News of the Weird, September 11, 2011
Chuck Shepherd
by Chuck Shepherd
Copyright 2011 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
* Richard Handl, 31, was arrested in southern Sweden in July after a
raid on his home. He had been trying for months to set up a nuclear
reactor in his kitchen, but became alarmed when a brew of
americium, tritium, and beryllium created a nuclear meltdown on
his stove. Only then, he said, did it occur to him to ask the country's
Radiation Authority if what he was doing was legal, and the
subsequent police raid answered that question. No dangerous
radiation level was detected, but Handl still faces fines and a
maximum two-year prison sentence for unauthorized possession of
nuclear materials. [MSNBC-AP, 8-3-2011; The Local (Stockholm,
8-2-2011]
The Entrepreneurial Society
* For the Self-Indulgent: (1) The fashion designer Chandrashekar
Chawan recently created gold-plated, diamond-studded contact
lenses that make eyes "sparkle" (not always a good thing, admitted
Chawan, citing reviews calling the look "cringeworthy" and
"demonic"). According to an MSNBC report, the "bling" part never
actually touches the cornea. (2) Among the trendiest avant-garde
beauty treatments are facial applications made from snail mucus,
according to a July report by London's Daily Mail. South Korean
glamour consultants were the first to use mollusk extract's generous
moisturizing properties, though a dermatologist warned (on NBC's
"Today" show) that no "controlled" studies have yet demonstrated
snail-goo superiority. [MSNBC, 8-4-2011] [Daily Mail, 7-29-2011]
Leading Economic Indicators
* Augustin James Henri-Pinault is only four years old, but he
nevertheless has certain financial needs--which amount to about
$46,000 a month, according to the child-support request filed by his
mother, "supermodel" Linda Evangelista. A Wall Street Journal
reporter concluded that the figure is about right for rich kids in New
York City, what with needing a driver, designer clothes, around-the-
clock nannies, and various personalized lessons. And soon,
according to a consultant-to-the-rich interviewed in August by the
Journal, Augustin James will become even more expensive, as he
graduates from his exclusive pre-school and enters his exclusive
kindergarten. [Wall Street Journal, 8-3-2011]
* The highest-paid state government employee in budget-strapped
California in 2010 was among the least productive workers in the
system, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation reported in
July. Jeffrey Rohlfing is on the payroll as a surgeon in the state
prison system (base pay: $235,740), but he has been barred from
treating inmates for the last six years because supervisors believe
him to be incompetent. Last year, Dr. Rohlfing earned an additional
$541,000 in back pay after he successfully appealed his firing to the
state's apparently-easily-persuaded Personnel Board. Currently, Dr.
Rohlfing is assigned records-keeping duties. [Los Angeles Times, 7-
13-2011]
No, Thanks!
* (1) Colorado inmate Daniel Self filed a federal lawsuit in July
against the Sterling Correctional Facility because prison personnel
saved his life. They revived him after he had stopped breathing,
from an attack of sleep apnea, but he contends he had previously
demanded to officials that he never be resuscitated, preferring to die
rather serve out his life sentence. (2) Terry Barth complained to
hospital officials that he was "kidnaped" by paramedics and thus
cannot be liable for the $40,000 he has been billed by Enloe
Medical Center in Chico, Calif., where he was brought by
ambulance following a motorcycle crash in August 2010. Barth
said he had insisted at the scene that paramedics not take him to a
hospital because he had no medical insurance. (Paramedics are
legally required to take anyone with a serious head injury.) [Denver
Post, 7-18-2011] [KOVR-TV, 7-7-2011]
Medical Marvels
* The first published instance of a woman's nipple appearing on the
sole of her foot was noted in a 2006 report in the journal
Dermatology and reprised in a series of U.S. and British press
reports in July 2011. The reporting physicians, led by Dr. Delio
Marques Conde, acknowledged that out-of-place breast tissue, while
extremely rare, has shown up before on the back, shoulder, face, and
thigh. The foot nipple was "well-formed," with areola and
sebaceous glands. [New York Daily News, 7-19-2011, citing
Dermatology, vol. 12, no. 4]
* British college student Rhiannon Brooksbank-Jones, 19, recently
had her tongue surgically lengthened just so she could better
pronounce the Korean letter "L." London's Daily Mail reported in
August that the student had become fascinated with Korean culture
and intends to live and work in South Korea eventually--and would
need to speak like a native to succeed. She is now satisfied that she
does. [Daily Mail (London), 8-12-2011]
Our Animal Sidekicks
* Ruth Adams called on Northampton College in central England to
measure the purring sound of her gray-and-white tabby cat, Smokey,
aiming for a Guinness Book record. The result, she told the
Associated Press in March, was 73 decibels, many multiples louder
than the average cat's purr and about as noisy, according to the AP,
as "busy traffic, a hair dryer, or a vacuum cleaner." (According to
cat-ologists, Smokey's purring could reflect either extreme
happiness or extreme stress.) [Yahoo News-AP, 3-30-2011]
* What Took Them So Long to Think of This? "Most wineries rely
on the human nose [to detect out-of-place odors]," said the vintner
of the Australian boutique wine Linnea, "but that is time-
consuming, costly, and nowhere as reliable as Belle." Miss Louisa
Belle is a seven-year-old bloodhound possessing, of course, a nose
that is reportedly 2,000 times more sensitive than the human nose.
Her primary job, the vintner told Melbourne's Herald Sun in July, is
to sniff out tainted corks during the bottling process. [Herald Sun
(Melbourne), 7-3-2011]
Pervs on Parade
* At a medical board hearing in Manchester, England, in August,
anesthesia consultant Dr. Narendra Sherma was accused of placing
the hand of a sedated female patient underneath the operating table
so that he could fondle his own private parts using a "stranger's"
touch. Two medical workers claimed to have seen him, one of
whom said she saw Sherma "exposed." Sherma explained later that
his pants had inadvertently fallen down during one procedure
because a previous patient had kicked loose the tape holding them
up. [Daily Mail (London), 8-12-2011]
Least Competent People
* (1) Police in Roseville, Mich., arrested a 24-year-old roofer in
August and charged him with reckless driving after he hit four cars.
He had noticed that his brakes had failed but inadvisedly tried to
drive on, anyway, by extending his left leg out the driver's side door
and braking "manually" (yes, as in "The Flintstones"). According to
police, the man was completely sober. (2) In Durango, Colo., Sean
Ogden, 19, was seriously burned in July when he tried to break
down fireworks he had purchased in order to build even bigger
ones. He was mixing them in a coffee-bean grinder. [Detroit Free
Press, 8-18-2011] [Denver Post-AP, 7-7-2011]
Update
* Two hundred ethnic groups in Cameroon still practice painful
"breast-ironing," affecting one-fourth of the puberty-age girls in the
country, according to a July CNN dispatch. The situation has barely
changed from when News of the Weird mentioned it in 2006.
Mothers flatten their daughters' breasts with a fire-hot pestle to
make girls less sexually desirable and thus more likely to stay in
school and avoid early pregnancy. (In America, ironically, the New
York Times reported two weeks later that spa-indulgent women are
complaining about "creases" in their breasts--from sleep posture that
creates unsightly "cleavage wrinkles" visible in low-neckline
fashions. Several remedial products are available to help women
keep their breasts separated, and thus smooth, at night.) [CNN, 7-
27-2011] [New York Times, 8-9-2011]
A News of the Weird Classic (March 1997)
* In 1978 the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum made a vicious
"clothesline" hit on New England Patriots' receiver Darryl Stingley's
neck, causing permanent paralysis. At the time, Tatum arrogantly
defended the play as legal and warned other opponents that they
could expect the same from him. However, in January 1997, Tatum
applied for disability benefits of $156,000 a year from the NFL
Players' Association, pointing to the mental anguish he has suffered
having to live with the incident. (The $156,000 was, in 1997, the
highest-payout category and was the same category that Stingley
was in.) (Update: Tatum died in 2010, Stingley in 2007.) [New
York Times, 1-24-97]
Thanks This Week to Richard Hunding, Peter Smagorinsky,
Perry Levin, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird
Board of Editorial Advisors.
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