2008 Woodie Awards
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
Issue date: 2/7/07 Section: Campus News
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News That Sounds Like a Joke
Because of recent government campaigns to protect wildlife, snake charmers in India’s Rajasthan state are increasingly unable to work with live snakes but nonetheless hope to continue earning tourists’ money by performing the same rituals, except without snakes.
On New Year’s Day at the South African tourist attraction of Cango Caves, an overweight visitor in the “Tunnel of Love” got stuck exiting, and she and the 23 people behind her were trapped for 12 hours until rescuers used a pulley and liquid paraffin (to grease the rocks) to extricate her.
Science on the Cutting Edge
Don Karkos heroically regained sight in his right eye in November after 65 years. A 1941 Navy submarine explosion had knocked him out, and doctors had told him many times that he would never see with that eye again, but Karkos, 82 (a retired horse farmer who works as a security guard at New York’s Monticello Raceway), was butted in the head by a horse in November and awoke the next day with sight regained. He told the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y., in December that the blow he took from My Buddy Chimo was even harder than the one from the concussion.
A researcher writing in the January/February issue of Australasian Science magazine reported that the Toxoplasma gondii parasite, carried by many cats, not only can harm pregnant women (as was previously known) but also can lower the IQ of men and make women more promiscuous.
Science Gone Too Far:A December New York Times dispatch reports that among the hottest social status symbols in Tokyo is the cute-but-bizarre dog created by inbreeding, such as a blue Chihuahua or a white dachshund. However, inbreeding also produces a high number of deformities, and to get that dachshund, for example, the litter of five contained four dogs with almost unspeakably gross birth defects. Nonetheless, because of demand, dog inbreeding continues. And a Nottingham University professor warned in January that farmers are now at work in the United Kingdom breeding “stress” and “hostility” out of pigs and cows to make them more obedient en route to the slaughterhouse. The professor said the goal of such breeders is to create animal “vegetables.”
Leading Economic Indicators
Outsourcing of American jobs recently reached a new category of corporate employees: lawyers. An estimated 23,000 lawyers’ jobs were lost in the U.S. last year to India, where document review and legal research can be performed at about half the cost as in America, according to a December story in the News Journal of Wilmington, Del.
In what one reporter termed “a culture clash of near-epic proportions,” Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist (the mostly free online advertising Web site), told a gathering of head-shaking, befuddled Wall Street analysts in December that his company had no intention of raising more money than necessary to cover expenses, much less of maximizing income (even though many analysts believe investors might pay $1 billion or more for the company).
Least Competent Criminals
Police in Chesterfield Township, Mich., arrested Calvin Fluckes Jr., 21, in December after he tried to cash a counterfeit check for $848 at a Wal-Mart. Fluckes was apparently oblivious of the approximately 80 uniformed police officers who were in the store for a charity event and whose cruisers Fluckes had to pass when he parked his car in the Wal-Mart lot. According to a police lieutenant, “(Fluckes) was immediately apprehended.”
Marshall Byers, 28, was arrested in Everett, Wash., in December, and charged with the attempted murder of his estranged wife’s boyfriend (who was treated for five knife wounds). According to prosecutors, Byers was surprised at the “attempted” charge. Allegedly, he told a detective, “What? I thought I stuck him like a pig. What do you mean, he’s alive?”
Also Should Have Kept His Mouth Shut: Jeremy Lyons, 20, was arrested in Hanover Township, Pa., in October for an alleged vandalism spree, bashing car windows with a baseball bat. A local TV station had carried a story of the arrest of another person, and Lyons for some reason called the station and, laughing, told them they had the wrong man. He was arrested when the call was traced.
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