From: Travis
From: Chuck Shepherd
Date: Sun, Mar 8, 2009
Subject: News of the Weird, March 8, 2009
WEIRDNUZ.M100 (News of the Weird, March 8, 2009)
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2009 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* University of California researchers, on a Pentagon contract,
announced in January success at rigging a live flower beetle with
electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the
insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles or optic
lobes can command it to take off, turn left or right, or hover,
according to a report in MIT Technology Review, and the insect's
"large" size (up to a whopping four inches in length) would enable
it to also carry a camera, giving the beetle military uses such as
surveillance or search and rescue. The researchers admired the
native flight-control ability of the beetle so much that they
abandoned developing robot beetles (which required trying to
mimic nature). [MIT Technology Review, 1-29-09]
Why They Go Postal
* An official of the National Association of Letter Carriers in
Buffalo, N.Y., said in February that it would challenge the Postal
Service's threatened suspension of a carrier who was using
sidewalks to get from house to house this winter instead of walking
across ice-packed, deep-snow-drift yards. Cutting across yards is
required by Postal Service rules in order to speed up deliveries.
[Buffalo News, 2-12-09]
Scenes of the Surreal
* (1) Allahmanamjad Barbel, 21, sought help in February at the
police station in Barnstable, Mass., after his sister playfully put
handcuffs on him at a birthday party and couldn't get them off.
Police removed them and then, after running his name through the
computer, discovered several outstanding warrants and
immediately re-cuffed him. (2) Doctoral student Daniel Bennett
filed a lawsuit against Britain's Leeds University in February
because custodians had mistakenly thrown out research that he had
been working with for the last seven years. Bennett is studying the
rare Butaan lizard of the Philippines and over the years, to examine
its diet, had painstakingly sifted through jungle dirt to gather over
70 pounds of its feces, which Bennett believes is worth far more
than the œ500 ($720) Leeds has offered him. [Cape Cod Times, 2-
11-09] [Daily Telegraph, 2-5-09]
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
* A coin-operated self-service dog-washing machine ("self"
meaning the dog's owner, not the dog) has been introduced in a
half dozen carwashes in the United States recently, at $10 for 10
minutes, according to a January report on one such franchise in
Stuart, Fla. The "K9000" is a three-foot-high, walk-in shower area
(or push-in, for reluctant dogs) with an open top, has six separate
wash cycles, conditioner and flea-and-tick options, and adjustable
water pressure and dryer settings. [TCPalm.com, 1-30-09]
* At Mannerspielplatz ("Men's Playground") near Kassel,
Germany, testosterone-fueled office workers can get in touch with
their "inner ditchdigger" (according to a January Wired magazine
report) and frolic all day long on 29-ton backhoes, 32-ton front-end
loaders, jackhammers, and various other big, loud vehicles, for an
admission fee of about $280 a day. At the "Men's Playground," the
owner said, "We fulfill men's dreams." [Wired, January 2009]
Weird Biology
* "Reproduction is no fun if you're a squid," said a biologist at the
University of Groningen in the Netherlands, referring especially to
the deep-sea squid. Finding a mate a mile down in pitch-darkness
is hard enough, but the combination of males that are smaller and
fearful of being overpowered and females whose reception of
sperm involves being stabbed makes the insemination process
especially traumatic. Sperm deposits can be extensive and
burdensome to the female and are delivered by the reckless
slashing of the skin by the male. In fact, according to a December
report in Germany's Der Spiegel, in the darkness the male
sometimes misses the female altogether and inseminates himself.
[Spiegel Online, 12-23-08]
* Princeton University scientists, reporting in January on research
in Peru, said they observed aggressive, carnivorous behavior for
the first time among dung beetles, which decapitated and ate
millipedes. Dung beetles were not known previously to be fussy
eaters (except for a 2006 study in which they seemed to prefer
horse dung to camel dung or sheep dung). [Daily Telegraph
(London), 1-21-09]
Leading Economic Indicators
* People With Too Much Money: At Tokyo's first fish auction of
2009 in January, the upscale Kyubey restaurant and the more
moderate Itamae Sushi dining chain jointly purchased a single,
280-pound bluefin tuna for the equivalent of about $104,000.
Kyubey said it would cut its half into slivers priced at about $22
each, while the popular Itamae planned to offer tinier, more
affordable slivers. . [Wall Street Journal, 1-20-09]
* In Hong Kong, according to a February Wall Street Journal
report, when a feng shui master speaks on the economy, investors
listen closely (especially in view of the mess quantitative analysis
has made of things). Alion Yeo, an expert on the Chinese system
of beliefs in stars, geography, and the location of objects, and
whose popular finance seminars attract high-end investors, told a
group of about 170 recently that 2009 would be dismal because the
U.S. economy is now in the hands of a President and a Secretary of
the Treasury who were both born in a Year of the Ox (1961), of
which 2009 is another (and which has already started frighteningly
with both a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse). [Wall Street Journal,
2-9-09]
* Some laid-off workers may be desperate to exhibit their work
skills at any available job, but February news reports highlighted
two government bureaucrats who draw $250,000 a year between
them yet have been prevented from doing a stitch of work for, in
one case six years, and in the other, 18 months. Randall Hinton is
nominally the chief of investigations for the New York State
Insurance Fund but was ostracized by his supervisors in 2002 and
has taken home his $93,000 a year for zero work every since. U.S.
Labor Department official Bob Whitmore earns $150,000 but has
had no work to do since July 2007 due to a clash with his
supervisors. [Albany Times Union, 2-5-09] [Washington Post, 2-
19-09]
Fine Points of the Law
* (1) Drug-trafficking is a capital offense in Malaysia, and it
appeared that one man would go down after being spotted by a
police officer with the key to a large drug locker. However, the
man has an identical twin brother who was not charged, and in
February, Kuala Lumpur High Court Judge Zaharah Ibrahim ruled
that because it was impossible to know which one had been seen
with the key, both had to go free. (2) Jeffrey Boyle was convicted
in 2006 of setting eight fires during the time he was a lieutenant in
the Chicago Fire Department and is serving a six-year sentence, but
in January, he filed a lawsuit against the Department demanding
his pension, of about $50,000 a year, on the ground that he was off-
duty during the time he set the fires. [Fox News-AP, 2-7-09]
[Chicago Tribune, 2-15-09]
Least Competent Criminals
* Recurring Themes: (1) In February, David Hampton, 23, was
charged in Charlotte County, Fla., with robbing a BP gas station
and became the latest such robber to run out of gas in his getaway
car even though minutes earlier, obviously, he had been present at
a gas station. (2) In Marseille, France, in January, a 21-year-old
man became the latest bank burglar with an ambitious plan and a
mediocre sense of direction, as he drilled through the outside wall
of a branch of Banque Populaire but missed the room with the safe
deposit boxes and wound up instead in a restroom. [WWSB-TV
(Sarasota), 2-9-09] [Reuters, 2-1-09]
A News of the Weird Classic (February 1996)
* A pre-trial hearing was scheduled in February 1996 in Lamar,
Mo., on Joyce Lehr's lawsuit against the county for injuries
suffered in a 1993 fall in the icy, unplowed parking lot of the local
high school. The Carthage Press reported that Lehr claimed
damage to nearly every part of her body. According to her lawsuit:
"All the bones, organs, muscles, tendons, tissues, nerves, veins,
arteries, ligaments . . . discs, cartilages, and the joints of her body
were fractured, broken, ruptured, punctured, compressed,
dislocated, separated, bruised, contused, narrowed, abrased,
lacerated, burned, cut, torn, wrenched, swollen, strained, sprained,
inflamed, and infected." [Carthage Press, 1-9-96]
Thanks This Week to George Cernica, Keith Donovan,
Stephen Taylor, Tom Barker, John Brewer, Paul Catledge, Clayton
Melanson, Aaron Eckstein, and Jeff Hochberg, and to the News of
the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo,
Geoffrey Egan, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul
Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and the News of the Weird
Editorial Advisors (Paul Blumstein, John Cieciel, Harry Farkas,
Fritz Gritzner, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Steve
Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis
Reed, Rob Snyder, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).
* * * * *
Visit Chuck Shepherd daily at
http://www.WeirdUniverse.net <http://www.weirduniverse.net/> (or
www.NewsoftheWeird.com <http://www.newsoftheweird.com/>) or
mail [email protected] / P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL
33629.
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