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 on the Staten Island Ferry — which is actually free to ride. Reddick was wearing an (unauthorized) “Authorized Ticket Agent” jacket when arrested, and according to a New York Post account, believes he operates legally because he misunderstands a technicality in a 2013 court case. Prosecutors, who described the waterfront tourist-exploitation scene as “the wild west,” found Reddick with seven dates of birth, five aliases and six Social Security numbers.
Can’t possibly be true
• Doctors at a hospital in Dongyang, China, removed 420 kidney stones from a single patient in June (a “Mr. He”). One of the surgeons told reporters that a soy-heavy diet of tofu was probably to blame. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the most stones removed from one kidney during surgery (in India in 2009 in a three-hour operation) is (this is not a misprint) 172,155.
• In May, the Museum of Modern Arts in Krakow, Poland, began showing a video of naked men and women entering a room and playing a game of tag — then revealing that that particular room was actually a building in a Holocaust gas-chamber facility in Auschwitz. The idea, apparently, was to bring three affected nations (Poland, Germany, and Israel) together, and among the sponsors of the exhibit was the Israeli embassy in Warsaw, despite criticism that the work was somewhat “repulsive and offensive.” A similar project opened in Tartu, Estonia, in February, but was closed almost immediately after objections from Jewish-advocacy organizations.
• U.S. students may be clever, but they apparently badly trail Chinese students in the genius of cheating on exams (and especially on the use of cheat-enabling technology). The government’s newest anti-fraud weapon, employed recently in the city of Luoyang during the crucial university-determining tests, is a six-propeller drone that can hover above a cavernous exam hall, trying to pinpoint the locations inside in which designated ace test-takers are radio-transmitting correct answers to their clients, whose tiny earbuds are worn deep in ear canals. Cheating students also use beverage-bottle cameras, ordinary-appearing eyeglasses that can scan and transmit images, and fingerprint film to fool fingerprint scanners that otherwise would root out test-taking ringers.
• France’s daily La Provence reported in May that at least one enterprising drug dealer in Marseilles had begun distributing “loyalty cards” to its best customers, offering a 10-euro discount on future sales after that customer’s card was full (all 10 squares stamped from previous sales). Said one buyer, “I thought I was hallucinating. I thought I was at a pizzeria or something.” The card also expressed thanks for the patronage and reminded the customer of operating hours, 11 a.m. to midnight.
• Rehab will be difficult: Laquanda Newby, 25, was charged with three counts of child abuse on June 7 at the county courthouse in Richmond, Virginia, after police spotted her car with two children locked inside on a day in which the temperature reached the 90s. Newby had parked at the courthouse that day in order to attend her hearing on charges that on May 26, she had locked her kids in a hot car while she was out on errands.
Wait, what?
Two students at Florida’s Valencia College filed a federal lawsuit in May against the school and three instructors for forcing them to undergo “transvaginal probes” as part of their sonography (ultrasound) curriculum. According to the lawsuit, the school insisted that students learn the probing on each other because, as an instructor said, “Experience is the best teacher.” The plaintiffs also charged that some instructors and a student leader (dubbed the “TransVag Queen”) made inappropriate, sexualized comments about bodies during the demonstrations.
