One Industry That Needs No Stimulus: (1) Drug officials in California's Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties (north of San Francisco) estimated in January that two-thirds of the area's economy is based on probably illegal marijuana farming (illegal under federal law, but permitted for medical use by the state). One federal agent told MSNBC, "Nobody produces any better marijuana than (they) do right here." (2) In January, the director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime acknowledged that during the bleak banking days of September and October 2008, with panic in the economy over the shortage of cash, often the main source available to some banks was drug dealers' steady deposits of money to be laundered.

-- Community Property: (1) As part of a highly contentious New York divorce, surgeon Richard Batista, who in good times had donated a kidney to his wife, demanded in January that she either give it back or compensate him with $1.5 million in consideration of the rarity of his kidney match. (2) Also in January, Thomas Rowley, 28, went on trial in Victorville, Calif., for his allegedly more direct approach two years ago after he and his girlfriend split. According to prosecutors, Rowley said that since he had paid for her breast implants, he felt entitled to recover them, allegedly by carving them out of her body (and consequently was charged with attempted murder).

-- Intimate Health Care: (1) A sex-education advocacy organization in Sweden complained in November about the government's program that, finally after years of resistance, provides prosthetic penises to newly transgendered males. The policy was nonetheless termed unfair because the devices are cosmetic only and do not "work." (Regulations prohibit taxpayer money for "sexual aids.") (2) In October, five employees of the health-care provider New Zealand Care resigned when the company ordered them to provide (as routine service to developmentally disabled patients who request it) assistance in masturbating.

-- Episcopal priest Gregory Malia, 43, of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., buys top-dollar champagne at New York City nightclubs, even leaving five-figure tips and treating his favorite waitresses to shopping sprees, according to a December New York Daily News report. Said Malia (who is a hemophiliac and owns a pharmacy devoted to blood-disorder medicine), "I work hard. I make good money. How I spend it, that is my business." Waitresses interviewed by the Daily News said "Father Greg" is a sweetheart, never doing anything inappropriate, but exceedingly generous, whether alone or with business clients. Said one waitress, "A bad night for him is (a tip of) $5,000."

-- Forbes magazine reported in December that state authorities were investigating Beverly Hills, Calif., plastic surgeon Alan Bittner over his claim that he had created diesel fuel for his and his girlfriend's SUVs out of liposuctioned fat from his patients. California law is said to prohibit using medical waste for such a purpose, but Bittner's claims came to light in patients' lawsuits over liposuction treatments, quoting Bittner as bragging about the biodiesel. Bittner wrote on one Web page (no longer online), "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel, and I have more fat than I can use."

-- London's Gymbox in Bank athletic club, recognizing that lifting weights can be a boring way to exercise, introduced "human barbells" recently, hiring five men of various sizes (including two dwarfs) that customers could use for weights instead of the iron. One advantage of the humans is that, on request, they shout encouragement to the customer with each lift. The largest of the five is a 37-year-old, 340-pound man.

-- Walter Tessier was charged with one of the pettiest of petit larceny counts in January as sheriff's deputies in Amsterdam, N.Y., said he tried to defraud a Price Chopper store. Tessier had purchased a $10.99 lobster but returned it, claiming that it had turned "bad," and the store allowed him some crab meat in exchange, but employees discovered that the "lobster" was only its empty, carefully reconstructed shell that made it appear whole. Tessier then ran from the store but was arrested later at his home, where he had just finished the crab meat.

-- The sheriff in El Dorado, Kan., asked in January for help from the public in locating a missing boy named Adam. According to the sheriff, Adam's parents, Doug and Valerie Herrman, only recently reported him missing, even though they had not seen him since he ran away in 1999, when he was 11. The Herrmans' attorney said that his clients were nonetheless "very worried about him."

-- Parenting Handful: Late last year, Jack Burt, 5, of a rural area near Darwin, Australia, admitted to his dad that he had been kicked off the school bus for bad behavior (including hitting the driver in the head with an apple), provoking the father to use the episode as a teaching opportunity, according to the Northern Territory News. For the five-day suspension, Dad would not reward Jack by driving him but would make Jack walk the 2 1/2-hour, seven-mile distance to school and back each day. On the first day after the suspension, Dad proudly helped Jack aboard the bus, hopeful of having instilled a new maturity. However, three stops later, Jack was kicked off again, for fighting.

-- A Prosecutor's Worst Nightmare: At a dramatic moment in the November trial of a bus driver accused of rape in Edmonton, Alberta, the prosecutor asked the victim on the witness stand to look around the courtroom and identify her attacker. The victim adjusted her glasses and scanned the room, but looked past the defense table and pointed confidently to a man in the gallery later identified as a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter, who in fact had nothing to do with the rape. (The judge allowed her a second chance, based on the volume of other evidence against the defendant, and she correctly identified him.)

-- Apparent closure was reached in 2006 in a long-running News of the Weird story in which, for sexual thrills, a man periodically telephoned managers of fast-food restaurants and, pretending to be a police detective, persuaded the manager to strip-search one or more employees, supposedly to recover stolen merchandise, and to describe the search over the phone. In January, another man, John Brady, 49, was arrested and charged on New York City's Staten Island with telephoning women at random and instructing them to perform digital rectal exams on themselves, claiming that he was doing research on the digestive system. At least one woman complied.

Life Imitates the Three Stooges: In January, inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a streetlamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it and the other to the left, and they slammed into each other, allowing jailers to catch up and re-arrest them. (A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment, and the video has been a worldwide sensation.)

"Fool for a Client" 3; Prosecutors 0: Between June and August 2003, high school dropout Jonathan Harris, 34, acted as his own lawyer in three Philadelphia felony cases and won them all, including a murder trial that could have sent him to death row. He had two more potential trials upcoming and taunted the prosecutor about taking him on again. (The prosecutor blamed the murder acquittal on unreliable and no-show witnesses.)

Poetry on the Rise: (1) Twelve local poets jumped into the frigid Green Lake in Seattle in December, just because they thought it would be a good way to publicize their art. "It's not enough to write," said one. "You need that audience." (2) The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned the conviction of Antonio Batista in November, declaring that his "death threat" against a Missassauga city council member, in the form of a sonnet on long-neglected potholes, was more likely literary expression. (3) Jose Gouveia, 45, recently published "Rubber Side Down," a book of poems by bikers about the open road (including 17-syllable "baiku"), some from the educationally upscale Highway Poets Motorcycle Club of Cambridge, Mass.

-- An Oregon district attorney's office set out two years ago to prosecute David Simmons for having sex the year before with his girlfriend, then 14, while he was 17. A grand jury in Jefferson County refused to indict Simmons, but the prosecutor acted exactly like the indictment had gone through, and no one, even Simmons, noticed the mistake. Only when Simmons agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a 30-day sentence in October 2006 did the news finally reach the foreman of the grand jury that had "no-billed" Simmons, and the foreman's complaint caused the judge to dismiss the conviction. However, in December 2008, prosecutors in neighboring Lane County charged Simmons anew for that 2005 tryst, claiming that "double jeopardy" does not apply because the Jefferson County case never legally happened (in that Simmons was never really indicted).

-- Hysterectomies by ordinary surgery can take hours to perform, several days' recovery and six weeks off from work, largely from the trauma of cutting open the abdomen, but recent advances in laparoscopy have reduced the burdens dramatically because the four required incisions are each only about one-eighth of an inch long. The Chicago Sun-Times reported in December that one of the leading practitioners, Dr. Richard Demir of South Barrington, Ill., had recently been recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for having removed a 7-pound uterus via laparoscopy (by cutting the organ into smaller pieces and pulling each out through the tiny incisions).

-- Police in New Britain, Conn., arrested Joel Rubin, 42, in January and charged him with using a stolen credit card, but unanswered was why Rubin also tried to use his own store discount card to get a lower price on the merchandise. It was Rubin's name on the discount card that tipped off police, and it was not immediately clear why Rubin wanted to save a few bucks off a bill that would be sent to someone else.

-- Secondary-Level Questions: (1) In December, Pauline McCook of Britain's Isle of Sheppey reported the theft from her front yard of her life-sized glass statue of mobster Al Capone. It was not reported why McCook would have such a statue in the first place. (2) In Plant City, Fla., in December, Robert Thompson and Taurus Morris were charged with armed burglary after taking a woman's eggbeater from her at knifepoint. It was not reported why they wanted the eggbeater or why the victim had to be threatened at knifepoint to get it.

-- In November, some African-American leaders in Danville, Ill., complained when eight black players were cut from the Danville High School basketball team at once, charging that the coach was engaging in "racial profiling" by, in the words of a black pastor, "(taking) a look at the way the young men wore their hair." The coach pointed out that though all the dismissed players are black, so are all eight retained players, and that two of the retained players wore the same style braids to which the pastor was referring.

-- The December student rioting in Athens, Greece (triggered by a police officer's shooting of an unarmed 15-year-old boy), was so intensive that the police department quickly ran through its arsenal of tear gas and was forced to use supplies that were 25 years old. One demonstrator told a Times of London reporter that it was unfair for police to use canisters that old because they contained dangerous chemicals that caused rioters to get "sick" and to "have trouble breathing."

-- It's Supposed to Be the Other Way Around: On the South Boulder (Colo.) Creek Trail in January, as a woman was standing beside her bicycle, a cow wandered by and tipped her over (and then stepped on her legs before meandering off).

"I take (my baby) to the park ... maybe put it in its stroller, or put it in its sling, or hold it in a blanket," the 49-year-old "mother" told ABC News reporters in January, lovingly describing her play-like infant. She is of the "reborn" community of women whose maternal instinct leads them to mother fake babies as they would real ones (which they choose not to have, or cannot have). Reborn dolls are exquisitely manufactured, selling for $500 and up, and require real baby clothes rather than doll suits. In addition to the obvious benefits (no diapers, no college fund), reborns will always be infants and never bratty adolescents. A psychiatrist told the reporters that she would not be surprised to find that the "mother" of a reborn would "have the same chemical, hormonal reactions as if she was holding a real baby."

Daniel Petric, 15 at the time, shot his parents in October 2007 (killing his mother) after they took away his violent Halo 3 video game. In January 2009, Judge James Burge pronounced Petric guilty of murder, rejecting his lawyers' claim that Petric was insane at the time because he had confused "killing" cartoon avatars with killing humans. However, even though the legal test of insanity was not met, Judge Burge acknowledged that Petric "had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents, they would be dead forever."

More People Disrespecting Railroad Tracks: (1) Toronto police officers investigating a robbery at The Beer Store in January parked their cruiser to investigate but admitted later (after a train had crushed it) that it was probably "a little bit on the tracks." (2) A 68-year-old driver got stuck on tracks in Anaheim, Calif., in December, and when panic set in at the sight of an oncoming train, she unfortunately decided to call 911 on her cell phone, rather than exit the car. (3) Matthew Randall, 40, had a happier ending in Ashland, Mass., in October after he drove onto the rails and was seen "barreling down the tracks" toward a train. CSX engineers were able to slow down before the collision, which knocked the car onto a side road, and Randall actually drove it home (and was later arrested for leaving the scene, trespassing on railroad tracks, and of course DUI).

(1) Katherine Kelly, 76, was arrested in November for stealing a wallet from a supermarket basket in New York City. It was her 73rd arrest, at least, with 16 convictions, but police say it could be more, in that they've found 36 aliases so far. (2) Henry Earl, 58, of Lexington, Ky., gave rehab one more try in October after his arrest number 1,333 (according to TheSmokingGun.com's public-records search), almost all for public intoxication.

New York's Newsday threw the improving-self-esteem movement into confusion with a July 2002 profile of the Lane brothers (who are both in their 40s) of New York City. Winner Lane (his birth name) has a long rap sheet of petty crimes, while his younger brother, Loser Lane (also his birth name), is a decorated police detective in South Bronx.

Saudi Arabia is host to several camel beauty pageants each year (condemned as religiously fatuous by Muslim clerics), but the country's first goat beauty pageant was held in September in Riyadh, with the distinctive Najdi breed, featuring high nose bridges and silky, shaggy hair, taking top prizes. In fact, most of the goats in the competition had the same father, Burgan, whose progeny typically fetch the equivalent of $25,000 and up. Still, prize-winning show camels can bring 10 times that amount for the greater status they convey to their owners. Burgan himself did not appear at the pageant, according to a Reuters dispatch, because his owner feared that a jealous competitor would have an "evil eye" cast upon him.

-- The Rental Society: Among the services available by the clock in Japan (according to a January BBC dispatch) are (1) quality time with a pet (about $10 an hour at the Ja La La Cafe in Toyko, usually with dogs or cats but with rabbits, ferrets and beetles available); (2) no-sex quality time with a college coed (flattering conversation by the hour at the Campus Cafe, less expensive than the geisha-type houses); (3) and actors from the I Want To Cheer Up agency in Tokyo, to portray "relatives" for weddings and funerals when actual family members cannot attend, or to portray fathers to help single women with their parenting duties, or to portray husbands to help women practice for the routine of married life (except for sex).

-- In January, a federal judge dismissed the last lawsuit standing in the way of a new Indian casino for California's Amador County, where the federally recognized Me-Wuk tribe of the Buena Vista Rancheria has its 67-acre reservation. The tribe consists of Rhonda Morningstar Pope and her five children, none of whom lives on the tribal land.

-- Parental Responsibility: (1) A father took his 20-year-old son to an Islamic court in Bauchi, Nigeria, in October, demanding that he be jailed for idleness, which he said has shamed the family. (The court immediately sentenced the son to 30 lashes and six months in prison.) (2) In December, a court in Seoul, South Korea, fined the parents of a teenage rapist the equivalent of about $60,000 for their negligence in raising the boy badly. (The 18-year-old himself is serving a 10-year sentence for the crime.)

-- Twenty million Chinese have their residences in caves, but that is often not a bad deal, according to a December McClatchy Newspapers dispatch from Miaogou Village. In addition to the obvious advantages (e.g., no mortgage), some caves have been in the family for generations and have electrical wiring, plumbing and cable television, and some are part of communities of connected caves. Researchers said that earthen insulation keeps the inside temperature from dropping below about 55 degrees Fahrenheit even in the dead of winter.

-- Political Correctness Update: (1) In November, the student association at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, voted to eliminate a cystic fibrosis organization from the list of charities it supports, explaining that since the condition almost exclusively afflicts white people, it was not "inclusive" enough to merit student funding. (2) In December, Britain's Oxford University Press announced the latest changes in its highly selective Junior Dictionary, finding room to add dozens of words, including trapezium, alliteration and incisor but eliminating, for example, bishop, chapel, christen, minister, monk, nun, parish, psalm and saint. The publisher said the changes reflect Britain's "multicultural, multifaith" society.

-- Photographer Yeon Lee's exhibit in a London gallery in December featured a burqa-clad model, fully robed from head to toe except for a tiny opening, but that opening was not the typical one, for the woman's eyes. Ms. Lee's openings exposed only the model's nipples, highlighting, she said, "the ways women are categorized in male-dominated societies."

-- Family Knows Best: (1) Evelyn Poynter, 86, had refused for months to leave her apartment in Pittsburgh and move in with her sister, Laura Stewart, 72, who had offered to take care of her. In December, according to police, a fed-up Stewart forcibly wrapped Poynter's arms, legs, neck and body in duct tape, tossed her in the back seat, and drove her home to Shaker Heights, Ohio. "There was nothing sinister," said Stewart's daughter, but still, Stewart was arrested. (2) In October, police in Elgin, Ill., said they were investigating an accusation that after a 13-year-old boy and girl broke off their relationship, the girl's mother ordered the boy to reconcile with her daughter by threatening to release nude photos of him that her daughter had taken.

Among the medical oddities mentioned in a December 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).

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) In January, police in Cape Coral, Fla., were seeking LaKeitha Watson-Atkinson for shoplifting from a TJ Maxx. The thief escaped after running from store security, but not before she was knocked down twice by her getaway car. In the commotion, a check made out to Watson-Atkinson fell to the ground. (2) Luke Radick, 21, was charged with attempted robbery of the National Bank of Palmerton in Sciota, Pa., in January. Bank employees refused to buzz Radick in for the simple reason that he stood at the door, covering his face and holding a shotgun.

An exceptionally cold winter brings more instances of the annual tragedy of young boys (rarely, girls) who could not resist the age-old physics experiment to see what would happen if, in sub-zero temperatures, they tried to lick a metal pole. In fact, it happened on successive days: a 10-year-old in Hammond, Ind., on Jan. 14 and a 6-year-old in Omaha, Neb., on the 15th. Both episodes ended badly with traces of the boys' tongues left on the poles.

(1) Marie-Eve Dean, 23, was ordered into intensive therapy in December by a judge in Ottawa, Ontario, after her conviction for mischief in making more than 10,000 crank phone calls to the city's 911 line, apparently just to protest the legal system's treatment of her former brother-in-law in a child-custody case. (2) A South Korean man identified only as Kim, wanted in Seoul for murder, had a more enduring grudge. Police charged the 37-year-old man with the November slaying of his high school music teacher after stewing for 21 years over the teacher's 1987 accusation that Kim cheated in class.

Ms. Courtney Mann, the head of the Philadelphia chapter of the white-supremacist National Association for the Advancement of White People, and who is a single mother who works as a tax preparer, was rebuffed in an attempt to join a Ku Klux Klan-sponsored march in Pittsburgh in April, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Though she has been in the NAAWP for at least four years, the Pennsylvania KKK Grand Dragon turned her down for the Klan march because Mann is black. "She wanted me to send transportation (to bring her to the rally)," said the Grand Dragon. "She wanted to stay at my house (during rally weekend). She's all confused, man. I don't think she knows she's black."