[404] in Humor
HUMOR: News of the Weird, July 29, 1994
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon Aug 15 15:07:06 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 94 14:58:09 EDT
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 1994 10:35:19 -0600 (MDT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN%ARIES@VAXF.Colorado.EDU>
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 1994 17:33:34 -0400
From: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
From: notw-request@nine.org (NotW List Admin)
WEIRDNUZ.338 (News of the Weird, July 29, 1994)
by Chuck Shepherd
Lead Story
* After a spirited debate at the Great Midwestern Think-Off on June 26
in New York Mills, Minn., the audience of professional and amateur
philosophers officially affirmed, by 70-54, that life has meaning.
Winning debater and sometime-fisherman Peter Hilts argued that life has
meaning even for a fish, prevailing over beekeeper Charles Carpenter,
who maintained that life simply "is" and that life is beyond such a
bland concept as "meaning." Each of the four semi-finalists received
a medal of Rodin's "The Thinker" seated on a tractor. [Des Moines
Register, 6-27-94]
Weird Science
* In Dallas in June, a 63-year-old woman had a 156-pound ovarian cyst,
representing about half her body weight, removed. Her surgeon said
"several stout people" were necessary to get the tumor off the operating
table. The woman's family proudly tacked up a photograph of the tumor
in the hospital room, but according to the Guinness Book, the world
record is 328 pounds, removed from a woman in Galveston, Tex., in 1905.
[Dallas Morning News, 6-10-94]
* Among the grants this year from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences,
taken from Torsten Amund Amundsson's 1940 legacy to study homosexuality,
was about $6,300 to examine whether homosexual behavior in fruit flies
is genetic in origin. [Washington Blade, 2-11-94]
* Writing last summer in the journal Animal Behaviour, two researchers
from England's University of Manchester hypothesized that a man's
between-coitis masturbation improves his chances of inseminating his
mate, even though it reduces the number of sperm that reach an egg.
They found that masturbation after several celibate days releases
"tired" sperm, moving more vigorous sperm up the queue. In a companion
paper in the same issue, the researchers posited that females use orgasm
to attempt to regulate conception: More sperm is accepted from a mate
with whom she has an orgasm. [The Medical Post, 1-11-94]
* The Philadelphia Inquirer reported in June on the allegedly successful
traumatic-memory treatment consisting of vigorously wagging fingers in
the patient's face, similar to the motion made by an angry schoolteacher
or parent. "Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing" is believed
to put patients in a better mood by inducing rapid eye movement to
"unclog" brain patterns. [Arizona Republic-Philadelphia Inquirer,
7-4-94]
* In May, more than 100 scientists convened in Ames, Iowa, for the
International Round Table on Swine Odor Control to discuss implications
for the growth of pig farms. Speakers included the developers of
electronic equipment that would measure the offensiveness of odors and
a researcher who found that downwind neighbors of a large North Carolina
hog farm became "tense, depressed, angry, and confused." Said one
participant, "We're dealing with complex issues that don't just come
down to 'does it smell bad.'" [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette-AP, Jun94]
* In March, doctors in England reported that people who grow up in clean
homes may be more likely to become ill later in life. In clean homes,
inhabitants are robbed of the small doses of bacteria that might
immunize them against many illnesses such as Crohn's disease and
ulcerative colitis. [Baltimore Sun-Reuter, 3-25-94]
* In February, scientists reporting from Malaysia in the journal Nature
wrote that they had found a male mammal, the Dayak fruit bat, that
lactates. According to Dr. Charles Francis, "[The bats] looked like
perfectly good males with large testes, but from the other end I could
see they also had well-developed breasts." The only other male mammals
to lactate have been a few specially-bred goats and sheep, which
produced milk in extremely small quantities. [New York Times, 2-24-94]
* In June, a news agency in India reported that an energy project in
New Delhi had produced street lighting and cooking gas for about 30
families, derived from the waste in about 40 public toilets in the city.
[Globe & Mail, 6-14-94]
Fetishes on Parade
* In November, Lance A. Binkowski, 20, was charged with reckless
endangering in Brookfield, Wis., when he ran from police. Officers had
been called after Binkowski had pounded on the back door of a daycare
center while dressed in a large sleeper with built-in feet, with a
pacifier in his mouth and clutching a teddy bear and a diaper bag.
According to the police chief, Binkowski intended no harm to the
children but "had his own personal reasons" for being there. [Milwaukee
Sentinel, 11-20-93]
* Thomas A. Dietrich, 31, pleaded guilty to sexual battery on eight
girls in Fairfax, Va., in June after police discovered that he had been
using the demonstrator video camera in the appliance showroom where he
worked to videotape himself fondling the girls. He had approached them
on the pretense of showing them how the camera worked while their
parents were shopping just a few feet away in the store. [Washington
Post, 6-9-94]
* Reuters News Service reported in February that a male flasher has been
plaguing Adelaide, Australia, since April 1992 and had recently added
three female victims to bring his total to nearly 50. The man is
distinguishable by the padlock he always wears around his genitals.
[[Bangkok Post-Reuters, Feb94]]
* In April, the Board of Education in Hamden, Conn., met in a private
session to discuss the drunk-driving guilty plea that had been entered
by Superintendent of Schools David W. Shaw two days before. At the
meeting, Board members reviewing previously-undisclosed police records
learned that in his arrest photo, Shaw is wearing men's pants but blue
eye shadow, a gold lame blouse, a string of black beads, and a ladies'
undergarment. Shaw blamed the incident on alcohol, which he said caused
him to mistake an adult bookstore for a convenience store when he needed
to buy cigarettes. [New Haven Register, 4-12-94]
* Last October, New York City Correction Department doctor Jerzy
Gajewski, at his trial for fondling a woman in a subway station the year
before, was suspended without pay after he allegedly fondled the court
stenographer. [New York Daily News, 10-28-93]
Least Competent Person
* In Columbia Heights, Minn., in June, two men, aged 18 and 19, outside
the Tasty Pizza late at night turned their backs to the front window,
dropped their pants, and mooned the patrons. Apparently upset that they
were not being noticed, they began to jump up and down. One of the two
lost his balance, fell into the window, breaking it, and cutting his
buttocks and several fingers. [Focus News, 6-14-94]
- - - - -
Copyright 1994, Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.
Released for the personal use of readers. No commercial use may be made
of the material or of the name News of the Weird.
