News of the Weird, October 9, 2011
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2011 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* An option for suicide "with elegance and euphoria" is how
Lithuanian-born PhD candidate Julijonas Urbonas (London's Royal
College of Art) described his "Euthanasia [Roller] Coaster,"
currently on the drawing board. Urbonas's model of "gravitational
aesthetics" would be a third-mile-long, 1,600-foot-high thrill ride
engineered to supply 10 Gs of centrifugal force (a spin at about 220
mph) to induce cerebral hypoxia, forcing blood away from the head
and denying oxygen to the brain. Euphoria (and disorientation and
anxiety, but not pain) are likely states to precede the brain's
shutdown. Urbonas insisted that users would have the option
through the first two minutes of the three-minute ride to rethink
their decision and bail out (or else to push the final "FALL" button).
(Suicide is legal in four European countries and Oregon and
Washington.) [Discovery News, 9-19-2011]
Government in Action!
* An open-government advocacy group's survey of federal agencies,
released in July, revealed that eight of them have unresolved
Freedom of Information Act requests that are over a decade old,
including one pending for more than 20 years. (The 1976 FOIA law
requires resolution within 20 business days, with a 10-day extension
under "unusual circumstances.") (Also, regarding the FOIA, a June
2011 request, by the city of Sioux City, Iowa, for background
documents regarding the recent Postal Service decision to move
jobs from Sioux City to Sioux Falls, S.D., was met promptly--by the
Postal Service's forecast that the likely fee for the documents would
be $831,000, even though under the law the first two search hours
and the first 100 documents are free.) [National Security Archive, 7-
4-2011] [Sioux City Journal, 7-27-2011]
* In August, the Securities and Exchange Commission's inspector
general revealed that a $1,200 cash award was paid by the agency in
2010 to one of the very employees who had been specifically
singled out for allowing Bernard Madoff to talk his way out of SEC
inquiries in 2005 and 2006, before his epic Ponzi scheme was
exposed in 2008. (The IG helpfully recommended that, in the
future, awards not be given to employees who have recently been
facing potential disciplinary action for poor performance.) [Legal
Times, 8-4-2011]
* Among the aftershocks of the 9-11 attacks on America was the
colossal budget-busting on "homeland security"--a spending binge
that, additionally, was thought to require something approaching
uniform disbursement of funds throughout the 50 states. (Endless
"what if" possibilities left no legislator unwilling to forsake
maximum security.) Among the questionable projects described in
a Los Angeles Times August review were the purchase of an
inflatable Zodiac boat with wide-scan sonar--in case terrorists were
eyeing Lake McConaughy in Keith County, Neb.; cattle nose leads,
halters, and electric prods (to protect against biological attacks on
cows, awarded to Cherry County, Neb.); a terrorist-proof iron fence
around a Veterans Affairs hospital near Asheville, N.C.; and
$557,400 in communications and rescue gear in case North Pole,
Alaska, got hit. [Los Angeles Times, 8-28-2011]
* The Office of Personnel Management's inspector general
denounced the agency in September for promiscuously continuing
to pay pension benefits to deceased federal retirees--citing a 70
percent rise in bogus payments over the last five years. However,
another federal inspector general (the Social Security
Administration's) chastised its agency for the opposite reason:
About 14,000 people each year are cut off from benefits after
erroneously being declared dead. [Washington Post, 9-22-2011]
[Chicago Tribune-CNN, 8-17-2011]
News That Sounds Like a Joke
* The convenience store clerk, Ms. Falguni Patel, was giving
testimony in the September trial of Morgan Armstrong (charged
with robbing her in Hudson, Fla., in 2009) when she began shaking
and then passed out while seated in the witness box. A relative of
Patel's approached, removed her sneaker, and held it to Patel's face,
without success. The relative explained that Patel was subject to
such blackouts and that sniffing the sneaker often revives her.
(After paramedics attended to her, Patel took the rest of the day off
and went back to court the next morning.) [St. Petersburg Times, 9-
7-2011]
Great Art!
* Although Moroccan artist Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, 27, concedes
that photographs can be misinterpreted, he maintains on his website
that he never wants to hurt people's feelings. Nevertheless, he said
he is proud of his photo exhibit in which he stands completely nude,
allowing various verses of the Quran to be projected on his skin.
His latest scheduled appearance was at an art fair in Marrakesh in
October. [Middle East Online, 9-21-2011]
* Two women were charged in September with what was likely a
major art theft for Johnson City, Tenn. Connie Sumlin, 45, and Gail
Johnson, 58, were identified from surveillance video as the ones
who snatched two pieces of art off the wall in the entrance of a local
Arby's restaurant (a picture of some pears, and a metal art object,
with an alleged combined value, according to the police report, of
"$1,200"). [Johnson City Press, 9-14-2011]
* Earlier this year, Marion Laval-Jeantet won a notable Prix Ars
Electronica award for her "hybrid" work that, she said, intends to
blur the boundaries between species. Laval-Jeantet stepped onstage
in Ljubljana, Slovenia, as a horse-human, having earlier injected
herself with horse blood (after prepping her body for several months
with different horse immunoglobulins). She also walked with stilts
that had "hooves" affixed to the bottom. She capped the show by
extracting some of her own presumably-hybrid blood, to be frozen
and stored for future research. [Wired.com, 8-10-2011; New
Scientist, 9-17-2011]
Fetishes on Parade
* Indecent-exposure flashers appear to be invading even off-limits
sanctuaries in their quest to be seen--in Florida, anyway. In
Sarasota County in September, Shane Wheatley, 31, was arrested
after a Comcast cable customer complained that Wheatley had
begun fondling himself while installing the woman's TV service.
Three days earlier, in Niceville, a 14-year-old boy (whose name was
not released) was charged with indecent exposure after a worshiper
reported him masturbating openly during services at the First United
Methodist Church. The boy admitted he had done the same thing
during services the week before, because he was "bored." [WTSP-
TV (St. Petersburg), 9-16-2011] [The Smoking Gun, 9-13-2011]
Least Competent Criminals
* In September, a jury found Terry Newman, 25, and an associate
guilty of aggravated assault for a home invasion in San Antonio,
Tex., in 2009, thus adding insult to Newman's injuries. Newman
was shot by a resident during the initial invasion, and then again by
another resident when he returned 15 minutes later to retrieve his
car. Finally, after police encountered Newman following a short
chase, he resisted officers and was shot again, for the third time.
(None of the injuries was life-threatening.) [San Antonio Express-
News, 9-10-2011]
(Very) Undignified Death
* An inquest in Yorkshire, England, in September found that the
February death of Brian Depledge, 38, was accidental--that he had
inadvertently strangled himself after falling onto a folding clothes
horse (of the kind often used to hang recently-washed laundry on to
dry). The coroner concluded that Depledge's body had become
trapped between rungs in such a way that the more he moved his
arms to extricate himself, the tighter was the pressure that was
unavoidably placed on his neck. [Yorkshire Post, 9-10-2011]
A News of the Weird Classic (February 2007)
* After Emmalee Bauer, 25, was fired by the Sheraton hotel
company in late 2006, she sought unemployment compensation
under Iowa law that affords benefits to employees terminated
through no fault of their own. However, the judge decided Bauer did
not qualify. She had written a 300-page journal, during office hours,
describing in detail her efforts to avoid work. Among her entries:
"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick. It just looks like I am
hard at work on something" and "Once lunch is over, I will come
right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon" and
"Accomplishment is overrated, anyway." [Des Moines Register, 1-
18-07]
Thanks This Week to Pete Randall, Michael Ravnitzky, Perry
Levin, Larry Seltzer, and David Bryant, and to the News of the
Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
*****
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