New York University arts professor Wafaa Bilal had his camera surgically removed in February -- the one that was implanted in the back of his skull in November to record, at 60-second intervals, the places he had left behind (beamed to and archived by a museum in Qatar). The camera had been mounted under his skin, braced by three titanium posts, but his body very painfully rejected one of the posts, and his temporary solution is to merely tie the camera to the back of his neck (even though that work-around is unsatisfactory to him because it represents a less-personal "commitment" to the art). In the future, he said, communication devices like his will routinely be part of our bodies.

-- Till Krautkraemer's New York City beverage company MeatWater creates dozens of flavors of water for the upscale market of hearty gourmets who would like their daily salads, or shellfish, or goulash from a bottle instead of from a plate. Among his new flavors introduced in January, according to an AOL News report, were poached salmon salad water and a Caribbean shrimp salad water that can double as a vodka mixer. Old standbys include Peking duck water, tandoori chicken water, bangers 'n' mash water, and Krautkraemer's favorite, German sauerbraten water.

-- Sell What You Know: In December, a company in eastern Ukraine (a country known for hard drinking) announced a "drinking buddy" service in which, for the equivalent of about $18, it would supply a barroom companion for the evening, "qualified" to discuss politics, sports, women, etc., and even to offer psychological counseling if appropriate.

-- Not Your Father's Scotch: (1) The Panamanian company Scottish Spirits recently introduced a straight Scotch whisky in 12-ounce cans, for a market of mobile drinkers who prefer not to invest in a whole bottle. The international Scotch whisky trade association expressed alarm. (2) At Clive's, of Victoria, British Columbia, Glenfiddich Scotch whisky is only one ingredient in the signature cocktail "Cold Night In," which, according to a January New York Times review, combines "molecular mixology" and comfort food. An especially buttery grilled-cheese sandwich is soaked overnight in the Scotch, along with Mt. Gay rum and Lillet Blanc wine. Following a brief freeze to congeal any remaining fat, and double-straining, it is ready to serve -- with a celery stick and other garnishments.

-- "Vulva Original," from a German company, VivaEros, is the "scent of a beautiful woman," reported in Harper's magazine in August 2010, and selling as a fragrance concentrate for the equivalent of about $35 for a small roll-on container. (Its promotional video is of a lavishly photographed gym scene, with a handsome male, observing a beautiful female working out on a stationary bike, followed afterward by the male's gently sniffing the seat.) "The female smell of intimacy," promised VivaEros, "triggers sexual attraction and desire," which men can address "more intensely during self-stimulation."

-- "You're not going to like this," warned NPR's Robert Krulwich, about to deliver a February story about visionary robotics developers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau, who created a carnivorous clock, supposedly able to power itself for 12 days merely on the carcasses of 12 dead houseflies (which the clock traps with fly paper and then mechanically razors in two). The pair also showed a prototype of a coffee table that catches mice by luring them up the table legs with cheese into a hole in the center, where they are guillotined. Auger and Loizeau said their creations are just extensions of TV nature programs showing animals hunting in the wild, but Krulwich fretted about the dangers inherent in "giving robots a taste for (meat)."

-- Scientists have long observed male capuchin monkeys urinating on their hands and then rubbing down their bodies, but researchers were unclear about the purpose (whether for identification, or threat-prevention, or mating) -- until a recent issue of the American Journal of Primatology. Dr. Kimberly Phillips and colleagues found that the practice helps clarify mating priorities, in that, first, males rub down promptly after being solicited by females in heat, and second, based on MRI scans of capuchins' brains, female mating activity is triggered only by adults' urine.

In May 2008, classroom disrupter Alex Barton, 5, was finally made by his teacher at Morningside Elementary kindergarten in St. Lucie County, Fla., to sit down and listen to the accumulated complaints of his classmates, who then were asked to vote on asking Alex to leave the class. (He lost, 14-2.) Shortly afterward, Alex was diagnosed with a form of autism, and his mother filed a federal disability discrimination lawsuit, citing Alex's "humiliation" by the voting incident. A settlement was reached in February 2011 when the school district agreed to pay Alex $350,000 (which included legal expenses). Said Ms. Barton, "Money can't take care of what (the school district) did to my family."

Lawyer Terry Watkins admitted to a judge in Faribault, Minn., in February that his client William Melchert-Dinkel did things that were "abhorrent," "sick" and "creepy," but that doesn't make him a criminal. Melchert-Dinkel has been charged with two felonies for counseling depressed people online on the techniques and virtues of suicide (for example, recommending positioning for a noose to a Briton who hanged himself three days later). (A judge's decision was pending at press time.)

Mental health practitioners, writing in the January issue of the journal Substance Abuse, described two patients who had recently arrived at a clinic in Ranchi, India, after allowing themselves to be bitten by cobras for recreational highs. Both men had decades-long substance-abuse issues, especially involving opiates, and decided to try what they had heard about on the street. One, age 44, bitten on the foot, experienced "a blackout associated with a sense of well-being, lethargy and sleepiness." The other, 52, reported "dizziness and blurred vision followed by a heightened arousal and a sense of well-being," and apparently was so impressed that he returned to the snake charmer two weeks later for a second bite.

Recurring Theme: Another "negative cash-flow" robbery occurred in February, in Kansas City, Mo., as an unidentified man tried to distract the clerk at a gun store by laying $40 on the counter to buy a box of bullets, then pulling a gun and demanding all the store's money. The clerk thwarted the robbery by pulling his own gun (not surprisingly, since it was a gun store) and scaring the robber off -- while the $40 remained on the counter.

From time to time a woman appears in the news proudly displaying her years-long cultivation of fingernail growth. This time it was Ms. Jazz Ison Sinkfield, a grandmother from Atlanta, who showed off her hands for WXIA-TV in February. She admits some handicaps from her 20- to 24-inch long nails that skew and curl in seemingly random directions (e.g., no bowling, shoe-tying or computer work, and the expense of a five-hour, $250 salon session each month), but claims to be unfazed if people she meets find the sight of her nails repulsive. Said Sinkfield, "Some people are jealous."

Bangkok economics student Panupol Sujjayakorn interrupted his studies in November (2005) to defend his World Scrabble Championship in London, one of many non-English-speaking competitors who achieved top-of-the-line ranking by memorizing up to 100,000 words in English without ever knowing their meanings. Like the others, reported the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Panupol learned first those premium words that overuse the prominent Scrabble letter tiles (such as "aureolae"). (Alas, this time around, a native English speaker, Dr. Adam Logan, a number theory researcher, won the title, building actual words like "qanat" and "euripi.")

Tombstone, Ariz., which was the site of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (made into a 1957 movie), is about 70 miles from the Tucson shopping center where a U.S. congresswoman, a federal judge and others were shot in January. A Los Angeles Times dispatch later that month noted that the "Wild West" of 1881 Tombstone had far stricter gun control than present-day Arizona. The historic gunfight occurred when the marshal (Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt) tried to enforce the town's no-carry law against local thugs. Today, however, with few restrictions and no licenses required, virtually any Arizonan 18 or older can carry a handgun openly, and those 21 or older can carry one concealed.

The government of Romania, attempting both to make amends for historical persecution of fortune-telling "witches" and to collect more tax revenue, amended its labor law recently to legalize the profession. However, "queen witch" Bratara Buzea, apparently speaking for many in the soothsaying business, told the Associated Press in February that official recognition might make witches legally responsible for future events that are beyond their control. Already, witches are said to be fighting back against the government with curses -- hurling poisonous mandrake plants into the Danube River and casting a special spell involving cat dung and a dead dog.

-- British loyalist Michael Stone still claims it was all a misunderstanding -- that he did not intend to assassinate Irish Republican Army political leaders in 2006, despite being arrested at the Northern Ireland legislature carrying knives, an ax, a garotte, and a bag of explosives that included flammable liquids, gas canisters and fuses. He was later convicted, based on his having detonated one explosive in the foyer and then carrying the other devices into the hall to confront the leaders, but he continued to insist that he was merely engaged in "performance art." (In January 2011, the Northern Ireland court of appeal rejected his claim.)

-- Phyllis Stevens, 59, said she had no idea she had embezzled nearly $6 million until her employer, Aviva USA, of Des Moines, Iowa, showed her the evidence. She said it must have been done by the "hundreds" of personalities created by her dissociative identity disorder (including "Robin," who was caught trying to spend Stevens' remaining money in Las Vegas just hours after the showdown with Aviva). Stevens and her spouse had been spending lavishly, buying properties, and contributing generously to political causes. As the "core person," Stevens said she will accept responsibility but asked a federal judge for leniency. (The prosecutor said Stevens is simply a thief.)

-- Thomas Walkley, a lawyer from Norton, Ohio, was charged in January with indecent exposure for pulling his pants down in front of two 19-year-old males, but Walkley said he was merely "mentoring" at-risk boys. He said it is a technique he had used with other troubled youths, especially the most difficult cases, by getting them "to think differently." Said Walkley, "Radical times call for radical measures."

-- U.S. News & World Report magazine, and the National Council on Teacher Quality, announced plans recently to issue grades (A, B, C, D and F) on how well each of the U.S.'s 1,000-plus teachers' colleges develop future educators, but the teachers of teachers appear to be sharply opposed to the very idea of being issued "grades." The project's supporters cited school principals' complaints about the quality of teachers applying for jobs, but the teachers' college representatives criticized the project's measurement criteria as overly simplistic.

-- Police were out in force in September as schools opened in Toronto, writing 25 school-zone speeding tickets in the first two hours. One of the 25 was issued to the driver of a school bus, caught speeding through a school zone trying to avoid being late at a pickup point farther down the road.

Paul Mason, 50, an ex-letter-carrier in Ipswich, England, told reporters in January he would file a lawsuit against Britain's National Health Service for negligence -- because it allowed him to "grow" in recent years to a weight of nearly 900 pounds. Mason said he "begged" for NHS's help in 1996 when he weighed 420, but was merely told to "ride your bike more." Last year, he was finally allowed gastric surgery, which reduced him to his current 518. At his heaviest, Mason estimates he was consuming 20,000 calories a day.

Life is improving for some Burmese Kayan women who, fleeing regular assaults by soldiers of the military government of Myanmar, become valuable exhibits at tourist attractions in neighboring Thailand -- because of their tribal custom of wearing heavy metal rings around their necks from an early age. The metal stacks weigh 11 pounds or more and depress girls' clavicles, giving them the appearance of elongated necks, which the tribe (and many tourists) regard as exotic. While human rights activists heap scorn on these Thai "human zoos" of ring-necked women, a Nacogdoches, Texas, poultry plant recently began offering some of the women a more attractive choice -- lose the rings and come work in Texas, de-boning chickens.

Although police in Mount Vernon, Ohio, aren't sure of the motive, they know (according to records made public in February) that the murderer-kidnapper Matthew Hoffman was arrested in November in a living room piled 3 feet high with leaves and a bathroom containing 110 bags of leaves attached to the walls. Hoffman, an unemployed tree-trimmer, later confessed to the kidnap and rape of a 13-year-old girl (whom he kept in a basement on a pallet of leaves) and had stuffed the bodies of his three murder victims in a hollow tree. An expert on serial killers told ABC News that trees might have given Hoffman comfort, but police haven't discounted that the leaves were there merely to help him later torch the house.

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Jose Demartinez, 35, was hospitalized in Manchester, N.H., in January. With police in pursuit, he had climbed out a hotel window using tied-together bed sheets, but they came undone, and he fell four stories. (2) Detected burglarizing a house in Summerfield, Fla., in January, Laird Butler fled through a window but not from police. The homeowner's dog had frightened Butler, who crashed through the glass, cut himself badly, and bled to death in a neighbor's yard. (3) Kevin Funderburk, 25, was charged with sexual assault of a 71-year-old woman in her Hutchinson, Kan., home in December. By the time his mug shot was taken, he was in a neck brace -- from the victim's frying-pan-swinging defense.

(1) During an early-January freeze, an 8-year-old boy, standing across the street from Woodward (Okla.) Middle School, apparently fell for the traditional dare from his brother and licked a metal pole. He had to wait on his tiptoes for emergency responders to come unstick him. (2) In January, John Finch, 44, of Wilmington, Del., became the latest alleged burglar to break in (through a window) and be unable either to climb back out or figure out the automatic locks on the doors (and thus be forced to call 911 on himself to be rescued).

The Wall Street Journal reported in March (1996) that New York City photographer (and former Electrolux vacuum cleaner salesman) Eugene Calamari Jr. is a part-time artist who lies on the floor and lets people vacuum him with an upright cleaner, after which he asks the vacuumers to please write down their feelings. According to Calamari, "A lot of people use each other and step on each other's rights." The theme he intends to convey, he said, is "I won't let anyone do this to me."

Getting Old, Young: (1) Jack Smeltzer broke a record in the tractor pull championships in Columbus, Ohio, in January -- doing a "full (track-length) pull" of 692 pounds. Jack is 7 years old. The National Kiddie Tractor Pullers Association (holding 80 events a year for ages 3 through 8) uses bicycles instead of motors. Ms. Brooke Wilker, 5, was the youngest champ, lugging 300 pounds 28 feet. (2) Walmart announced in January that it would soon offer a full line of makeup especially for 8-year-olds (and up), by GeoGirl, including mascara, sheer lip gloss, pink blush and purple eye shadow, all supposedly designed for young skin. (An executive of Aspire cosmetics said her research revealed a potential market of 6-year-olds.)

-- Everyone washes hair, but those who want a license to apply shampoo in Texas need 150 hours of training, with 100 hours in "theory and practice of shampooing," including a study of "neck anatomy." A February Wall Street Journal report on excessiveness of state regulation highlighted California's year-long training to be a barber, Alabama's 750-hour schooling standard for a manicurist's license, and Michigan's 500 practice hours for performing massages. (By contrast, many less-tightly regulated states seem not to suffer. Connecticut, without licensing, fielded only six complaints last year against manicurists -- four of which involved disputes over gift cards.) Next up for licensing, perhaps: cat groomers in Ohio.

-- What Budget Crunch? The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported in January that despite an array of pressing problems, the Broward County public school system has paid about $100,000 per year since 2004 to build and maintain special gardens at selected schools in order to lure butterflies for pupils to study.

-- Government That Works: (1) The 2009 federal stimulus program came through just in time with $34,000 for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Kearneysville, W.Va., laboratory. Work on the recent dangerous increase in Brown Marmorated Stink Bugs was in jeopardy because money had run out for design of a workable air distribution system for the offices. (2) The City Commission of San Antonio, Fla. (population 1,052), passed an ordinance in January restricting, to a tiny portion of town, where registered sex offenders could live. However, San Antonio has only one sex offender, and that man is exempt from the law because he already lives there.

-- David Morice, of Iowa City, Iowa, a teacher at Kirkwood Community College, was best known for a series of "Poetry Comics" until he decided last year to write 100-page poems every day for 100 days, until he had a book totaling 10,000 pages (actually, 10,119). For some reason, the University of Iowa Libraries has published the finished poem, online and in a 2-foot-high hardcopy stack. (Strangely, in a 480-word article describing Morice's feat, the Iowa City Press-Citizen included not even a hint about the poems' subject matter.)

-- In January, Toronto sculptor-photographer Lisa Murphy added to her reputation for devising "porn for the blind" by producing four more hand-molded erotic figures generated by using clay to replicate photographic scenes of nude and lingerie-clad models (accompanied by descriptions in Braille). "The butt was the hardest to sculpt," she said. "I wanted to get it nice and even, and give it a feminine softness so it would actually feel like a woman's butt." Her first book, "Tactile Mind," with 17 such raised erotic works, sells for $225 (Cdn).

-- Ripley's Believe It or Not! museum is already home to an artist's rendition of da Vinci's "The Last Supper" made from burned toast, and now comes a recent version by Laura Bell of Roscommon, Mich.: da Vinci's masterpiece made with clothes-dryer lint. Bell said she did about 800 hours of laundry of various-colored towels to obtain lint of the proper hues, and then worked 200 more hours to construct the 14-foot-long, 4-foot-high mural.

Surprise! (1) New Zealand traffic officer Andy Flitton cited an unnamed speeder recently for the second time in two years -- 11,000 miles from the spot of the first ticket. Flitton had moved from the U.K. to New Zealand, and unknown to him, the motorist himself had relocated to New Zealand last year. When Flitton stopped the man in Wellington in December 2010, the motorist recognized Flitton as the one who had ticketed him on the A5 highway near London. (2) Rap singer Trevell Coleman, trying to bring "closure" and "get right with God" for having shot a man in 1993 (since he was never caught), confessed the assault to New York City police in December, hoping that his humility might impress a judge. However, police checked and then booked Coleman -- for murder. Said Coleman, "(F)or some reason, I really didn't think that (the victim had) died."

-- "That Was Easy!": (1) Several students at Texas' Carrizo Springs High School were suspended in December, and a teacher placed on leave, after a parent complained that her son had been grabbed by the shirt and stapled to a classroom wall. She said it was at least the second time that it had happened. (2) Jodi Gilbert was arrested in Jamestown, N.Y., in January and charged with domestic violence -- stapling her boyfriend in the head several times with a Stanley Hammer Tacker.

-- In November, a Taiwanese factory owner accidentally dropped 200 $1,000 bills (worth about $6,600 in U.S. dollars) into an industrial shredder, turning them into confetti. Luckily, Taiwan's Justice Ministry employs a forensic handwriting analyst who excels at jigsaw puzzles on the side. Ms. Liu Hui-fen worked almost around the clock for seven days to piece together the 75 percent of each bill sufficient to make them legally exchangeable.

Laconic Perps: (1) A female motorist in Kitsap County, Wash., reported in January being motioned by another driver to pull over, but she ignored him. The man then tried to ratchet up his credibility, motioning her over again but this time holding a hand-scrawled sign reading "sheriff." (She remained unimpressed.) Seattle Weekly reported that a similar incident had occurred several months earlier. (2) Robert Michelson was arrested in Farmington, Conn., in February, after calling a 911 operator to inquire about the lawfulness of the marijuana plant he was growing. The operator informed him that it was illegal. (All 911 calls are automatically traced, and Michelson was soon arrested.)

People Who Ran Over Themselves: (1) A transit driver was hospitalized in December after his idling bus slipped out of gear and ran over him as he walked around it in front of Waikato Hospital in New Zealand. (2) A 37-year-old woman in Melbourne, Australia, was hospitalized in November after forgetting to engage her parking brake. The car rolled backward down her driveway, knocking her over, then hitting a fence, thrusting forward and running her down a second time. (3) A 67-year-old golfer died on the Evanston (Ill.) Golf Club course in November, apparently run over by his own electric cart. (He was discovered underneath, and the medical examiner ruled the death accidental.)

Patricia Frankhouser filed a lawsuit in Jeannette, Pa., in November (2004) against the Norfolk Southern railway as a result of being hit by a train 10 months earlier as she walked on the tracks. Most such injuries nowadays involve pedestrians distracted by earphoned music players, but Frankhouser claimed merely that Norfolk Southern was negligent for not posting signs warning that the railroad tracks are sometimes used by trains.