News of the Weird (February 7, 2016)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M461, February 7, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Even though concealed-carry gun permit-holders in Texas can now “open carry,” pistol-packing women concerned with fashion are not limited to traditional firearms in ordinary cowboy holsters. An online company, A Well Armed Woman, offers such carry options as stylish leggings, lace waistbands, and an array of underarm and bra holsters (even an in-cup model, the “Marilyn”) in leopard-print and pastel colors. However, a woman’s body shape and size may be more important shopping considerations, according to the company’s founder. “A 32A bust could not conceal a Glock 19 very well--nor would a 42DD-or-larger [front] allow for effective cross-draw carry.” [Star-Telegram (Fort Worth), 12-22-2015] [NPR, 1-28-2016]
Democracy Blues
In January, Robert Battle took the oath of office for his second term as a city councilman in East Chicago, Ind.--administered at the county lockup, where he is being held without bail, charged with a cold-blooded murder during a drug deal. The crime made news in October (i.e., before election day), yet Battle still won his race. According to law, he cannot be forced out of office unless he is convicted or admits the crimes, and he had the right to vote for himself in the election (except that he failed to request an absentee ballot). [Chicago Tribune, 1-25-2016]
Canonical Marijuana
(1) The Albany, N.Y., company Vireo Health told reporters it would soon offer the world’s first certified Kosher marijuana, announcing that the Orthodox Union of New York had authenticated it as having met Jewish dietary laws (e.g., grown with insect-free plants). (Other Kosher-validating officials complained that the approval should apply only to marijuana that is eaten, not smoked.) (2) Two habit-wearing nuns were scheduled to ask the Merced (Calif.) City Council in January to decline its prerogative under state law to ban dispensing or cultivating of medical marijuana. The nun’s order makes and sells salves and tonics for pain management, using a strain of cannabis containing only a trace of psychoactive material. [Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 1-7-2016] [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-4-2016]
Bright Ideas
Since the (naturally insulated) uterus can be a lonely space, Institute Marques of Barcelona, Spain, recently demonstrated a tampon-like “speaker” to carry soothing, specially-selected, 54-decibel (“hushed tone”) rhythms that supposedly improve fetal growth. In the “Babypod”’s first “concert,” the singer Soraya performing Christmas carols. (However, documented evidence for such a device was limited to success of in-vitro fertilization when music was wafted through during the first 48 hours of sperm-egg union) [New York Times Live, 1-1-2016]
The Job of the Researcher: Taiwanese scientists recently announced the availability of their Infant Cries Translator (iPhone and Android app) that they say can, with “77 percent” accuracy (“92 percent” for those under two weeks old), tell what a baby wants by its screeches and wailings. The National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin doctors first had to create a database of 200,000 crying sounds. [Reuters, 12-30-2015]
Compelling Explanations
The Latest in Corruption News: (1) Italy’s highest court freed a man in January because the bribe he offered a cop to avoid a DUI ticket was “too small” to be serious--100 euros (about $108). (2) Lawyers for John Bills (former Chicago city commissioner on trial for taking bribes on a traffic-camera contract) said Bills was obviously innocent because everyone knows that, in Chicago, only bribing the mayor (or at least an alderman) will get anything done. (3) A security guard in Nairobi, Kenya, despairingly told a New York Times reporter in November (detailing corruption so rampant that, for example, ball-point pens were being sold to the government for $85 each) that “If [people]’re going to steal, please, just steal a little.” [The Local (Rome), 1-21-2016] [Chicago Sun-Times, 1-13-2016] [New York Times, 11-5-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
A former lecturer for Spanish classes at the liberal arts Amherst College near Northampton, Mass., sued the school in December after it failed to renew her contract--leading the lecturer to charge that the Spanish department had tried to solicit student course enrollment by prostitution. Lecturer Dimaris Barrios-Beltran accused her supervisor, Victoria Maillo, of hiring only attractive “teaching assistants” and encouraging them to “date” Amherst students with the ulterior motive of signing them up for Spanish classes--to boost the department’s profile. (College officials said they could not corroborate the accusation, but apparently Maillo is no longer employed at Amherst.) [Washington Post, 12-29-2015]
William Bendorf, 38, filed a lawsuit in December against the Funny Bone comedy club in Omaha, Neb., and comedian-hypnotist Doug Thompson after plunging off the stage and breaking his leg following Thompson’s having hypnotized him during his act. Thompson claimed that he had “snapped” Bendorf out of the trance, but the lawsuit claims that Bendorf, instead of exiting via the stairs as Thompson instructed, wandered directly toward his stage-side table because he was still “under” Thompson’s spell. [Omaha World-Herald, 12-28-2015]
A patient who had been blind for a decade (a condition thought to have been brought on by brain damage from an auto accident) suddenly “regained” her sight, according to a research report in the latest PsyCh Journal--but only in one of the 10 identities (a teenage boy) populating her Dissociative Identity Disorder. Doctors have since ruled out organic damage and (through EEG testing) “malingering” and are now coaxing her eyesight back by treating the disorder. [Washington Post, 11-24-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Chutzpah! (1) Michael Leonard, 53, was charged in December with stealing a package that moments earlier had been dropped off by a courier. The delivery was to a Prince George’s County, Md., police station, and Leonard, hanging around in the station (to register as a sex offender) walked out with the package when no one was looking. (However, a station surveillance camera caught his face.) (2) Sean Lyons, 23, wanted on an Upper Darby, Pa., arrest warrant since October as a drug dealer, was arrested in January--at the police station, where officers recognized him when he came to give information as a victim of an unrelated hit-and-run accident. [Capital Gazette (Annapolis), 12-23-2015] [Philly.com, 1-21-2016]
The Aristocrats!
(1) David Newman, a prominent emergency-room doctor at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was recently charged with sexual abuse of two female patients, including one of drugging, groping, and masturbating onto the woman’s unconscious body (one incident in September and another four months later). (2) Well-known restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 53, was arrested in January and charged with exposing (and “pleasuring”) himself to two women, repeatedly, at a New York City subway station--and to one he had blatantly asked, “Can I masturbate to you?” Hoyt is the owner-chef at Quintessence in the East Village and gained notoriety in 2005 when a subway passenger photographed him “in action” during a previous weak moment. [New York Times, 1-20-2016] [New York Post, 1-13-2016]
Recurring Themes
(1) Kopi Luwak (the gourmet coffee beans roasted only after having been flavored by a trip through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats) has been a staple of weird news stories for a quarter century, but a New York startup (“Afineur”) will soon bring to market a synthetic process mimicking the flavoring effects of the civets’ gut bacteria. (2) From time to time, when people worry excessively about their stations in life, entrepreneurs create “destruction rooms,” where, for a fee, customers get some time with a sledgehammer or baseball bat and pound on junked furniture. The most recent, Tantrums LLC, of Houston, Tex., opened in January, charging $35 for 10 minutes. [Business Week, 7-21-2015] [KHOU-TV, 7-22-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (July 2011)
Toshihiko Mizuno, 55, was arrested in Tokyo in June [2011] after three girls, ages 9 and 10, reported that he had talked them into spitting for him so that he could record it on video, to assist with "research" he was doing on "saliva." Police later discovered 26 videotapes, featuring about 400 young girls spitting. According to local media sources, Mizuno has had the obsession for 17 years, successfully getting at least 500 girls to spit, among the estimated 4,000 he propositioned. [NDTV (New Delhi, India)-Agence France-Presse, 6-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Bruce Strickland, and to the News of the Weird Board Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M461, February 7, 2016
Copyright 2016 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.
Lead Story
Even though concealed-carry gun permit-holders in Texas can now “open carry,” pistol-packing women concerned with fashion are not limited to traditional firearms in ordinary cowboy holsters. An online company, A Well Armed Woman, offers such carry options as stylish leggings, lace waistbands, and an array of underarm and bra holsters (even an in-cup model, the “Marilyn”) in leopard-print and pastel colors. However, a woman’s body shape and size may be more important shopping considerations, according to the company’s founder. “A 32A bust could not conceal a Glock 19 very well--nor would a 42DD-or-larger [front] allow for effective cross-draw carry.” [Star-Telegram (Fort Worth), 12-22-2015] [NPR, 1-28-2016]
Democracy Blues
In January, Robert Battle took the oath of office for his second term as a city councilman in East Chicago, Ind.--administered at the county lockup, where he is being held without bail, charged with a cold-blooded murder during a drug deal. The crime made news in October (i.e., before election day), yet Battle still won his race. According to law, he cannot be forced out of office unless he is convicted or admits the crimes, and he had the right to vote for himself in the election (except that he failed to request an absentee ballot). [Chicago Tribune, 1-25-2016]
Canonical Marijuana
(1) The Albany, N.Y., company Vireo Health told reporters it would soon offer the world’s first certified Kosher marijuana, announcing that the Orthodox Union of New York had authenticated it as having met Jewish dietary laws (e.g., grown with insect-free plants). (Other Kosher-validating officials complained that the approval should apply only to marijuana that is eaten, not smoked.) (2) Two habit-wearing nuns were scheduled to ask the Merced (Calif.) City Council in January to decline its prerogative under state law to ban dispensing or cultivating of medical marijuana. The nun’s order makes and sells salves and tonics for pain management, using a strain of cannabis containing only a trace of psychoactive material. [Haaretz (Tel Aviv), 1-7-2016] [San Francisco Chronicle, 1-4-2016]
Bright Ideas
Since the (naturally insulated) uterus can be a lonely space, Institute Marques of Barcelona, Spain, recently demonstrated a tampon-like “speaker” to carry soothing, specially-selected, 54-decibel (“hushed tone”) rhythms that supposedly improve fetal growth. In the “Babypod”’s first “concert,” the singer Soraya performing Christmas carols. (However, documented evidence for such a device was limited to success of in-vitro fertilization when music was wafted through during the first 48 hours of sperm-egg union) [New York Times Live, 1-1-2016]
The Job of the Researcher: Taiwanese scientists recently announced the availability of their Infant Cries Translator (iPhone and Android app) that they say can, with “77 percent” accuracy (“92 percent” for those under two weeks old), tell what a baby wants by its screeches and wailings. The National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin doctors first had to create a database of 200,000 crying sounds. [Reuters, 12-30-2015]
Compelling Explanations
The Latest in Corruption News: (1) Italy’s highest court freed a man in January because the bribe he offered a cop to avoid a DUI ticket was “too small” to be serious--100 euros (about $108). (2) Lawyers for John Bills (former Chicago city commissioner on trial for taking bribes on a traffic-camera contract) said Bills was obviously innocent because everyone knows that, in Chicago, only bribing the mayor (or at least an alderman) will get anything done. (3) A security guard in Nairobi, Kenya, despairingly told a New York Times reporter in November (detailing corruption so rampant that, for example, ball-point pens were being sold to the government for $85 each) that “If [people]’re going to steal, please, just steal a little.” [The Local (Rome), 1-21-2016] [Chicago Sun-Times, 1-13-2016] [New York Times, 11-5-2015]
The Continuing Crisis
A former lecturer for Spanish classes at the liberal arts Amherst College near Northampton, Mass., sued the school in December after it failed to renew her contract--leading the lecturer to charge that the Spanish department had tried to solicit student course enrollment by prostitution. Lecturer Dimaris Barrios-Beltran accused her supervisor, Victoria Maillo, of hiring only attractive “teaching assistants” and encouraging them to “date” Amherst students with the ulterior motive of signing them up for Spanish classes--to boost the department’s profile. (College officials said they could not corroborate the accusation, but apparently Maillo is no longer employed at Amherst.) [Washington Post, 12-29-2015]
William Bendorf, 38, filed a lawsuit in December against the Funny Bone comedy club in Omaha, Neb., and comedian-hypnotist Doug Thompson after plunging off the stage and breaking his leg following Thompson’s having hypnotized him during his act. Thompson claimed that he had “snapped” Bendorf out of the trance, but the lawsuit claims that Bendorf, instead of exiting via the stairs as Thompson instructed, wandered directly toward his stage-side table because he was still “under” Thompson’s spell. [Omaha World-Herald, 12-28-2015]
A patient who had been blind for a decade (a condition thought to have been brought on by brain damage from an auto accident) suddenly “regained” her sight, according to a research report in the latest PsyCh Journal--but only in one of the 10 identities (a teenage boy) populating her Dissociative Identity Disorder. Doctors have since ruled out organic damage and (through EEG testing) “malingering” and are now coaxing her eyesight back by treating the disorder. [Washington Post, 11-24-2015]
Least Competent Criminals
Chutzpah! (1) Michael Leonard, 53, was charged in December with stealing a package that moments earlier had been dropped off by a courier. The delivery was to a Prince George’s County, Md., police station, and Leonard, hanging around in the station (to register as a sex offender) walked out with the package when no one was looking. (However, a station surveillance camera caught his face.) (2) Sean Lyons, 23, wanted on an Upper Darby, Pa., arrest warrant since October as a drug dealer, was arrested in January--at the police station, where officers recognized him when he came to give information as a victim of an unrelated hit-and-run accident. [Capital Gazette (Annapolis), 12-23-2015] [Philly.com, 1-21-2016]
The Aristocrats!
(1) David Newman, a prominent emergency-room doctor at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, was recently charged with sexual abuse of two female patients, including one of drugging, groping, and masturbating onto the woman’s unconscious body (one incident in September and another four months later). (2) Well-known restaurateur Dan Hoyt, 53, was arrested in January and charged with exposing (and “pleasuring”) himself to two women, repeatedly, at a New York City subway station--and to one he had blatantly asked, “Can I masturbate to you?” Hoyt is the owner-chef at Quintessence in the East Village and gained notoriety in 2005 when a subway passenger photographed him “in action” during a previous weak moment. [New York Times, 1-20-2016] [New York Post, 1-13-2016]
Recurring Themes
(1) Kopi Luwak (the gourmet coffee beans roasted only after having been flavored by a trip through the digestive tracts of Asian civet cats) has been a staple of weird news stories for a quarter century, but a New York startup (“Afineur”) will soon bring to market a synthetic process mimicking the flavoring effects of the civets’ gut bacteria. (2) From time to time, when people worry excessively about their stations in life, entrepreneurs create “destruction rooms,” where, for a fee, customers get some time with a sledgehammer or baseball bat and pound on junked furniture. The most recent, Tantrums LLC, of Houston, Tex., opened in January, charging $35 for 10 minutes. [Business Week, 7-21-2015] [KHOU-TV, 7-22-2015]
A News of the Weird Classic (July 2011)
Toshihiko Mizuno, 55, was arrested in Tokyo in June [2011] after three girls, ages 9 and 10, reported that he had talked them into spitting for him so that he could record it on video, to assist with "research" he was doing on "saliva." Police later discovered 26 videotapes, featuring about 400 young girls spitting. According to local media sources, Mizuno has had the obsession for 17 years, successfully getting at least 500 girls to spit, among the estimated 4,000 he propositioned. [NDTV (New Delhi, India)-Agence France-Presse, 6-14-2011]
Thanks This Week to Bruce Strickland, and to the News of the Weird Board Editorial Advisors.
Comments
The whole 'concealed carry' for women is, imo, just a marketing ploy. I've known a lot of women who carry concealed using standard, off-the-shelf holsters. One lady (and I call her that with discretion because she knows my moniker on this site) uses a shoulder holster with the pistol sitting below her rib cage. It was made for a Makarov 9mm (which she has but rarely uses), but her Walther PP 7.65×17mm fits it nicely. As long as her suit jackets aren't too tightly tailored, it's completely unnoticeable.
"Destruction Rooms" -- I remember a big draw at the county fair, late 1960s, was giving a cop car a whack with a sledge hammer. A cruiser had a blown engine (or something else that made it not worth fixing, given its age), so the cops set up a booth to benefit a police charity. They made a small fortune!
"Destruction Rooms" -- I remember a big draw at the county fair, late 1960s, was giving a cop car a whack with a sledge hammer. A cruiser had a blown engine (or something else that made it not worth fixing, given its age), so the cops set up a booth to benefit a police charity. They made a small fortune!
Posted by Phideaux on 02/07/16 at 10:12 PM
Yes firearms have now become a fashion accessory. It the old days they came in dull black, brown or gunmetal blue and occasionally chrome/stainless. And carrying it well, where is was secure, easy to get to and hide. But open carry is changing it all with easy to change, multiple grips of a color to match your mood, outfit or shoes. Please be patient honey, I need to find the Glock grips in cherry red to match my shoes, purse and lip gloss. And holsters the same. How many more cows will die for fancy old west style, tooled "rigs". I have noted some macho men now carry their open carry pistols in strapless holsters making them so much more prone to falling out and perhaps discharging or for someone to walk up from behind and steal it. I'm old fashion and will carry it concealed, so if I'm forced to use it, the presentation will be a complete surprise and will only pay extra for a good secure holster. My question is when will assault rifles come in fashion colors?
Posted by Gator Guy on 02/08/16 at 09:12 PM
Chicago: The law is correct here; after all, he might be innocent. What surprises me is that he was elected - and that his party, if any, allowed him to stand.
Speaker: Since babies have been born healthy of hearing for millennia without any speakers, and have been shown to react to music playing in the mother's environment, presumably transmitted through the belly and womb, it's a bit of a fraud.
Translator: So can almost any mother - and most fathers, too, at that.
Speaker: Since babies have been born healthy of hearing for millennia without any speakers, and have been shown to react to music playing in the mother's environment, presumably transmitted through the belly and womb, it's a bit of a fraud.
Translator: So can almost any mother - and most fathers, too, at that.
Posted by Richard Bos on 02/15/16 at 06:22 AM
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