News of the Weird (December 1, 2013)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M347, December 1, 2013
Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
The Marvels of Science: The notorious white separatist Craig Cobb is currently soliciting like-skinned people to move to his tiny town of Leith, N.D. (pop. 16) to create a deluxe caucasian enclave, but at the urging of a black TV host submitted to a DNA test in November to “prove” his lineage--and turned up 14 percent black (“Sub-Saharan African”). (He has vowed to try other DNA tests before confirming those results.) Bobby Harper (previously, Leith’s only black resident) was gleeful: “I knew there [had to be another] black person in town.” (In mid-November, Cobb was charged, along with an associate, with seven counts of terrorism for walking menacingly through Leith wielding a long gun.) [Bismarck Tribune, 11-11-2013; Los Angeles Times, 11-19-2013]
Government in Action
Recurring Theme: The Environmental Protection Agency, already revealed in June to have allowed a contractor to maintain taxpayer-funded “man caves” (TVs, appliances, couches, videos, etc.) hidden away in a Washington, D.C.-area warehouse, made the news again during the government shutdown in October when soup with a 1997 expiration date was found in a shutdown-ignored EPA employees’ refrigerator. Furthermore, in September, former high-level EPA executive John Beale pleaded guilty to defrauding the agency of $900,000 in salary, expenses, and bonuses dating back to the 1990s by claiming work orders (including secret projects for the CIA) that no one at EPA appears ever to have tried to verify. [Washington Post, 10-17-2013] [Washington Post, 9-27-2013]
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: In October, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro created a “Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness” to coordinate the welfare programs begun by the late President Hugo Chavez. Critics charged, however, that there is much to be unhappy about, given the country’s annual rate of inflation (near 50 percent), and an Associated Press dispatch quoted one critic who said she would be happy enough if only stores were not constantly out of milk and toilet paper. (Another skeptic said he looked forward to maybe a Vice Ministry of Beer). [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 10-25-2013]
The U.S. government has engaged in some legendarily wasteful projects, but leaders in China’s Yungai village (pop. 3,683), in Hunan province, have surely raised the bar for epic squander after borrowing the equivalent of $2.4 million and building an impressive seven-story government headquarters--but with 96 still-unlooked-out front windows because there is no activity beyond the first floor. According to an October London Daily Telegraph report, the only occupants are the village government’s eight employees. [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-24-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Though many people might agree with blind musician Stevie Wonder that it is “crazy” to let people like him carry guns, federal and state laws seem ambiguous, according to a lengthy analysis of Iowa’s supplied by the Des Moines Register in September. Some Iowa sheriffs believe that federal anti-discrimination law limits their discretion (though they can deny permits for lack of physical or mental ability to handle the gun). The National Federation of the Blind generally trusts its members never to use guns recklessly, a spokesman said, and blind Iowa activist Michael Barber emphasized his right. “[Y]ou take it out and point and shoot,” he said, “and I don’t necessarily think eyesight is necessary.” “For me, the inspiration is just to see if I run into any difficulties.” [Des Moines Register, 9-8-2013]
Great Art!
Leandro Granato, 27, said that he discovered, as a kid in Argentina, that liquids sucked up through his nose could then be squirted out of his eye--and an art career was born. News sites reported in October that Granato’s “eye paintings” of ink colors, splattered out as tears on canvas in various motifs (from up to 1.5 pints of ink each), are offered for sale at a top-end price of the equivalent of $2,400 each. (Huffington Post’s story also reminded readers that Chilean artist Carina Ubeda is another who uses her body functions as a medium--specifically, her menstrual blood, which she employed in the form of 90 used sanitary napkins arranged in a hoop featuring an apple, symbolizing ovulation. Her June show ran in Quillota, Chile.) [Huffington Post, 10-3-2013 (Granato)] [Huffington Post, 6-26-2013 (Ubeda)]
Police Report
Informal Georgia Sobriety Tests: PREVIOUSLY: Rachel Gossett blew a .216 alcohol reading in Loganville, Ga., in November, but that was probably a formality after an officer witnessed her attempt to put a cheeseburger from a Waffle Shop onto her foot as if it were a shoe. And Rashad Williams, 38, was charged with DUI in Atlanta in October after he crashed through the front of a Walgreens drug store and then, according to a witness, calmly exited his vehicle (which was sticking halfway into the building) and resumed drinking next door at the Anchor Bar. [Huffington Post, 11-7-2013] [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10-18-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Round Up the Usual Suspect: Indicted, for rape, in August in Hamilton County, Tenn.: Mr. John Allan Raper, 19. (Other recent miscreants were Mr. Batman Suparman, 19, convicted in Singapore in November of housebreaking and theft, and Mr. Bamboo Flute Blanchard, 18, who was arrested in June in Gainesville, Fla., and accused of trying to stab his father for an unreported provocation--although one possible motive suggests itself.) [Times Free Press (Chattanooga), 9-17-2013] [The Straits Times (Singapore), 11-11-2013] [Gainesville Sun, 6-26-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Chutzpah!: Sheriff’s deputy Darrell Mathis of Newton County, Ga. (30 miles east of Atlanta), a five-year veteran, was arrested in September and charged with selling marijuana locally--from his squad car, in uniform, and apparently without inhibition. A confidential informant, unnerved by Mathis’s alleged brazenness, convinced FBI agents in April 2013 to do a by-the-book sting (with which Mathis of course naively cooperated, according to Bureau affidavits). (In their final meeting before the arrest, for example, Mathis took pains to assure the agents: “Don’t worry. I’m on your side,” he said. He was reportedly enthusiastic about the sting’s plan to run marijuana and cocaine from Alabama to North Carolina.) [CNN, 9-23-2013]
Sights to Behold
PREVIOUSLY: When Franco Scaramuzza witnessed two men pepper-spraying a couple in a shopping center parking lot in Nashville, Tenn., in September, he bravely responded in the only way he knew. Scaramuzza, who teaches the art of fencing, drew his fencing sword (“epee”) [In html: épée] and challenged the men. With his epee held high and aimed, and chanting fencing-type yells, he charged at the men. As he said later, “They completely panicked and dropped everything . . . and really took off.” Michael Butt and Zachary Johnson were arrested nearby and charged with robbery. [WSMV-TV (Nashville) via KIDK-TV (Idaho Falls), 9-30-2013]
In a courthouse lobby in Kelso, Wash., in October, a woman carrying a cake was approached by Robert Fredrickson, a stranger who was also in the building on business. Without warning, Fredrickson attacked--the cake, not the woman--feeding himself with his hands before washing them off at a drinking fountain. “[S]tand right there. Don’t move,” yelled a deputy, attempting to bring Fredrickson to justice. As soon as the officer looked away, however, Fredrickson returned to clawing at the cake and stuffing his mouth. Finally, several deputies arrived to subdue Fredrickson and charge him with theft and resisting arrest. [KATU-TV (Portland, Ore.), 10-3-2013]
Least Competent Criminals
PREVIOUSLY: Not Ready for Prime Time: Derek Codd, 19, apparently left his cell phone, by accident, at the house in Lake Worth, Fla., that he had burglarized in November, and just as investigating officers were arriving and noticed it, the phone rang. (“Who is this?” an officer asked. The caller answered innocently, “Derek Codd’s mother.” Derek was arrested a short time later.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11-4-2013]
A News of the Weird Classic (February 2009)
Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December [2008] Wall Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch, flail their limbs, and obey commands given suddenly, even if it means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in 1878 among lumberjacks in Maine but has been reported also among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from the stress of working in close quarters). [Wall Street Journal, 12-30-2008] .M095
Thanks This Week to Jay Caplan, Steve Dunn, John McGaw, David Swanson, and Bruce Leiserowitz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M347, December 1, 2013
Copyright 2013 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
The Marvels of Science: The notorious white separatist Craig Cobb is currently soliciting like-skinned people to move to his tiny town of Leith, N.D. (pop. 16) to create a deluxe caucasian enclave, but at the urging of a black TV host submitted to a DNA test in November to “prove” his lineage--and turned up 14 percent black (“Sub-Saharan African”). (He has vowed to try other DNA tests before confirming those results.) Bobby Harper (previously, Leith’s only black resident) was gleeful: “I knew there [had to be another] black person in town.” (In mid-November, Cobb was charged, along with an associate, with seven counts of terrorism for walking menacingly through Leith wielding a long gun.) [Bismarck Tribune, 11-11-2013; Los Angeles Times, 11-19-2013]
Government in Action
Recurring Theme: The Environmental Protection Agency, already revealed in June to have allowed a contractor to maintain taxpayer-funded “man caves” (TVs, appliances, couches, videos, etc.) hidden away in a Washington, D.C.-area warehouse, made the news again during the government shutdown in October when soup with a 1997 expiration date was found in a shutdown-ignored EPA employees’ refrigerator. Furthermore, in September, former high-level EPA executive John Beale pleaded guilty to defrauding the agency of $900,000 in salary, expenses, and bonuses dating back to the 1990s by claiming work orders (including secret projects for the CIA) that no one at EPA appears ever to have tried to verify. [Washington Post, 10-17-2013] [Washington Post, 9-27-2013]
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: In October, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro created a “Vice Ministry of Supreme Social Happiness” to coordinate the welfare programs begun by the late President Hugo Chavez. Critics charged, however, that there is much to be unhappy about, given the country’s annual rate of inflation (near 50 percent), and an Associated Press dispatch quoted one critic who said she would be happy enough if only stores were not constantly out of milk and toilet paper. (Another skeptic said he looked forward to maybe a Vice Ministry of Beer). [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 10-25-2013]
The U.S. government has engaged in some legendarily wasteful projects, but leaders in China’s Yungai village (pop. 3,683), in Hunan province, have surely raised the bar for epic squander after borrowing the equivalent of $2.4 million and building an impressive seven-story government headquarters--but with 96 still-unlooked-out front windows because there is no activity beyond the first floor. According to an October London Daily Telegraph report, the only occupants are the village government’s eight employees. [Daily Telegraph (London), 10-24-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Though many people might agree with blind musician Stevie Wonder that it is “crazy” to let people like him carry guns, federal and state laws seem ambiguous, according to a lengthy analysis of Iowa’s supplied by the Des Moines Register in September. Some Iowa sheriffs believe that federal anti-discrimination law limits their discretion (though they can deny permits for lack of physical or mental ability to handle the gun). The National Federation of the Blind generally trusts its members never to use guns recklessly, a spokesman said, and blind Iowa activist Michael Barber emphasized his right. “[Y]ou take it out and point and shoot,” he said, “and I don’t necessarily think eyesight is necessary.” “For me, the inspiration is just to see if I run into any difficulties.” [Des Moines Register, 9-8-2013]
Great Art!
Leandro Granato, 27, said that he discovered, as a kid in Argentina, that liquids sucked up through his nose could then be squirted out of his eye--and an art career was born. News sites reported in October that Granato’s “eye paintings” of ink colors, splattered out as tears on canvas in various motifs (from up to 1.5 pints of ink each), are offered for sale at a top-end price of the equivalent of $2,400 each. (Huffington Post’s story also reminded readers that Chilean artist Carina Ubeda is another who uses her body functions as a medium--specifically, her menstrual blood, which she employed in the form of 90 used sanitary napkins arranged in a hoop featuring an apple, symbolizing ovulation. Her June show ran in Quillota, Chile.) [Huffington Post, 10-3-2013 (Granato)] [Huffington Post, 6-26-2013 (Ubeda)]
Police Report
Informal Georgia Sobriety Tests: PREVIOUSLY: Rachel Gossett blew a .216 alcohol reading in Loganville, Ga., in November, but that was probably a formality after an officer witnessed her attempt to put a cheeseburger from a Waffle Shop onto her foot as if it were a shoe. And Rashad Williams, 38, was charged with DUI in Atlanta in October after he crashed through the front of a Walgreens drug store and then, according to a witness, calmly exited his vehicle (which was sticking halfway into the building) and resumed drinking next door at the Anchor Bar. [Huffington Post, 11-7-2013] [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10-18-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Round Up the Usual Suspect: Indicted, for rape, in August in Hamilton County, Tenn.: Mr. John Allan Raper, 19. (Other recent miscreants were Mr. Batman Suparman, 19, convicted in Singapore in November of housebreaking and theft, and Mr. Bamboo Flute Blanchard, 18, who was arrested in June in Gainesville, Fla., and accused of trying to stab his father for an unreported provocation--although one possible motive suggests itself.) [Times Free Press (Chattanooga), 9-17-2013] [The Straits Times (Singapore), 11-11-2013] [Gainesville Sun, 6-26-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Chutzpah!: Sheriff’s deputy Darrell Mathis of Newton County, Ga. (30 miles east of Atlanta), a five-year veteran, was arrested in September and charged with selling marijuana locally--from his squad car, in uniform, and apparently without inhibition. A confidential informant, unnerved by Mathis’s alleged brazenness, convinced FBI agents in April 2013 to do a by-the-book sting (with which Mathis of course naively cooperated, according to Bureau affidavits). (In their final meeting before the arrest, for example, Mathis took pains to assure the agents: “Don’t worry. I’m on your side,” he said. He was reportedly enthusiastic about the sting’s plan to run marijuana and cocaine from Alabama to North Carolina.) [CNN, 9-23-2013]
Sights to Behold
PREVIOUSLY: When Franco Scaramuzza witnessed two men pepper-spraying a couple in a shopping center parking lot in Nashville, Tenn., in September, he bravely responded in the only way he knew. Scaramuzza, who teaches the art of fencing, drew his fencing sword (“epee”) [In html: épée] and challenged the men. With his epee held high and aimed, and chanting fencing-type yells, he charged at the men. As he said later, “They completely panicked and dropped everything . . . and really took off.” Michael Butt and Zachary Johnson were arrested nearby and charged with robbery. [WSMV-TV (Nashville) via KIDK-TV (Idaho Falls), 9-30-2013]
In a courthouse lobby in Kelso, Wash., in October, a woman carrying a cake was approached by Robert Fredrickson, a stranger who was also in the building on business. Without warning, Fredrickson attacked--the cake, not the woman--feeding himself with his hands before washing them off at a drinking fountain. “[S]tand right there. Don’t move,” yelled a deputy, attempting to bring Fredrickson to justice. As soon as the officer looked away, however, Fredrickson returned to clawing at the cake and stuffing his mouth. Finally, several deputies arrived to subdue Fredrickson and charge him with theft and resisting arrest. [KATU-TV (Portland, Ore.), 10-3-2013]
Least Competent Criminals
PREVIOUSLY: Not Ready for Prime Time: Derek Codd, 19, apparently left his cell phone, by accident, at the house in Lake Worth, Fla., that he had burglarized in November, and just as investigating officers were arriving and noticed it, the phone rang. (“Who is this?” an officer asked. The caller answered innocently, “Derek Codd’s mother.” Derek was arrested a short time later.) [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 11-4-2013]
A News of the Weird Classic (February 2009)
Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December [2008] Wall Street Journal roundup was "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disorder," in which a person, when startled, would "jump, twitch, flail their limbs, and obey commands given suddenly, even if it means hurting themselves or a loved one." It was first observed in 1878 among lumberjacks in Maine but has been reported also among factory workers in Malaysia and Siberia. It is believed to result from a genetic mutation that blocks the calming of the central nervous system (but could be merely psychological, from the stress of working in close quarters). [Wall Street Journal, 12-30-2008] .M095
Thanks This Week to Jay Caplan, Steve Dunn, John McGaw, David Swanson, and Bruce Leiserowitz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Craig Cobb Wha that boy ain't nuttun but an octoroon or maybe a plain old mustee!
E.P.A. Seriously, just how much longer is this @$##@$ going to be tolerated?
Cake Eater Winter's coming on... time to get indoor lodgings.
E.P.A. Seriously, just how much longer is this @$##@$ going to be tolerated?
Cake Eater Winter's coming on... time to get indoor lodgings.
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 12/01/13 at 08:54 PM
DNA- Can't wait till he tries to join the white supremacists in jail, bet they hold that 14% against him.
EPA- Hey, they've been busy supervising clean ups on broken florescent light bulbs and other really important stuff.
point and shoot- Really? Wow, what an idiot.
art?- Blood is considered hazardous waste, why is that woman even allowed to display her 'art'?
epee- That is great! He's a hero!
cake- And no one filmed it?? Hilarious!
phone- See what happens when you are a helicopter parent.
jumping- A variation of the fainting goat thing?
EPA- Hey, they've been busy supervising clean ups on broken florescent light bulbs and other really important stuff.
point and shoot- Really? Wow, what an idiot.
art?- Blood is considered hazardous waste, why is that woman even allowed to display her 'art'?
epee- That is great! He's a hero!
cake- And no one filmed it?? Hilarious!
phone- See what happens when you are a helicopter parent.
jumping- A variation of the fainting goat thing?
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 12/02/13 at 03:01 AM
I really love your stories.
Posted by Frank Sekera on 12/02/13 at 03:14 AM
Cobb: I'm surprised it took a DNA test. Surely a sift through the records would've been enough?
Michael Barber: I... have nothing to add.
Scaramuzza: and what a perfect name for such an act!
Michael Barber: I... have nothing to add.
Scaramuzza: and what a perfect name for such an act!
Posted by Richard Bos on 12/03/13 at 08:36 AM
Cobbe- Wonder how they tell the difference between sub-Saharan and Saharan genes? Are Americans from the Sahara still African-American?
Posted by RobK on 12/03/13 at 12:05 PM
RobKon: Statistics, massed statistics. If you collect enough DNA profiles of people from enough groups around the world, you do see some patterns. You also see an astounding amount of miscegenation - people have been bonking people all over the world with blithe and laudatory disregard for skin colour for millennia. Even so, certain genes (and I don't know whether they're all meaningful, but I suspect not even that) seem to originate from, and occur exclusively in people with ancestors from, certain areas of the world.
To name but one, meaningful but not outwardly visible, example, if you have the gene for sickle cell anemia, even if only in one chromosome instead of both (so you show no symptoms), one of your ancestors must have come from either sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. Perhaps he or she came from there a few centuries ago, but you can't be unmixed European or Chinese if you have that gene.
And whether people of Berber descent are African-American (or, indeed, whether Nelson Mandela is) is a purely political matter, and has nothing to do with science. As neatly demonstrated by Mr. Cobb, supra. 😉
To name but one, meaningful but not outwardly visible, example, if you have the gene for sickle cell anemia, even if only in one chromosome instead of both (so you show no symptoms), one of your ancestors must have come from either sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East. Perhaps he or she came from there a few centuries ago, but you can't be unmixed European or Chinese if you have that gene.
And whether people of Berber descent are African-American (or, indeed, whether Nelson Mandela is) is a purely political matter, and has nothing to do with science. As neatly demonstrated by Mr. Cobb, supra. 😉
Posted by Richard Bos on 12/04/13 at 08:16 AM
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