News of the Weird (April 5, 2015)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M417, April 5, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Wait, What? An unarmed man, suspected of no crime, who three years ago was shot 16 times by police while lying in his bed, told a Seattle Times reporter in March that he bears no ill will for the cops who shot him. Said Dustin Theoharis, now 32, “Sometimes [police] make mistakes.” Theoharis was napping in a friend’s house in Puyallup, Wash., when police arrived to arrest the friend’s son, and when Theoharis reached for his ID, one officer imagined a gun, and the two officers opened fire, hitting Theoharis in the jaw, both upper arms, both lower arms, wrist, hand, shoulder, abdomen, and both legs. He spent months in a hospital and skilled nursing facility and today is largely immobile and unable to work. (He “won” legal settlements totaling $5.5 million, but one-third went to lawyers, and much of the rest has paid medical bills.) [Seattle Times, 3-21-2015]
Can’t Possibly Be True
Update: According to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, it appears that some of the 2016 Summer Olympics aquatic events will take place among floating household trash and raw sewage in Guanabara Bay (although Mayor Eduardo Paes noted to the Associated Press in March that the events are scheduled for the “cleanest part” of the Bay). To acquire the games, organizers had promised a massive cleanup, but now, with 500 days to go, Paes conceded that the goals will not be met and that, indeed, infrastructure improvements still have not halted the sewage flow into the Bay. [Associated Press, 3-23-2015]
Despite the skepticism of a few tech writers, the Internet pornography super site PornHub insists that it is developing a wristband that stores energy (enough to power a cellphone) that can be generated by the “up and down” motion of masturbation. PornHub announced in February that it will soon begin recruiting human testers for its Wankband. [PornHub press release via New York Daily News, 2-28-2015]
Compelling Explanations
According to the 17-year-old bicyclist who was broadsided by a motorist at rush hour in Sheffield, England, on March 6th, the driver at first alighted from the car to help. However, upon seeing the extent of the cyclist’s injuries, she apologized and walked away, telling the sprawled-out victim that her children were in the car and would be “scared” to see all that blood--and so she would drive them on to school. (Witnesses provided a description of the vehicle, but the hit-and-run driver was still at large.) [Huffington Post UK, 3-12-2015]
Trying to stake out a position on the Paris murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine, Pope Francis in January told an audience during his Philippines tour that freedom of speech is important but that there are limits. “If my good friend Dr. [Alberto] Gasbarri [who organized the Pope’s visit and was standing at his side] says a curse word against my mother,” Francis said, “he can expect a punch.” He then “threw” a mock “punch” toward Gasbarri. (The Vatican press office was later moved to clarify that violence in God’s name can never be justified.) [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 1-15-2015]
Cultural Diversity
Super-Protective Parenting: Standardized placement exams are typically far more determinative of student success in Asian countries than the U.S., and in March in some testing centers in India’s Bihar state, “traditional” rampant cheating became grotesque. Dozens of parents were seen climbing outside walls of one center (to pass answers and notes to the students), reminiscent of movie depictions of Santa Anna’s army scaling the walls of the Alamo. The week-long secondary school exams, testing 1.4 million students, had early-on seen 400-plus students expelled, nine bags of cheat sheets confiscated, and at least seven parents arrested. However, officials admitted that their security forces were overmatched by parents desperate to assist their children. [BBC News, 3-19-2015]
Awesome!
Chicago’s WGN-TV was forced to apologize in March for a misjudgment in booking its “Morning Show” after an unconventional “circus” performer, in a live-television publicity segment, took a power saw to a metal box affixed to her crotch. “Dancer” Shana Vaughan-Gabor, of the Cirque De La Femme, created a dazzling shower of sparks, provoking the male host to first demand that the camera cut away but then admitting, “I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet a woman like this.” In the followup segment, a group of children who had witnessed the scene used descriptions like “creepy” and “stinky,” but Vaughan-Gabor later urged the station to “save the children from ‘boring’ [entertainment].”) [Daily Mail (London), 3-18-2015]
The Litigious Society
In March, the Administrative Office of the Courts revealed a slight increase in federal litigation in 2014 but a much larger increase in prisoner lawsuits. Leading the upturn was Dale Maisano, 63, serving 15 years for aggravated assault and who last year alone filed 3,613 cases concerning his Florence, Ariz., facility. Counting previous prison stints, Maisano has filed 6,076 complaints against various officials and prison systems’ health-care providers. (In a 2014 USA Today report, Maisano volunteered that he himself “could use some mental health[-care].”) [Washington Post, 3-20-2015]
Unclear on the Concept
In March, the investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $16.25 million to settle a client’s charges that Credit Suisse gave faulty investment advice on two acquisitions by Freeport-McMoRan (one of the world’s largest producers of copper and gold). Actually, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Freeport will receive only $10 million in cash. The remaining amount it agreed to accept, to make up for Credit Suisse’s faulty advice, is $6.25 million worth of future investment advice. [Wall Street Journal, 3-17-2015]
Is This a Great Country or What?
Ion productions of Cincinnati is eager to sell “the world’s first commercially available hand-held flamethrower”--the XM42, which could shoot 25-foot flames and cost between $700-$800. Ion announced in March that it was seeking additional funding, touting the device’s uses (“killing insects,” “eliminating weeds between pavement cracks,” “melting snow,” “entertaining friends”) and assuring potential buyers that portable flamethrowers are less-regulated than handguns. (Only California and Maryland legislators, and a few city or county officials, appear to be on top of the issue of amateur flame-throwing.) [Washington Post, 3-22-2015]
The Aristocrats!
Police in Grandville, Mich., arrested David Slovinski, 51, following a pair of January incidents in which he approached employees of Meijer stores and showed them cellphone photos of his genitals. Slovinski, already a “sexually delinquent person” under the law, was on a GPS monitor during the incidents. He later told a police investigator that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but that showing his penis to people “cheers me up when I’m feeling down.” [MLive.com (Grand Rapids), 3-19-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Recurring Theme: Perpetrators on the run frequently, unintentionally reveal their whereabouts by their need to show off on social media, but Christopher Wallace has reached legendary show-off status. Being sought in connection with a January burglary, he went to his home in Fairfield, Maine--and posted on the Snapchat site that that’s where he was. Police arrived and, during their canvass, noticed a brand-new Snapchat post from Wallace--mischievously writing that police were in his home right then searching for him but that he was cunningly hiding in a cabinet. Police opened the cabinet and arrested him. [Associated Press via Morning Sentinel (Waterville, Maine), 3-24-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 2010)
In mid-April [2010], senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that then-recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Australian Jennifer McCreight began campaigning worldwide, urging women to dress provocatively on April 26th, to create "boobquake" to test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women pledged to reveal scandalous cleavage on that date. On April 26th, a Richter-scale 6.5 quake did in fact hit just south of Taiwan. (Tempering the Ayatollah’s “victory,” a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region). [Courier-Mail (Brisbane)-AFP, 4-17-10; Indianapolis Star, 4-28-10]
Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Robert Coleridge, Bruce Leiserowitz, Kathryn Wood, and Crystal Hipkins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M417, April 5, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Wait, What? An unarmed man, suspected of no crime, who three years ago was shot 16 times by police while lying in his bed, told a Seattle Times reporter in March that he bears no ill will for the cops who shot him. Said Dustin Theoharis, now 32, “Sometimes [police] make mistakes.” Theoharis was napping in a friend’s house in Puyallup, Wash., when police arrived to arrest the friend’s son, and when Theoharis reached for his ID, one officer imagined a gun, and the two officers opened fire, hitting Theoharis in the jaw, both upper arms, both lower arms, wrist, hand, shoulder, abdomen, and both legs. He spent months in a hospital and skilled nursing facility and today is largely immobile and unable to work. (He “won” legal settlements totaling $5.5 million, but one-third went to lawyers, and much of the rest has paid medical bills.) [Seattle Times, 3-21-2015]
Can’t Possibly Be True
Update: According to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, it appears that some of the 2016 Summer Olympics aquatic events will take place among floating household trash and raw sewage in Guanabara Bay (although Mayor Eduardo Paes noted to the Associated Press in March that the events are scheduled for the “cleanest part” of the Bay). To acquire the games, organizers had promised a massive cleanup, but now, with 500 days to go, Paes conceded that the goals will not be met and that, indeed, infrastructure improvements still have not halted the sewage flow into the Bay. [Associated Press, 3-23-2015]
Despite the skepticism of a few tech writers, the Internet pornography super site PornHub insists that it is developing a wristband that stores energy (enough to power a cellphone) that can be generated by the “up and down” motion of masturbation. PornHub announced in February that it will soon begin recruiting human testers for its Wankband. [PornHub press release via New York Daily News, 2-28-2015]
Compelling Explanations
According to the 17-year-old bicyclist who was broadsided by a motorist at rush hour in Sheffield, England, on March 6th, the driver at first alighted from the car to help. However, upon seeing the extent of the cyclist’s injuries, she apologized and walked away, telling the sprawled-out victim that her children were in the car and would be “scared” to see all that blood--and so she would drive them on to school. (Witnesses provided a description of the vehicle, but the hit-and-run driver was still at large.) [Huffington Post UK, 3-12-2015]
Trying to stake out a position on the Paris murders of the staff of Charlie Hebdo magazine, Pope Francis in January told an audience during his Philippines tour that freedom of speech is important but that there are limits. “If my good friend Dr. [Alberto] Gasbarri [who organized the Pope’s visit and was standing at his side] says a curse word against my mother,” Francis said, “he can expect a punch.” He then “threw” a mock “punch” toward Gasbarri. (The Vatican press office was later moved to clarify that violence in God’s name can never be justified.) [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 1-15-2015]
Cultural Diversity
Super-Protective Parenting: Standardized placement exams are typically far more determinative of student success in Asian countries than the U.S., and in March in some testing centers in India’s Bihar state, “traditional” rampant cheating became grotesque. Dozens of parents were seen climbing outside walls of one center (to pass answers and notes to the students), reminiscent of movie depictions of Santa Anna’s army scaling the walls of the Alamo. The week-long secondary school exams, testing 1.4 million students, had early-on seen 400-plus students expelled, nine bags of cheat sheets confiscated, and at least seven parents arrested. However, officials admitted that their security forces were overmatched by parents desperate to assist their children. [BBC News, 3-19-2015]
Awesome!
Chicago’s WGN-TV was forced to apologize in March for a misjudgment in booking its “Morning Show” after an unconventional “circus” performer, in a live-television publicity segment, took a power saw to a metal box affixed to her crotch. “Dancer” Shana Vaughan-Gabor, of the Cirque De La Femme, created a dazzling shower of sparks, provoking the male host to first demand that the camera cut away but then admitting, “I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet a woman like this.” In the followup segment, a group of children who had witnessed the scene used descriptions like “creepy” and “stinky,” but Vaughan-Gabor later urged the station to “save the children from ‘boring’ [entertainment].”) [Daily Mail (London), 3-18-2015]
The Litigious Society
In March, the Administrative Office of the Courts revealed a slight increase in federal litigation in 2014 but a much larger increase in prisoner lawsuits. Leading the upturn was Dale Maisano, 63, serving 15 years for aggravated assault and who last year alone filed 3,613 cases concerning his Florence, Ariz., facility. Counting previous prison stints, Maisano has filed 6,076 complaints against various officials and prison systems’ health-care providers. (In a 2014 USA Today report, Maisano volunteered that he himself “could use some mental health[-care].”) [Washington Post, 3-20-2015]
Unclear on the Concept
In March, the investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG agreed to pay $16.25 million to settle a client’s charges that Credit Suisse gave faulty investment advice on two acquisitions by Freeport-McMoRan (one of the world’s largest producers of copper and gold). Actually, according to a Wall Street Journal report, Freeport will receive only $10 million in cash. The remaining amount it agreed to accept, to make up for Credit Suisse’s faulty advice, is $6.25 million worth of future investment advice. [Wall Street Journal, 3-17-2015]
Is This a Great Country or What?
Ion productions of Cincinnati is eager to sell “the world’s first commercially available hand-held flamethrower”--the XM42, which could shoot 25-foot flames and cost between $700-$800. Ion announced in March that it was seeking additional funding, touting the device’s uses (“killing insects,” “eliminating weeds between pavement cracks,” “melting snow,” “entertaining friends”) and assuring potential buyers that portable flamethrowers are less-regulated than handguns. (Only California and Maryland legislators, and a few city or county officials, appear to be on top of the issue of amateur flame-throwing.) [Washington Post, 3-22-2015]
The Aristocrats!
Police in Grandville, Mich., arrested David Slovinski, 51, following a pair of January incidents in which he approached employees of Meijer stores and showed them cellphone photos of his genitals. Slovinski, already a “sexually delinquent person” under the law, was on a GPS monitor during the incidents. He later told a police investigator that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but that showing his penis to people “cheers me up when I’m feeling down.” [MLive.com (Grand Rapids), 3-19-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Recurring Theme: Perpetrators on the run frequently, unintentionally reveal their whereabouts by their need to show off on social media, but Christopher Wallace has reached legendary show-off status. Being sought in connection with a January burglary, he went to his home in Fairfield, Maine--and posted on the Snapchat site that that’s where he was. Police arrived and, during their canvass, noticed a brand-new Snapchat post from Wallace--mischievously writing that police were in his home right then searching for him but that he was cunningly hiding in a cabinet. Police opened the cabinet and arrested him. [Associated Press via Morning Sentinel (Waterville, Maine), 3-24-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (May 2010)
In mid-April [2010], senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi issued a warning that then-recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and elsewhere were caused by women's loose sex and immodest dress. Immediately, Australian Jennifer McCreight began campaigning worldwide, urging women to dress provocatively on April 26th, to create "boobquake" to test the cleric's theory, and at least 90,000 women pledged to reveal scandalous cleavage on that date. On April 26th, a Richter-scale 6.5 quake did in fact hit just south of Taiwan. (Tempering the Ayatollah’s “victory,” a Purdue University seismologist observed that a 6.5 quake was not uncommon for that region). [Courier-Mail (Brisbane)-AFP, 4-17-10; Indianapolis Star, 4-28-10]
Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Robert Coleridge, Bruce Leiserowitz, Kathryn Wood, and Crystal Hipkins, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Shot by cops- Wow, why haven't we heard about this one? ...Oh saw his picture, now I get it.
Olympics- Don't have it there! The athletes should refuse to compete there.
Wankband- A cell phone hell. Most teen boys could power their homes.
Hit&run;- The 17yr old's mom should get the chance to show that bitch what a lot of blood looks like.(beat the sh!t out of her)
Flamethrowers- Using a flamethrower for insects is like using a .44 with armor piercing rounds for mice, ridiculous.
Olympics- Don't have it there! The athletes should refuse to compete there.
Wankband- A cell phone hell. Most teen boys could power their homes.
Hit&run;- The 17yr old's mom should get the chance to show that bitch what a lot of blood looks like.(beat the sh!t out of her)
Flamethrowers- Using a flamethrower for insects is like using a .44 with armor piercing rounds for mice, ridiculous.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 04/05/15 at 06:16 PM
Ok... one of 3 things is going on this week:
1) Florida is getting less weird
2) Chuck is starting to feel bad about his home state & reporting less about it
3) Ragnorok is upon us!
1) Florida is getting less weird
2) Chuck is starting to feel bad about his home state & reporting less about it
3) Ragnorok is upon us!
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 04/06/15 at 12:16 PM
"Wankband- A cell phone hell. Most teen boys could power their homes."
This was my take on this on another forum:
Not safe for teens?
How well does this cope with hormonally hyperactive teenagers?
"Timmy said his phone needed recharging, plugged it into this strap thingy on his wrist and went to his room."
"Fifteen minutes later there was this horrible explosion that nearly killed him."
An Apple representative was quoted as saying:
"We don't know how, but apparently the phone's battery took an enormous power surge that exceeded all failsafes. We can't stress this enough, don't jerk around with third party chargers."
This was my take on this on another forum:
Not safe for teens?
How well does this cope with hormonally hyperactive teenagers?
"Timmy said his phone needed recharging, plugged it into this strap thingy on his wrist and went to his room."
"Fifteen minutes later there was this horrible explosion that nearly killed him."
An Apple representative was quoted as saying:
"We don't know how, but apparently the phone's battery took an enormous power surge that exceeded all failsafes. We can't stress this enough, don't jerk around with third party chargers."
Posted by Captain DaFt on 04/06/15 at 07:14 PM
A bit of overkill there. What the hell, got a reason to shoot once why not a lot. It took Miami police over a hundred rounds to kill one guy in a car a few years ago, Oh they wounded 4 innocent bystanders on the crowed street also. But that's Miami, a day with out a shooting or downtown gun battle is no day at all.
Flamethrower: Just what's needed to add to your arsenal. Mack-10, Uzi,
AR-15/16 AK-47, MP4, .50cal sniper rifle, street-sweeper semi-auto shotgun. Now add the XM-42 flamethrower, a infernal destructive device, pure tool of the devil. Just the tool for the mice and snakes under the house or the pesky pigeons roosting under the eaves of the roof. Wonder what the staff in open carry businesses will think when you bring that primed and ready baby in? A vary small leak will give you a real preview of hell.
Flamethrower: Just what's needed to add to your arsenal. Mack-10, Uzi,
AR-15/16 AK-47, MP4, .50cal sniper rifle, street-sweeper semi-auto shotgun. Now add the XM-42 flamethrower, a infernal destructive device, pure tool of the devil. Just the tool for the mice and snakes under the house or the pesky pigeons roosting under the eaves of the roof. Wonder what the staff in open carry businesses will think when you bring that primed and ready baby in? A vary small leak will give you a real preview of hell.
Posted by Gator Guy on 04/06/15 at 07:36 PM
seniors going@ Captain DaFt, :lol: :lol: :lol:
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 04/07/15 at 12:05 PM
Combine the PornHub battery charger with any of the numerous camera spyware downloads available, and teenage boy has an iWatch. Tim Cook will be delighted.
Posted by Angie unduplicated on 04/12/15 at 01:15 PM
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