Anti-Theft ID Breakthrough: For people who become stressed when asked to prove their identities by biometric scans of fingerprints, hand prints or eyeballs, Japan's Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology has developed a chair frame that authenticates merely by sitting down: a butt-scanner. Professor Shigeomi Koshimizu's device produces a map of the user's unique derriere shape, featuring 256 degrees of pressure at 360 different points and could be used not only to protect vehicles from theft but also, when connected to a computer, to prevent log-ons by those with unauthorized posteriors.

-- Imminent Gay Takeovers: (1) Mayor Jose Benitez of Huarmey, Peru (population 16,000), speaking at the opening of a water works in November, warned residents about strontium in the water, which he said suppresses male hormones. He reminded residents that nearby Tabalosos, which is lately popular with gays and lesbians, shares the water supply and that Huarmey could turn gay, too. (2) A November report by Muslim scholars at Saudi Arabia's highest religious council (Majlis al-Ifta' al-A'ala), presented to the Saudi legislature, warned that ending the ban on females' driving would cause a surge in prostitution, pornography, divorce and, of course, homosexuality (and the scholars added that, within 10 years, the country would have "no more virgins").

-- California state legislator Mary Hayashi of Hayward pleaded guilty in January to misdemeanor shoplifting. Police said she had walked out of a Neiman Marcus store in October with over $2,400 worth of unpaid-for merchandise, caused, said her lawyer, by a benign brain tumor that might have affected her decision-making. (Miraculously, and just in time for the legislative session, the tumor, said the lawyer, is "no longer affecting her concentration or her judgment.")

-- Because this past Christmas fell on a Sunday, nearly one Protestant church in 10 in the U.S. reported having canceled Sunday services that day out of fear of low attendance, as parishioners remained at home with family. (The poll, by Lifeway Research, noted also that other churches, while not canceling, had left services to their second-string clergy.)

-- Retired sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. was arrested in November in a suburb of Denver and charged with distributing methamphetamine to men in exchange for sex. Sullivan, who had a distinguished career as Arapahoe County sheriff, was booked into the Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Center, named for him after he retired in 2002.

-- Eldon Alexander, 36, and Ms. Korin Vanhouten, 47, had two different encounters with Ogden, Utah, police on Dec. 15. First, they were issued misdemeanor citations after being accused of shoplifting at a WinCo Foods store. They were released and walked out to their car in the parking lot, but summoned the police when they discovered that while they were busy shoplifting, someone had broken into their car and stolen a stereo. (The shoplifted items were worth about $25, the stereo about $60.)

-- Sheriff's deputies arrested novelist Nancy Mancuso Gelber, 53, in December in Bryan, Texas, after she had allegedly arranged a hit on her husband. (The "hit man," of course, was an undercover officer.) Gelber said she had walked in on the husband romancing with one of her friends, and the couple were in the process of divorcing (complicated by his having removed her from his health insurance just as she was scheduled for expensive surgery). Gelber is the author of the 2010 "crime thriller," "Temporary Amnesia," and told the "hit man" that she was quite familiar with investigative procedures (though obviously poor at spotting undercover officers).

-- Jesse Dimmick filed a lawsuit in Topeka, Kan., in October against Jared and Lindsay Rowley -- whom he has been convicted of kidnapping in a notorious 2009 episode that resulted in his being shot by police. Dimmick broke into the home and held the couple hostage at knifepoint, but now says that, during the siege, the couple made him an "oral contract," "legally binding," that they would help him hide if he would sometime later pay them an unspecified amount of money. According to the lawsuit, since Dimmick was subsequently shot (accidentally, said the Topeka police), his injuries were the result of the Rowleys breaching the contract to hide him safely. (Police, who had surrounded the home, arrested Dimmick when he fell asleep.)

-- The two men who heroically pulled a woman out of a burning car wreck in 2009, and surely (according to a highway patrol officer on the scene) saved her life, have sued the woman for the emotional and physical disabilities that resulted from the episode (brought to light in an August 2011 Associated Press report). David Kelley and Mark Kincaid not only stopped voluntarily to help, but were the only ones on the scene capable of pulling the woman to safety. (The fire was so hot that it melted Kelley's cellphone.) Kelley said he has suffered serious breathing problems and cannot avoid horrific dreams reliving the episode. The woman, Theresa Tanner, subsequently admitted that she deliberately crashed the car that day in a suicide attempt.

-- Former 11-year-veteran police officer Louise McGarva, 35, filed a lawsuit recently, asking the equivalent of about $760,000, against the Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh, Scotland, for causing her post-traumatic stress disorder. Officer McGarva was attending a supposedly routine riot training session that got out of hand. She said she discovered that she had developed a debilitating fear of sirens and police cars.

-- Tri-athlete Sabine von Sengbusch, 46, filed a lawsuit recently against Meghan Rohan, 28, over a June bicycle-pedestrian collision in New York City's Central Park. Von Sengbusch claims that Rohan had the audacity to step in front of her as she was bicycling, causing her to fall and suffer "painful and permanent" injuries. (Although von Sengbusch said she was inside the "bike lane" at the time, park officials said signs make clear that pedestrians have the right of way at all times.) Von Sengbusch's "permanent" injuries did not prevent her from competing in a triathlon on Oct. 1, in which she finished second. According to a New York Post report on the lawsuit, Central Park pedestrians are growing more vociferous in denouncing bicyclists, and vice versa.

-- A recent article in the Journal of Sexual Medicine reported the painful results obtained by three Hispanic men incarcerated in the southwestern United States who had, for some reason, inserted specially designed chips, carved from dominoes, under the skin of their penises, apparently based on a folkloric belief that "sexual performance and virility" would be enhanced. Infections resulted, requiring "major" surgery that was unspecified in the article.

No "Individual Mandate": To meet its municipal budget, the town of South Fulton, Tenn., assessed each residence $75 a year for firefighting service, but in the name of "liberty" gave people the chance to opt out of coverage. Vicky Bell chose not to pay, and when her home caught fire in December, firefighters rushed to the scene -- but only to be on hand in case the fire spread to her neighbors, who had paid their fees. Bell's home burned to the ground as firefighters watched. (Mayor David Crocker said "a majority" of residents had paid the fee.)

Obsessions: (1) Don Aslett, 76, recently opened the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho, as the culmination of a lifelong devotion to tidying up. Highlights are several hundred pre-electric vacuum cleaners plus interactive exhibits to encourage kids to clean their rooms. Aslett told London's Daily Mail in December that people who don't understand his dedication must never have experienced the satisfaction of making a toilet bowl sparkle. (2) Also starting early in life, Dustin Kruse, 4, is so knowledgeable about toilet models and plumbing mechanics that the Kohler Co. presented him with an advanced-model "dual flush" commode for Christmas. Dustin, a fan of the Kohler showroom, has been known to explain toilet technology to other showroom visitors.

-- Predator drones are an important weapon against terrorists in Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries, but in June, an unarmed predator was employed stateside to help catch cattle rustlers. The Department of Homeland Security owns eight predators for surveillance and occasionally assists local law enforcement. The cattle rustlers had been arrested, then jumped bail and holed up on their vast ranch near Lakota, N.D., but the predator spotted their exact location on the property, leading to a raid that ended without bloodshed.

-- Government Inaction: India's legendarily plodding government bureaucracy had long stymied a snake charmer named Hakkul (a villager in Uttar Pradesh state), who had sought a snake-conservation permit, which had been authorized at one level but delayed locally. In November, finally exasperated, Hakkul walked into the land revenue office in the town of Harraiya with several sacks of snakes (including cobras) and turned them loose, sending clerks and visitors climbing furniture or fleeing. Recent news accounts report that "almost all" of the snakes had been rounded up.

-- A December news release from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control warned of the dangers of Campylobacter jejuni bacteria infections on a sheep ranch, but apparently only among workers who used an old-style (19th century) method of castrating the animals. CDC strongly urged that workers stop biting off the sheep's genitals and instead use modern tools.

-- From U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn's periodic list of the most "unnecessary, duplicative and low-priority projects" that the federal government currently funds (announced in December): $75,000 to promote awareness of the role Michigan plays in producing Christmas trees and poinsettias; $48,700 for promoting the Hawaii Chocolate Festival; $113,227 for a video game preservation center in New York; and $764,825 to study something surely already done adequately by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs -- how college students use mobile devices for social networking. Also on Sen. Coburn's list: $15.3 million in continuing expenses for the famous Alaskan "bridge to nowhere" that was widely ridiculed in 2005 but apparently refuses to die.

Convicted serial rapist Steven Phillips was exonerated in 2008, one of a continuing string of wrongly convicted Dallas-area "criminals" proved innocent by DNA testing, and under a formula by state law, he was awarded about $4 million, tax-free, for his 25 years behind bars. Recently, Phillips' ex-wife filed a petition in court demanding a portion -- even though the couple had been divorced for the last 17 years of his incarceration, and the ex-wife had remarried and had a child. (The ex-wife claims it was Phillips who originated the divorce and that she had given up on him only because he had revealed a "disgusting" history as a "peeping tom" and flasher.)

(1) Dan D'Amato, 45, partying in an Orlando, Fla., motel room in December, was accidentally shot by a stranger who was having a dispute with another partygoer. Later, as his wounded hip was being treated at a hospital, doctors discovered and removed two "huge" tumors in D'Amato's abdomen that had so far gone unnoticed. The tumors were not cancerous but had they not been found, they would soon have disabled him. (2) At a home in Taylorsville, Utah, in December, one housemate who was pursuing a mouse in the kitchen accidentally shot another housemate. As police investigated, they discovered a 13-year-old girl hiding in a closet. A third housemate, Paul Kunzler, 28, was then arrested and charged with carrying on a months-long sexual relationship with her.

-- John Whittle, 52, was charged in December with robbing a Wells Fargo Bank in Port Richey, Fla. According to police, Whittle ordered a beer at the Hayloft Bar shortly after 1 p.m., then excused himself, and a few minutes later, returned to finish his beer. In the interim, police said later, Whittle had walked down the street to the bank and robbed it.

-- In December, Russell Mace, 55, was caught soon after robbing a Union Savings Bank branch in New Milford, Conn. A bank employee had spotted Mace acting "suspicious" in the parking lot, and indeed, he said, Mace entered, robbed the bank of about $3,000, and fled to a waiting car. Police, however, identified the car, which they had noted from Mace's recent arrest for shoplifting. (The "suspicious" behavior the bank employee had noticed, he told police, was Mace, pants down, defecating, in plain view among parked cars.)

(1) A 28-year-old man in New York City quietly excused himself the morning after his wedding in November (at a hotel following an elaborate reception), took a taxi to a Harlem River overlook, and jumped to his death. According to a relative, the man's suicide note mentioned that he "couldn't take it anymore." (2) Luna Oraivej, 37, was ordered in 2010 by a court in Seattle to take an anger- management course to settle a charge of domestic violence, but in December 2011, she sued the creator of the course because a fellow attendee had stabbed her in the arm during a classroom dispute. (The instructor was playing a video of "Dr. Phil," and Oraivej had urged the classmate to listen to Dr. Phil's message, but the classmate apparently could not bear it.)

Rookie Mistake: Tyechia Rembert, 33, was arrested and charged with robbing a Burger King drive-thru cashier in York, Pa., in December but only after making police officers' job easier. After her clean getaway, she called the restaurant to reassure herself that none of the witnesses had noted her car's license plate number. None had, but using cellphone records, police traced that call to Rembert.

Not all states have anti-bestiality laws, and Peter Bower's ongoing case in Ohio exemplifies prosecutors' frustration. There was evidence that Bower had had sex with a dog ("Maggie") and had written her "love" letters, and police arrested him in June. Prosecutors were willing to settle the case in November for minimal punishment because the only law Bower could have been charged under is "animal cruelty," and they explained that they might have had trouble showing harm to the apparently adored dog. (At the time of Bower's arrest, a search had uncovered human-animal pornography and a life-sized inflatable sheep.)

(1) A 77-year-old man was killed by a sheriff's deputy in December while standing beside his own engraved tombstone in a Gardnerville, Nev., cemetery. (The victim was holding a shotgun and was distraught over the death of his wife.) (2) A 20-year-old man died of an apparent cocaine overdose in North Charleston, S.C., in December as a result of trying to help his older brother. The pair had been arrested and placed in a police cruiser when the older brother convinced the younger one to swallow the ounce of cocaine the older man was carrying. (According to a police report, the cocaine had been stored in the older man's "backside.")

Intelligent Design: If the male nursery web spider were a human, he would be sternly denounced as a vulgar cad. Researcher Maria Jose Albo of Denmark's Aarhus University told Live Science in November that the spiders typically obtain sex by making valuable "gifts" to females (usually, high-nutrition insects wrapped in silk), but if lacking resources, a male cleverly packages a fake gift (usually a piece of flower) also in silk but confoundingly wound so as to distract her as she unwraps it -- and then mounts her before she discovers the hoax. Albo also found that the male is not above playing dead to coax the female into relaxing her guard as she approaches the "carcass" -- only to be jumped from behind for sex.

-- Son Theodore Zimmick and two other relatives filed a lawsuit in November against the St. Stanislaus cemetery in Pittsburgh for the unprofessional burial of Theodore's mother, Agnes, in 2009. Agnes had purchased an 11-by-8-foot plot in 1945, but when she finally passed away, the graveyard had become so crowded that, according to the lawsuit, workers were forced to dig such a small hole that they had to jump up and down on the casket and whack it with poles to fit it into the space.

-- Managers of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, N.Y., decided recently to relocate the statue of Abraham Lincoln that since 1895 had occupied a seldom-visited site and whose advocates over the years had insisted be given more prominence. It turned out that the most viable option was to swap locations with a conspicuous 1906 statue of Dr. Alexander Skene. Lincoln is certainly universally revered, but Dr. Skene has advocates, too, and some (according to a December Wall Street Journal report) are resisting the relocation because Dr. Skene (unlike Lincoln) was a Brooklynite, and Dr. Skene (unlike Lincoln) had a body part named after him ("Skene's glands," thought to be "vital" in understanding the "G spot").

-- The two hosts of the Dutch TV show "Guinea Pigs" apparently followed through on their plans in December to eat pieces of each other (fried in sunflower oil) in order to describe the taste. Dennis Storm and Valerio Zeno underwent surgery to have small chunks removed for cooking, with Zeno perhaps faring worse (a piece of Storm's "bottom") compared to Storm (who got part of Zeno's abdomen).

-- A December New England Journal of Medicine report described a woman's "losing" her breast implant during a Pilates movement called the Valsalva (which involves breath-holding while "bearing down"). The woman said she felt no pain or shortness of breath but suddenly noticed that her implant was gone. Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore discovered that, because of the woman's recent heart surgery, the muscles between the ribs had loosened, and the implant had merely passed through a rib opening. (They returned it to its proper place.)

-- A balaclava-wearing man "kidnapped" Julian Buchwald and his girlfriend in 2008 in Australia's Alpine National Park as they were picnicking. The man separated the couple, tore their clothes off and buried them, but Buchwald escaped and rescued the girlfriend, and they wandered around naked for days before being rescued. The balaclava-clad man, it turns out, was Buchwald, whose plan was to convince the woman by his heroism that she should marry him (and more immediately, to have sex even though they had both pledged to remain virgins until marriage). Buchwald was convicted in Victoria County Court and sentenced in December to more than seven years in prison.

-- Laurie Martinez, 36, was charged in December with filing a false police report in Sacramento, Calif., alleging that she was raped, beaten bloody and robbed in her home. It turns out that she had become frustrated trying to get her husband to move them to a better neighborhood and that faking a rape was supposed to finally persuade him. Instead, he filed for divorce. Martinez is employed by the state as a psychologist.

-- After 12 almost intolerable months, Ms. Seemona Sumasar finally received justice in November from a New York City jury, which convicted Jerry Ramrattan of orchestrating a complex and ingenious scheme to convince police that Sumasar was a serial armed robber. Ramrattan, a private detective and "CSI" fan, had used his knowledge of police evidence-gathering to pin various open cases on Sumasar as revenge for her having dumped him (and to negate her claim that Ramrattan had raped her in retaliation). Ramrattan was so creative in linking evidence to Sumasar that her bail had been set at $1 million, causing her to spend seven months in jail. (Said one juror, "If I had seen this on TV, my reaction would be, 'How could this really happen?'")

Prominent Birmingham, Ala., politician Bill Johnson describes his wife as "the most beautiful woman in the world," but he revealed in December that, while on temporary duty recently as an earthquake relief specialist in New Zealand, he had clandestinely donated sperm to nine women (and that three were already pregnant). Becoming a biological father is "a need that I have," he told a New Zealand Herald reporter, and his wife had been unable to accommodate him. Asked if his wife knew of the nine women, Johnson said, "She does now." Indeed, Alabama newspapers quickly picked up the story, and Mrs. Johnson told the Mobile Press-Register that there is "healing to do."

Not Ready for Prime Time: The unidentified eyeglass-wearing robber of an HSBC Bank in Long Island City, N.Y., in December fled empty-handed and was being sought. Armed with a pistol and impatient with a slow teller, the man fired a shot into the ceiling to emphasize his seriousness. However, according to a police report, the gunshot seemed to panic him as much as it did the others in the bank, and he immediately ran out the door and jumped into a waiting vehicle.

-- James Ward's second annual festival of tedium (the "Boring conference"), in November at York Hall in east London, once again sold out, demonstrating the intrinsic excitement created by yawn-inducing subject matter. Last year's conference featured a man's discourse on the color and materials of his neckwear collection and another's structured milk-tasting, patterned after a wine-tasting. This second edition showcased a history of the electric hand-dryer and a seminar on the square root of 2.

-- Last month, News of the Weird informed readers of the woman who wanted to "be at one" with her recently deceased horse and thus stripped naked and climbed inside the bloody carcass (posing for a notorious Internet photo spread). Afghan slaughterhouse employees surely never consider being "at one" with water buffaloes, but a November Washington Post dispatch from Kabul mentions a similarity. U.S. slaughterhouse authority Chris Hart found, as he was helping to upgrade an antiquated abattoir near Kabul, that the facility employed a dwarf, "responsible" (wrote the Post) "for climbing inside water buffalo carcasses to cut out their colons." (Nonetheless, the slaughterhouse is halal, adhering to Islamic principles.)

-- No Longer Weird? One would think that classical musicians who carry precious violins, worth small fortunes, on public transportation would be especially vigilant to safeguard them. However, from time to time (for example, in 2008, 2009, 2010 and May 2011), absentmindedness prevailed. Most recently, in December, student MuChen Hsieh, 19, accompanying a 176-year-old violin (on loan from a foundation in Taiwan and worth about $170,000) on a bus ride from Boston to Philadelphia, forgot to check the overhead rack when departing and left without it. Fortunately, a bus company cleaner turned it in. (Most famously, in 1999, the master cellist Yo Yo Ma left his instrument in the trunk of a New York City taxicab.)