News of the Weird (January 26, 2014)
News of the Weird
Weirdnuz.M355, January 26, 2013
Copyright 2014 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: Everyone’s Above Average: Ask Americans how they stand compared to their fellow countrymen, and in survey after survey, the vast majority rank themselves “above average” in such areas as driving skill, sexual prowess, and general honesty. A recent study of English prisoners, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, revealed that those miscreants think they, too, are in the upper half. They rate themselves above average (whether compared to Britons in prison or in society at large) in compassion, generosity, dependability, trustworthiness, and honesty. In fact, the only trait on the University of Southampton survey on which the criminals failed to rank themselves as better than the typical Brit was “law-abidingness.” On that trait, the inmates rated themselves merely as “average.” [Pacific Standard magazine, 1-7-2014]
Compelling Explanations
Pastor Ray Scott Teets, 66, of Fallen Timbers Community Chapel in Springhill Township, Pa., arrested in November for alleged “inappropriate contact” with an 11-year-old girl (daughter of parishioners) on at least three occasions, denied to police that the meetings were inappropriate. The girl, he said, requested counseling with him and suggested that sessions take place in the storage shed in back of the chapel. (The girl said there were six meetings, lasting about 15 minutes each, and denied initiating them.) [WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh), 11-22-2013]
Robert Bourque, 55, was convicted of DUI in Sarnia, Ontario, in October but continued to deny the charge. He admitted he had four beers on the day of the traffic stop but said the Breathalyzer result was misleading because he had recently poured alcohol into his ears to test his theory about how Jesus healed the sick. (Bourque was acting as his own lawyer.) [Toronto Sun, 10-11-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: The mother and other relatives of William Medina, 24, said they felt hurt by the public’s comments suggesting that Medina and his partner in the November Reading, Pa., armed robbery were “thugs.” William was a “family man”--“no big hard criminal,” his mother said. The two robbers, armed and wearing masks, were gunned down by a Krick’s Korner customer who said he feared the worst when he saw the robbers leading a store employee at gunpoint into a back room. A Medina cousin said he deplored people’s taking the law into their own hands. [WFMZ-TV (Allentown, Pa.), 11-5-2013]
Ironies
Celebrity Ironies: (1) In December, a California appeals court endorsed actor Tippi Hedren’s victory suing the lawyer who had earlier failed to win compensation for her from a 2006 studio accident. In Hedren’s most famous movie role, she was attacked by birds in Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film, and in 2006 had been clobbered by falling scenery caused by birds nesting in an attic over a stage. (2) A man who won a Hollywood raffle to watch the finale of “Breaking Bad” with cast members was arrested in Fort Myers, Fla., in January and faces his own intent-to-sell drug charges. Two weeks earlier, unrelated to the show or the raffle, a man with the same name as the show’s protagonist (Walter White) was sentenced in Billings, Mont., to 12 years in prison on drug charges. [Hollywood Reporter, 12-16-2013] [Naples Daily News, 1-1-2013] [Billings Gazette, 12-16-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Too Much Information: Arvind Kejriwal, fresh from his electoral victory as chief minister of the state of New Delhi, India, was to report to work on Monday, December 30th, to begin fulfilling his anti-corruption administration--one that promised unprecedented “transparency” to make government visible to constituents. However, the transparency of his first public announcement was perhaps over-the-top--that he was taking the day off because of a bout of diarrhea. Said a colleague, “When the chief minister gives you a minute by minute update on his bowel movements, hail democracy.” [Agence France-Presse via South China Morning Post, 12-30-2013]
Officials in Taiji, Japan, announced in October they would build a tourist attraction to publicize a nearby annual dolphin cull in which thousands are killed. Park planners hope to attract visitors to swim and cavort in pools among the lovable, captured dolphins--and also to dine on dolphin meat (and rare whale meat) scored from the culls. Conservationists are of course disgusted by the project. [Japan Daily Press, 10-7-2013]
Fine Points of the Law
PREVIOUSLY: Michael Robertson, 31, argued via a lawyer before Massachusetts’s highest court in November that his arrest for taking “upskirt” photographs of a woman on the subway should be tossed out--asserting that he has a constitutional right to take pictures of anything that is not covered up in public. Said his lawyer (a woman), noting that the victim’s skirt provided only partial covering, “If a clothed person reveals a body part whether it was intentional or unintentional, he or she cannot expect privacy.” (Robertson’s case had been suspended at the trial court while he seeks a ruling on his legal interpretation.) [Eagle Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), 11-4-2013]
Legislation, Not the Constitution, Is the Supreme Law of the Land: The December federal court decision, by Judge William Pauley, dismissing a challenge to the National Security Agency’s phone surveillance program, suggested that even if a citizen might prove that his constitutional right to privacy was being violated, that person could never know it in the first place and thus never challenge, because Congress purposely made the NSA program secret. In fact, wrote Judge Pauley, the alleged constitutional violation that created the current lawsuit only came to light because of the unauthorized leaks by Edward Snowden. Therefore, if Congress never amends its secret laws, citizens will never get to find out whether their rights are being violated. [Washington Post, 12-27-2013]
Perspective
For nearly 30 years, until 2007, the U.S. national symbol, the bald eagle, was endangered and protected, but officially they (along with golden eagles) are now so insignificant that the government is willing to endure dozens of them being chopped to death annually in the blades of “clean energy” wind turbines. An Associated Press investigation in December revealed that the federal government is purposely ignoring the eagles’ attrition out of fear that outraged conservationists’ campaigns will hinder development of wind power as an alternative to coal-produced electricity. (Another recent AP investigation revealed a similar painful choice in the continued commitment to ethanol as a cleaner alternative fuel even though that cleanliness is being increasingly questioned and even though ethanol production requires the massive diversion of corn that could inexpensively feed millions of hungry people worldwide.) [Associated Press via Philly.com, 12-6-2013]
The Aristocrats!
Love the One You’re With: (1) Lydell Coleman, 36, was charged with felony indecent exposure in Seattle in December. He had allegedly dropped his pants outside the Sub Shop at Westwood Village and begun “humping” the front window. (2) PREVIOUSLY: Edwin Tobergta, 34, was sentenced to 11 months in prison in November after his earlier guilty plea in Hamilton, Ohio, to “having sex,” naked, with a rubber pool float, in front of children. (3) An inebriated Andrew Davidson, 25, was arrested in July on a train between Aberdeen, Scotland, and Glasgow after foisting himself on a beverage cart and “humping” it, shouting “I want to kiss you, I want to [have sex with] you.” [KOMO-TV, 12-25-2013] [WXIX-TV (Cincinnati) via WMC-TV (Memphis), 11-5-2013] [Metro (London), 1-7-2014]
Least Competent Criminals
According to a police report, Tevin Monroe, 31, walked into a McDonald’s in Norfolk, Va., in December to inquire about a job, asked a manager for an application, and was told that the form was available online and that he should go download it. The manager’s response left Monroe dissatisfied, and he lifted his shirt to show the manager the gun in his waistband. The manager quickly located a paper application for Monroe (but also discreetly summoned police, who arrived and arrested Monroe while he was still filling out the form). [WVEC-TV (Norfolk), 12-17-2013]
Suspicions Confirmed
PREVIOUSLY: University of Alabama football fan Adrian Briskey, 28, was charged in December with the fatal shooting of a 36-year-old woman (also a ‘Bama fan) at a postgame gathering in Hoover, Ala., to commiserate over the team’s last-second loss to arch-rival Auburn. According to the victim’s sister, Briskey was angry at the woman because she was insufficiently distraught at the game’s outcome. [WBRC-TV (Birmingham), 12-9-2013]
Thanks This Week to Jan Wolitzky and Andres Velasco, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Weirdnuz.M355, January 26, 2013
Copyright 2014 by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
PREVIOUSLY ON WEIRD UNIVERSE: Everyone’s Above Average: Ask Americans how they stand compared to their fellow countrymen, and in survey after survey, the vast majority rank themselves “above average” in such areas as driving skill, sexual prowess, and general honesty. A recent study of English prisoners, published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, revealed that those miscreants think they, too, are in the upper half. They rate themselves above average (whether compared to Britons in prison or in society at large) in compassion, generosity, dependability, trustworthiness, and honesty. In fact, the only trait on the University of Southampton survey on which the criminals failed to rank themselves as better than the typical Brit was “law-abidingness.” On that trait, the inmates rated themselves merely as “average.” [Pacific Standard magazine, 1-7-2014]
Compelling Explanations
Pastor Ray Scott Teets, 66, of Fallen Timbers Community Chapel in Springhill Township, Pa., arrested in November for alleged “inappropriate contact” with an 11-year-old girl (daughter of parishioners) on at least three occasions, denied to police that the meetings were inappropriate. The girl, he said, requested counseling with him and suggested that sessions take place in the storage shed in back of the chapel. (The girl said there were six meetings, lasting about 15 minutes each, and denied initiating them.) [WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh), 11-22-2013]
Robert Bourque, 55, was convicted of DUI in Sarnia, Ontario, in October but continued to deny the charge. He admitted he had four beers on the day of the traffic stop but said the Breathalyzer result was misleading because he had recently poured alcohol into his ears to test his theory about how Jesus healed the sick. (Bourque was acting as his own lawyer.) [Toronto Sun, 10-11-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: The mother and other relatives of William Medina, 24, said they felt hurt by the public’s comments suggesting that Medina and his partner in the November Reading, Pa., armed robbery were “thugs.” William was a “family man”--“no big hard criminal,” his mother said. The two robbers, armed and wearing masks, were gunned down by a Krick’s Korner customer who said he feared the worst when he saw the robbers leading a store employee at gunpoint into a back room. A Medina cousin said he deplored people’s taking the law into their own hands. [WFMZ-TV (Allentown, Pa.), 11-5-2013]
Ironies
Celebrity Ironies: (1) In December, a California appeals court endorsed actor Tippi Hedren’s victory suing the lawyer who had earlier failed to win compensation for her from a 2006 studio accident. In Hedren’s most famous movie role, she was attacked by birds in Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic film, and in 2006 had been clobbered by falling scenery caused by birds nesting in an attic over a stage. (2) A man who won a Hollywood raffle to watch the finale of “Breaking Bad” with cast members was arrested in Fort Myers, Fla., in January and faces his own intent-to-sell drug charges. Two weeks earlier, unrelated to the show or the raffle, a man with the same name as the show’s protagonist (Walter White) was sentenced in Billings, Mont., to 12 years in prison on drug charges. [Hollywood Reporter, 12-16-2013] [Naples Daily News, 1-1-2013] [Billings Gazette, 12-16-2013]
PREVIOUSLY: Too Much Information: Arvind Kejriwal, fresh from his electoral victory as chief minister of the state of New Delhi, India, was to report to work on Monday, December 30th, to begin fulfilling his anti-corruption administration--one that promised unprecedented “transparency” to make government visible to constituents. However, the transparency of his first public announcement was perhaps over-the-top--that he was taking the day off because of a bout of diarrhea. Said a colleague, “When the chief minister gives you a minute by minute update on his bowel movements, hail democracy.” [Agence France-Presse via South China Morning Post, 12-30-2013]
Officials in Taiji, Japan, announced in October they would build a tourist attraction to publicize a nearby annual dolphin cull in which thousands are killed. Park planners hope to attract visitors to swim and cavort in pools among the lovable, captured dolphins--and also to dine on dolphin meat (and rare whale meat) scored from the culls. Conservationists are of course disgusted by the project. [Japan Daily Press, 10-7-2013]
Fine Points of the Law
PREVIOUSLY: Michael Robertson, 31, argued via a lawyer before Massachusetts’s highest court in November that his arrest for taking “upskirt” photographs of a woman on the subway should be tossed out--asserting that he has a constitutional right to take pictures of anything that is not covered up in public. Said his lawyer (a woman), noting that the victim’s skirt provided only partial covering, “If a clothed person reveals a body part whether it was intentional or unintentional, he or she cannot expect privacy.” (Robertson’s case had been suspended at the trial court while he seeks a ruling on his legal interpretation.) [Eagle Tribune (North Andover, Mass.), 11-4-2013]
Legislation, Not the Constitution, Is the Supreme Law of the Land: The December federal court decision, by Judge William Pauley, dismissing a challenge to the National Security Agency’s phone surveillance program, suggested that even if a citizen might prove that his constitutional right to privacy was being violated, that person could never know it in the first place and thus never challenge, because Congress purposely made the NSA program secret. In fact, wrote Judge Pauley, the alleged constitutional violation that created the current lawsuit only came to light because of the unauthorized leaks by Edward Snowden. Therefore, if Congress never amends its secret laws, citizens will never get to find out whether their rights are being violated. [Washington Post, 12-27-2013]
Perspective
For nearly 30 years, until 2007, the U.S. national symbol, the bald eagle, was endangered and protected, but officially they (along with golden eagles) are now so insignificant that the government is willing to endure dozens of them being chopped to death annually in the blades of “clean energy” wind turbines. An Associated Press investigation in December revealed that the federal government is purposely ignoring the eagles’ attrition out of fear that outraged conservationists’ campaigns will hinder development of wind power as an alternative to coal-produced electricity. (Another recent AP investigation revealed a similar painful choice in the continued commitment to ethanol as a cleaner alternative fuel even though that cleanliness is being increasingly questioned and even though ethanol production requires the massive diversion of corn that could inexpensively feed millions of hungry people worldwide.) [Associated Press via Philly.com, 12-6-2013]
The Aristocrats!
Love the One You’re With: (1) Lydell Coleman, 36, was charged with felony indecent exposure in Seattle in December. He had allegedly dropped his pants outside the Sub Shop at Westwood Village and begun “humping” the front window. (2) PREVIOUSLY: Edwin Tobergta, 34, was sentenced to 11 months in prison in November after his earlier guilty plea in Hamilton, Ohio, to “having sex,” naked, with a rubber pool float, in front of children. (3) An inebriated Andrew Davidson, 25, was arrested in July on a train between Aberdeen, Scotland, and Glasgow after foisting himself on a beverage cart and “humping” it, shouting “I want to kiss you, I want to [have sex with] you.” [KOMO-TV, 12-25-2013] [WXIX-TV (Cincinnati) via WMC-TV (Memphis), 11-5-2013] [Metro (London), 1-7-2014]
Least Competent Criminals
According to a police report, Tevin Monroe, 31, walked into a McDonald’s in Norfolk, Va., in December to inquire about a job, asked a manager for an application, and was told that the form was available online and that he should go download it. The manager’s response left Monroe dissatisfied, and he lifted his shirt to show the manager the gun in his waistband. The manager quickly located a paper application for Monroe (but also discreetly summoned police, who arrived and arrested Monroe while he was still filling out the form). [WVEC-TV (Norfolk), 12-17-2013]
Suspicions Confirmed
PREVIOUSLY: University of Alabama football fan Adrian Briskey, 28, was charged in December with the fatal shooting of a 36-year-old woman (also a ‘Bama fan) at a postgame gathering in Hoover, Ala., to commiserate over the team’s last-second loss to arch-rival Auburn. According to the victim’s sister, Briskey was angry at the woman because she was insufficiently distraught at the game’s outcome. [WBRC-TV (Birmingham), 12-9-2013]
Thanks This Week to Jan Wolitzky and Andres Velasco, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.
Comments
Above average- Everyone believes they are smart and good ect, its part of being able to live with ones self.
pervert- Seriously? His last name is Teets? For real?
thugs- The families should be ashamed for defending armed robbery. Those 2 thugs lived by the gun and died by the gun.
Application- But did he get the job??
pervert- Seriously? His last name is Teets? For real?
thugs- The families should be ashamed for defending armed robbery. Those 2 thugs lived by the gun and died by the gun.
Application- But did he get the job??
Posted by Patty in Ohio, USA on 01/26/14 at 09:52 PM
Pastor Teets I'll bet he told her it was Gabriel's Horn.
Robert Bourque This guy is bourqueing mad!
Breaking Bad Life imitating the silver screen imitating life imitating the silver scree.....
The Constitution Not much more than something to wipe ones a$$ on, any more.
Ethanol According to my uncle, who knows these things, this stuff will eat your engine if it is left to sit for long periods. Anyhow, I've also heard that it takes more energy to create the stuff than it produces.
"have sex with" in Scottish rhymes with "lookin'".
Robert Bourque This guy is bourqueing mad!
Breaking Bad Life imitating the silver screen imitating life imitating the silver scree.....
The Constitution Not much more than something to wipe ones a$$ on, any more.
Ethanol According to my uncle, who knows these things, this stuff will eat your engine if it is left to sit for long periods. Anyhow, I've also heard that it takes more energy to create the stuff than it produces.
"have sex with" in Scottish rhymes with "lookin'".
Posted by Expat47 in Athens, Greece on 01/27/14 at 12:50 AM
Above Average- I dont blame them for thinking that way, when on the outside you have our politicians, bi businessmen and bureaucrats- question is what is an American journal doing surveying British prisoners?
Ironies- Miley Cyrus injured in tongue-on-deep-frozen-lamppost incident- interesting...
Taiji- Any chance of sneaking a Great White in there somewhere? Or a few thousand giant squid, or blue-ringed octopi? Lets hope the idea was dreamt up by a Japanese Environmentalist, who wanted to really bring the anti-culling message home to anyone dumb enough to agree with such a thing.
Perspective-Very simple way of sorting this problem- an air whistle on the end of the blades- anyone whos had a 6 year old neice playing the same note on a recorder for hours on end will know how stress inducing it is!
Ironies- Miley Cyrus injured in tongue-on-deep-frozen-lamppost incident- interesting...
Taiji- Any chance of sneaking a Great White in there somewhere? Or a few thousand giant squid, or blue-ringed octopi? Lets hope the idea was dreamt up by a Japanese Environmentalist, who wanted to really bring the anti-culling message home to anyone dumb enough to agree with such a thing.
Perspective-Very simple way of sorting this problem- an air whistle on the end of the blades- anyone whos had a 6 year old neice playing the same note on a recorder for hours on end will know how stress inducing it is!
Posted by Rob on 01/27/14 at 08:19 AM
Taiji: Can we have a Jap-culling festival? Pretty please? Norwegians can come, too - and those nice, elephant-murdering Chinese.
NSA: He's correct, and that's disgusting. Mind you, anyone who's been paying attention on the 'net knew this at least two decades ago - NSA Line Eater, anyone?
Expat/Ethanol: Everything takes more energy to produce than it releases. That's called entropy. The reason oil, coal and nuclear look like they don't is that the energy was spent millions or milliards of years before we use it. If you do it right, ethanol crops could certainly be similarly efficient (get energy from the sun, spend it here), but sugarcane (which the Brazilians use) is probably more suitable for that than maize, particularly as grown in the massively over-subsidised Mid-Western USA. (And never mind Europe; we just don't get enough sun up here at all - maybe you down in Greece do, but up here in the soggy Nether Regions? Forget it.)
Expat/Lookin': Or with "flaggin'".
Rob/Perspective: That would drive any neighbours completely bonkers, and probably kill more animals through messing with their mating calls than they could possibly shred.
NSA: He's correct, and that's disgusting. Mind you, anyone who's been paying attention on the 'net knew this at least two decades ago - NSA Line Eater, anyone?
Expat/Ethanol: Everything takes more energy to produce than it releases. That's called entropy. The reason oil, coal and nuclear look like they don't is that the energy was spent millions or milliards of years before we use it. If you do it right, ethanol crops could certainly be similarly efficient (get energy from the sun, spend it here), but sugarcane (which the Brazilians use) is probably more suitable for that than maize, particularly as grown in the massively over-subsidised Mid-Western USA. (And never mind Europe; we just don't get enough sun up here at all - maybe you down in Greece do, but up here in the soggy Nether Regions? Forget it.)
Expat/Lookin': Or with "flaggin'".
Rob/Perspective: That would drive any neighbours completely bonkers, and probably kill more animals through messing with their mating calls than they could possibly shred.
Posted by Richard Bos on 01/28/14 at 10:46 AM
Commenting is not available in this channel entry.
Category: