The human brain's 100 billion neurons may have such specific functions that a few electrically charge only upon recognition of a single celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton. UCLA researchers, studying the healthy cells of pre-op epilepsy patients, inadvertently discovered this unusual property, which apparently varies with individuals but remains internally consistent, whether the celebrity is represented by picture, name or sound. Patients were presented "hundreds of stimuli," one researcher told The Wall Street Journal in October, but "the neuron would respond to only one or two." For example, neurons were found that reacted only to Jennifer Aniston, only to "The Simpsons," only to Mother Teresa.

-- In 2002, following an acrimonious family debate, the head of late baseball slugger Ted Williams was cryogenically frozen, in the hope that science will some day learn how to revive dead people. An employee of the Arizona lab that stores the head recently disclosed some inside shenanigans, according to a September report in the New York Daily News. According to the employee, to keep Williams' head from sticking to the inside of its storage carton, the head was placed on an empty Bumble Bee tuna fish can inside the container, but the can itself then stuck to the head and had to be whacked off with a monkey wrench. (Since the lab's work is secretive, only first-person reports are likely to emerge on this story.)

-- High-Maintenance Goddesses: In Ahmedabad District, India, in September, Ramveer Singh Baghel, 35, sliced off his tongue as an offering to the goddess Amba. His sacrifice made him an instant deity in the local temple, delaying his trip to the hospital. And two weeks later, in a village in Bargarh District, India, a 19-year-old woman cut out her tongue, hoping, she said, that the Shiva temple's resident goddess would halt the woman's imminent arranged marriage and allow her to pick someone closer to her age.

-- Adventure in the Bush: In June, after a monitored, endangered marsupial (a "woylie") was killed in West Australia, scientists set out to recover the expensive radio collar transmitter it was wearing, but as they approached the signal, a 6-foot-long python swallowed the woylie and collar. The scientists captured the snake, intending to wait for the collar to pass through, but poachers broke into the Department of Environment and Conservation's shelter and stole the python, surely intending to sell it. According to a June report in The West Australian, the scientists, aided by authorities, eventually picked up the radio transmissions again, arrested one poacher, and freed the snake from its impending life of captivity.

-- In a delicate, two-hour procedure at a hospital in Newport Beach, Calif., in September, firefighters carefully sawed off the inch-thick metal dumbbell-tightening ring into which a man had inserted his penis three days earlier. He told surgeons his plan was to lengthen the organ, to, as he put it, "make me the chief of my tribe." By the time he got to the hospital, his member was swollen to more than twice its normal size, and sawing the ring off (without cutting the skin) was the only way to save it.

-- The mayor of the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, faced with an overcrowded highway D909 through town, "solved" the problem recently by making the street one-way, sending traffic speedily into the adjacent town of Clichy-la-Garenne. That city's mayor (a political rival of the Levallois-Perret mayor) reacted by making his portion of D909 one-way back toward Levallois-Perret, creating a dilemma at the city limit. Other authorities are working to resolve the impasse.

-- Chutzpah! In the tiny east Texas town of Tenaha, police allegedly extorted traveling motorists by subjecting them to bogus traffic stops, perhaps finding small amounts of drugs, and then offering to forgo prosecution if the motorists would forfeit their cars and other property. The forfeited items were then sold to fund a special police recreation account. Last year, the ACLU of Texas filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against both the police and local prosecutor Lynda Russell, and in September 2009, Russell asked the state attorney general if she could pay her legal expenses from the alleged extorted recreation account.

-- (1) Ella Orko, 86, was arrested in Chicago in August (her 61st arrest) and charged with shoplifting $252 worth of groceries and sundries (including anti-wrinkle cream). (2) Earlier this year, Richard Ramsey, 77, finally fulfilled a dream he said he'd had since age 13: He surgically became a woman. He had been living occasionally as Renee Ramsey following a 20-year military career, partly spent as a Green Beret.

-- Judge James Morley dismissed animal cruelty charges in September against former Moorestown, N.J., police officer Robert Melia Jr., who had been caught in 2006 attempting to sexually gratify himself using calves' mouths. Because the state has no anti-bestiality statute, Melia was charged with animal "cruelty," but Judge Morley said he was uncertain whether the acts were "cruel" or merely confusing. He reasoned that calves would normally recognize an appendage in their mouths as the prelude to food. If the calf could speak, said Judge Morley, it might merely say, "Where's the milk? I'm not getting any milk."

-- (1) Jerry Lowery, 38, surrendered to police in Milwaukee in July in connection with three thefts of expensive eyeglasses from local retailers. He admitted that he "really (likes) to be around glasses" and has had this "problem" for about 15 years. (2) Police in Commerce, Texas, arrested a man in September and charged him with twice approaching a female clerk at Commerce Hardware, holding up a piece of paper with powder on it and blowing it into her face to provoke sneezing. Said police chief Kerry Crews: "He becomes aroused by females sneezing. ... In my entire career I've never heard of anything like this."

-- Major Denial: In September, David McKay, 28, finally pleaded guilty in Regina, Saskatchewan, to obstruction of justice after initially lying to police officers who were trying to serve a warrant on him from an earlier incident. McKay had repeatedly claimed that he was "Matthew," and not "David McKay," even at the station house, when a search revealed that "David McKay" was tattooed on his shoulder.

-- (1) A 40-year-old man accidentally fatally shot himself in Imperial, Mo., in September while teaching gun safety to his girlfriend. The gun fired when he was quizzing her to recognize whether a gun's safety mechanism was engaged or not. (2) Tom Elton, 54, and Brenda Blondell, 59, both convicted murderers who became prison-rights activists, eventually won parole, continued their community work together in the Vancouver, British Columbia, area, and married each other. However, in June, police arrested Elton and charged him with murdering Blondell.

-- In August 2006, the St. Petersburg Times profiled Michael Wiley, 39, of Port Richey, Fla., an enthusiastic driver despite having lost both arms and half a leg in a childhood accident. Wrote the Times: "He guides the key into the ignition with his mouth. Turns it with his toes. Shifts with his knee. Bites the headlight switch. Jams his stump of a left arm into the steering wheel and whips it around." On the minus side, his license was revoked long ago, and reckless driving charges flourish, including the latest, one day after the Times story ran. (And three weeks later, he was charged with domestic assault, using his forehead.)

Love Can Mess You Up: Before Arthur David Horn met his future bride Lynette (a "metaphysical healer") in 1988, he was a tenured professor at Colorado State, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale, teaching a mainstream course in human evolution. With Lynette's guidance (after a revelatory week with her in California's Trinity Mountains, searching for Bigfoot), Horn evolved, himself, resigning from Colorado State and seeking to remedy his inadequate Ivy League education. At a conference in Denver in September, Horn said he now realizes that humans come from an alien race of shape-shifting reptilians that continue to control civilization through the secretive leaders known as the Illuminati. Other panelists in Denver included enthusiasts describing their own experiences with various alien races.

-- Health Insurance Follies: (1) Blue Shield California twice refused to pay $2,700 emergency room claims by Rosalinda Miran-Ramirez, concluding that it was not a "reasonable" decision for her to go to the ER that morning when she awoke to a shirt saturated with blood from what turned out to be a breast tumor. Only after a KPIX-TV reporter intervened in September did Blue Shield pay the claim. (2) National Women's Law Center found that the laws of eight states permit insurance companies to deny health coverage to a battered spouse (as a "pre-existing condition," since batterers tend to be recidivists), according to a September report by Kaiser Health News.

-- Child "Protection" Caseworkers: (1) In November 2008, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services returned an infant to her mother's care two weeks after the woman had, according to police, left her in a toilet bowl. (Three months later, following further investigation, the woman was charged with attempted murder, and the baby was taken away.) (2) Texas child agency caseworkers assigned a low priority (non-"immediate" risk) after a home visit in May in Arlington revealed that a violent, long-troubled mother routinely left three children, ages 6, 5 and 1, home alone all day while she was at work. In September, the 1-year-old was found dead.

-- On Aug. 28, a suicide bomber approached Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, intending to kill them both using a new, mysterious device that an al-Qaida video had earlier proclaimed would be impossible to detect. The terrorist blew up only himself, though, and security investigators concluded that his "bomb" was a 3-inch-long explosive hidden in his rectum. A Transportation Security Administration official downplayed the puny power of such a small device (but its effectiveness in bringing down an airplane is still an open question).

-- While state and local governments furiously pare budgets by laying off and furloughing workers, retired bureaucrats who receive defined-benefit pensions (rather than flexible 401(k) retirement accounts) continue to receive fixed payouts. According to a California organization advocating that government retirement benefits be changed from pensions to 401(k) accounts, one retired fire chief in northern California gets $241,000 a year, and a retired small-town city administrator's pension is $499,674.84 per year, guaranteed.

-- In September, Hadi al-Mutif, 34, who has been on death row in Saudi Arabia for the last 16 years, following his conviction for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, was given a five-year prison sentence after insulting the Saudi justice system in a TV interview.

-- Among the ramblings on the blog of George Sodini (the gunman who killed three women in a Pennsylvania health club, and then himself, in August) was his belief that, having once been "saved," he would enter heaven even if he happened to commit mass murder. Sodini attributed the belief to one of his church's pastors, and another church official, Deacon Jack Rickard, told the Associated Press that he personally believes Sodini is in heaven ("once saved, always saved"), though Rickard somehow split the difference: "He'll be in heaven, but he won't have any rewards because he did evil."

-- The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals operates an assistance-dog program under a $500,000 grant and not only provides the trained dog but also yearly "refresher" sessions to keep the dog sharp. However, client Patricia Frieze told SF Weekly in September that the organization had asked her whether it could do the refresher course this year by telephone instead of a home visit by a trainer.

-- Landlords Prevail: (1) In July, Chuck Bartlett was finally granted legal possession of his house in Kenai, Alaska, overcoming a squatter's delaying tactics aided by local laws that frustrated eviction despite clear evidence of Bartlett's ownership. (Bartlett waited out the two-month standoff by pitching a tent in his own yard.) The squatter's final, futile challenge involved scribbling an obviously bogus "lease" that, even though Bartlett never signed it (or even saw it), the sheriff had to honor because only a judge, following a formal hearing, can rule it invalid. (2) In Raleigh, N.C., in July, Leslie Smith, 62, had no such problem. He was arrested after calling the police to report that he had shot a woman who had been living in his house. "She won't get out (of the house). So I shot her."

-- (1) Douglas Jones, 57, was cited by federal park rangers in September for having, over the course of a year, littered Joshua Tree National Park in California with more than 3,000 golf balls. Jones explained that he tossed the balls from his car, believing he was thus honoring deceased golfers. (2) John Manley, 50, breathed pain-free in September for the first time in two years after surgeons discovered the source of his coughing and discomfort. Manley said he "like(s) to take big gulps of drink," which is his only explanation for why a 1-inch piece of a plastic utensil was lodged not in his stomach but in his lung. Duke University surgeon Momen Wahidi recalled the scene in the operating room as they tried to make out what the fragment was: "We started reading out loud, 'a-m-b-u-r-g-e-r'" (for Wendy's Old-Fashioned Hamburgers).

-- Two men were arrested in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, in September after allegedly scamming four local businessmen out of a total of $160,000, but the scam may reflect worse on the victims than the perpetrators. The victims (who might have considered themselves savvy entrepreneurs to have earned that much money) were somehow persuaded by the alleged scammers that bills of currency can duplicate themselves if soaked in a secret chemical overnight. The perpetrators "demonstrated" the chemical's power by a sleight-of-hand, probably involving a hidden $100 bill that, after soaking, appeared alongside an original $100 bill. (Readers who want to try chemically doubling their money thusly will need bleach, baby powder and hair spray, which the perpetrators had recently purchased.)

-- More Examples of Miracle Drugs: (1) Mitchell Deslatte, 25, drove in and parked at a Louisiana state trooper station in Baton Rouge in July, staggered inside, and asked the man behind the desk for a room, thinking he was in a hotel. He was arrested for DUI. (2) Terence Loyd, 32, pleaded guilty in Mansfield, La., in August to possession of cocaine. He had been arrested in March when construction workers saw him on his hands and knees, rolling in (and eating) mud and growling like a dog.

-- From a Legal Notice of a Name Change in the Honolulu Advertiser, Aug. 24, 2005: change name from "Waiaulia Alohi anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam Paghmani" to "Waiaulia Alohi anail ke alaamek kawaipi olanihenoheno Kam."

Beneath the luxury hotels on the Las Vegas Strip is a series of flood tunnels that are home to dozens of people who work odd jobs such as hustling leftover change in casino slot machines. A correspondent for London's The Sun gained the trust of a few and even photographed their "apartments" for a September dispatch, showing well-stocked quarters, with scrounged appliances and furniture and even one makeshift shower rigged from a water cooler. "Amy," who has lived in the tunnels with her husband, "J.R.," for two years, said she "love(s)" the Vegas lifestyle and appears in no hurry to leave her setup. "Kathryn" (who lives with boyfriend "Steven") also appears content except, she says, for the fragrance, the black widow spiders, and the periodic rush of water through their home (threatening any "valuables" not stacked on crates).

-- David Cerullo came to prominence after purchasing the television studios abandoned by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and established what is perhaps the boldest of all Christian "prosperity gospel" ministries (that pays him an annual base salary of $1.52 million). With his father, semi-retired Pentecostal preacher Morris Cerullo, they assure followers that the more they give, the more God will return to them. In a recent TV spot, Morris, speaking first in tongues and then addressing the currently credit-challenged: "When you (donate), the windows of heaven ... open for you ... 100 fold." "Debt cancellation!" (The on-screen message: "Call now with your $900 offering and receive God's debt cancellation!")

-- In September, a judge in Stuart, Fla., was about to sentence pastor Rodney McGill for real estate fraud, but McGill was undaunted, addressing a courtroom prayer for his enemies: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, for every witness called against me, I pray cancer in their lives, lupus, brain tumor, pancreatic cancer." The judge then sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

-- The cheap-drink Tuesday night special at the Attic bar in Newcastle, England, in early September was a money-back guarantee at the end of the night to anyone who could still legally drive (measured by the bar's breathalyzer), with the evening's most-alcohol-saturated customer drinking free the following week. The Newcastle City Council soon convinced the bar it was a bad idea.

-- The Department of Homeland Security (relying on a study later termed by the Government Accounting Office to have been rushed and flawed) decided in January that the best place for its new $700 million research facility on infectious diseases would be in Kansas, which happens to be in the heart of America's "tornado alley." The GAO report, leaked to The Washington Post in July, claimed the risk of accidental release of dangerous pathogens is far greater than the department assumed.

-- Canadian medical appliance manufacturer X4 Labs, which sells a penis-elongating traction device for around $400, disclosed in August that it is making a solid gold version on contract for a Saudi businessman. The buyer claimed he required gold only because of allergies, but then also ordered it ornamented with diamonds and rubies, according to an August Agence France-Presse report. X4's cachet as a medical-appliance supplier is expected to get the device past Saudi customs, which normally bans sex toys.

-- Four apparently quite bored people in their early 20s were arrested in September in Bennington, Vt., after a Chili's restaurant burglar alarm sounded at 4:30 a.m. According to police, the four intended to remove and steal the large chili on the restaurant's sign, using a hacksaw and power drill. However, not possessing a battery-operated drill, they had strung extension cords together running to the nearest outlet they could find, which was 470 feet away, across four lanes of highway and through a Home Depot parking lot.

(1) Marine Sgt. Michael Ferschke was killed in Iraq in 2008, but his wife and their son, both Japanese citizens, cannot enter the United States. The couple exchanged vows under Japanese law by long-distance proxy, as Michael was about to deploy, but immigration law does not recognize such unions, unless subsequently "consummated." (The Ferschkes had conceived their child before they were married.) (2) Marine Lance Cpl. Josef Lopez took the Corps' advice and received a smallpox vaccination just before deploying to Iraq, but after nine days in country, he went into a coma with a rare adverse reaction that has left him permanently, seriously disabled. However, since he was felled by the vaccine and not "combat," he is ineligible for special disability funds to help seriously wounded troops (for such expenses as modifying a home to accommodate a disability).

In September, police in Bonney Lake, Wash., were seeking "Dale," who had been reported hanging around the high school, trying to befriend male athletes. In the most recent incident, he lured a boy to the library, offering help on a term paper project, but when the boy declined and walked away, "Dale" jumped on his back and asked for a piggyback ride. (Fondness for piggyback rides is not a widely practiced obsession, though the legendary illustrator R. Crumb liked to receive them in lieu of sex, according to an ex-girlfriend in the 1994 movie "Crumb.")

Failure to Keep a Low Profile: (1) Angel DeLeon, 30, admitted to police in May that he was the one who had just robbed the National Penn Bank in Reading, Pa. Police originally started after DeLeon's car when he raced by them with his radio blaring. (2) Ricky Dale Ford was jailed in September in Conway, Ark., accused of stealing an all-terrain vehicle. While joyriding, Ford had accidentally hit a beehive, and when police found him in nearby woods, he was "barely breathing," one officer said, having been stung more than 100 times.

Britain's local councils are notoriously fearful of lawsuits arising from the garden "allotments" they rent to residents. For example, in September, the Southampton Council barred residents of recently vandalized property from installing barbed wire, lest a trespasser get hurt and sue. Meanwhile, in Michigan, Scott Zeilinski, who is serving eight years in prison for armed robbery, filed a lawsuit against the store he had robbed because an employee (whom Zeilinski had just threatened with a knife to the throat) had pulled out his gun and shot Zeilinski.

Ironies: (1) A 77-year-old woman in Heaton Mersey, England, who was described by friends as an enthusiastic shopper whose home was crammed to the ceiling with purchases, died in January of natural causes, but rescuers made five passes through the clutter before locating her body under stacks of goods that had fallen on her. (2) A 45-year-old devout Catholic was killed recently in Vienna, Austria, shortly after a harrowing experience on a stuck elevator. The man had been so traumatized that, following his rescue, he went straight to the Weinhaus Church to give thanks. However, as he approached the altar, an 850-pound stone pillar fell and crushed him.

"Pain is the sensation of weakness leaving the body," Phoenix "artist" Steve Haworth told a Phoenix New Times reporter in May 2001, while he was arranging scenes for associates of his Church of Body Modification, including a horizontal full-body suspension (hanging for five minutes by rings in body piercings); a tug of war (full-force pulling contest using a rope held taut through rings on various body piercings); free-moving implants just below the skin that appear to be, say, a living bracelet; and various body alterations such as "Vulcan" ears, a ribbed penis and a filleted male urethra. Haworth won't amputate anything, though (too "destructive," he said), thus displeasing his girlfriend, who wants to lose two toes in order to fit into smaller shoes.