News of the Weird, February 5, 2012
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2012 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Your Government Knows Best: A 2007 federal energy-
independence law required companies that supply motor fuel in the
U.S. to blend in a certain cellulose-based ingredient starting in
2011--even though (as the Environmental Protection Agency well
knows) the ingredient simply does not now exist. A New York
Times reporter checked with EPA in January and found that the
companies will still have to pay the monetary penalties for
noncompliance (and almost certainly the even-stiffer penalties for
2012, since the ingredient is still two or three years from
development). "It belies logic," said a petrochemicals trade
association executive. [New York Times, 1-9-2012]
Cultural Diversity
* Two dozen religious leaders in India's Karnataka state are, as
usual, protesting the annual, century-old Hindu ritual in which
lower-caste people roll around in food leftovers of upper-caste
people. "Hundreds" performed the exercise at temples, according to
a January Times of India report, believing that contact with
sophisticates' food will alleviate pernicious skin conditions. [The
Times of India, 1-8-2012]
* Far away from Karnataka, in the urban center of Calcutta, India,
engineers are trying to save the historic Howrah Bridge from
collapsing due to corrosion from spit. A half-million pedestrians
(aside from the frenzied vehicle traffic) use the bridge every day and
frequently spit their guthka and paan (half-chewed betel leaf and
areca nut and slaked lime) onto the steel hangers that hold up the
bridge--thus reducing the hanger bases by 50 percent in just the last
three years. (Engineers' immediate remedies: cover the bases in
washable fiberglass and conduct an education campaign in which
"gods" implore pedestrians to hold their saliva until they've crossed
the bridge.) [BBC News, 11-22-2011]
* On November 5th, the 400 inhabitants of Coll, an island off the
coast of Scotland, endured the first "crime" that any of the residents
could remember. Someone vandalized the public lavatories at a
visitors' facility, doing the equivalent of about $300 damage. A
constable was summoned from a nearby island to investigate, but
seas were rough, and he had to wait for two days for the ferry to run.
One Coll resident vaguely recalled an incident at a pub once in
which a man threatened to throw a punch (but didn't), and another
remembered that someone took whale bones left on a beach by
researchers (but later gave them back). According to a Daily
Telegraph report, the culprit is "still at large." [Daily Telegraph, 11-
20-2011]
Latest Religious Messages
* In separate incidents during one week in December in Polk
County, Fla., four church pastors were arrested and charged with
sex-related crimes involving children, including Arnold Mathis, 40,
at the time working for the Saint City Power and Praise Ministry in
Winter Haven but who has moved on to the Higher Praise
Ministries in Lake Wales and who was allowed to work for the
church despite a sex-crime rap sheet. [CF News (Bright House
Cable News, Orlando), 12-18-2011]
* Just two weeks before the January worldwide Internet protest
against proposed copyright-protection legislation, the Missionary
Church of Kopimism in Sweden announced that it had been granted
official government status as a religion (one of 22 so recognized),
even though its entire reason for being is to celebrate the right to
share files of information--in any form but especially on the
Internet. Swedish law makes such religious recognition easy,
requiring only "a belief system with rituals." The Kopimism website
demonizes "copyright believers" who "derive their power by
limiting people's lives and freedom." [TorrentFreak blog via NPR,
1-4-2012]
Milestones in Government Regulation
* According to recent consumer-protection rulings by the European
Food Safety Authority, sellers of prunes are prohibited from
marketing them as laxatives, and sellers of bottled water are
forbidden to offer it as preventing dehydration. In both cases, the
commissioners referred to the underlying science of the body to
defend their decisions, but the rulings were still widely derided as
anti-common-sense. Members of the European Parliament
complained, especially given the current precarious state of the
European Union, itself. One Parliamentarian challenged an EFSA
policymaker to a prune-eating contest: If it's not a laxative, he said,
let's see how many you can eat and not have your "bowel function"
"assisted." [Daily Telegraph, 11-18-2011, 12-14-2011]
Oops!
* (1) In December in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan, a group of
luxury car enthusiasts gathered and began a caravan to nearby
Hiroshima, but one of the drivers, changing lanes, hit a median
barrier and spun across the highway, resulting in a chain-reaction
pileup involving 14 cars, including eight red Ferraris, a
Lamborghini, and two Mercedes-Benzes. Drivers suffered only cuts
and bruises, but "some" of the vehicles were reported "beyond
repair." (2) David Dopp of Santaquin, Utah, won a fundraising
raffle sponsored by the non-profit organization "teamgive" in
November--a Lamborghini Murcielago, valued at about $380,000.
He picked up his prize on December 17th, but six hours later, he
spun out of control, knocked over several fence posts, and disabled
the Murcielago's front end. [Yahoo News-AP, 12-5-2011] [KSL-TV
(Salt Lake City), 12-20-2011]
Chutzpah!
* Logan Alexander, 63, a school security guard in Trenton, N.J.,
who was fired after pleading guilty in 2007 to twice inappropriately
touching students, was later sued by a third girl for similar behavior
but settled that lawsuit in 2010 by agreeing to pay the girl $12,500.
Recently, according to a December report in the Trenton Times,
Alexander filed a lawsuit against the Trenton Board of Education,
demanding that the Board pay the $12,500 to the girl because, after
all, Alexander was "on duty" when he committed the inappropriate
touching. [Trenton Times, 12-12-2011]
Least Competent Criminals
* In Bennington, Vt., in December, Adam Hall, 34, was accused of
vandalizing his ex-girlfriend's car, including scratching the word
"slut" into the hood (except that the word was spelled s-u-l-t). Hall
initially denied any involvement until an officer handed him a sheet
of paper and asked him to write the sentence, "You are a slut." Sure
enough, Hall spelled slut "sult" and was promptly charged with
malicious mischief. [ABC News, 12-15-2011]
The District of Calamity
* In November, the Washington Times reported that the
Washington, D.C.,-area Metro transportation agency had hired, as a
financial consultant, a woman with multiple convictions for bank
fraud and who had been implicated in one of Washington's largest
heroin rings. Furthermore, even when the agency learned of her
record, it neither disciplined her nor removed her from her finance
responsibilities. According to the Times, Metro has other lax-
management issues. A Maryland state attorney recently revealed
that a Metro employee had been "storing" 70 unaccounted-for
pieces of Metro property (including computers and televisions) at
his home for years, and following that news, according to the
Times, other employees began sheepishly returning similar
property. [Washington Times, 11-3-2011]
* Update: Hon. Marion Barry, 75 and former four-term mayor (and
one-time famous cocaine user), is now in his second post-prison
term as Washington, D.C., Council member and announced in
January that he will run for another four years. In December,
Internal Revenue Service filed a new lien on a home Barry owns in
Washington , based on unpaid income taxes from 2010. Barry is
currently making payments out of his Council paycheck for D.C.
and federal taxes back to 1999 after pleading guilty in 2005 to the
failure to file tax returns at all for the previous six years. The very
next year, 2006, he failed to file for 2005, and after getting caught
then, he subsequently failed to file for 2007. On the D.C. Council,
Barry is a member of the finance and revenue committee.
[Washington Post, 12-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Bruce Strickland, Peter Smagorinsky,
and Bruce Leiserowitz, and to the News of the Weird Board of
Editorial Advisors.
*****
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