardens at the exit gates (Daily Mail).

Meanwhile Mr Zhu, a 61 year-old retired teacher from China’s Jiangxi province, let his curiosity get the better of him during a vistit to the circus in Nankang, and put his hand though the bars of a tiger’s cage to feel its fur. The tiger promptly bit off four of his fingers. Zhu collapsed on the spot with shock, but survived to receive 3500 yuan (about $500) in compensation. The tiger was unharmed by the incident, but felt hungry again 15 minutes later (Times of India).

Less aggressive, but equally troubling, is the giant bear that has made its home near Lake Tahoe, Nevada, described by one resident as “super smart”. The residents of Incline Village are enduring almost nightly visits from a 700 lb black bear that has already caused $70000 of damage this year. The bear has evaded the traps set for it and the patrols looking for it, and has even survived a couple of rounds from a .44 magnum, one of which reportedly bounced off its skull (Las Vegas Sun).

In other (not actually) bear news, Australian marsupial pinup the Koala is looking at a bleak future according to recent reports. The loss of eucalyptus trees through deforestation, dog attacks and car accidents are stressing the animals to such an extent that they are succumbing to usually harmless viral infections. Frank Carrick of Queensland University’s Koala Study Program said the koalas were in “diabolical trouble” and that their numbers were “declining alarmingly”. (Washington Post). The Australian Koala Foundation estimates that there are fewer than 100000 koalas left in the wild, maybe as few as 43000, and the mainland population could go extinct in as little as 30 years (New Scientist).

Finally, a crocodile bit of more than it could chew this week when it strayed too close to a bloat of hippopotami and their young, who promptly formed a threatening defensive ring. Startled, the crocodile attempted to escape over the backs of the angry hippos, a fatal mistake. The croc’s scaly hide was no defence against the 3000-4000 lbs of bite pressure of an adult hippo, and it was soon crushed to death in their jaws (Telegraph).

It's a far cry from the cretaceous period where, according to new fossil finds, crocodiles were the extraordinarily successful inhabitants of a swampy region that was to become the Sahara Desert. Given nicknames like "boarcroc" and "ratcroc", the fossils show a plethora of different crocodile species living alongside each other, with each adapted to different ways of life. Some, like "dogcroc" and "duckcroc" have oddly shaped braincases that suggest they may have been considerably more intelligent than their modern descendants (Times).

Black Sheep

In line with the WU theme of "dangerous domestic animals...."

Anyone actually seen this?

All original content in posts is Copyright © 2008 by the author of the post, either Alex Boese ("Alex"), Paul Di Filippo ("Paul"), or Chuck Shepherd ("Chuck"). All rights reserved. The banner illustration at the top of this page is Copyright © 2008 by Rick Altergott.