News of the Weird, May 12, 2013

[Chuck Shepherd]

WEIRDNUZ.M318 (News of the Weird, May 12, 2013)
by Chuck Shepherd       

Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story

* Caribou Baby, a Brooklyn, N.Y., "eco-friendly maternity, baby
and lifestyle store," has recently been hosting gatherings at which
parents exchange tips on "elimination communication"--the
weaning of infants without benefit of diapers (as reported in April
by the New York Times).  Parents watch for cues, such as a certain
"cry or grimace" that supposedly signals that the tot urgently needs
to be hoisted onto a potty.  (Eventually, they say, the potty serves to
cue the baby.)  Dealing with diapers is so unpleasant, they say, that
cleaning an occasional mess becomes tolerable.  The little darlings'
public appearances sometimes call for diapers but can also be dealt
with by taking the baby behind the nearest tree.  One parent even
admitted, "I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people
putting their baby over the sink."  [New York Times, 4-19-2013]

Can't Possibly Be True

* Washington, D.C.'s WRC-TV reported in March that a woman
from the Maryland suburbs showed a reporter a traffic citation she
had just received, ticketing her for driving in the left lane on
Interstate 95 in Laurel while going only 63 mph--compared to the
posted ("maximum") speed of 65.  The citation read, "Failure of
driver . . . to keep right."  The station's meteorologist noted that
winds that day were gusting to 40 mph and that the woman might
simply have been trying to control her car.  [WRC-TV, 3-12-2013]

* The principal and head teacher at a Godalming, England, special-
needs school were reported by employees in March for allowing a
student with self-harm issues to cut herself, under staff supervision.
(Unsted Park School enrolls kids aged 7-19 who have high-
functioning autism.)  Teachers were to hand the girl a sterilized
blade, wait outside a bathroom while she acted out, checking up on
her at two-minute intervals, and then dressing the girl's wounds
once she had finished.  The school reportedly abandoned the policy
six days after implementing it.  [GetSurrey.co.uk (Guildford,
England), 3-25-2013]

* Last year, according to Chicago's WBBM-TV, Palmen Motors in
Kenosha, Wis., sold a brand-new GMC Terrain SUV to an elderly
couple, 90 and 89, in which the husband was legally blind and in
hospice care, on morphine, and the wife had dementia and could
barely walk.  According to the couple's daughter, it was her brother,
David McMurray, who wanted the SUV but could not qualify
financially and so drove his mother from Illinois to Kenosha to sign
the documents while a Palmen employee traveled to Illinois to get
the father's signature (three weeks before he passed away, it turns
out).  An attorney for Palmen Motors told the TV station that the
company regretted its role and would buy the vehicle back.
[WBBM-TV, 3-13-2013]

Democracy Blues              

* The city council of Oita, Japan, refused to seat a recently-elected
member because he would not remove the mask he always wears
in public.  Professional wrestler "Skull Reaper A-ji" said his fans
would not accept him as authentic if he strayed from his character.
Some masked U.S. wrestlers, and especially the popular Mexican
"lucha libre" wrestlers," share the sentiment.  (At press time, the
issue was apparently still unresolved in Oita.) [Daily Telegraph
(London), 3-13-2013]

* At the January 8th public meeting, Cooper City, Fla.,
Commissioner Lisa Mallozzi, annoyed with local activist (and
former commissioner) Gladys Wilson, told her (according to video
and audio of the meeting), "[B]low me."  Wilson, 81, said later she
did not understand what the phrase meant; Mallozzi said later that
she meant only that she needed to blow her nose.  [WPLG-TV
(Miami), 1-14-2013]

Unclear on the Concept

* Passive possession of child pornography is not a victimless crime,
authorities say, because by definition a child had been abused in the
creation of the image, but that reasoning was no relief for New
Zealander Ronald Clark, who was sentenced to three months in jail
in Auckland in April for watching pornographic cartoon videos of
short-statured elves and pixies.  A child-protection activist
acknowledged that no child was harmed in the creation of the
Japanese anime artwork but insisted that it was still injurious
because "[I]t's all part of that spectrum."  Clark said he wondered if
he might also be convicted for viewing sexual stick-figure drawings.
[Stuff.co.nz (Auckland), 4-21-2013]

* John Leopold, the former County Executive of Anne Arundel
County, Md., serving 30 days in jail for illegally forcing his
government security detail and another employee to perform
personal errands, apparently wasted no time in March displaying a
similar attitude toward his jailers.  He quickly demanded that the
jailers serve him a breakfast of Cheerios, skim milk, bananas, and
orange juice, instead of the scheduled fare.  (Last year, Anders
Breivik, the imprisoned 2011 mass murderer of 77 in Norway,
famously began a hunger strike when rebuffed over his 27-page list
of demands, including internet access and a series of menu and
climate-control improvements.)  [Associated Press via Yahoo
News, 3-20-2013] [BBC News, 11-9-2012]

Suspicions Confirmed

* California street gangs stage fights whose locations can be
accurately predicted using the same algorithm that anthropologists
use to predict where lions and hyenas will fight in the wild to
protect their own territories.  A UCLA researcher, using the
standard "Lotka-Volterra" equation on 13 equal-sized criminal
gangs in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in east Los Angeles
produced a table of probabilities of how far from each gang's border
any fights were likely to occur.  In the period 1999-2002, the
formula correctly showed that about 58 percent of shootings
occurred within 0.2 miles of the border, 83 percent within 0.4 miles,
and 97 percent within one mile.  [Daily Mail (London), 3-26-2013]

Perspective

* Animal-rights activists have had success in recent years making
covert videos of abuses on farms and in slaughterhouses, showing
defenseless animals being cruelly mistreated in patterns unlikely to
be caught by government inspectors making orderly, rare visits.
However, as the New York Times reported in April,  legislators in
Iowa, Utah, Missouri, and almost a dozen other states believe that
the greater problem is that such videos "defame" the operators of
these farms and slaughterhouses, and the states have proposed to
criminalize the activists' conduct, which might be "trespassing" in
that they gain access only by subterfuge, for instance, pretending
earnestly to apply for jobs.  The typical state legislation would also
require that any such video must immediately be turned over not to
the media but to law enforcement--allegedly, so the abuse could be
dealt with but also coincidentally denying the activists their most
valuable tool for strengthening the law. [New York Times, 4-7-
2013]

Least Competent Criminals

* Just Because It Worked Once--:  Carl Bellenir, 48, was arrested in
San Luis Obispo, Calif., in February after he had successfully cashed
in, at a Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, several rolls of pennies that had
been stuffed into rolls labeled for dimes.  Bellenir apparently did not
realize that the rolls would be examined later in the day and so
returned the very next morning to the same bank and tried it again.
Police were called, and Bellenir fled, but he was captured down the
street at a Bank of America trying the same trick.  [Tribune News
(San Luis Obispo), 2-7-2013]

Strange Old World

* Dateline Saudi Arabia:  (1) A newspaper in the capital city of
Riyadh reported in April that three men from United Arab Emirates
were booted out of a religious festival by Saudi morality police
because they were thought to be "too handsome" and would make
Saudi women improperly attracted to them.  (2) Another Saudi daily
reported in April that a schoolteacher had agreed to marry her suitor
but only provided that the man take on two of her colleagues as extra
wives.  (Saudi Arabia allows men as many as four.)  The newspaper
reported that the woman had rented three apartments in the same
building, signaling that the deal had perhaps been sealed.
[ArabianBusiness.com, 4-16-2013] [Gulf News, 4-21-2013]

Readers' Choice

* Kent Hendrix heroically rushed to the aid of a female neighbor
being assaulted by an acquaintance on their residential street in
Millcreek, Utah, in April and scared the man off (though he soon
turned himself in).  Hendrix is a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints and, more to the point, a black belt in karate, and
even more to the point, was aiming his favorite samurai sword at the
attacker.  Said Hendrix, "His eyes just got huge . . . that he was
staring down 29 inches of razor." [KSTU-TV (Salt Lake City), 4-23-
2013]

     Thanks This Week to Cheryl Juba, Kevin Kawaguchi, Peter
Wardley, and Paul Krause, and to the News of the Weird Board of
Editorial Advisors.
              
                   * * * * * 
WeirdNews at earthlink dot net, http://www.NewsoftheWeird.net
(almost daily), and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679.