News of the Weird, March 1, 2015
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M412, March 1, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
The Utah Court of Appeals ruled in February that Barbara Bagley has a legal right to sue herself for her own negligent driving that caused the death of her husband. Typically, in U.S. courts, a party cannot profit from its own negligence, but Bagley is the official “representative” administering her husband’s estate and has a duty to claim debts owed to the husband. Those debts would include “wrongful death” damages from a careless driver (actually, the careless driver’s insurance company), even if the careless driver was herself. Of course, if her lawsuit is successful, the monetary award would become part of the husband’s estate, a portion of which will likely go to her. [Salt Lake Tribune, 2-18-2015]
Historical Weird
Can’t Possibly Be True: For a brief period in 1951 and 1952, an educational kit, the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab, was for sale in the U.S. even though it came with testable samples of four types of uranium ore and three different radiation sources (alpha, beta, gamma). A surviving copy of the kit has been on display recently at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but the radioactive materials had to be removed before the kit could be shipped to Belfast. (The kit had failed to sell well; kids apparently preferred the company’s erector sets.) [BBC News, 2-16-2015]
In February, the Kansas Humanities Council, providing background to a current, traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit, posted a description of a 1925 baseball game in Wichita in which the professional, all-black Wichita Monrovians took on members of the local Ku Klux Klan. (Historians guessed that the KKK risked the embarrassment of defeat only because it needed the exposure to overcome declining enrollments.) The Monrovians (champions of the “Colored Western League” the year before) won, 10-8, and the Klan shut down in Kansas two years later. [Kansas Humanities Council , 2-17-2015]
Intelligent Design
A 37-year-old Lancashire, England, businessman (identified in later news reports as Duane Walters), fearing surgery for suspected bladder cancer, was discovered to be cancer-free, but on the other hand, he was found to have a uterus, ovaries, and cervix--even though he has fully functioning exterior male genitalia. He was referred to Manchester University Hospital for a hysterectomy (to prevent the possibility of pregnancy)--and was counseled that he might eventually become menopausal. His condition, “persistent Mullerian duct syndrome,” is rare enough when diagnosed at birth but, according to experts cited by the Daily Telegraph, virtually unheard-of at age 37. Walters said he will continue living as a man. [Daily Telegraph, 2-7-2015]
War Is Hell
Least Competent Terrorists: (1) A recent YouTube-posted compilation of footage gleaned from, in some cases, unedited ISIS promotion videos, claimed to show jihadists accidentally killing themselves. Several fighters in a group photo appear to be blown up when one of them fumblingly detonates a captured bomb, and one man was killed when he apparently tried to re-load a mortar launcher too quickly. (2) London’s Daily Telegraph reported in January that the “Darkshadow” jihadists from Tunisia and Ivory Coast, who had proclaimed their website-hacking would disrupt international travel, wound up taking down a site consisting merely of bus timetables in Bristol, England. Darkshadow’s English translator also misspelled Muslim (“Muslum”). [Daily Mail (London), 2-6-2015] [Daily Telegraph, 1-2-2015]
Perspective: ISIS’s very public recent executions of a Jordanian pilot and two Japanese citizens were met with starkly different reactions. In Jordan, King Abdullah II led his nation in a call for bloody revenge. In Japan (according to a February Associated Press dispatch from Tokyo) feelings were mixed because of “meiwaku”--Japan’s cultural feeling that the dead victims (and their families) were “causing trouble” by placing themselves in harm’s way. Said one man cited by the AP, “In the old days, their parents would have had to commit hara-kiri to apologize.” In fact, both victims’ families did repeatedly apologize for inconveniencing the government, which had warned citizens to stay away from the war zone. [Associated Press via Cortez Journal (Cortez, Colo.), 2-5-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
Point Taken: At a February meeting in New York of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, regarding whether meetings should be open to the general public, the representative from Belarus expressed alarm because of potential problems for the security staff. “What if,” he asked (according to a Reuters report), “there were topless ladies screaming from the public gallery throwing bottles of mayonnaise?” (According to the official summary, the Mexican delegate apparently earnestly pointed out that some U.N. meetings were already open to the public but as yet there were no mayonnaise-droppings.) [Reuters, 2-11-2015]
CSI Netherlands: Police in the Dutch town of Haarlem, near Amsterdam, raided an urban marijuana farm after a recent heavy snowfall. In photographs of the neighborhood, all streets, yards, and roofs of houses are blanketed in white--except for a certain portion of the roof of one home, on which the snow had completely melted. Police, deducing that the attic was likely an illegal hot marijuana greenhouse, made arrests. [Daily Mail (London), 2-9-2015]
News You Can Use: If you’re in pain, shouting “Owww!” has measurable therapeutic value. Writing recently in the Journal of Pain, researchers from National University of Singapore hypothesize that the muscle movements in vocalizing somehow divert or confuse pain signals, which otherwise would go unimpeded to the brain. Of subjects who plunged their hands into extremely cold water, those who were allowed to vocalize kept their hands immersed for up to three minutes longer than those who were silent. (The “oww” sound is similar in many languages and is apparently instinctive, from birth.) [International Business Times (New York), 2-2-2015]
First-World Problem Solved
A company called AudioQuest believes there are serious music listeners sufficiently grossed out by the imperfect sound delivered by ordinary ethernet cables (typically, with plastic connectors on each end and selling for around $20) that relief is needed. The company recently introduced the Cat-6 Ethernet cable, whose connectors are made of silver. For those who require the reportedly richer sound, relief is only $10,500 away. [Slashgear.com, 2-12-2015]
The Aristocrats!
Police in Glendale, Ore., arrested a 27-year-old man and his 22-year-old girlfriend after their 7-week-old son died of starvation. The couple claimed to have been feeding the boy properly, but investigators found that the pair operated an online porn business in which the mother lactated onto various items while the paying customers watched--and believe that little of the mother’s milk remained for the baby. [KPIC-TV (Roseburg, Ore.), 2-19-2015]
Promoting Their Brands
(1) Robert Michael Phillips was arrested in West Palm Beach, Fla., in February and faces a series of charges after police witnessed him allegedly conducting drug transactions and found heroin in his pocket and crack cocaine in his vehicle. (His rap sheet includes seven convictions and a prison stint.) On his February police intake form, under “Occupation,” Phillips stated, “Drug dealer.” (2) John Balmer, 50, was arrested at a Kmart in Hudson, Fla., in January as he attempted to pass a bag (allegedly containing marijuana and methamphetamine) to another person in line. Balmer was wearing a t-shirt that read “Who needs drugs?” above lettering that read “No, seriously, I have drugs.” [Palm Beach Post, 2-6-2015] [Tampa Bay Times, 1-6-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (July 2011)
People With Issues: Self-described Las Vegas "performer" Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7th [2011] to break the Guinness Book world record by 100 prickings. (Veteran Las Vegas piercer Bill "Danger" Robinson did the honors.) Coincidentally, on the same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 of the piercings. The lucky guy was Davidson's longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos. [Las Vegas Weekly, 6-8-2011] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-8-2011]
Thanks This Week to Larry Neer, David Nelson, Jan Linders, and Steve Dunn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M412, March 1, 2015
Copyright 2015 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
The Utah Court of Appeals ruled in February that Barbara Bagley has a legal right to sue herself for her own negligent driving that caused the death of her husband. Typically, in U.S. courts, a party cannot profit from its own negligence, but Bagley is the official “representative” administering her husband’s estate and has a duty to claim debts owed to the husband. Those debts would include “wrongful death” damages from a careless driver (actually, the careless driver’s insurance company), even if the careless driver was herself. Of course, if her lawsuit is successful, the monetary award would become part of the husband’s estate, a portion of which will likely go to her. [Salt Lake Tribune, 2-18-2015]
Historical Weird
Can’t Possibly Be True: For a brief period in 1951 and 1952, an educational kit, the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab, was for sale in the U.S. even though it came with testable samples of four types of uranium ore and three different radiation sources (alpha, beta, gamma). A surviving copy of the kit has been on display recently at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but the radioactive materials had to be removed before the kit could be shipped to Belfast. (The kit had failed to sell well; kids apparently preferred the company’s erector sets.) [BBC News, 2-16-2015]
In February, the Kansas Humanities Council, providing background to a current, traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit, posted a description of a 1925 baseball game in Wichita in which the professional, all-black Wichita Monrovians took on members of the local Ku Klux Klan. (Historians guessed that the KKK risked the embarrassment of defeat only because it needed the exposure to overcome declining enrollments.) The Monrovians (champions of the “Colored Western League” the year before) won, 10-8, and the Klan shut down in Kansas two years later. [Kansas Humanities Council , 2-17-2015]
Intelligent Design
A 37-year-old Lancashire, England, businessman (identified in later news reports as Duane Walters), fearing surgery for suspected bladder cancer, was discovered to be cancer-free, but on the other hand, he was found to have a uterus, ovaries, and cervix--even though he has fully functioning exterior male genitalia. He was referred to Manchester University Hospital for a hysterectomy (to prevent the possibility of pregnancy)--and was counseled that he might eventually become menopausal. His condition, “persistent Mullerian duct syndrome,” is rare enough when diagnosed at birth but, according to experts cited by the Daily Telegraph, virtually unheard-of at age 37. Walters said he will continue living as a man. [Daily Telegraph, 2-7-2015]
War Is Hell
Least Competent Terrorists: (1) A recent YouTube-posted compilation of footage gleaned from, in some cases, unedited ISIS promotion videos, claimed to show jihadists accidentally killing themselves. Several fighters in a group photo appear to be blown up when one of them fumblingly detonates a captured bomb, and one man was killed when he apparently tried to re-load a mortar launcher too quickly. (2) London’s Daily Telegraph reported in January that the “Darkshadow” jihadists from Tunisia and Ivory Coast, who had proclaimed their website-hacking would disrupt international travel, wound up taking down a site consisting merely of bus timetables in Bristol, England. Darkshadow’s English translator also misspelled Muslim (“Muslum”). [Daily Mail (London), 2-6-2015] [Daily Telegraph, 1-2-2015]
Perspective: ISIS’s very public recent executions of a Jordanian pilot and two Japanese citizens were met with starkly different reactions. In Jordan, King Abdullah II led his nation in a call for bloody revenge. In Japan (according to a February Associated Press dispatch from Tokyo) feelings were mixed because of “meiwaku”--Japan’s cultural feeling that the dead victims (and their families) were “causing trouble” by placing themselves in harm’s way. Said one man cited by the AP, “In the old days, their parents would have had to commit hara-kiri to apologize.” In fact, both victims’ families did repeatedly apologize for inconveniencing the government, which had warned citizens to stay away from the war zone. [Associated Press via Cortez Journal (Cortez, Colo.), 2-5-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
Point Taken: At a February meeting in New York of the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, regarding whether meetings should be open to the general public, the representative from Belarus expressed alarm because of potential problems for the security staff. “What if,” he asked (according to a Reuters report), “there were topless ladies screaming from the public gallery throwing bottles of mayonnaise?” (According to the official summary, the Mexican delegate apparently earnestly pointed out that some U.N. meetings were already open to the public but as yet there were no mayonnaise-droppings.) [Reuters, 2-11-2015]
CSI Netherlands: Police in the Dutch town of Haarlem, near Amsterdam, raided an urban marijuana farm after a recent heavy snowfall. In photographs of the neighborhood, all streets, yards, and roofs of houses are blanketed in white--except for a certain portion of the roof of one home, on which the snow had completely melted. Police, deducing that the attic was likely an illegal hot marijuana greenhouse, made arrests. [Daily Mail (London), 2-9-2015]
News You Can Use: If you’re in pain, shouting “Owww!” has measurable therapeutic value. Writing recently in the Journal of Pain, researchers from National University of Singapore hypothesize that the muscle movements in vocalizing somehow divert or confuse pain signals, which otherwise would go unimpeded to the brain. Of subjects who plunged their hands into extremely cold water, those who were allowed to vocalize kept their hands immersed for up to three minutes longer than those who were silent. (The “oww” sound is similar in many languages and is apparently instinctive, from birth.) [International Business Times (New York), 2-2-2015]
First-World Problem Solved
A company called AudioQuest believes there are serious music listeners sufficiently grossed out by the imperfect sound delivered by ordinary ethernet cables (typically, with plastic connectors on each end and selling for around $20) that relief is needed. The company recently introduced the Cat-6 Ethernet cable, whose connectors are made of silver. For those who require the reportedly richer sound, relief is only $10,500 away. [Slashgear.com, 2-12-2015]
The Aristocrats!
Police in Glendale, Ore., arrested a 27-year-old man and his 22-year-old girlfriend after their 7-week-old son died of starvation. The couple claimed to have been feeding the boy properly, but investigators found that the pair operated an online porn business in which the mother lactated onto various items while the paying customers watched--and believe that little of the mother’s milk remained for the baby. [KPIC-TV (Roseburg, Ore.), 2-19-2015]
Promoting Their Brands
(1) Robert Michael Phillips was arrested in West Palm Beach, Fla., in February and faces a series of charges after police witnessed him allegedly conducting drug transactions and found heroin in his pocket and crack cocaine in his vehicle. (His rap sheet includes seven convictions and a prison stint.) On his February police intake form, under “Occupation,” Phillips stated, “Drug dealer.” (2) John Balmer, 50, was arrested at a Kmart in Hudson, Fla., in January as he attempted to pass a bag (allegedly containing marijuana and methamphetamine) to another person in line. Balmer was wearing a t-shirt that read “Who needs drugs?” above lettering that read “No, seriously, I have drugs.” [Palm Beach Post, 2-6-2015] [Tampa Bay Times, 1-6-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (July 2011)
People With Issues: Self-described Las Vegas "performer" Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7th [2011] to break the Guinness Book world record by 100 prickings. (Veteran Las Vegas piercer Bill "Danger" Robinson did the honors.) Coincidentally, on the same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 of the piercings. The lucky guy was Davidson's longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos. [Las Vegas Weekly, 6-8-2011] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-8-2011]
Thanks This Week to Larry Neer, David Nelson, Jan Linders, and Steve Dunn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Thanks, Chuck, another good week.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/02/15 at 05:31 AM
KKK baseball: A foreboding of the Berlin Olympics?
UN meetings: I'm fairly sure that the security at the UN building is good enough to spot the jars of mayo.
Owww: That's not the sound in French (it's aïe, pronounced roughly the personal pronoun "I"), and, indeed, yelling "Ow!" in France does not tell someone that whatever they're doing is hurting you.
Piercings: Unless they're counting each and every jab of a tattoo needle, I don't see how anyone could get that many piercings in one sitting. At 10 a minute, that's still over 5 hours. Kind of a long time to keep saying "Owww!"
UN meetings: I'm fairly sure that the security at the UN building is good enough to spot the jars of mayo.
Owww: That's not the sound in French (it's aïe, pronounced roughly the personal pronoun "I"), and, indeed, yelling "Ow!" in France does not tell someone that whatever they're doing is hurting you.
Piercings: Unless they're counting each and every jab of a tattoo needle, I don't see how anyone could get that many piercings in one sitting. At 10 a minute, that's still over 5 hours. Kind of a long time to keep saying "Owww!"
Posted by TheCannyScot in Atlanta, GA on 03/02/15 at 08:47 AM
Re: the rather expensive Cat-6 audio cable
Years ago someone did a test with some audiophile folk where they compared the very, very expensive Monster brand speaker cables with coat hangars.
Verdict? They couldn't tell the difference.
I just wish they'd taken video footage of those people's faces when they told them they were hearing music through bent coat hangars.
Years ago someone did a test with some audiophile folk where they compared the very, very expensive Monster brand speaker cables with coat hangars.
Verdict? They couldn't tell the difference.
I just wish they'd taken video footage of those people's faces when they told them they were hearing music through bent coat hangars.
Posted by John S on 03/02/15 at 09:49 AM
Put the most expensive equipment in a normal room and you've wasted 99% of your money. Don't sit in the right spot and/or don't pay close attention and you'll not even hear stereo only HiFi.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/02/15 at 10:42 AM
Insurance- Why are insurance rates so high?
KKK defeat- Black athletes trounce white athletes, wow, that NEVER happens.
Gender x2- Good thing there was no external opening or a wet dream could have resulted in pregnancy.
Terror incompetence- The more dummies they accept as members the better off the rest of us are.
Belarus- How did the toppless-throwing-mayo-jars-protests in Belarus not make the news?
Better cables- As I have said about better and better HD, the quality is still limited by my visual equity as well. The same is true of sound quality and my 50 yr old ears.
Baby- Tragic. I hope the "parents" get to go hungry too.
KKK defeat- Black athletes trounce white athletes, wow, that NEVER happens.
Gender x2- Good thing there was no external opening or a wet dream could have resulted in pregnancy.
Terror incompetence- The more dummies they accept as members the better off the rest of us are.
Belarus- How did the toppless-throwing-mayo-jars-protests in Belarus not make the news?
Better cables- As I have said about better and better HD, the quality is still limited by my visual equity as well. The same is true of sound quality and my 50 yr old ears.
Baby- Tragic. I hope the "parents" get to go hungry too.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 03/02/15 at 11:49 AM
Above should say visual aquity.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 03/02/15 at 11:51 AM
There is no such word as aquity. The word you are looking for is acuity.
Posted by Mike on 03/03/15 at 02:59 AM
No, Mike, there IS such a word and I found it on the interweb. You can see it if you go to www (dot) aquityconsulting (dot) com
I got your back, Patty. :lol:
I got your back, Patty. :lol:
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 03/03/15 at 04:59 AM
Thanks sweetheart! Sorry for the misspelling.
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 03/03/15 at 12:31 PM
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