News of the Weird (December 6, 2015)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M452, December 6, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Wait, What? After certain takeoffs and landings were delayed on November 7th at Paris’s Orly airport (several days before the terrorist attacks), a back trace on the problem forced the airport to disclose that its crucial “DECOR” computer system still runs on Windows 3.1 software (introduced in 1992). DECOR’s function is to estimate the spacing between aircraft on fog-bound, visually-impossible runways, and apparently it must shut down whenever the airport scrambles to find an available 3.1-qualified technician. [Vice.com, 11-13-2015]
Cultural Diversity
Weird Japan (continued): Sony manufactured a robot dog (“Aibo”) from 1996-2006 for a legion of pet-fanciers, but now that supplies of spare parts and specialized repairers are dwindling, many of the beloved family “canines” are “dying” off. Not to worry, though, for many “surviving” owners are conducting elaborate, expensive--and even religious--burials with widely-attended funerals for their Aibos. (A March 2015 Newsweek report offered a dazzling photographic array of Aibo funerals.) Aibo support groups proliferate online because, said one observer, “[W]e think that somehow, [Aibos] really have souls.” [Newsweek, 3-15-2015]
Leading Economic Indicators
Art Basel, the annual week-long festival for “One-Percenters” in Miami Beach, is scheduled for December 1st-6th, and among the many excesses is the sale of on-demand caviar, available by text message, to be delivered in person within the hour, at $275 for a 125-gram tin. Miami New Times calls Art Basel “ComicCon for the world’s moneyed elite,” and among the extravaganzas is an “exotic dance club sheltered inside a greenhouse.” Four thousand artists, from 32 countries, are participating, at 260 galleries. [Miami New Times, 11-17-2015]
New World Order: “Crowdsourcing” start-ups (such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter) raise money online for projects such as underappreciated entrepreneurial ventures or families needing help with medical expenses. Day-trading dabbler Joe Campbell went online in November to beg for assistance after being crushed by a bet of the type that many say wrecked the U.S. economy in 2007-08. He held a pessimistic “short” position in his account on KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (KBIO)--hoping to exploit traders overly optimistic about the company. However, overnight NASDAQ trading awakened him with news that KBIO’s price had skyrocketed in frenzied trading and that Campbell now owed his broker $131,000--and Campbell’s new GoFundMe post stoically asks strangers to please help him pay that off. [Marketwatch, 11-20-2015]
Government in Action
Charles Smith, 62, says he’ll be driving municipal buses for Broward County, Fla., until he retires in 2020, even though his record includes 14 accidents in a recent five-year period (not enough for discipline, in that, according to contract rules, not more than four labeled “preventable” were in any two consecutive years). The bus drivers’ union president told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he “can’t figure out why” some drivers just get into more accidents than others. (Elsewhere in transit news, notorious serial New York joydriver Darius McCollum, 50, commandeered yet another bus and was arrested on November 11th. He faces jail time, just as he has already served for more than two dozen bus- and train-“borrowing” incidents.) (Based on news reports of McCollum over the years, he nonetheless might be a better bus driver than Charles Smith.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11-20-2015] [New York Times, 11-11-2015]
The federal government confiscated more property from citizens (through “civil asset forfeiture”) in 2014 than burglars did, according to FBI figures publicized by the independent Institute for Justice (and that did not count state and local government seizures, which are not uniformly reported). None of the governments is bound by law to await convictions before exercising seizure rights. (Some of the seized assets must eventually be returned to private-party victims, but news reports abound of suddenly-enriched police departments and other agencies being “gifted” with brand-new cars and other assets acquired from suspects never convicted of crimes.) [Washington Post, 11-23-2015]
More Things to Worry About
(1) Carrie Pernula, 38, was arrested in Champlin, Minn., in October after a perhaps too-aggressive strategy for quieting raucous neighbor kids. According to the police report, Pernula, at wit’s end, apparently, wrote the kids’ parents by mail reading, “[Your] children look delicious. May I have a taste?” (2) Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar, 24, was arrested in Midland, Tex., in November, accused of threatening a woman at knifepoint because (according to the police report) she would not “smell his arm pit.” [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis, 10-21-2015] [Midland Reporter-Telegram, 11-18-2015]
People With Issues
Author Richard Brittain, 28 (and a former champion at the popular British Scrabble-like “Countdown” TV show) pleaded guilty in Scotland’s Glasgow Sheriff Court in November for his 2014 response to an unfavorable literary review by an 18-year-old supermarket worker, posting on an Internet site. Brittain had acknowledged some criticisms of his book “The World Rose” in a blog but said other critics had compared him to Dickens, Shakespeare, and Rowling. However, he confessed, when he read the clerk’s review, he searched for her online, found where she worked, traveled 500 miles to the store, and knocked her out with a wine bottle to the back of the head. (She was treated and released at a hospital.) [Daily Mail, 11-10-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Recurring Theme: The job market in Wayne County, Mich., is apparently tough to crack, which led John Rose, 25, to the county sheriff’s office looking for a job. He finished the paper application in November and was awaiting his interview when deputies called him back. As he walked through the door, he was arrested, since a routine check had turned up numerous outstanding charges in Kentucky including multiple counts of rape, sexual abuse, and sodomy. [Detroit News, 11-13-2015]
Not Ready for Prime Time: A crew of masked home invaders struck an Orlando family in October and were preparing a haul of about $100,000 in cash and property when one of the perps got testy with the family’s barking dog. “Back up, Princess,” the masked man said, inadvertently revealing that he was on a first-name basis with the dog and therefore a family acquaintance. The victims, piecing together other clues, identified Christopher Jara, who was soon arrested. [WESH-TV (Orlando), 10-29-2015]
Recurring Themes
Inexplicable: He was a “well-traveled professional with close to seven figures in the bank,” according to a November New York Times profile, who had recently, gradually given $718,000 to two Manhattan psychics who had vowed to help reunite him with a former love (even though she is dead and, said one, reachable only if he built an 80-mile bridge of gold past her “reincarnation portal”). Though the psychics have been identified, a private investigator said the very personality problems that made the man a victim will also make him a “terrible witness” in court. [New York Times, 11-15-2015]
Readers’ Choice: Massachusetts became perhaps America’s most religiously advanced state in November when its Registry of Motor Vehicles implicitly granted official recognition to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (whose adherents believe, generally, that hard evidence of God’s existence is no stronger than that of FSM’s existence). Ms. Lindsay Miller of Lowell, Mass., proudly displayed her driver’s license, whose photo is of Ms. Miller wearing a metal colander on her head--since a “religious” head covering is the only type permitted in official ID photos. (FSM’ers are known as “Pastafarians.”) (As News of the Weird has reported, the Czech Republic issued at least one official “colander” ID in 2013, and in January 2014, Pastafarian Christopher Schaeffer took his seat on the Town Council of Pomfret, N.Y., decked out in his finest colander-ware.) [Associated Press via KRON-TV (San Francisco), 11-13-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (April 2011)
At George Washington University's men's basketball game on March 5th [2011], accountancy department professor Robert Kasmir was honored at halftime for being one of the elite financial donors to the university, but failed to make it to the end of the game. He was ejected from the Smith Center arena in the second half for harassing a referee. [GW Hatchet (George Washington University), 3-5-2011]
Thanks This Week to Lisa Robinson and Joel Sullivan, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M452, December 6, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Wait, What? After certain takeoffs and landings were delayed on November 7th at Paris’s Orly airport (several days before the terrorist attacks), a back trace on the problem forced the airport to disclose that its crucial “DECOR” computer system still runs on Windows 3.1 software (introduced in 1992). DECOR’s function is to estimate the spacing between aircraft on fog-bound, visually-impossible runways, and apparently it must shut down whenever the airport scrambles to find an available 3.1-qualified technician. [Vice.com, 11-13-2015]
Cultural Diversity
Weird Japan (continued): Sony manufactured a robot dog (“Aibo”) from 1996-2006 for a legion of pet-fanciers, but now that supplies of spare parts and specialized repairers are dwindling, many of the beloved family “canines” are “dying” off. Not to worry, though, for many “surviving” owners are conducting elaborate, expensive--and even religious--burials with widely-attended funerals for their Aibos. (A March 2015 Newsweek report offered a dazzling photographic array of Aibo funerals.) Aibo support groups proliferate online because, said one observer, “[W]e think that somehow, [Aibos] really have souls.” [Newsweek, 3-15-2015]
Leading Economic Indicators
Art Basel, the annual week-long festival for “One-Percenters” in Miami Beach, is scheduled for December 1st-6th, and among the many excesses is the sale of on-demand caviar, available by text message, to be delivered in person within the hour, at $275 for a 125-gram tin. Miami New Times calls Art Basel “ComicCon for the world’s moneyed elite,” and among the extravaganzas is an “exotic dance club sheltered inside a greenhouse.” Four thousand artists, from 32 countries, are participating, at 260 galleries. [Miami New Times, 11-17-2015]
New World Order: “Crowdsourcing” start-ups (such as GoFundMe and Kickstarter) raise money online for projects such as underappreciated entrepreneurial ventures or families needing help with medical expenses. Day-trading dabbler Joe Campbell went online in November to beg for assistance after being crushed by a bet of the type that many say wrecked the U.S. economy in 2007-08. He held a pessimistic “short” position in his account on KaloBios Pharmaceuticals (KBIO)--hoping to exploit traders overly optimistic about the company. However, overnight NASDAQ trading awakened him with news that KBIO’s price had skyrocketed in frenzied trading and that Campbell now owed his broker $131,000--and Campbell’s new GoFundMe post stoically asks strangers to please help him pay that off. [Marketwatch, 11-20-2015]
Government in Action
Charles Smith, 62, says he’ll be driving municipal buses for Broward County, Fla., until he retires in 2020, even though his record includes 14 accidents in a recent five-year period (not enough for discipline, in that, according to contract rules, not more than four labeled “preventable” were in any two consecutive years). The bus drivers’ union president told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he “can’t figure out why” some drivers just get into more accidents than others. (Elsewhere in transit news, notorious serial New York joydriver Darius McCollum, 50, commandeered yet another bus and was arrested on November 11th. He faces jail time, just as he has already served for more than two dozen bus- and train-“borrowing” incidents.) (Based on news reports of McCollum over the years, he nonetheless might be a better bus driver than Charles Smith.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11-20-2015] [New York Times, 11-11-2015]
The federal government confiscated more property from citizens (through “civil asset forfeiture”) in 2014 than burglars did, according to FBI figures publicized by the independent Institute for Justice (and that did not count state and local government seizures, which are not uniformly reported). None of the governments is bound by law to await convictions before exercising seizure rights. (Some of the seized assets must eventually be returned to private-party victims, but news reports abound of suddenly-enriched police departments and other agencies being “gifted” with brand-new cars and other assets acquired from suspects never convicted of crimes.) [Washington Post, 11-23-2015]
More Things to Worry About
(1) Carrie Pernula, 38, was arrested in Champlin, Minn., in October after a perhaps too-aggressive strategy for quieting raucous neighbor kids. According to the police report, Pernula, at wit’s end, apparently, wrote the kids’ parents by mail reading, “[Your] children look delicious. May I have a taste?” (2) Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar, 24, was arrested in Midland, Tex., in November, accused of threatening a woman at knifepoint because (according to the police report) she would not “smell his arm pit.” [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis, 10-21-2015] [Midland Reporter-Telegram, 11-18-2015]
People With Issues
Author Richard Brittain, 28 (and a former champion at the popular British Scrabble-like “Countdown” TV show) pleaded guilty in Scotland’s Glasgow Sheriff Court in November for his 2014 response to an unfavorable literary review by an 18-year-old supermarket worker, posting on an Internet site. Brittain had acknowledged some criticisms of his book “The World Rose” in a blog but said other critics had compared him to Dickens, Shakespeare, and Rowling. However, he confessed, when he read the clerk’s review, he searched for her online, found where she worked, traveled 500 miles to the store, and knocked her out with a wine bottle to the back of the head. (She was treated and released at a hospital.) [Daily Mail, 11-10-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Recurring Theme: The job market in Wayne County, Mich., is apparently tough to crack, which led John Rose, 25, to the county sheriff’s office looking for a job. He finished the paper application in November and was awaiting his interview when deputies called him back. As he walked through the door, he was arrested, since a routine check had turned up numerous outstanding charges in Kentucky including multiple counts of rape, sexual abuse, and sodomy. [Detroit News, 11-13-2015]
Not Ready for Prime Time: A crew of masked home invaders struck an Orlando family in October and were preparing a haul of about $100,000 in cash and property when one of the perps got testy with the family’s barking dog. “Back up, Princess,” the masked man said, inadvertently revealing that he was on a first-name basis with the dog and therefore a family acquaintance. The victims, piecing together other clues, identified Christopher Jara, who was soon arrested. [WESH-TV (Orlando), 10-29-2015]
Recurring Themes
Inexplicable: He was a “well-traveled professional with close to seven figures in the bank,” according to a November New York Times profile, who had recently, gradually given $718,000 to two Manhattan psychics who had vowed to help reunite him with a former love (even though she is dead and, said one, reachable only if he built an 80-mile bridge of gold past her “reincarnation portal”). Though the psychics have been identified, a private investigator said the very personality problems that made the man a victim will also make him a “terrible witness” in court. [New York Times, 11-15-2015]
Readers’ Choice: Massachusetts became perhaps America’s most religiously advanced state in November when its Registry of Motor Vehicles implicitly granted official recognition to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (whose adherents believe, generally, that hard evidence of God’s existence is no stronger than that of FSM’s existence). Ms. Lindsay Miller of Lowell, Mass., proudly displayed her driver’s license, whose photo is of Ms. Miller wearing a metal colander on her head--since a “religious” head covering is the only type permitted in official ID photos. (FSM’ers are known as “Pastafarians.”) (As News of the Weird has reported, the Czech Republic issued at least one official “colander” ID in 2013, and in January 2014, Pastafarian Christopher Schaeffer took his seat on the Town Council of Pomfret, N.Y., decked out in his finest colander-ware.) [Associated Press via KRON-TV (San Francisco), 11-13-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (April 2011)
At George Washington University's men's basketball game on March 5th [2011], accountancy department professor Robert Kasmir was honored at halftime for being one of the elite financial donors to the university, but failed to make it to the end of the game. He was ejected from the Smith Center arena in the second half for harassing a referee. [GW Hatchet (George Washington University), 3-5-2011]
Thanks This Week to Lisa Robinson and Joel Sullivan, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Paris airport: The French are not the only country with outdated air traffic control technology. Some of the stuff used in this country is of a similar computer vintage and the FAA has had to hire back retiree's as expensive consultant's to fix the equipment. This does not calm my nerves when flying. My former government employer discovered it has a large amount of critical data stored on some old Wang computers and they had no means of accessing it.
Art Basel: A artist visitor to Art Basel this year decided to create her own spontaneous "performance art" by stalking and attacking another unsuspecting art connoisseur with a exacto art knife yesterday in Miami Beach at the art show. Some visitors saw the blood, screaming victim, paramedics, police and crime scene tape as more performance art also. The attackers quote was something to the effect of, "I had to cut her and see her bleed" as she was led away in cuffs and charged with attempted murder. The victim, a total stranger to the attacker will be ok, but of course very shocked at becoming a active, surprise participant in performance art as a unwilling victim player. Check the Sunday edition of the Miami Herald for the full and probably more accurate version. I went one year and found the whole event even too strange and bizarre for me. In related Miami Beach news near Art Basel's location, a bare chested bank robber ended up confronting police with a straight razor stolen from a open barber shop. It was the robbers final performance in that Police took his intentions seriously and had better weapons. An alert citizen got a video of the event, now making the rounds on the internet.
The accident prone bus driver and friendly thieves are just more strange Florida news. Some how Florida continues to make multiple posting in this site. Is something wrong here?
Art Basel: A artist visitor to Art Basel this year decided to create her own spontaneous "performance art" by stalking and attacking another unsuspecting art connoisseur with a exacto art knife yesterday in Miami Beach at the art show. Some visitors saw the blood, screaming victim, paramedics, police and crime scene tape as more performance art also. The attackers quote was something to the effect of, "I had to cut her and see her bleed" as she was led away in cuffs and charged with attempted murder. The victim, a total stranger to the attacker will be ok, but of course very shocked at becoming a active, surprise participant in performance art as a unwilling victim player. Check the Sunday edition of the Miami Herald for the full and probably more accurate version. I went one year and found the whole event even too strange and bizarre for me. In related Miami Beach news near Art Basel's location, a bare chested bank robber ended up confronting police with a straight razor stolen from a open barber shop. It was the robbers final performance in that Police took his intentions seriously and had better weapons. An alert citizen got a video of the event, now making the rounds on the internet.
The accident prone bus driver and friendly thieves are just more strange Florida news. Some how Florida continues to make multiple posting in this site. Is something wrong here?
Posted by Gator Guy on 12/06/15 at 07:44 PM
"Government in Action"
As a truck driver, I have to chime in here. According to a number of studies conducted by the FMCSA, in accidents involving eighteen-wheelers and four-wheelers, (cars, pickups, vans, etc.), where the fault could be determined, the four-wheelers were at fault at least 75% of the time. The authors of the study concluded that the percentage is probably much higher than that.
I suspect the same is true for bus drivers, perhaps more so, as they do all, or most, of their driving on city streets. When you consider that commercial drivers are held to a higher level of liability than non-commercial drivers, (i.e., fault generally goes to the commercial driver), the fact that they can't pin "preventable" on most of his accidents really says something. Chances are, even the ones labelled "preventable" weren't his fault. And, anyone who's lived in a city has seen how cars behave around slow-moving vehicles like busses. He probably experiences more accidents because of the specific route he's on, and the time of day he does it.
I'm glad this man has a union that can protect him and his career from idiot drivers, and an ignorant press. Most of the time you just get fired, no matter where the fault lay, because companies don't want to pay higher insurance premiums.
As a truck driver, I have to chime in here. According to a number of studies conducted by the FMCSA, in accidents involving eighteen-wheelers and four-wheelers, (cars, pickups, vans, etc.), where the fault could be determined, the four-wheelers were at fault at least 75% of the time. The authors of the study concluded that the percentage is probably much higher than that.
I suspect the same is true for bus drivers, perhaps more so, as they do all, or most, of their driving on city streets. When you consider that commercial drivers are held to a higher level of liability than non-commercial drivers, (i.e., fault generally goes to the commercial driver), the fact that they can't pin "preventable" on most of his accidents really says something. Chances are, even the ones labelled "preventable" weren't his fault. And, anyone who's lived in a city has seen how cars behave around slow-moving vehicles like busses. He probably experiences more accidents because of the specific route he's on, and the time of day he does it.
I'm glad this man has a union that can protect him and his career from idiot drivers, and an ignorant press. Most of the time you just get fired, no matter where the fault lay, because companies don't want to pay higher insurance premiums.
Posted by sudon't on 12/08/15 at 02:52 PM
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