News of the Weird
News of the Weird: Blessings, Guaranteed
More and more churches — hundreds, according to a June Christianity Today report — offer hesitant parishioners a “money-back guarantee” if they tithe 10 percent, or more, of their income for 90 days, but then feel that God blesses them insufficiently in...
News of the Weird: A Longtime Recurring Theme Peaks
In May, an apparently devout woman named Katy Vasquez of Winter Park, Florida, posted a sincerely written entry on Facebook — and told Huffington Post in an interview — that she had just seen a “sign from God,” a cross, as a smudge in her infant’s...
News of the Weird: Getting Fannies in the Seats
The Bunyadi opened in London in June for a three-month run as the world’s newest nude-dining experience, and, since it only seats 42, it now has a reservation waiting list of 40,000. Besides the nakedness, the Bunyadi creates “true liberation,” said...
News of the Weird: App Nauseam
In May, the Norwegian Consumer Council staged a live, 32-hour TV broadcast marathon — a word-for-word reading of the “terms of service” for internet applications Instagram, Spotify and more than two dozen others, totaling 900 pages and 250,000 words of...
News of the Weird: Who’s a Good Boy?
Life is good now for British men who “identify” as dogs and puppies, as evidenced by a BBC documentary, Secret Life of the Human Pups, showing men in body outfits — one a Lycra-suited Dalmatian, “Spot” — exhibiting “sexual”...
News of the Weird: Cashing In
By 2009, when Zimbabwe’s central bank gave up on controlling inflation, its largest currency was the 100 trillion-dollar bill — barely enough for bus fare in Harare and not even worth the paper needed to print it. However, that 100 trillion-dollar note has...
News of the Weird: People With Issues
Pixee Fox reported in May that she was recovering nicely from cosmetic rib-removal surgery, performed by one of the few doctors in the world who offers it, Dr. Barry Eppley of Carmel, Indiana. Though she has had more than a dozen “beautifying” procedures,...
News of the Weird: Medical Miracle
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced they had recently transmitted high-speed digital data through slabs of pork loin and beef liver. The signal cleared the muscle and gristle so cleanly that it permitted streaming of high-definition...
News of the Weird: Google Sees the Future
Google filed a U.S. Patent Office application on April 28 for a vision-improvement device in liquid form that, once inserted — i.e., injected directly into the eyeball — solidifies into not only a lens replacement for the eye, but an instrument that carries its own...
News of the Weird: Jail Is Hell
The eye-catching Vietnamese model and Playboy, Venezuela edition, Playmate Angie Vu complained to the New York Daily News in April that her five-plus months in jail in Brooklyn have been “torture” and “cruel” because of her lack of access to...
News of the Weird: That’s Entertainment, Baby!
By Chuck ShepherdOne notably hypersuccessful YouTube channel — 700,000 subscribers — features Lauri Vuohensilta of Finland pulverizing various objects such as a bowling ball, in a 100-ton hydraulic press. Said Vuohensilta, “I think it’s built into every...
News of the Weird: The Internet’s Promise Fulfilled — For Men
Japan’s Tenga toy company appears to be first on the market with a virtual reality bodysuit (for use with the Oculus Rift “Sexy Beach Premium Resort” 3-D game) containing a genital stimulator and the sensation of “groping” breasts —...
News of the wEiRd: The Power of Precedent
Department of Veterans Affairs employee Elizabeth Rivera Rivera, 39, was fired after her arrest, followed by a February guilty plea, for armed robbery, but when she was sentenced only to probation, an arbitrator ordered the VA to rehire her — and give her back pay she...
News of the Weird: Hardly a ‘Do-Nothing’ Congress
In March, U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas, chairman of the House Rules Committee, introduced a resolution to recognize magic as one of America’s “national treasure(s),” backed by a 711-word paean urging all to “support and protect” the...
News of the Weird: Glaciers and Gender
University of Oregon professor Mark Carey produced a 10,300-word journal article in January proposing a new sensitivity to Earth’s melting icecaps: a “feminist glaciology framework” to “generate robust analysis of gender, power and...
News of the Weird: Take That, Portland!
Seattle’s ambitious Office of Arts & Culture has allocated $10,000 this year to pay a poet or writer to create a work while present on the city’s Fremont Bridge drawbridge. The office’s deputy director told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in January that the city...
News of the Weird: The Square Wheel of Justice
In February, New York’s highest court finally said “enough” to the seemingly endless delays on a multimillion-dollar judgment for negligence that occurred 23 years ago. Linda Nash had sued, among others, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey for injuries she...
News of the Weird: Cat Culture
Longtime National Symphony cellist David Teie announced in November that his crowdfunding project was hugely successful, freeing him to produce an album of music meaningful to cats. Cats, for example, relax in response to the earliest sound of their mother’s purring,...
News of the Weird: Intelligent Design
Wired.com’s most recent “Absurd Creature” feature shows a toad devouring a larva of a much-smaller beetle, but the “absurdity” is that the larva is in charge and that the toad will soon be beetle food. The larva’s Darwinian advantage is that, inside the toad, it bites...
News of the Weird: The Well Armed Woman
Even though concealed-carry gun permit-holders in Texas can now “open carry,” pistol-packing women concerned with fashion are not limited to traditional firearms in ordinary cowboy holsters. An online company, The Well Armed Woman, offers such carry options as stylish...
News of the Weird: Newest Fashionistas
In January, the upscale Italian fashion house Dolce & Gabbana introduced stylish hijabs and abayas aimed at Muslim women unafraid to call attention to themselves as they exercise their obliged modesty. D&G’s marketing effort even accessorized models’...
News of the Weird: Streaming News
The “public art” statues unveiled in January by Fort Myers, Florida, Mayor Randy Henderson included a metal structure by sculptor Edugardo Carmona of a man walking a dog, with the dog “lifting his leg” beside a pole. Only after inspecting the piece more closely did...
The New Grade Inflation
They are simply “‘spas’ designed to attract teenagers,” according to one university official — plush, state-of-the-art “training” complexes built by universities in the richest athletic conferences to entice elite 17-year-old athletes to come play for and, perhaps,...
News of the Weird: Hard Times for Science
A tractor-trailer driver with a load of bottled water tried to make it over an historic bridge in Paoli, Indiana, on Christmas Day, with the obvious outcome when 35 tons of water starts across a limit-6-tons span. The driver told police she saw the 6-ton sign, but did...
New World Order
In December, Canada’s supportive organization The Transgender Project released a biographical video of the former Paul Wolscht, 46, and the father of seven children with his ex-wife, Marie, describing his new life as not only a female, but a 6-year-old female,...
One-man Arsenal
According to the flabbergasted sheriff of rural Chesterfield County, South Carolina, “This has completely changed our definition of (what constitutes) an ‘ass-load’ of guns.” Brent Nicholson, 51, had been storing more than 7,000 firearms in his home and a storage...
News of the Weird: Are We Safe?
As if 2015 weren’t bad enough for the Department of Homeland Security — e.g., in June, internal DHS tests revealed that its Transportation Security Administration failed to stop 67 of 70 guns passing through airport screeners — a U.S. congressman revealed in December...
News of the Weird: ‘I want you to have as much biz as a pimp in a nursing home.’
In November, lawyer Michael Petersen of Appleton, Wisconsin, was ordered by county judge Philip Kirk — in a sentence for contempt of court — to inform every client he acquires in the following 12 months that Petersen is a “crook,” “cheat,” “thief” and “liar.” Kirk...
Wait, What?
After certain takeoffs and landings were delayed on Nov. 7 at Paris’ Orly airport (several days before the terrorist attacks), a back trace on the problem forced the airport to disclose that its crucial “DECOR” computer system still runs on Windows 3.1 software —...
News of the Weird: It’s Snot Hygienic
The manager of the agency in Louisville, Kentucky that is responsible for, among other things, development planning, zoning changes and historic landmarks revealed in November that his headquarters has a “boogers” problem and ordered users of the third-floor men’s...
News of the Weird: The Patient Will See You Now
Professional patients now help train would-be doctors, especially in the most delicate and dreaded of exams (gynecological and prostate), where a becalming technique improves outcomes. One “teaching associate” of Eastern Virginia Medical School told The Washington...
News of the Weird: Good One?
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, declared an emergency on Oct. 30, when one of its soldiers had the bright idea to arrive for a Halloween party on base dressed as a suicide bomber, with realistic-looking canisters in a wired vest. Gates to the post, headquarters of Army...
News of the Weird: Annals of Justice
A 2015 decision of the Georgia Supreme Court has created a puzzle for drunk driver enforcement. In Georgia, and other states, blood alcohol tests are “voluntary” to bypass; meaning drivers can’t be forced, or even pressured, to endure a test that ultimately helps to...
News of the Weird: Poor little rich guys
Poor Little Rich Guys Among those struggling with psychological issues in modern America are the rich “one-percenters” — especially the mega-rich “one-percent of one-percenters” — according to counselors specializing in assuaging guilt and moderating class hatred....
News of the Weird: Doing Time Right
In October, a Harvard University debate team — three-time recent champions of the American Parliamentary Debate Association — lost a match to a team of prisoners from the maximum-security Eastern New York Correctional Facility. Prison debaters “are held to the exact...
News of the Weird
Two suburban Minneapolis elementary schools this fall hired a consulting firm to advise officials on kids’ recess, and the leading recommendations — promoting “safety” and “inclusiveness” — were elimination of “contact games” in favor of, for example, hopscotch. Some...
News of the Weird: Protecting Our Freedoms
The bold, shameless leering of David Zaitzeff is legendary around Seattle’s parks, and more so since he filed a civil complaint against the city in September challenging its anti-voyeurism law for placing a “chilling effect” on his photography of immodestly dressed...
News of the Weird: Priorities
A New York University Center for Justice study released in September warned that, unless major upgrades are made quickly, 43 states will conduct 2016 elections on electronic voting machines at least 10 years old and woefully suspect. Those states use machines no...
News of the Weird: From Cuba, With Love
One of the remaining 116 Guantanamo Bay prisoners (a man suspected of having been close to Osama bin Laden) has a dating profile on Match.com captioned “detained but ready to mingle,” the man’s lawyer Carlos Warner told Al Jazeera America in September. Muhammad Rahim...
News of the Weird: Your English Teacher Was Right
In September, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery concluded that records of an investigation need not be released to the Memphis City Council — because there was no comma. The law requires the records’ release “only in compliance with a subpoena or an order of...
News of the Weird: A Paper Drone
The Federal Aviation Administration recently granted — likely for the first time ever — an application to fly a paper airplane. Prominent drone advocate Peter Sachs had applied to conduct commercial aerial photography with his “aircraft,” a Tailor Toys model with a...
News of the Weird: Pope Mania
Muslim clerics complain of the commercialization of the holy city of Mecca during the annual hajj pilgrimages, but for Pope Francis’ visits to New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia in mid-September, shameless street vendors and entrepreneurs already appear to...News of the Weird: Living Small
Apartment buyers in ridiculously expensive Hong Kong are now eagerly paying up to the equivalent of $500,000 (U.S.) for units not much bigger than a U.S. parking space (and typically physically self-measured by the applicant’s wing-span). An agent told The Wall Street...
News of the Weird: Cecil Speaks
The distress across the Western world in July over the big-game killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe was apparently misdirected, according to veteran “animal communicator” Karen Anderson of Elk, Washington, who told Facebook and Internet visitors...News of the Weird: Pets of the One Percent
“The worshipful treatment of pets may be the thing that unites all Americans,” wrote an Atlantic Magazine blogger in July, describing the luxury terminal for animals under construction at New York’s JFK airport. The ARK will offer shower stalls for traveling horses,...News of the Weird: An App for That, Too
Among the health and fitness apps for computers and smartphones are sex-tracking programs to document the variety of acts and positions, degrees of frenzy and lengths of sessions (via an on-bed motion detector) — and menstrual trackers aimed at males (to help judge...
News of the Weird: The 90-Minute Day
The whimsical premise of the iconic movie “Groundhog Day” (that someone can wake up every day believing it is the previous day) has largely come to life for a patient of a British psychologist writing recently in the journal Neurocase. Dr. Gerald Burgess’ patient,...News of the Weird: Supplemental Protesters
Among the protesters at New York City’s Gay Pride Parade on the Sunday after the Supreme Court’s historic gay-marriage decision was a group of men outfitted in Jewish prayer garments and representing the Jewish Political Action Committee. They carried signs reading,...News of the Weird: Failure Is The Best Option
The enormous compensation CEOs of large corporations receive is justified in part by their bringing prosperity to their shareholders, but last year (an excellent one for most investors), two of the nation’s best-paid chief executives “earned” handsome raises despite...News of the Weird: Too Real
California inventor Matt McMullen, who makes the world’s most realistic life-sized female doll, the RealDoll (with exquisite skin texture and facial and body architecture, and which sells for $5,000 to $10,000, depending on customization), is working with engineers...News of the Weird: New York State of Crime
Gregory Reddick, 54, and his employer, SJQ Sightseeing Tours, filed a lawsuit in June against New York City for “harass(ing)” them and hampering their ability to rip off tourists, specifically, interfering with their “right” to sell tickets for $200 or more for trips...News of the Weird: Fore!
Researchers studying the human-brain-eating Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea reported in a June journal article that they have identified the specific “prion” resistance gene that appears to offer complete protection against mad cow disease and perhaps other...News of the Weird: Living Small
Apartment buyers in ridiculously expensive Hong Kong are now eagerly paying up to the equivalent of $500,000 (U.S.) for units not much bigger than a U.S. parking space (and typically physically self-measured by the applicant’s wing-span). An agent told The Wall Street...News of the Weird: Eating Silicon Style
Silicon Valley code-writers and engineers work long hours — with apparently little time for “food” as we know it. Eating is “time wasted,” in the words of celebrity inventor Elon Musk, and normal meals a “marketing facade,” said another Valley bigwig. The New York...News of the Weird: Crime Does Pay
When officials in Richmond, California, learned in 2009 that 70 percent of the city’s murders and firearms assaults were directly linked to 17 people, they decided on a bold program: to pay off those 17 to behave themselves. For a budget of about $1.2 million a year,...News of the Weird: Revealing Art Class
Among the requirements of “Visual Arts 104A” at the University of California, San Diego is that, for the final exam, students would make a presentation while nude, in a darkened room. Professor Ricardo Dominguez (who would also be nude for the finals) told KGTV in May...News of the Weird: Happy Copyright Infringement to You?
There’s hardly a more generic song in America than “Happy Birthday to You,” but to this day (until a judge renders a decision in a pending case), Warner/Chappel Music is still trying to make big dollars off of the 16-word ditty (15 original words plus a user-supplied...News of the Weird: Dookie Donations
Already, healthy people can donate blood, sperm, and eggs, but now the nonprofit OpenBiome offers donors $40 for bowel movements — to supply “fecal transplants” for patients with nasty C. difficile bacterial infections. (“Healthy” contents are transplanted into the...News of the Weird: Islam-Appropriate Adult Toys
Saudi Arabia’s very first sex accessory shop (in the holy city of Mecca) should be opening soon, according to news reports — operated by a Moroccan Muslim, backed by the German adult mega-retailer Beate Uhse, and supposedly fully compliant with Islamic law. Owner...E-Edition
Best Of 2024
Readers Choice 2024
