Radical Dentistry
Radical dentistry was on display in November in London’s Science Gallery, where installations offered “art-science collaborations” — including Taiwan artist Kuang-Yi Ku’s “Fellatio Modification Project.” Former dentist Ku, complaining that textbooks on mouths tragically under-regard their value in sex, created (the ordinary way) a custom retainer for the client’s mouth but then added rubber “bumps” and “cones” and “ribs” and “ripples” that might be pleasing to a partner.
Suspicions Confirmed
Evolution, according to scientists, likely explains why some prey develop defense mechanisms to avoid predators, i.e., the prey who fail to develop them are unable to procreate because they’re dead, but a team of scientists from Sweden and Australia recently concluded that something similar happens in a species of fish in which males mate basically by huge-appendaged rape. Growing nine generations of the species in the lab, the researchers concluded that the females who can avoid the “rapist” evolve larger brains than those who fall victim. Researchers, loosely speaking, thus concluded that as males grow bigger penises, females grow bigger brains to outsmart them.
Recurring Themes
Whistleblower goes to jail; responsible industry executives make millions. Long-time Mississippi environmental activist Tennie White is 27 months into a 40-month sentence for “falsifying” three $150 tests in her laboratory, but high-ranking executives at the Kerr-McGee chemical conglomerate made millions on the case White helped expose: leakage of cancer-causing creosote into communities, including White’s Columbus, Mississippi, neighborhood. A detailed investigation by TheIntercept.com in November noted the executives’ brilliant response to the 25,000 creosote lawsuits nationwide: put all the liability into one outlying company (eventually going bankrupt) but selling off, highly profitably, the rest of the firm.
Compelling Explanations
Texas is among the most enthusiastic states for jailing low-income arrestees who cannot pay a money bail, especially during devastating family hardships, and the four Houston bail magistrates are particularly harsh, according to a recent report of the Texas Organizing Project. After hearing one financially overwhelmed woman beg sarcastically that $1,000 bail is “nothing” next to her other bills, unsympathetic magistrate Joe Licata shrugged, “It’s nothing to me, either. It’s job security.”
Pervert — Or Not
1.) When police in Port Orange, Florida, arrested Anthony Coiro, 76, in November, he admitted that he had a stash of “crazy” pornography, some featuring children. However, he adamantly insisted, “I’m not a pedophile. I’m just a pervert,” adding, “a law-abiding pervert.” He faces 52 counts. 2.) In November in Osaka, Japan, an unnamed arrestee apparently had his sexual molestation charge against a woman on a crowded train dramatically downgraded. “Actually,” the man indignantly told the judge, he is not a pervert, but just a pickpocket (a lesser crime). The victim had testified that the man had brushed against her for “3 seconds” and not the “30” she originally told police.
Weird Quantities Recently in the News
1.) Price tag for one round of a 155mm projectile shot from the Navy’s USS Zumwalt: $800,000. 2.) Trees killed in California by the now-5-year-old drought: 102,000,000. 3.) Recent finding of water farthest from the Earth’s surface: 621 miles down (one-third of the way to the Earth’s core). 4.) Odds that Statistics Lecturer Nicholas Kapoor (Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut) said he played against in buying a $15 Powerball ticket: 1 in 913,129 (but he won $100,000!). 5.) Speed police calculated Hector Faire, 19, reaching in an Oklahoma police chase: 208 mph. They got him, anyway. 6.) Different languages spoken by children in Buffalo, New York, public classrooms: 85.
Hardly Need a Breathalyzer
1.) Michelle Keys, 35, among those joyously caught up in Iowa’s upset win over highly ranked Michigan in football in November and celebrating that night in Iowa City, was slurring and incoherent and told police she was certain she was standing in Ames, Iowa (120 miles away), and had just watched the “Iowa State – Arizona” game — a matchup not played since 1968. She registered .225. 2.) A 38-year-old woman was arrested in Springwood, Australia, in November when police stopped her car at 3 a.m. at an intersection with a children’s swing set wedged onto the roof of her SUV. She had shortly before mistakenly driven through someone’s back yard and through the swing set. .188.
Perspective
“Sexually-based offenses,” a TV show intones, are “particularly heinous,” but to the small Delaware liberal arts Wesley College, according to the U.S. Department of Education, even an accusation of sexual misconduct is so heinous that there was no need even to interview the alleged wrongdoer before expelling him. An informal meeting did occur, but only after the investigation was completed. The expulsion occurred even though the victim herself had not originally accused that particular student. The expelled student’s offense was to have helped set up video for a consensual sex encounter that was live-streamed without consent. The Department of Education accepted a settlement in which Wesley agreed to revamp its code of student rights.
Recent Alarming Headlines
“Man Mixing LSD and Cough Syrup Saves Dog From Imaginary Fire” (WNYT-TV, Albany, NY, 10-15-2016). Panicked, he had first sought help from neighbors who were unpersuaded by the sight of a fireless fire.
“Santa Claus Speaks Out Against North Pole Ban of Marijuana Sales” (KTUU-TV, Anchorage, AK). Cannabis is legal in Alaska unless towns ban it, and the legally-named Mr. Claus needs it for cancer pain.
“Dog On Loose Causes Sheep To Have Sex With Their Sisters in Walton On The Hill” (Surrey Mirror, Redhill, England, 9-22- 2016). The wild dog has wrecked a planned mating program, leaving female sheep to canoodle with each other.
Least Competent Artists
Apparently, the plan by a 33-year-old unlicensed driver in an unregistered vehicle in Perth, Australia, in November to keep from being stopped by police was to print “Police” in large, “official”-looking letters on the sides of her white Hyundai, using a blue dry-erase board marker. She was, of course, quickly stopped by police.
A woman in a quiet north Minneapolis neighborhood told reporters she became fearful after seeing a large swastika spraypainted on a garage door down a nearby alley just after election day. Problem: The base “X” of the correct design has “hooks” that should always extend to the right, clockwise; three of the Minneapolis “artist’s” awkwardly hook left.
The Passing Parade
1.) In November, a court in Christchurch, New Zealand, ordered the local police to “undo” the 493 bottles’ worth of liquor they had recently poured down the city’s drain after raiding an unlicensed bar. The court said the police must pay a pumping company to recall the hooch because of environmental regulations. 2.) In November, the Littleton, Colorado, city government, faced with the need to blot sticky tar on 120 streets whose potholes it was filling, bypassed expensive “detackifiers” in favor of stuffing toilet paper over the tar, causing the streets to have a trick-or-treat look.
A News of the Weird Classic (February 2013)
An estimated 3.2 million kids ages 5-12 take mixed-martial-arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults’ Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a January (2013) report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the swaggering, mohawked Derek “Crazy” Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina “The Black Widow” Awana, 7. Kids under age 12 fight each other without regard to gender, and blows above the collarbone, and on the groin, kidneys, and back are prohibited. “Crazy” delivered merciless forearm chest smashes before the referee intervened, and the Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via arm-bar submission. Parental involvement is said to be either fear of their child’s getting hurt or encouragement to be meaner.
