-- In the midst of World Cup fever, readers might have missed Germany's win over host Barbados in June for the Woz Challenge Cup, following an eight-team polo tournament with players not on horses but Segways. The sport is said to have been created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whose Silicon Valley Aftershocks competed again this year in Barbados (but last won the Cup in 2007). Wozniak told ESPN.com that his own polo skills are fading, but the San Jose Mercury News reported in May that Woz's fearlessness on the Segway seems hardly diminished. (The Mercury News report, on the Aftershocks' local, nerd-populated league, described the players as "the pudgy and the pale" and "geek chic.")

-- Stories of epic sportsmanship warm the public's heart, but there is also epic "cutthroat," such as by Monrovia (Calif.) High School girls' track coach Mike Knowles. Knowles' team had just been defeated for first place in the last event of the April league championship meet -- by a record-setting pole vault by South Pasadena High School's Robin Laird, edging her team over Monrovia, 66-61. But then Knowles noticed that Laird was wearing a flimsy, string "friendship" bracelet, thus violating a national high school athletics' jewelry rule. He notified officials, who were forced to disqualify Laird and declare Monrovia the champion, 65-62. "This is my 30th year coaching track," Knowles said later. "I know a lot of rules and regulations."

-- Universal health insurance cannot come soon enough for uninsured Kathy Myers, 41, of Niles, Mich., who, suffering an increasingly painful shoulder injury, has been continually turned away from emergency rooms because the condition was not life-threatening. In June, as a last resort, she took a gun and shot herself in the shoulder, hoping for a wound serious enough for ER treatment. Alas, she missed major arteries and bones and was again sent home, except with even more pain.

-- Britain's Countess of Wemyss and March, now 67, is a hands-on manager-fundraiser for the Beckley Trust -- UK's leading advocacy organization for legalizing marijuana, according to an April profile by the Daily Mail. However, she has not forsaken an earlier psychotropic-promoting campaign. In her early 20s, when she was Amanda Feilding, she extolled the virtues of trepanation (to "broaden ... awareness" by increasing the oxygen in the brain, directly, by drilling a hole in one's head). Feilding's first boyfriend wrote the book on the process ("Bore Hole"), and her husband, the flamboyant 13th Earl of Wemyss, has also been trepanned. The Countess still expresses hope that the National Health Service will eventually cover trepanning.

-- People who live or work in New York City believe themselves to be among the world's toughest and hardiest, but at least 51 of them are apparently legendarily soft: the 51 city bus drivers who between them took 3,200 days of paid leave last year to "heal" over the single workplace "injury" of being spit on by passengers. (Thirty-two other spit-upon drivers did not request leave.) An official with the Transport Workers Union called spitting "physically and psychologically traumatic" and requiring "recuperat(ion)." -- The prominent Howrah bridge in Calcutta, India, has become a serious safety risk, according to a May report for the Calcutta Port Trust, because the steel hoods protecting the pillars holding up the bridge have been thinned by 50 percent in recent years. Engineers believe the corrosion has been caused almost entirely by the chemicals in gutkha, the popular chewing tobacco/herb concoction, which produces expectorants routinely hocked onto the bridge by the 500,000 pedestrians who cross it every day.

-- (1) At a public meeting of the Dixon, Calif., City Council in May, Councilman Michael Ceremello refused to yield the floor to a colleague ("(Y)ou don't have the floor. Please sit back and shut the (F-word) up"). (2) Paul Gogarty, a Member of Ireland's Parliament, during a public session in May, answering the criticism of an opponent ("With all due respect ... (F-word) you, Deputy Stagg, (F-word) you.").

-- Inventor Jiro Takashima, 75, maintains that his Pro-State massager is a serious medical device (retailing for about $80), but his daughter-partner Amy Sung, 35, simultaneously markets it as a prostate sex-play toy called the Aneros at adult novelty stores (retailing for about $50). According to a June Houston Chronicle report, Takashima's booth at medical conventions is popular, but at sex expos, he and his daughter are "rock stars." However, since the Pro-State/Aneros was intended as a medical device, competing sex-toy makers have felt free to copy Aneros' design, and Takashima's lawsuit to stop them is now before a federal court in Houston.

-- Washington, D.C., Attorney General Peter Nickles ordered an investigation in June after learning that the city's payroll office had, over a seven-year period, failed to remit the life-insurance premiums deducted from the paychecks of at least 1,400 employees. Already, one employee had been told that her policy had been canceled because of the unremitted premiums. (Until the investigation is finished, it is impossible to say which of the two usual explanations of chronic D.C. bureaucratic dysfunction -- theft or "large-scale human error" -- is applicable.)

-- In the space of about 30 minutes on a June morning, according to a Dayton Daily News report, Brian Horst, 35, shoplifted several packages of meat and a jug of Mad Dog 20/20 wine from a store, inexplicably rolled a stainless-steel tank of carbon dioxide on wheels away from a restaurant, and disabled an ATM by pounding it with a rock (after several witnesses spotted him in conversation with the screen, apparently trying to reason with the machine or possibly with an imaginary employee inside it).

-- Recent Playdates: (1) Old Forge, Pa., February (Jesus appearing in a bucket of sauce at Brownie's Famous Pizzeria). (2) Lockport, N.Y., December (joint appearance of Jesus and Mary in an orange, sliced open on Christmas morning). (3) Rockford, Ill., April (Jesus appearing in the MRI of a thoracic spine examination). (4) Brownsville, Texas, May (Mary appearing on bark from a tree toppled during a storm). (5) Salford, England, February (Jesus appearing on a frying pan following the burning of a pancake). (6) Old Hatfield, England, February (Jesus appearing on a partially burned log in a fireplace).

-- Tensions were brewing in the family of Zell Kravinsky, 48, and his psychiatrist-wife Emily over what she believes is his excessive altruism (according to an August 2003 profile in The New York Times). Kravinsky is not just a passionate philanthropist (from his fortune in commercial real estate), but such a strict utilitarian that he says he would sacrifice his one good kidney (he's already donated the other one) if it were needed by someone doing more social good than he. "No one should have two kidneys," he says, "until everyone has one." He said he cannot value his own kids more than anyone else's, a point that has angered his parents and caused Emily to threaten divorce and two friends to abandon him.

New York state school officials had promised to crack down on soft test-grading to end the near-automatic grade-advancement by students unprepared for promotion. However, a June New York Post report found that the problem lingers under the current grading guideline called "holistic rubrics." Among examples cited by the Post (from a 4th-grade math test): How many inches long is a "2-foot-long skateboard"? (Answer: 24; "half-credit" answer: 48). Also, if you have 35 book boxes, and each contains 10 books, how many books are there? (Answer: 350; "half-credit" answer: 150).

-- According to a May report by Seattle's KOMO-TV, former Oregon National Guardsman Gary Pfleider II is awaiting the results of his latest appeal to end the garnishment of his disability checks to cover $3,175 for gear he supposedly "lost" when he was shot in Iraq. Pfleider was hit in the leg by a sniper in 2007, bled profusely and was evacuated (and is awaiting his ninth surgery on the leg), but the Oregon Guard apparently believes that, despite the trauma, Pfleider somehow should have paused to inventory the equipment he was carrying and to make arrangements for its safekeeping during his imminent hospitalization.

-- To ease the crowds entering the Texas Capitol building in Austin, officials recently opened an "express" line, bypassing most security precautions, for selected visitors and personnel. Obviously, members of the legislature use the express line, along with Capitol employees presenting ID. A third category of favored visitors: anyone with a Texas concealed-weapons carry permit. The Houston Chronicle reported in June that the lobbyists frustrated with the long security lines have been applying for concealed-weapons permits even if they expect never to touch a firearm.

-- Though he reportedly hacks more frequently lately, 2-year-old Ardi Rizal of Banyuasin, Indonesia, continues to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, according to a May dispatch in London's Daily Mail and other news reports. Local officials offered Ardi's parents a new car if they convinced him to quit, but the mother warned that her son throws massive, head-banging tantrums if deprived of his smokes, and his fisherman father, noting Ardi's generous girth, says the kid looks fine to him. (Unfortunately for the parents, Ardi prefers only a certain high-end brand, which costs the equivalent of about $2.75 a pack.)

-- Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported in May that Qantas Airways has acknowledged re-using plastic knives and forks from its in-flight meals as many as 30 times before discarding them. One supplier who visited Qantas' Q Catering center in the Sydney suburb of Mascot was told that the Qantas cutlery's plastic is "more robust" than ordinary plastic utensils and is completely safe (after special cleaning).

-- It took until spring 2010 (eight years after the invasion of Afghanistan) for the U.S. Army to realize that enemy fighters in that vast, mountainous country were difficult to shoot at because they are often so far away. The Associated Press reported in May that the Army is only now reconsidering its reliance on standard M-4 rifles (whose effective range is under 1,000 feet), in favor of M-110 sniper rifles (effective at more than 2,500 feet). (Shorter-range rifles work well in Iraq, since the fighting is closer-in.)

Psychologists generally discount that children at age 6 can form a specific intention to "sexually" molest anyone (as opposed to roughing someone up or being obnoxious), but the principal of Downey Elementary School in Brockton, Mass., nonetheless suspended a first-grade boy in 2006 for "sexual harassment." The boy admitted putting two fingers inside a girl's waistband, but his parents sued, livid that a "sexual" motive had been assumed. In February 2010, Brockton's daily Enterprise reported that the school would pay the boy a $160,000 settlement for the principal's overzealousness.

(1) In Urfa, Turkey, in April, pop singer Metin Senturk set the world speed record for an unassisted blind driver (in a Ferrari F430, at about 175 mph), an experience he called "like a dance with death." (2) In March in Watertown, Mass., two blind teenage fencers from local schools for the blind squared off in what was believed to be the first such match ever. (3) The Edinburgh (Scotland) Arts Festival announced in June that it would display, beginning in August, an exhibit of images taken by the blind photographer Rosita McKenzie, 56.

-- The New Living Expo in San Francisco in May showcased such "healthy-living" breakthroughs as a $1,200 machine promising to suck toxins out of your body; a $249 silver amulet to protect you from "deadly" cell phone radiation; and a $15,000 Turbo Sonic if your red blood cells need to be "de-clumped." A Canadian study at the same time found that 97 percent of people who admitted buying "anti-aging" products did not think they would work but nevertheless confessed their need to hope like those who "hope" the viper-venom-derived $525 Euoko Y-30 Intense Lift Concentrate will prolong their lives.

-- Recurring Theme: Once again, the larger question in a "swindling psychic" case is not how Portland, Ore., "psychic" Cathy Stevens managed to separate Mr. Drakar Druella, 42, from his $150,000 (which she needed, to cure Druella's "negative energy"). The larger question is how did a man so totally lacking in street smarts manage to amass $150,000 to begin with. Explained Druella, "(Stevens) could cry (at) will. (She) becomes what you want and need her to be."

At her arraignment in Missoula, Mont., in April, Jackiya Ford, 37, refused to enter a plea to various fraud charges because, she explained, "Montana" is not a legal entity. According to the prosecutor, after Ford was shown a house for sale by a local agent, she tried to cut out the middleman by filing an ownership claim to it and all the land within 20 miles of it (although she generously offered to sell it to the current residents, aka the legal owners, for $900,000, but only in "silver or gold"). Armed with her (fraudulent) ownership document, she broke into the home and posted a no-trespassing sign (the only visitors allowed: people authorized by "our Lord and Savior Yahushua"). (As if she weren't busy enough, she also disclosed that she is pregnant.)

In this latest collection of men who accidentally shot themselves recently, private parts were the center of attention. University of Illinois campus police officer Bryan Mallin accidentally shot himself in the butt while shopping in Chicago (March), and Timothy Davis, 22, digging through a drawer in Fort Myers, Fla., last October, also accidentally shot himself in the butt. And four other men (a shopper at a Lowe's Home Improvement store in Lynnwood, Wash., a 17-year-old in Vallejo, Calif., 20-year-old Jeffrey Disney in Hamilton, Ohio, and 50-year-old David Blurton, in Dillon, Colo.) accidentally shot themselves in what for men is their most cherished spot.

In July (2004), police were summoned to an upscale office building in St. Louis, Mo., on a report of a man roaming the halls with a gun, and on arrival, officers found some workers hiding under desks and in closets and others having fled the building. Police concluded that two lawyers, Gary Burger and Mark Cantor, were once again playing their game in the hallways, stalking each other with BB guns and occasionally firing. Most workers did not know that the men were playing, but one did because she had been shot in the finger and shoulder after walking into a previous battle. Police said they would file gun charges, and one officer said the perps would be tried "as adults" (i.e., not in the juvenile court system).

-- Catholic Youth Organization coach Michael Kman, 45, was charged in May with various misdemeanors regarding an alleged attempt over a several-month period to fix kids' basketball games for Kman's Our Lady of Lourdes church team in East Pennsboro Township, Pa. According to police, Kman sent multiple text messages to referees Jay and Jon Leader, offering them as much as $2,500 if certain games reached the "right outcome." The Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg has suspended Kman from coaching. In Kman's day job, he is a financial consultant.

-- In May, Britain's Norfolk District Council banned the traditional barroom game of "dwile flonking" just as the inaugural "world championships" were to take place at the Dog Inn pub in Ludham, Great Yarmouth. The game, which some believe has been played since "medieval times," calls on players to fling a beer-soaked rag from the end of a small stick toward the face of an opponent, and in the event the tosser misses the target two straight times, he must quickly down a half-pint of ale. The council called the game a "health and safety" problem.

-- Among the unique dining experiences of the Beijing Zoo is the ability of patrons to view an exhibit of frolicking hippopotamuses and then step into the zoo's restaurant and dine on such dishes as toe of hippopotamus. Also available: kangaroo tail, deer penis, ant soup and other delectables. Animal welfare activists condemned the dining experience, according to a dispatch in London's Guardian.

-- Virginia state inmate Kendall Gibson, who is serving 47 years for abduction and robbery committed at age 18, has spent the last 10 years in the prison's "hole," 23 hours a day in a cell "the size of a gas station restroom" (wrote an Associated Press reporter), not because he's a danger to the prison population, but because he won't cut his hair. Gibson is a Rastafarian and says his dreadlocks are devoutly authorized by the spiritual Lord, Jah. (A 1999 Virginia prison regulation requires administrative segregation for long-hairs.)

-- In May, in a news reverberation heard around the Arab world from the city of Al-Mubarraz, Saudi Arabia, as a "policeman" from the notorious Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice approached a young couple in public to demand the woman's ID, the woman beat up the cop. Charges are pending against her, but women's rights activists across the Muslim world are reporting the incident as a watershed moment, according to the Media Line (Middle East) news agency.

-- Nelson Derbigney's second wife, Laura, is a Hispanic Catholic, but the first wife has a court order that Nelson's and her joint-custody son from that first marriage will be raised as an Orthodox Jew like his mother. That means that stepmother Laura must learn to create a strict kosher lifestyle when the son stays with his dad. (Said Laura's lawyer, of the logical extension of the court order, if one substituted "fundamental Islam" for "Orthodox Judaism," Catholic Laura might have to wear a burqa in public.)

-- Standing firm under severe local criticism, John Chianelli (the chief mental-health administrator of Milwaukee County, Wis.) has begun housing aggressive males and vulnerable females together in the same unit. Chianelli defended his decision with research showing that, in similar facilities, female patients provided a civilizing influence that reduced males' propensities to violence -- at least males' violence against other males.

-- Bucket Lists: (1) Patricia Edwards, 51, was arrested in Sanford, Fla., in March after being identified as the woman who walked into a Bank of America branch, handed over a robbery note and walked out with money. After being quickly nabbed, she explained: "There was no plan, no nothing, just impulse. I think everyone should have a list of things they want to do before they (die)." (2) Still stuck on the Bucket List (until recently) of great-grandmother Rosemary Douglas was her regret that, at 81, she had still never collected child support payments for her son, who is now 60, from the "boy's" father, Urban Joseph Grass, now 82. In a Los Angeles court filing in April, she claimed $50 per month from the date of the 1951 court order (totaling, including interest, $57,000).

-- "A Brave Man's Solution to Baldness" (read an April Toronto Star headline): Philip Levine, 28, working with artist Kat Sinclair, initially solved the problem of his "boring" shaved head by having her paint original murals on his dome, with the result that he became a star in the London (England) club scene. Since then, Levine has upgraded -- to painstakingly laying jewelry designs on his bald head, employing hundreds of thumbtack-sized Swarovski crystals to create a "swooping, shimmery, rockabilly" dome that dazzles in the light. The crystals shed after about a day, creating the opportunity for more designs.

(1) Scottish TV personality Drew McAdam, a professional body-language reader who advises the "Five's Trisha" talk show on whether guests with fabulous stories are telling the truth or not, was rejected for jury duty in May after being called by the Livingston Sheriff Court. (Obviously, at least one of the lawyers thought his side would have a better chance without an "expert" lie-detector evaluating witnesses.) (2) Restaurateur Ted Bulthaup told WRTV in Indianapolis in May that he had finally convinced the Internal Revenue Service of a rare, "five-figure" income tax reduction based on years of unusual "disaster" losses. Bulthaup proved to the IRS that he was making good money until Conseco Fieldhouse was built in his downtown neighborhood (occupied 40 nights a year by the mediocre Indiana Pacers NBA team), which caused his business to fall off sharply.

Walter "Butch" Rubincan, 46, was charged in February in Newark, Del., as being a serial thief with perhaps a 20-year habit, specializing in men's shoes. When not out taking things, Rubincan (who "kept to himself," according to neighbors) is a medical technologist at two local hospitals, a part-time actor, and a one-time championship figure-skater. When police investigators first visited Rubincan's home, they discovered 3,900 shoes in about 150 boxes and bags (along with a few more upscale items and stolen photographs of young men), and Rubincan finally admitted he needed help.

Their Getaways Hit a Dead End: (1) Noah Comer, 39, crashed his motorcycle and was killed as he tried to flee sheriff's deputies in San Diego in January after allegedly stealing a pack of cigarettes from the AM/PM minimart. (2) Gordon Wright, 58, and two associates were killed in January going the wrong way on Interstate 94 in a Detroit suburb after allegedly stealing $45 worth of Axe beauty products from a CVS store. (Police said they were not pursuing Wright but that he was merely in a hurry to get away.)

British mechanical engineer John Tyrer told an audience at the annual meeting of the Institute of Physics in Brighton, England, in March (1998) that he and his colleagues were using lasers to design a more comfortable bra. "A breast imposes various load distributions ... and vibrational problems as the woman walks," he said, and he criticized the "strap design" that "transmits the load to the wrong places." According to Tyrer, the technology, "Electron Speckle Pattern Interfermometry," analyzes the way a three-dimensional surface (like a bra) changes when a force is applied to it.