Chuck’s Hand-Picked Overnight Weird News for Thursday
Illuminati agent blows cover, winds up stuck in air vent at museum
Richard Smith, 25, had to call 911 when he got stuck, but he did nothing wrong because his boss in the worldwide conspiracy, Agent Womack, had merely sent him to the wrong place to confiscate the Soviet-made MERV66S-22AN warhead (with 30 lbs. of enriched uranium and a plutonium trigger). Turns out the helicopter that dropped him onto the roof for the mission had flown to the museum in Knoxville, Tenn., when it was the museum in Memphis that had the warhead. [Note from Weird Universe's fact-checker: That part about being stuck in the air vent when police arrived is a fact.] WBIR-TV (Knoxville)
Comments 'illuminati_museum'
Evolutionary biologists spar over, um, the origin of the anus
No, seriously. They think organisms started with just one opening for everything, but then it got bigger to accommodate various functions, and eventually the egress got separated from the ingress. Possibly. In fact, the reproductive tract may have started out as an anus. "The issue remains open," said a commenter to the punchline-inspiring journal article. Nature
Comments 'origin_anus'
Update: Lab-grown rat brain cells can power a robot
The latest work from Reading University's Kevin Warwick, the prolific remote-brain researcher, shows that brain cells are smart enough on their own, in isolation, to know how to form up and do more complex tasks. [Previously, News of the Weird has reported on Warwick's pioneering microchip work, e.g., communicating with his wife solely by their respective arm-planted chips and his routine ability to open his office door and turn on the lights just by thinking about it. NOTW 592 (6-11-1999), NOTW 644 (6-9-2000), NOTW 700 (7-8-2001).] Daily Telegraph (London)
Comments 'rat_braincells'
Update: The District of Calamity govt's tax-refund scam
The mastermind, "Mother Harriette" Walters, 51, pleaded guilty and will serve at least 15 yrs in prison for ripping at least $48m from Washington, D.C., taxpayers. Based on her cooperation since her arrest, prosecutors now believe (a) the scam was going on before Walters took it over in 1989; (b) she took it to new levels, eventually, to a hgh of $8.6m in 2004, (c) outside auditors, inside supervisors, and four mayors never even came close to discovering the scam, (d) even though in several aspects it was amateurish, and (e) if it wasn't for that clerk in a Sun Trust branch located inside a supermarket, who questioned a ridiculously large check and wouldn't let go of the suspicion, Walters'd still be working her magic. Washington Post
Comments 'harriette_walters'
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
A 41-yr-old guy was convicted in Philadelphia of having more than a million child porn images on his computer and of setting up video cameras in a kids' bathroom (and believe me, you don't want to know what his minimum age of preference is). He's also here because his name is Woman. Mr. Woman. Mr. John Woman. [CORRECTION: Well, no, it's not; it's actually Worman, but it was Woman on an earlier version of this story.] WCAU-TV (Philadelphia)
Comments 'john_woman'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Jacob Weiss, 19, Vail, Colo., might have convinced a pal that killing himself wouldn't be such a bad thing. KUSA-TV (Denver)
Comments 'jacob_weiss'
More Things to Worry About on Thursday
The Storchen restaurant in Switzerland plans to introduce entrees cooked in women's breast milk . . . . . The governor of Bavaria, promoting Oktoberfest, said a lot of Germans could drain one of those 2-liter bottles full of beer and still be OK to drive . . . . . A tractor-trailer collision in central Florida spilled a Treasury shipment of almost 4 million nickels all over Interstate 95 [Link Corrected] . . . . . Estonian authorities have charged 11 people with creating a 1.2-mile-long pipeline running across the border with Russia, pumping in vodka (because its Russian price was one-third the European-Union-induced price) [Link Corrected]. Today's Newsrangers: Jim Peterson, Emory Kimbrough, Gabriel Fig, Karl Olson
Comments 'worry_080918'
Richard Smith, 25, had to call 911 when he got stuck, but he did nothing wrong because his boss in the worldwide conspiracy, Agent Womack, had merely sent him to the wrong place to confiscate the Soviet-made MERV66S-22AN warhead (with 30 lbs. of enriched uranium and a plutonium trigger). Turns out the helicopter that dropped him onto the roof for the mission had flown to the museum in Knoxville, Tenn., when it was the museum in Memphis that had the warhead. [Note from Weird Universe's fact-checker: That part about being stuck in the air vent when police arrived is a fact.] WBIR-TV (Knoxville)
Comments 'illuminati_museum'
Evolutionary biologists spar over, um, the origin of the anus
No, seriously. They think organisms started with just one opening for everything, but then it got bigger to accommodate various functions, and eventually the egress got separated from the ingress. Possibly. In fact, the reproductive tract may have started out as an anus. "The issue remains open," said a commenter to the punchline-inspiring journal article. Nature
Comments 'origin_anus'
Update: Lab-grown rat brain cells can power a robot
The latest work from Reading University's Kevin Warwick, the prolific remote-brain researcher, shows that brain cells are smart enough on their own, in isolation, to know how to form up and do more complex tasks. [Previously, News of the Weird has reported on Warwick's pioneering microchip work, e.g., communicating with his wife solely by their respective arm-planted chips and his routine ability to open his office door and turn on the lights just by thinking about it. NOTW 592 (6-11-1999), NOTW 644 (6-9-2000), NOTW 700 (7-8-2001).] Daily Telegraph (London)
Comments 'rat_braincells'
Update: The District of Calamity govt's tax-refund scam
The mastermind, "Mother Harriette" Walters, 51, pleaded guilty and will serve at least 15 yrs in prison for ripping at least $48m from Washington, D.C., taxpayers. Based on her cooperation since her arrest, prosecutors now believe (a) the scam was going on before Walters took it over in 1989; (b) she took it to new levels, eventually, to a hgh of $8.6m in 2004, (c) outside auditors, inside supervisors, and four mayors never even came close to discovering the scam, (d) even though in several aspects it was amateurish, and (e) if it wasn't for that clerk in a Sun Trust branch located inside a supermarket, who questioned a ridiculously large check and wouldn't let go of the suspicion, Walters'd still be working her magic. Washington Post
Comments 'harriette_walters'
People Whose Sex Lives Are Worse Than Yours
A 41-yr-old guy was convicted in Philadelphia of having more than a million child porn images on his computer and of setting up video cameras in a kids' bathroom (and believe me, you don't want to know what his minimum age of preference is). He's also here because his name is Woman. Mr. Woman. Mr. John Woman. [CORRECTION: Well, no, it's not; it's actually Worman, but it was Woman on an earlier version of this story.] WCAU-TV (Philadelphia)
Comments 'john_woman'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
Jacob Weiss, 19, Vail, Colo., might have convinced a pal that killing himself wouldn't be such a bad thing. KUSA-TV (Denver)
Comments 'jacob_weiss'
More Things to Worry About on Thursday
The Storchen restaurant in Switzerland plans to introduce entrees cooked in women's breast milk . . . . . The governor of Bavaria, promoting Oktoberfest, said a lot of Germans could drain one of those 2-liter bottles full of beer and still be OK to drive . . . . . A tractor-trailer collision in central Florida spilled a Treasury shipment of almost 4 million nickels all over Interstate 95 [Link Corrected] . . . . . Estonian authorities have charged 11 people with creating a 1.2-mile-long pipeline running across the border with Russia, pumping in vodka (because its Russian price was one-third the European-Union-induced price) [Link Corrected]. Today's Newsrangers: Jim Peterson, Emory Kimbrough, Gabriel Fig, Karl Olson
Comments 'worry_080918'
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