News of the Weird M520, March 26, 2017

[Chuck Shepherd]

​WEIRDNUZ.M520 (News of the Weird, March 26, 2017)
by Chuck Shepherd

Copyright 2017 by Chuck Shepherd.  All rights reserved.

Lead Story                                  
              
* A highlight of the recent upmarket surge of Brooklyn, N.Y., as a
residential and retail favorite was the asking price for an  ordinary
parking space in the garage at 845 Union Street in the Park Slope
neighborhood:  $300,000 (also carrying a $240 a month
condominium fee and $50 monthly taxes).  That's similar to the
price of actual one-bedroom apartments in less ritzy Brooklyn
neighborhoods like Gravesend (a few miles away).   [DNAInfo, 3-6-
2017]

Compelling Explanations

* Saginaw, Mich., defense lawyer Ed Czuprynski had beaten a
felony DUI arrest in December but was sentenced to probation on a
lesser charge in the incident, and among his restrictions was a
prohibition on drinking alcohol--which Czuprynski acknowledged
in March that he has since violated at least twice.  However, at that
hearing (which could have meant jail time for the violations),
Czuprynski used the opportunity to beg the judge to remove the
restriction altogether, arguing that he can't be "effective" as a lawyer
unless he is able to have a drink now and then.  (At press time, the
judge was still undecided.) [MLive.com, 3-10-2017]

Fine Points of the Law

* Residents in southern Humboldt County, Calif., will vote in May
on a proposed property tax increase to fund a community hospital in
Garberville to serve a web of small towns in the scenic, sparsely
populated region, and thanks to a county judge's March ruling, the
issue will be explained more colorfully.  Opponent Scotty McClure
was initially rebuffed by the registrar when he tried to distribute, as
taxpayer-funded "special elections material," contempt for "Measure
W" by including the phrase "(insert fart smell here)" in the
description.  The registrar decried the damage to election "integrity"
by such "vulgarity," but Judge Timothy Cissna said state law gives
him jurisdiction only over "false" or "misleading" electioneering
language.  [North Coast Journal (Eureka, Calif.), 3-7-2017]

Can't Possibly Be True

* News of the Weird has written several times (as technology
progressed) about Matt McMullen's "RealDoll" franchise--the San
Marcos, Calif., engineer's richly-detailed flexible silicone
mannequins that currently sell for $5,500 and up (more with
premium custom features).  Even before the recent success of the
very humanish, artificially-intelligent (AI) android "hosts" on TV's
"Westworld," McMullen revealed that his first AI doll, "Harmony,"
will soon be available with a choice of 12 "personalities" including
"intellectualism" and "wit," to mimic an emotional bond to add to
the sexual.  A recent University of London conference previewed a
near future when fake women routinely provide uncomplicated
relationships for lonely (or disturbed) men.  (Recently, in Barcelona,
Spain, a brothel opened offering four RealDolls "disinfected after
each customer"--though still recommending condoms.)  [Forbes, 2-
28-2017]

* Scientists at Columbia University and the New York Genome
Center announced that they have digitally stored (and retrieved)
a movie, an entire computer operating system, and a $50 gift
card on a single drop of DNA.  In theory, wrote the researchers
in the journal Science, they might store, on one gram of DNA,
215 "petabytes" (i.e., 215 million gigabytes--enough to run,
say, 10 million HD movies) and could reduce all the data
housed in the Library of Congress to a small cube of crystals.
[Wall Street Journal, 3-3-2017]

* An office in the New York City government, suspicious of a
$5,000 payment to two men in the 2008 City Council election
of Staten Island's Debi Rose, opened an investigation, which at
$300 an hour for their "special prosecutor," has now cost the
city $520,000, with his final bill still to come.  Despite scant
"evidence" and multiple opportunities to back off, the
prosecutor relentlessly conducted months-long grand jury
proceedings, fought several court appeals, had one 23-count
indictment almost immediately crushed by judges, and enticed
state and federal investigators to (fruitlessly) take on the Staten
Island case.  In March, the city's Office of Court Administration
finally shrugged and closed the case. [New York Times, 3-8-
2017]

Ironies

* A chain reaction of fireworks in Tultepec, Mexico, in
December had made the San Pablito pyro marketplace a
scorched ruin, with more than three dozen dead and scores
injured, leaving the town to grieve and, in March, to solemnly
honor the victims--with even more fireworks.  Tultepec is the
center of Mexico's fireworks industry, with 30,000 people
dependent on explosives for a living.  Wrote The Guardian,
"Gunpowder" is in "their blood." [The Guardian (London), 3-
10-2017]

Miscellaneous Economic Indicators

* (1) "Bentley" the cat went missing in Marina Del Rey, Calif.,
on February 26th and as of press time had not been located--
despite a posted reward of $20,000.  (A "wanted" photo is
online, if you're interested.)  (2) British snack food
manufacturer Walkers advertised in February for a part-time
professional chip taster, at the equivalent of $10.55 an hour.
(3) An Australian state tribunal ordered a cold-calling
telemarketer to pay $90,000 for selling a farm couple
2,000 ink cartridges (for their one printer) by repeated pitches. 
[Fox News, 3-8-2017] [Leicester Mercury, 2-23-2017] [The
Age (Melbourne), 3-9-2017]

Perspective

* American chef Dan Barber staged a temporary "pop-up"
restaurant in London in March at which he and other renowned
chefs prepared the fanciest meals they could imagine using
only food scraps donated from local eateries.  A primary
purpose was to chastise First World eaters (especially
Americans) for wasting food, not only in the kitchen and on the
plate but to satisfy our craving for meat (for example, requiring
diversion of 80 percent of the world's corn and soy just to feed
edible animals).  Among Barber's March "WastED" dishes
were a char-grilled meatless beetburger and pork braised in
leftover fruit solids. [TreeHugger.com, 3-3-2017]
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/dine-fancy-food-scraps-
wasted-pop-restaurant-london.html

Undignified Deaths

* (1) Smoking Kills:  A 78-year-old man in Easton, Pa., died in
February from injuries caused when he lit his cigarette but
accidentally set afire his hooded sweatshirt.  (2) Pornography
Kills:  A Mexico City man fell to his death recently in the city's
San Antonio neighborhood when he climbed to turn off a
highway video sign on the Periferico Sur highway that was
showing a pornographic clip apparently placed by a hacker. 
[NJ.com, 2-28-2017] [Metro News (London), 3-6-2017]

Least Competent Criminals

* Oops!  An officer in Harrington, Del., approaching an
illegally-parked driver at Liberty Plaza Shopping Center in
March, had suspicions aroused when she gave him a name
other than "Keyonna Waters" (which was the name on the
employee name tag she was wearing).  Properly ID'ed, she was
arrested for driving with a suspended license.  [WMDT-TV
(Salisbury, Md.), 3-6-2017]

The Passing Parade

* (1) In his third try of the year in January, Li Longlong of
China surpassed his own Guinness Book record by climbing 36
stairs while headstanding (beating his previous "34").  (Among
the Guinness regulations:  no touching walls and no pausing
more than five seconds per step.)  (2) The online live-stream of
the extremely pregnant giraffe "April" (at New York's Animal
Adventure Park) has created such a frenzy (and exposed the
tiny attention spans of viewers) that, as of March 3rd, they had
spent a cumulative 1,036 years just watching.  (Erin Dietrich of
Myrtle Beach, S.C., 39 weeks pregnant herself, mocked the
lunacy by livestreaming her own belly while wearing a giraffe
mask.) (By press time, Erin had delivered; April, not.)

A News of the Weird Classic (June 2013)
                                  
* Maryland state troopers stopped when they caught sight of a
drummer working out all alone on the side of traffic-packed
Interstate 695 near Windsor Mill Road in Baltimore on May
21st [2013], at about 10:30 a.m.  As the troopers later reported,
the man had run out of gas and, rather than just sit around in his
car, had set up his full drum kit on the shoulder and practiced
while he awaited assistance.  After a utility truck arrived, with
gasoline, the drummer packed up and went on his way.
[Baltimore Sun, 5-21-2013]

     Thanks This Week to Kevin Corwin and Alyssa Grosso,
and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T.
Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt
Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and
Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein,
Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott
Langill, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark
Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter
Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley,
and Jerry Whittle).
                    ****
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