Equal justice under the law might just depend simply on whether a judge's stomach is growling when he pronounces sentence, according to a study of 1,000 parole decisions during 50 courtroom days observed by students from Columbia University and Israel's Ben Gurion University for an April journal article. The students found that, day after day, judges were increasingly stingy with parole as a morning or afternoon session wore on, but that dramatic spikes in generosity took effect immediately following lunch or a snack break. The lead researcher, Columbia professor Jonathan Levav, expressed satisfaction with the scholarship but disappointment "as a citizen" with the findings.

-- "Man's best friend" sometimes isn't, as when a playful dog hops onto a gun on the ground, causing it to fire a round. John Daniels, 28, took a bullet in the knee from his dog, for example, in Raleigh, N.C., in January. Dogs betray in other ways, too. Motorist Joel Dobrin, 32, was pulled over in a traffic stop in February in Moro, Ore., and rushed to hide his alleged drug stash, which was in a sock. However, his dog intercepted the sock for an impromptu game of dog-tug-of-war in the car. Dobrin won but lost his grip, and the sock flew out the driver's window, right in front of the officer. Dobrin was cited, and later indicted, for drug possession.

-- At least three jihadist groups in recent years have published full-color Arabic magazines lauding the Islamist struggle, with articles and essays to recruit fighters and offer personal advice for women on the importance of raising proper families and catering to mujahedeens' needs. The latest, Al-Shamikha ("The Majestic Woman"), which surfaced in March, featured interviews with martyrs' wives and advised women to stay indoors, both for modesty and a "clear complexion" (advice that earned the magazine its nickname "Jihad Cosmo").

-- Prevailing medical authority 20 years ago warned that few humans could survive blood-alcohol readings above .40 (percent), but in recent years, drivers have rather easily survived higher numbers (curiously, many from Wisconsin, such as the man in February in Madison, Wis., with a .559). (In 2007, an Oregon driver was found unconscious, but survived, with a .72 reading.) The plethora of high numbers might indicate mistaken medical teaching, or nonstandard machine measurements -- or an evolutionary hardiness in American drinkers.

-- Snowmobilers fall through thin ice every season because the ice's thickness is difficult to estimate, especially at night. Less understandable is that every season, when other snowmobilers come to rescue the downed snowmobiler, they drive their vehicles as close as they can to the spot of the fall -- which, of course, is right at the lip of thin-ice-break, thus virtually assuring that their vehicle, too, will fall in, such as the four people who fell through the ice in a pond near Holyrood, Newfoundland, in February.

-- Young girls "grow up" prematurely, often aided by hungry retailers such as the U.S.'s Abercrombie & Fitch and the British clothiers Primark and Matalan, each of which this spring began offering lines of padded bras for girls as young as 7 (8 at Abercrombie & Fitch for the "Ashley Push-Up Triangle"), with Matalan offering one in size "28aa." Child advocates were predictably disgusted, with one Los Angeles psychologist opining that permissive mothers were trying to compensate through their daughters for their own lack of sexual appeal.

-- In 2002 News of the Weird mentioned a theme park near Mexico City in which potential emigrants to the U.S. could test their survival skills in an obstacle course mimicking the rigors one would endure sneaking across the border. Recently, Owlchemy Labs, a Massachusetts technology company, announced plans to release an iPhone/iPad app, "Smuggle Truck," a video game in which players compete to drive a pickup truck full of illegals over rocky terrain from Mexico into the U.S. without too many passengers bouncing out (and with in-game "additions" consisting of pregnant women giving birth enroute). Special "green cards" are awarded to winners. (Update: At presstime, Apple rejected the app, and Owlchemy said it would alter the game to one of animals escaping from a forest.)

-- Chutzpah! Thieves usually pick out easy jobs, but occasionally they go bold -- for example, breaking into the prison at New Plymouth, New Zealand's North Island, in March (carrying off a large TV set) or breaking into a police station in Uddingston, Scotland, in April (carrying off uniforms and radios).

-- Local councils that govern life in the United Kingdom seem overly frightened of liability lawsuits -- even from criminals who might get hurt while committing crimes. London's Daily Telegraph and the Surrey Mirror reported in February that police in the counties of Kent and Surrey had been advising homeowners and merchants to avoid using wire mesh on windows because burglars could seriously gouge themselves while climbing through. Also, electrical engineer David Bishop said police seemed especially concerned that burglars could be electrocuted if they broke into his workshop and thus advised him to post a warning sign outside that could be seen in the dark.

-- Carelessness sometimes begets tragedy, as when motorists survive terrible accidents but then, while awaiting help, they are hit and killed by emergency vehicles. In December, near Ocala, Fla., a 39-year-old driver survived a rollover but was accidentally run over and killed by a responding Marion County sheriff's deputy, and in April in Baldwin Park, Calif., an arriving ambulance fatally struck a 22-year-old accident victim who was, until that moment, not seriously hurt.

-- In 2007, Australian Wayne Scullino, then 30, quit his job in Sydney and somehow convinced his wife they should sell their house and move to Wisconsin for the sole purpose of rooting for the Green Bay Packers, about which he had enjoyed an inexplicable fascination since age 15. Said Scullino, "At some point, you've got to ... start living the life you want to." After one season, the Scullinos returned home, but in February 2011, he was of course back in the U.S., on hand in Dallas for the Packers' victory in Super Bowl XLV. Scullino says his Australian friends are still bewildered. "I try to talk to them about it," he said, "but they just don't get it."

-- In January 2010, shortly after News of the Weird's report, the U.K. government admitted that the British-made "magic wand" bomb-detector its own Department of Trade and Industry was promoting for export to police in Mexico and the Philippines was useless (no better than a Ouija board). Earlier, several British firms had sold thousands to Iraqi police at dollar equivalents of $16,000 to $60,000 (from a manufacturing cost of about $20 each). Furthermore, according to City of London police, "hundreds" of Iraqis had died in Baghdad after suicide bombers were mistakenly allowed into secure areas after being "cleared" by the wands. In January 2011, BBC News reported that a new British company, Unival, featuring a respected retired Army colonel as spokesman, had resumed selling the wands, to Bulgarian police.

-- Sigurdur Hjartarson's life's work is his Phallological Museum in the fishing town of Husavik, Iceland. As the world's only all-penis attraction, it draws tourists by the thousands, eager to see the 276-specimen collection of desiccated or stuffed organs from a wide range of animals. However, only in April (15 years after it opened) did the museum acquire a human penis, donated by the late Pall Arason, an acquaintance who, said Hjartarson, "liked to be in the limelight ... to be provocative." To an Associated Press reporter inquiring of the "size" of Arason's donation, Hjartarson said only, "You will just have to come and see it."

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LEAD STORY

Businesses typically resist government regulation, but in March Florida's interior designers begged the state House of Representatives to continue controlling them, with a theatrically ham-handed lobbying campaign challenging a deregulation bill. Designers righteously insisted that only "licensed professionals" (with a minimum six years of college and experience) could prevent the nausea Floridians would suffer from inappropriate color schemes (affecting the "autonomic nervous system" and salivary glands). Also, poorly designed prison interiors could be turned into weapons by inmates. Furthermore, deregulation would contribute to "88,000 deaths" a year from flammable materials that would suddenly inundate the market in the absence of licensing. Said one designer, addressing House committee members, "You (here in this chamber) don't even have correct seating." (If deregulation is successful, competition will increase, and lower fees are expected.)

-- The longstanding springtime culinary tradition of urine-soaked eggs endures, in Dongyang, China, according to a March CNN dispatch. Prepubescent boys contribute their urine (apparently without inhibition) by filling containers at schools, and the eggs are boiled according to recipe and sold for the equivalent of about 23 cents each. Many residents consider the tradition gross, but for devotees, it represents, as one said, "the (joyous) smell of spring."

-- The port town of Kumai, Borneo, consists of low-rise shops and houses serving a population of 20,000 but also many tall, windowless box buildings perforated with small holes. The structures are actually birdhouses, for the town's chief industry is harvesting the nests of the hummingbird-like swiftlet, constructed of its own saliva, which, properly processed, yields a sweet-tasting paste with alleged medicinal qualities and highly revered throughout Asia, according to a January BBC News report.

-- In January, while the Texas Legislature debated budget cuts that would almost certainly cost Allen High School (just north of Dallas) at least $18 million and require layoffs of teachers and other school personnel, construction was continuing on the school's new $60 million football stadium. Noted a New York Times report on the stadium (which 63 percent of voters approved in a 2009 bond referendum), "(O)nly football supersedes faith and family (among Texans)."

-- Former stripper Crystal Deans, who said she learned the trade at age 18 but later retired and turned to God for help through a rough patch of her life, now offers free pole-dancing classes in Spring, Texas, near Houston, expressly for Christian women. Her gyrations may be the same as when she was working, she said, but now everyone is clothed, and she dances only to "Christian music."

-- Youth pastor Brent Girouex, 31, was urged to confess by his minister in Council Bluffs, Iowa, in February to an apparently lengthy series of sexual experiences with boys and young men, which he initiated by suggesting that ejaculating would help the victims gain "sexual purity" by (as he explained to detectives) "getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind." Eight victims reported multiple purification sessions, with one estimating as many as 100.

-- For Career Day in April at Shady Grove Elementary School in Henrico, Va., kids heard a local plastic surgeon describe his specialty, but not until afterward did parents learn that the surgeon had brought along as props saline breast implants (which he passed around for the kids to handle). Many parents were outraged, and even one calmer parent commented, "Career Day sure isn't what it once was."

-- The End Is Near, But How Near? In March in Owensboro, Ky., James Birkhead, 52, was sentenced to 5 1/2 months in jail for making survivalist bombs to protect his family after he became alarmed by the movie "2012," which portrays the chaos expected next year when the world ends (as supposedly foretold by the Mayan calendar). By contrast, Edwin Ramos of Vineland, N.J., is busy traveling the East Coast in his RV trying to warn people that the end will not be in 2012 but actually this month -- May 21, 2011. (The discrepancy would not exist if there had been a biblical year "0" after B.C. and before A.D.) Ramos' father apparently does not share his son's view because he accepted ownership of Ramos' successful construction business as Ramos concluded that it had no future.

-- Marie Stopes International is a prominent London charity that robustly promotes a woman's right to choose abortion, but a whimsical public service campaign in January has created unusually savage criticism. The organization partnered with the British comedy music band The Midnight Beast to produce a video suggesting anal sex as a contraceptive of choice. Among the lyrics of one song, "One up the bum, and it's no harm done/One up the bum, and you won't be a mum."

-- A man stole Waltham, Mass., student Mark Bao's notebook computer in March, but Bao used his automatic online-backup service to access the hard drive while the thief was using it, to discover a performance video of a man (presumably the thief) dancing (lamely, thought Bao) to a pop song. Bao uploaded the video to YouTube -- where 700,000 viewers showed it the proper disrespect -- and also tracked down the thief's e-mail address and informed him of his new Internet "stardom." Shortly afterward, the still-unidentified thief turned in the notebook to Bentley University police with an apology to "Mark," begging him to take down the video.

-- Apple's iPad 2 is in short supply worldwide, and so, coincidentally, are paper models of the device demanded by those of Chinese heritage at the Qingming Festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Confucian tradition promises good fortune to the dead if their relatives burn impressive-enough offerings at graveside during the festival (as News of the Weird mentioned in 2006). Though local vendors offer paper models of first-generation iPads to burn, and paper Samsung Galaxy Tabs, some families fear that misfortune will ensue if they fail to burn the most advanced version of the iPad. (Low-tech families burn paper copies of money or paper shirts or shoes.)

-- Arrested in Aurora, Colo., in January and charged with stalking his wife: Joseph Moron. Appointed to a senior executive position in January in the global communications firm Alcatel-Lucent: George Nazi. Arrested for dealing marijuana in March in Fairfax County, Va.: Kevin Lee Cokayne. Appointed as interim chief medical officer of Newhall Memorial Hospital in Santa Clarita, Calif., in March: Dr. Richard Frankenstein. Arrested for DUI in April by a California Highway Patrolman ("CHiP"): Eric Estrada (not the actor). Posthumously rejected as the namesake for the new government office center in Fort Wayne, Ind., in March: former Fort Wayne Mayor Harry Baals (pronounced "bales" by his descendants but always "balls" by Mr. Baals, himself).

-- Among the Republicans swept into office in November (1994, a banner year for the GOP) was Steve Mansfield, elected to Texas' highest criminal-appeals court. Among Mansfield's campaign lies or exaggerations (freely admitted in a post-election interview in the publication Texas Lawyer) were his claims of vast criminal-court experience (he is an insurance and tax lawyer), that he was born in Texas (actually, Massachusetts), that he dated a woman "who died" (she is still alive), and that he had "appeared" in courts in Illinois (never) and Florida (advised a friend, but not as a lawyer). During the interview, Mansfield said that he lived in Houston as a kid, but when the reporter asked him if that was a lie, Mansfield reluctantly admitted it was. Mansfield said he planned to stop "exaggerate(ing)" now that he is one of the highest-ranking judges in Texas. (Update: He served one six-year term.)

A tank and several armored vehicles with dozens of SWAT officers and a bomb robot rolled into a generally quiet Phoenix neighborhood on March 21, startling the residents. Knocking down a wall, deputies raided the home of Jesus Llovera, who was "suspected" of running a cockfighting business, and, indeed, 115 chickens were found inside, but Llovera was alone and unarmed, and his only previous connection to cockfights was a misdemeanor conviction in 2010 for attending one. "We're going to err on the side of caution," said Sgt. Jesse Spurgin. Adding to neighbors' amazement was the almost-fanciful sight -- riding in the tank -- of actor Steven Seagal, who had brought his "Lawman" reality TV show to Phoenix.

-- Product Giveaways: (1) New sign-ups for higher-end Dish satellite TV systems at the Radio Shack in Hamilton, Mont., also receive free Hi-Point .380 pistols or 20-gauge shotguns (after passing a background check, paid for by the store). The owner said his business has tripled since introducing the premium in October. (2) Bobblehead dolls may be popular baseball giveaways, but as part of the local "Green Sports Alliance" demonstrating concern for the environment, the Seattle Mariners announced in March that for several games this season, fans would get free bags of compost (made from food and other items discarded at Mariners games).

-- It started as a class project at Brown University, but after a launch party on March 19 (and a sold-out first run of 500), Julie Sygiel's Sexy Period menstrual-leak-fighting panties are on sale ($32 to $44, depending on the style -- "cheeky," "hipster" or "bikini"). Sygiel said "sexy" is less to suggest sensuality than to help women cope with the time of the month when they feel "not at (their) best. We want to banish that moment."

-- A Chinese Capitalist's Learning Curve: In the early hours of the destruction at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant in March, rumors abounded that millions of people might need iodine products to fight off radiation. A restaurateur named Guo in Wuhan, China, seeing the price of iodized table salt rise dramatically, cleverly cornered a market with 4 1/2 tons of it, trucked to his home, where it filled half the rooms. According to a March 25 China Daily report, the price has returned to pre-Fukushima levels -- much less than what Guo paid, and he can neither return the salt (lacking documentation) nor sell nor transport it (lacking the proper licenses).

-- From a March Discovery.com report: "Forty million years ago, a female mite met an attractive partner, grabbed him with her clingy rear end, and began to mate -- just before a blob of tree resin fell on the couple, preserving the moment for eternity." The resin-encrusted mites were discovered recently by researchers from the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology (who noted that, in those days, the female dominated mating, but that evolution has reversed that role).

-- Medical Marvels: (1) Supatra Sasuphan, 11, of Bangkok, was recently noted as the world's hairiest girl by the Guinness Book of World Records for her wolf-like facial hair as one of only 50 people in history to be recorded with hypertrichosis. Though she has of course been teased and taunted at school, she told a reporter in February that the Guinness Book recognition has actually increased her popularity at Ratchabophit school. (2) According to a team of University of Montreal psychologists, a 23-year-old man, "Mathieu," is the first documented case of a person wholly unable to feel a musical beat or to move in time with it. The scientists report for an upcoming journal article that Mathieu sings in tune but merely flails with his body, bouncing up and down much more randomly than do people who are merely poor dancers.

-- From the September 2010 issue of the journal Endoscopy, reported by three physicians at the Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia: A 52-year-old woman undergoing a routine colonoscopy was shown on the screen to have a cockroach in her traverse colon. A literature review revealed no previous cases of cockroaches (but, e.g., ants, wasps, bees). Though the cockroach was not welcome, the doctors acknowledged that in some other countries, they are delicacies.

-- Scientists Just Wanna Have Fun: A team of whimsical researchers at the University of Osaka (Japan) Graduate School of "Frontier Biosciences" has produced a strain of mice prone to "miscopying" DNA -- making them susceptible to developing sometimes-unexpected mutations, such as their recently born mouse that tweets like a bird. Lead researcher Arikuni Uchimura told London's Daily Mail that he had expected to produce, instead, a mouse with an odd shape, but the "singing mouse" emerged. Previously, the team produced a mouse with dachshund-like short limbs.

-- People With Too Much Money: (1) During New York City's Fashion Week in February, "fanny packs" made a comeback (though certainly not under that name), according to a Wall Street Journal report, ranging in price from a $325 Diane von Furstenberg to an Hermes "Kelly Bandeau" model, expected to sell for $4,675. (2) An unidentified "coal baron" in northern China purchased an 11-month-old, 180-pound red Tibetan mastiff recently from a breeder in Qingdao for the equivalent of about $1.52 million. "The price is justified," said breeder Lu Liang. "We have spent a lot of money raising this dog, and we have the salaries of plenty of staff to pay."

-- What Federal Cutbacks? In March, DailyCaller.com, combing federal government job announcements, found more than 1,000 in Washington, D.C., including a Facebook manager for the Interior Department ($115,000 annually), a student internship at the Housing Finance Agency ($48,000) (the same salary as being offered by the Pentagon for mailroom clerks), and managers of equal-opportunity employment programs at the Peace Corps ($155,000) and the Transportation Department (almost $180,000).

A suspicious wife (who lives apart from her husband because of work requirements) flew to the couple's principal home in Wilmette, Ill., on March 4 and, finding her husband's new girlfriend's clothes hanging in their closet, scissored out the crotch area of all her pants, doing about $2,000 in damage, and leaving the remnants in the driveway before returning to her East Coast home. According to police, neither the husband nor the girlfriend chose to file complaints, and the case is closed.

Clever, But Didn't Think It All the Way Through: (1) Daryl Davis, 30, was arrested in Springfield, Pa., in March and charged with stealing a pickup truck off of a dealer's lot. According to police, Davis had carefully forged an owner's credential for the truck at another dealership and obtained a "duplicate" key, allowing him to drive the truck off the second dealer's lot. However, when he made the original bogus credential, he had used his own name and photograph and was easily tracked down. (2) LaShay Simmons, 22, was charged in March in Houston with theft of about 250 Sprint phones by (according to police) ordering 10 to 20 phones at a time under the names of legitimate businesses, but then calling Sprint back later to change the delivery location. However, she always made the callbacks using her own easily traceable Sprint phone.

In June (1995), Barbara Ricci was voted by fellow contestants as "Mrs. Congeniality" in the Mrs. New York State pageant, receiving 22 of the 28 votes. However, six months earlier, she had gone to trial in Mount Vernon, N.Y., on charges that she tried to run down with her car the 11-year-old daughter of a neighbor with whom she had been feuding (resulting in a hung jury). And two years before that, a police officer had charged her with punching and kicking him at a school board meeting (and she pleaded guilty to harassment).