News of the Weird (January 17, 2016)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M458, January 17, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
They are simply “‘spas’ designed to attract teenagers,” according to one university official--plush, state-of-the-art “training” complexes built by universities in the richest athletic conferences to entice elite 17-year-old athletes to come play for (and, perhaps, study at?) their schools. The athletes-only mini-campuses include private housing and entertainment (theaters, laser tag, miniature golf)--but, actually, the schools are in a $772-million-plus “arms’ race” (according to a November Washington Post investigation) because soon after one school’s sumptuous, groundbreaking facility opens, some other school’s more-innovative facility renders it basically second-rate. And of course, as one university official put it, the “shiny objects” have “nothing whatsoever to do with the mission of a university.” (Donors and alumni provide much of the funding, but most schools by now also tap students’ “athletic fees.”) [Washington Post, 12-21-2015]
Redneck Chronicles
Police in Monticello, Ky., charged Rodney Brown, 25, with stealing farm animals and equipment from a home in December--but offering to return everything if the victim (a man) had sex with him. Brown allegedly took 25 roosters, a goat, and some rooster pens and other rooster-care equipment. (Because Brown also supposedly said he’d beat the man up if he called police, a “terroristic threatening” count was added to “soliciting prostitution.”) [WKYT-TV (Lexington, Ky.), 1-5-2015]
Made in Heaven: William Cornelius, 25, and his fiancee Sheri Moore, 20, were arrested at the Bay City (Mich.) Mall in January, charged with theft. Police found $80.93 worth of items, swiped from Spencer Gifts (a watch, an edible thong, a vibrator, and “BJ Blast” oral-sex candy), but Moore refused to, she said, “snitch” on Cornelius, who had minutes earlier proposed to her via the mall’s loudspeaker and given her a Walmart ring, to applause from onlooking shoppers as she accepted. Cornelius was apprehended at the food court, having apparently (according to the police report) “fallen asleep at a table while tying his shoe.” [Bay City Times, 1-7-2015]
Latest Religious Messages
Islam Rising: (1) A geography class at Riverheads High School in Augusta County, Va., alarmed some parents in December when students were assigned to copy an Arabic script to experience its “artistic complexity.” However, the phrase the teacher presented for copying was the “shahada” (“There is no god but Allah”). District officials called that just a coincidence--that the phrase was presented only for calligraphy and never translated. (2) A Washington state parent complained in December that a Wolvol toy airplane they bought for their child on Amazon.com, instead of making engine noises, recited spoken words--which a Whatcom County Islamic Society spokesman said was actually a prayer that Hajj pilgrims speak when they journey to Mecca. (Wolvol said it would investigate.) [Schilling Show via Fox News, 12-15-2015] [KING-TV (Seattle), 12-28-2015]
Wait, What? NPR’s “Morning Edition,” reporting on the violent tornadoes that hit North Texas on the night after Christmas, interviewed one woman who said she was luckier than her neighbors because of her faith. She was entertaining 10 relatives when she heard the “train”-like sound of the winds approaching and took everyone outside to confront the storm: “We . . . started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over . . . airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We spoke to the storm and said, Go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.” [NPR.org, 12-28-2015]
Weird Science
The most promising current concussion-prevention research comes from a study of . . woodpeckers (according to a December Business Week report). Scientists hypothesize that the birds’ apparent immunity from the dangers of constant head-slamming is because their neck veins naturally compress, forcing more blood into their craniums, thus limiting the dangerous “jiggle room” in which brains bang against the skull. A team led by a real-life doctor portrayed in the movie “Concussion” is working on a neck collar to slightly pinch the human jugular vein to create a similar effect. [Business Week, 12-28-2015]
Researchers from the University of York and the University of St. Andrews wrote in the journal Biology Letters in December that they observed wild male parrots using pebbles in their mouths to help grind seashells into powder and hypothesized that the purpose was to free up the shells’ calcium in “vomitable” form so that they could pass it to females before mating, to help improve their offspring’s health outcomes. [Discovery News via Washington Post, 12-15-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
National Pride: (1) Factory worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon was arrested in December in a Bangkok suburb after he wrote a “sarcastic” comment on social media about the dog that belongs to Thailand’s king. For the crime of “insulting the monarch,” Thanakorn faces 37 years in prison. (2) Michael McFeat, a Scottish man working on contract for a mining company in Kyrgyzstan, was arrested in January after he (on Facebook) jokingly called the country’s national dish “horse penis.” (“Chuchuk” is indeed a sausage made from horsemeat.) The crime he was charged with carries a five-year prison term. [New York Times, 12-14-2015] [BBC News, 1-4-2016]
Leading Economic Indicators
The government of the Netherlands, seeking to boost the economy while simultaneously improving highway skills, enacted legislation in December to allow driving instructors to be paid in sexual services provided the student is at least 18 years old. Though prostitution is legal, the Transport Minister cautioned that the “initiative” for the new arrangement must be with the instructor so that the country gains better-trained drivers as a result. [CNN, 12-21-2015]
Great Moments in Leadership
(1) In November, the president of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, in the stands but “bored” with his country’s “Super Cup” soccer final that had been tied, 1-1, for a long stretch, ordered officials on the field to stop play abruptly and proceed to a game-ending ten-kick “shootout.” (The Tevragh-Zeina team won.) (2) Jorge Servin, Paraguay’s head of indigenous affairs, was fired in November after he apparently kneed an indigenous woman in the stomach as she protested her people’s treatment by the government. (3) The head of Croatia’s human rights committee, Ivan Zvonimir Cica, posing alongside President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic to commemorate International Human Rights Day in December, had his pants inexplicably come loose and fall to his ankles. [NBC News, 12-1-2015] [BBC News, 11-28-2015] [Huffington Post, 12-9-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Most Recent Net-Cash-Loss Theft: The manager of the Nandos Riccarton restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand, is pretty sure that he knows who swiped the contents of the store’s tip jar that December evening (based on surveillance video), but the man denied the theft and walked out. The manager told police there was less than $10 in the jar at the time--but also that the man had paid his $14.90 tab for food, yet hurried off without eating it. [Stuff.co.nz (Wellington), 12-21-2015]
Recurring Themes
Approaching Maximum Capacity: The Smoking Gun website suggested in December that the Fairbanks, Alaska, counterfeiting arrest of Chelsea Sperry, 31, might have set a woman’s “record” for orifice-concealed contraband. Her vaginal inventory included 16 counterfeit bills (face value, $890), one genuine $10 bill (in a different orifice), two baggies of meth, another containing seven morphine pills, two baggies of heroin, and 40 empty baggies (apparently anticipating further sales, although it was not reported why the empty baggies--and the $10 bill--were not stored openly, for example, in her pocket). [The Smoking Gun, 12-11-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (October 2011)
London Fashion Week usually brings forth a shock or two from cutting-edge designers, but a September [2011] creation by Rachel Freire might have raised the bar: a floor-length dress made from 3,000 cow nipples (designed to resemble roses). Initial disgust for the garment centered on implied animal abuse, but Freire deflected that issue by pointing out that the nipples had been discarded by a tannery and that her use amounted to "recycling." Freire, 32, distracted by the animal-abuse angle, was spared having to explain the other issue--why anyone would want to wear a dress made with cow nipples. [Ecouterre.com. 26-2011]
Thanks This Week to Eddie Earles, Kelly Fitzpatrick, Ric Adams, Harry Thompson, and Rob Zimmer, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M458, January 17, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
They are simply “‘spas’ designed to attract teenagers,” according to one university official--plush, state-of-the-art “training” complexes built by universities in the richest athletic conferences to entice elite 17-year-old athletes to come play for (and, perhaps, study at?) their schools. The athletes-only mini-campuses include private housing and entertainment (theaters, laser tag, miniature golf)--but, actually, the schools are in a $772-million-plus “arms’ race” (according to a November Washington Post investigation) because soon after one school’s sumptuous, groundbreaking facility opens, some other school’s more-innovative facility renders it basically second-rate. And of course, as one university official put it, the “shiny objects” have “nothing whatsoever to do with the mission of a university.” (Donors and alumni provide much of the funding, but most schools by now also tap students’ “athletic fees.”) [Washington Post, 12-21-2015]
Redneck Chronicles
Police in Monticello, Ky., charged Rodney Brown, 25, with stealing farm animals and equipment from a home in December--but offering to return everything if the victim (a man) had sex with him. Brown allegedly took 25 roosters, a goat, and some rooster pens and other rooster-care equipment. (Because Brown also supposedly said he’d beat the man up if he called police, a “terroristic threatening” count was added to “soliciting prostitution.”) [WKYT-TV (Lexington, Ky.), 1-5-2015]
Made in Heaven: William Cornelius, 25, and his fiancee Sheri Moore, 20, were arrested at the Bay City (Mich.) Mall in January, charged with theft. Police found $80.93 worth of items, swiped from Spencer Gifts (a watch, an edible thong, a vibrator, and “BJ Blast” oral-sex candy), but Moore refused to, she said, “snitch” on Cornelius, who had minutes earlier proposed to her via the mall’s loudspeaker and given her a Walmart ring, to applause from onlooking shoppers as she accepted. Cornelius was apprehended at the food court, having apparently (according to the police report) “fallen asleep at a table while tying his shoe.” [Bay City Times, 1-7-2015]
Latest Religious Messages
Islam Rising: (1) A geography class at Riverheads High School in Augusta County, Va., alarmed some parents in December when students were assigned to copy an Arabic script to experience its “artistic complexity.” However, the phrase the teacher presented for copying was the “shahada” (“There is no god but Allah”). District officials called that just a coincidence--that the phrase was presented only for calligraphy and never translated. (2) A Washington state parent complained in December that a Wolvol toy airplane they bought for their child on Amazon.com, instead of making engine noises, recited spoken words--which a Whatcom County Islamic Society spokesman said was actually a prayer that Hajj pilgrims speak when they journey to Mecca. (Wolvol said it would investigate.) [Schilling Show via Fox News, 12-15-2015] [KING-TV (Seattle), 12-28-2015]
Wait, What? NPR’s “Morning Edition,” reporting on the violent tornadoes that hit North Texas on the night after Christmas, interviewed one woman who said she was luckier than her neighbors because of her faith. She was entertaining 10 relatives when she heard the “train”-like sound of the winds approaching and took everyone outside to confront the storm: “We . . . started commanding the winds because God had given us authority over . . . airways. And we just began to command this storm not to hit our area. We spoke to the storm and said, Go to unpopulated places. It did exactly what we said to do because God gave us the authority to do that.” [NPR.org, 12-28-2015]
Weird Science
The most promising current concussion-prevention research comes from a study of . . woodpeckers (according to a December Business Week report). Scientists hypothesize that the birds’ apparent immunity from the dangers of constant head-slamming is because their neck veins naturally compress, forcing more blood into their craniums, thus limiting the dangerous “jiggle room” in which brains bang against the skull. A team led by a real-life doctor portrayed in the movie “Concussion” is working on a neck collar to slightly pinch the human jugular vein to create a similar effect. [Business Week, 12-28-2015]
Researchers from the University of York and the University of St. Andrews wrote in the journal Biology Letters in December that they observed wild male parrots using pebbles in their mouths to help grind seashells into powder and hypothesized that the purpose was to free up the shells’ calcium in “vomitable” form so that they could pass it to females before mating, to help improve their offspring’s health outcomes. [Discovery News via Washington Post, 12-15-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
National Pride: (1) Factory worker Thanakorn Siripaiboon was arrested in December in a Bangkok suburb after he wrote a “sarcastic” comment on social media about the dog that belongs to Thailand’s king. For the crime of “insulting the monarch,” Thanakorn faces 37 years in prison. (2) Michael McFeat, a Scottish man working on contract for a mining company in Kyrgyzstan, was arrested in January after he (on Facebook) jokingly called the country’s national dish “horse penis.” (“Chuchuk” is indeed a sausage made from horsemeat.) The crime he was charged with carries a five-year prison term. [New York Times, 12-14-2015] [BBC News, 1-4-2016]
Leading Economic Indicators
The government of the Netherlands, seeking to boost the economy while simultaneously improving highway skills, enacted legislation in December to allow driving instructors to be paid in sexual services provided the student is at least 18 years old. Though prostitution is legal, the Transport Minister cautioned that the “initiative” for the new arrangement must be with the instructor so that the country gains better-trained drivers as a result. [CNN, 12-21-2015]
Great Moments in Leadership
(1) In November, the president of Mauritania, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, in the stands but “bored” with his country’s “Super Cup” soccer final that had been tied, 1-1, for a long stretch, ordered officials on the field to stop play abruptly and proceed to a game-ending ten-kick “shootout.” (The Tevragh-Zeina team won.) (2) Jorge Servin, Paraguay’s head of indigenous affairs, was fired in November after he apparently kneed an indigenous woman in the stomach as she protested her people’s treatment by the government. (3) The head of Croatia’s human rights committee, Ivan Zvonimir Cica, posing alongside President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic to commemorate International Human Rights Day in December, had his pants inexplicably come loose and fall to his ankles. [NBC News, 12-1-2015] [BBC News, 11-28-2015] [Huffington Post, 12-9-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Most Recent Net-Cash-Loss Theft: The manager of the Nandos Riccarton restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand, is pretty sure that he knows who swiped the contents of the store’s tip jar that December evening (based on surveillance video), but the man denied the theft and walked out. The manager told police there was less than $10 in the jar at the time--but also that the man had paid his $14.90 tab for food, yet hurried off without eating it. [Stuff.co.nz (Wellington), 12-21-2015]
Recurring Themes
Approaching Maximum Capacity: The Smoking Gun website suggested in December that the Fairbanks, Alaska, counterfeiting arrest of Chelsea Sperry, 31, might have set a woman’s “record” for orifice-concealed contraband. Her vaginal inventory included 16 counterfeit bills (face value, $890), one genuine $10 bill (in a different orifice), two baggies of meth, another containing seven morphine pills, two baggies of heroin, and 40 empty baggies (apparently anticipating further sales, although it was not reported why the empty baggies--and the $10 bill--were not stored openly, for example, in her pocket). [The Smoking Gun, 12-11-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (October 2011)
London Fashion Week usually brings forth a shock or two from cutting-edge designers, but a September [2011] creation by Rachel Freire might have raised the bar: a floor-length dress made from 3,000 cow nipples (designed to resemble roses). Initial disgust for the garment centered on implied animal abuse, but Freire deflected that issue by pointing out that the nipples had been discarded by a tannery and that her use amounted to "recycling." Freire, 32, distracted by the animal-abuse angle, was spared having to explain the other issue--why anyone would want to wear a dress made with cow nipples. [Ecouterre.com. 26-2011]
Thanks This Week to Eddie Earles, Kelly Fitzpatrick, Ric Adams, Harry Thompson, and Rob Zimmer, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
sports- The amount of money spent on sports is ridiculous. Meanwhile how many young people are put in debt forever from school loans.
Arabic phrase- Try using Jesus loves me for calligraphy class once.
tornado control- Yeah its religious, God protects the stupid.
concussions- I heard wood, pecker and collar that restricts blood flow. Are you sure its about the head on guys shoulders?
jail time in other countries- Stay home where you understand the rules!
end the game- That's a super power!!!!!!!
vagina as a container- Buy a purse for God's sakes!
nipple dress- Full length dress, temperature drops, mini skirt!
Arabic phrase- Try using Jesus loves me for calligraphy class once.
tornado control- Yeah its religious, God protects the stupid.
concussions- I heard wood, pecker and collar that restricts blood flow. Are you sure its about the head on guys shoulders?
jail time in other countries- Stay home where you understand the rules!
end the game- That's a super power!!!!!!!
vagina as a container- Buy a purse for God's sakes!
nipple dress- Full length dress, temperature drops, mini skirt!
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 01/17/16 at 10:48 PM
Shoplifting: Edible undies at the mall? Adds a whole new meaning to eating out. Plus, if he could afford to go to the food court, why shoplift?
Concussion: restricting blood flow to/from the brain sounds like a way to conceal the damage caused by concussion.
Going Dutch: Earning your license in the back seat, huh?
Parrot diet: Makes sense to me. Parrots are remarkably intelligent. Indeed, being called a bird-brain is actually glowing praise. OTOH, eating like a bird is a deadly insult, as many birds eat more than their own weight in food every day.
Concealed contraband: Thank goodness Hermione Granger used a bewitched purse!
Concussion: restricting blood flow to/from the brain sounds like a way to conceal the damage caused by concussion.
Going Dutch: Earning your license in the back seat, huh?
Parrot diet: Makes sense to me. Parrots are remarkably intelligent. Indeed, being called a bird-brain is actually glowing praise. OTOH, eating like a bird is a deadly insult, as many birds eat more than their own weight in food every day.
Concealed contraband: Thank goodness Hermione Granger used a bewitched purse!
Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 01/18/16 at 10:25 AM
Some people claim that the college football teams have become the equivalent of minor league farms for the NFL, that those students' educations come in a distant second. I can't argue with that, but I'd point out that the American university system as a whole has failed to educate students for several decades now. Those not playing football are having their heads stuffed full of leftist propaganda. I find it hard to condemn those schools on the basis of their extravagant athletic programs when their academic programs are nothing more than puppy mills for "progressive" voters. Look thee to thine own house first, academicians; your ivory towers are more than a little tarnished.
Posted by A Nonny Mouse on 01/18/16 at 10:34 AM
Perhaps it is time for universities to go the way of churches as far as government funding. The kids are one thing but if staff, any staff, pushes a specific political agenda the school can not receive Federal or State monies. This, of course, includes both grants and loans. That would stop a lot of the bs because as far as university upper management goes, leftist politics is their opinion but money is their religion.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 01/18/16 at 01:41 PM
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