News of the Weird 2.0 (October 14, 2013)

News of the Weird 2.0
Angst, Confusion, Cynicism, Ridicule

Prime Cuts of Underreported News from Last Week, Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
October 14, 2013
(datelines October 5-October 12) (links correct as of October 13)

Knowing how frenzied we Westerners have become (led by the 24-hour TV news cycles), Norway has decided to taunt us. Its public television station said it would soon do 5 hours, live, of knitting. Associated Press via Greensboro (N.C.) News & Record

Recurring Theme: Husbands in Orthodox Judaism can get one-party divorces, but for wives, divorce requires consent of the hubby, which is sometimes not forthcoming just out of spite. Enter rabbis (like these in New Jersey) who do a sorta-mob-like workaround (one of several Orthodox workarounds we’ve covered in NOTW, e.g., .M184), which in this case seems to require, um, cattle prods to encourage the husbands. Gotta maintain those sacred traditions, at any cost. ABC News /// NOTW .M184 (10-17-2010) [scroll to 7th story]

Readers’ Choice: (1) Under Ohio law, Donald Eugene Miller Jr., now 61, was declared dead in 1994 when he went off the grid, but he came back in 2005, and since then has been trying to become un-dead, legally. No can do, said a judge last week. (The federal law may be different, though.) (2) Lucas Burke, 21, and Ethan Keeler, 20, trying to break into a safe in Hopkinton, N.H., with an acetylene torch, succeeded (and, but for all the fireworks being kept in the safe, the men would still be around to brag). The Courier (Findlay, Ohio) /// Union Leader (Manchester)

Family Values: Cliff Oshman, 64, is no ordinary pedophile seeking an online hook-up. (Ordinary part: yes, the girl was a cop.) (Not ordinary: The hookup was not just for him but for his family, and he had brought the wife and kid along to meet their new addition.) Orlando Sentinel

Cliches Come to Life: Voting for the president of Azerbaijan was scheduled for last Wednesday and went down as expected--except for the fact that the gov’t accidentally released the final vote totals on Tuesday. (Actually, President Aliyev polled better than expected.) Washington Post

The Continuing War on Science: (1) Saudi Arabia and 5 other Gulf states announced they would henceforth bar gays from entering their countries and base their gaydar on medical science! (2) In Pakistan, when a probably-Taliban bomb goes off in a an office of anti-polio activists, killing two, it’s still not nearly the death threat among Pakistanis who will fall to the polio epidemic this year because so few people believe in vaccines. World’s Greatest Newspaper /// BBC News

Editor's Notes

Suspicions Confirmed: Reading between the lines to learn what actually happens to “the work” during a gov’t shutdown, we learn (from, for example, this Wall Street Journal piece) that the federal workforce will eventually make up almost all the work and do it on the regular clock without overtime--thus raising the question, What did they used to do during the hours of the day that, in the future, they’ll be using to catch up from shutdown work?

More Deep Thoughts: (1) London’s Daily Mail and The Guardian have both opened way-more-than-“token” bureaus in major U.S. cities, intending to compete globally with U.S. news giants. More and more, they’ll be breaking U.S. news. (2) The Onion last week devoted a story to one of Yr Editor’s favorite tasty bites: that the people at the bottom of a public opinion poll (those 3 or 4 standard deviations away, say, the 5 percent recently who actually think Congress is doing a “good” job) should be more newsworthy than the majority on the issue. (3) American fascination with the power of “one person, standing up against the system” grows, and it’s thus becoming more common that, as in Scottsdale, Ariz., one parent’s three parents’ complaining about an Edward Albee play will prevail over an entire community. (Bonus: This Richmond, Va., Halloween decoration has to go because, well, “How am I supposed to explain to my kids” a dead person in the yard display? [ed.: Go forth, bold parent! Like Cassie the wildebeest mother, prepare your child for the rigors of the cruel society into which he was born!]

Newsrangers: David Swanson, Rich LeVinus, David Schneider, and Kevin Kohler, and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.