Sophisticated automobile technology makes high-performance engines purr in relative silence, but automakers fear that their most demanding drivers are emotionally attached to the engines' roar. Consequently, as Car and Driver reported in April, the 2012 BMW M5, with 560 horsepower tempered with sound deadeners, has installed pre-recorded engine noise, channeled into the car's cabin via the stereo system. A computer program matches the amplitude of the engine's growl to the driver's accelerator-revving. In other automobile tech news, Peugeot technicians announced in March that they were preparing "mood paint" for the body of the company's iconic RCZ model. The paint's molecular structure would be alterable by heat sensors in the steering wheel and elsewhere that measure a driver's stress levels. A calm driver might see his car turn green, for instance -- but watch out for road-rage red! [Car and Driver, April 2012 (not online)] [DieselCarOnline (Leamington Spa, England), 3-31-2012]

-- With only 30,000 hotel rooms in Rio de Janeiro, and 50,000 visitors expected for the June United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, officials persuaded owners of many of the city's short-time "love hotels" (typically renting for four hours at a time) to change business plans for a few days to accommodate the delegates. A BBC News stringer reported that the hotels will remove some special fixtures and furniture, such as "erotic chairs" and velvet wall coverings, but that the large, round beds would stay. Fortunately, the conference does not begin until June 13. The night of June 12 ("Lovers Day") is a big income-producer for short-stay hotels. [BBC News, 4-11-2012]

-- The Marine Wounded Warriors Battalion at Camp Lejeune, N.C., generally enjoys excellent support from the community, but in an April report of the Government Accountability Office, Marines complained of a "petting zoo" environment in which civilian charities and advertisers use the battalion to seek out "poster" faces and bodies that "looked the part" of wounded veterans, such as those severely burned or missing limbs. Warriors who suffer post-traumatic stress or brain injuries often appear outwardly "normal" and are likely to be ignored by the support organizations, thus setting a "bad tone" among the wounded. [Washington Post, 4-5-2012]

-- Not Your Classic Perps: (1) In October, Dr. Kimberly Lindsey, 44, a deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control's Laboratory Science, Policy, and Practice Program Office, was charged with two counts of child molestation and bestiality involving a 6-year-old boy. (2) In April, Yaron Segal, 30, a post-doctoral researcher at a physics lab at MIT, was arrested upon arriving in Grand Junction, Colo., after arranging with a woman online to have sex with the woman's underage daughter (an adventure that was the product of a law enforcement sting). (Two weeks later, Segal was found dead in his jail cell of an apparent suicide.) [WSB-TV (Atlanta), 10-11-2011] [KMGH-TV (Denver), 4-17-2012]

-- Oh, Dear!: (1) At a March Chicago Symphony Orchestra performance, the music continued uninterrupted as two patrons engaged in a fistfight over box seating. Conductor Riccardo Muti "never stopped conducting," said a patron. "He very gracefully, without missing a beat -- literally -- he brought (the second movement) to a very quiet and subdued close." (2) It costs $8,500 (plus $3,000 annual dues) to join the ultra-prestigious New York Athletic Club, which counts Olympic champions among its upper-crust members. However, an April brawl in a back room, said to have begun over a woman, saw (according to witnesses) fighting "wolf packs" in a "lion's pit" that resulted in several bloody injuries, with two people sent to the hospital and three arrested. [Chicago Sun-Times, 3-10-2012] [New York Times, 4-24-2012]

(1) Arrested for felony battery in Bloomington, Ind., in April: Ms. Fellony Silas, 30. (2) Announced as eligible for parole in June by the Kansas Prison Review Board: Mr. Wilford Molester Galloway. (3) Arrested for hit-and-run in April in Roseville, Calif.: Mr. Obiwan Kenobi, 37. (4) Arrested on drug and weapons charges in Clarkstown, N.Y., in April, Mr. Genghis Khan. (5) Among the silly town names uncovered in an April report on SmarterTravel.com: Why, Ariz., Whynot, Miss., Hell, Mich., Pig, Ky., Elephant Butte, N.M., Monkeys Eyebrow, Ky., and Embarrass, Minn. The report also found towns in Wales and New Zealand that are 58 and 57 letters long, respectively. [The Smoking Gun, 4-16-2012] [Lawrence Journal-World, 4-9-2012] [KXTV (Sacramento, 4-26-2012] [The Smoking Gun, 5-1-2012] [SmarterTravel.com, 4-5-2012]

-- Following her recent holiday in the United States, in which she passed through Boring, Ore. (pop. 12,000), Scotswoman Elizabeth Leighton returned home to suggest that officials in her hometown of Dull, Scotland, arrange for the two towns to become "sister cities," even though they did not qualify under normal protocols because of Boring's larger size. (The Oregon town was named for a Civil War soldier, William H. Boring.) [BBC News, 4-24-2012]

-- Some villagers in China's Shandong Province who are too poor or isolated to hook up to home heating fuel service have an alternative, according to a March report by China News Center. They take giant, heavy-duty balloons that resemble 15-foot-long condoms and walk to filling stations to inflate them with natural gas every four or five days. The danger of explosion is high, but the balloons remain many villagers' best option. [China News Center (ChinaMedia.com), 3-1-2012]

-- A Better Reason to De-Fund Planned Parenthood: The organization has survived a controversial de-funding campaign over its limited abortion program, but its Washington state chapter, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, began a quixotic safe-sex campaign in February in which thousands of condoms were distributed with scannable barcodes. The plan was that users would automatically register information about their locations during sex, and, if the users chose, other information about the particular sexual experience they just had. Among the choices: "Ah-maz-ing," "Rainbows exploded and mountains trembled," "Things can only improve from here." [New York Daily News, 2-29-2012]

-- At the 10th Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait in March, as medals were presented and winners' national anthems were played, officials were apparently ill-prepared for medalist Maria Dmitrienko of Kazakhstan. Consequently, her "national anthem" was, inadvertently, the humorous ditty from the movie "Borat." (Instead of such lyrics as "sky of golden sun" and "legend of courage," the audience heard "Greatest country in the world / All other countries are run by little girls" and "Filtration system a marvel to behold / It removes 80 percent of human solid waste.") Dmitrienko reportedly kept a mostly straight face throughout, although Kazakhstan later demanded, and received, an official apology. [Daily Mail (London), 3-23-2012]

-- Clumsy: (1) In March, Germany's celebrity rabbit -- the genetically "earless" bunny Tiny Til -- was accidentally crushed to death in a zoo in Limbach-Oberfrohna when a cameraman accidentally stepped on it while setting up for a news conference. (2) In 2011, a photographer snapping pictures for an art magazine moved a 2,630-year-old African sculpture to get a better shot, and accidentally smashed it ("to smithereens," according to the owner, Corice Arman, who filed a $300,000 lawsuit in April 2012 against the photographer and his magazine). [Spiegel Online via New York Daily News, 3-16-2012] [New York Post, 4-26-2012]

Lawrence Cobbold, 38, has a house in Plympton, England, but has to make living arrangements at his parents' home or elsewhere because his place is totally taken over by his 21,000-item collection of bird ornaments and doodads. Before heading off to sleep elsewhere, he spends an average of four hours a day tidying up the collection. His dad (who described his other son as "completely normal") said, "I just hope I die before (Lawrence). I don't want to (have to) clear all this out." [Plymouth Herald, 4-5-2012]

Questionable Strategy: Robert Strank, 39, was arrested in Beavercreek, Ohio, in April and charged with trying to rob the Huntington Bank. According to police, he had approached the bank's counter but become ill and asked a teller to call 911 to summon medics. There were conflicting news reports about when medics arrived to treat Strank, but there was agreement that Strank recovered and subsequently presented the same teller his pre-written holdup note demanding cash. He was arrested in short order. [WDTN-TV (Dayton), 4-20-2012; WHIO-TV (Dayton), 4-23-2012]

Condo developer Larry Hall is already one-quarter sold out of the upscale doomsday units he is building in an abandoned underground Cold War-era Atlas-F missile silo near Salina, Kan. He told an Agence France-Presse reporter in April that his 14-story structure would house seven floors of apartments ($1 million to $2 million each, cash up front), with the rest devoted to dry food storage, filtered-water tanks and an indoor farm, which would raise fish and vegetables to sustain residents for five years. The 9-foot-thick concrete walls (built to protect rockets from a Soviet nuclear attack) would be buttressed by entrance security to ward off the savages who were not wise enough to prepare against famine, meteors, nuclear war and the like. Hall said he expects to be sold out this year and begin work on another of the three silos he has options to buy. [Agence France-Presse via Google News, 4-9-2012]

-- Dan O'Leary, the city manager of Keller, Tex. (pop. 27,000), faced with severe budget problems, was unable to avoid the sad job of handing out pink slips. For instance, he determined that one of Keller's three city managers had to go, and in April, he laid himself off. According to a March Fort Worth Star-Telegram report, O'Leary neither intended to retire nor had other offers pending, and he had aroused no negative suspicions as to motive. He simply realized the city could be managed more cost-effectively by the two lower-paid officials. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3-21-2012]

-- Herman Wallace, 70, and Albert Woodfox, 65, have been held in solitary confinement (only one hour a day outside) since 1972 in the Louisiana State Prison at Angola, after being convicted (via flimsy evidence and a convenient prison snitch) of killing a guard. A third convict for the murder, Robert King, who was in solitary for 29 years but then released, explained to BBC News in an April dispatch what it's like to live inside 54 square feet for 23 hours a day, for over 14,000 straight days. The lawyer working to free Wallace and Woodfox said the soul-deadened men were "potted plants." [BBC News, 4-4-2012]

(1) A federal court magistrate in Melbourne, Australia, decided to split a divorcing couple's assets in half in February after listening to tedious details of their 20-year marriage. The "couple" lived apart except for vacations and kept their finances separate, constantly "invoic[ing] each other," according to the Daily Telegraph, for amounts as trifling as a $1.60 lightbulb. (2) Though many Americans act as though they are in love with themselves, only Nadine Schweigert became an honest woman. She married herself in March in front of 45 family members and friends in Fargo, N.D., vowing "to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self." And then she was off on a solo honeymoon. [Herald Sun (Melbourne), 2-27-2012] [Fargo Forum, 3-15-2012]

On Feb. 1st, the New Jersey Honor Legion -- a civic association with more than 6,000 members in law enforcement -- nominated Frank DiMattina as "Citizen of the Month" for offering his catering hall in Woodbridge, N.J., numerous times for gatherings of police and firefighters. The nomination came three weeks after DiMattina (also known as "Frankie D") was convicted of shaking down a rival bidder for a school-lunch contract in New York City. Federal prosecutors told the New York Daily News that DiMattina is mobbed up--an associate of the Genovese family's John "Johnny Sausage" Barbato. [New York Daily News, 3-26-2012]

-- In January, Ms. Navey Skinner, 34, was charged with robbing the Chase Bank in Arlington, Wash., after passing a teller a note that read, "Put the money in the bag now or [d]ie." According to investigators, Skinner subsequently told them she had been thinking about robbing a bank and then, while inside the Chase Bank, "accidentally robbed" it. [Daily Herald (Everett, Wash.), 1-30-2012]

-- Emanuel Kuvakos, 56, was arrested in April and charged with sending two Chicago sports team executives emails that threatened them with violence for having stolen his "ideas" for winning "championships." One of the victims was a former general manager of the Chicago Cubs, a team that famously has not won a National League championship in 66 years, nor a World Series in 103. [Chicago Tribune, 4-18-2012]

-- In April, Arizona (recently the home of cutting-edge legislation) almost set itself up for the impossible task of trying to prohibit any "annoy[ing]" or "offen[sive]" or "profane" language on the Internet. The state House passed the bill, which was endorsed 30-0 by the state Senate, ostensibly to make an anti-stalking telephone regulation applicable to "digital" communications. (Just as the bill was about to go to the governor for signature, sponsors suddenly realized the futility of the bill's directives, and on April 4th, withdrew it.) [Phoenix New Times, 4-4-2012]

-- Finally, a nationally prominent judge has taken on prison "nutriloaf" as a constitutional issue. In March, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner reinstated a dismissed lawsuit by a Milwaukee County Jail inmate who claimed that the mystery meat gave him an "anal fissure." Posner wrote that the lower courts needed to rule on whether the food of indeterminate content is "cruel and unusual punishment," since (citing a Wikipedia entry) an anal fissure seems "no fun at all." [American Bar Association Journal, 3-28-2012]

-- Gay Rights in Limbo: (1) The Missouri House of Representatives, after several times rejecting "sexual orientation" as one of the legally prohibited categories of discrimination, managed to find another category in March (to join "race," "religion" and so forth) that is deserving of special protection: licensed concealed-weapons carriers. (2) The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in April that Joshua Coman, convicted of having sex with a dog, does not have to register as a sex offender. Activists had urged that the sodomy law on which Coman was convicted be declared unconstitutional, since it appears to equate human-animal sex with man-man and woman-woman sex. However, the Court declined, instead noting that Coman had been convicted of a misdemeanor and that only felons are required to register. [St. Louis Public Radio, 3-11-2012]

In March, West Des Moines, Iowa, police opened an investigation, with video surveillance, of a 59-year-old employee of the state's Farm Bureau on suspicion of criminal mischief. According to police documents cited by the Des Moines Register, the man would look through the employee database for photos of attractive female colleagues and then visit their work space after hours and urinate on their chairs. Not only does the man allegedly have a problem, but the Farm Bureau figured it is out $4,500 in damaged chairs. [Des Moines Register, 3-27-2012]

Amateur Hour: (1) CVS supervisor Fenton Graham, 35, of Silver Spring, Md., was arrested as the inside man (with two accomplices) in two drugstore robberies in April. Surveillance video showed that in the second heist, the nervous perp evidently failed to take the money with him, and Graham (the "victim") was seen taking it out to his forgetful partner. (2) Kyle Voss, 24, was charged with four burglaries in Great Falls, Mont., in April after coming upon a private residence containing buckets of coins. According to police, Voss first took the quarters and half-dollars ($3,000), then days later he returned for $700 in dimes and nickels. By the third break-in, the resident had installed surveillance video, and Voss was caught as he came back for a bucket of pennies. [Washington Post, 4-13-2012] [Associated Press via Fox News, 4-17-2012]

Federal court documents revealed in March that AWOL Army Pvt. Brandon Price, 28, had convinced Citibank in January that he spoke for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (one of the world's richest men) and convinced the bank to issue Allen (i.e., Price) a new debit card and to change Allen's address from Seattle to Price's address in Pittsburgh. Price/Allen shopped decidedly downscale, running up charges only at Gamestop and Family Dollar, totaling less than $1,000. [Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 3-27-2012]

Condo developer Larry Hall is already one-quarter sold out of the upscale doomsday units he is building in an abandoned underground Cold War-era Atlas-F missile silo near Salina, Kan. He told an Agence France-Presse reporter in April that his 14-story structure would house seven floors of apartments ($1 million to $2 million each, cash up front), with the rest devoted to dry food storage, filtered-water tanks and an indoor farm, which would raise fish and vegetables to sustain residents for five years. The 9-foot-thick concrete walls (built to protect rockets from a Soviet nuclear attack) would be buttressed by entrance security to ward off the savages who were not wise enough to prepare against famine, meteors, nuclear war and the like. Hall said he expects to be sold out this year and begin work on another of the three silos he has options to buy. [Agence France-Presse via Google News, 4-9-2012]

-- Dan O'Leary, the city manager of Keller, Tex. (pop. 27,000), faced with severe budget problems, was unable to avoid the sad job of handing out pink slips. For instance, he determined that one of Keller's three city managers had to go, and in April, he laid himself off. According to a March Fort Worth Star-Telegram report, O'Leary neither intended to retire nor had other offers pending, and he had aroused no negative suspicions as to motive. He simply realized the city could be managed more cost-effectively by the two lower-paid officials. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 3-21-2012]

-- Herman Wallace, 70, and Albert Woodfox, 65, have been held in solitary confinement (only one hour a day outside) since 1972 in the Louisiana State Prison at Angola, after being convicted (via flimsy evidence and a convenient prison snitch) of killing a guard. A third convict for the murder, Robert King, who was in solitary for 29 years but then released, explained to BBC News in an April dispatch what it's like to live inside 54 square feet for 23 hours a day, for over 14,000 straight days. The lawyer working to free Wallace and Woodfox said the soul-deadened men were "potted plants." [BBC News, 4-4-2012]

(1) A federal court magistrate in Melbourne, Australia, decided to split a divorcing couple's assets in half in February after listening to tedious details of their 20-year marriage. The "couple" lived apart except for vacations and kept their finances separate, constantly "invoic[ing] each other," according to the Daily Telegraph, for amounts as trifling as a $1.60 lightbulb. (2) Though many Americans act as though they are in love with themselves, only Nadine Schweigert became an honest woman. She married herself in March in front of 45 family members and friends in Fargo, N.D., vowing "to enjoy inhabiting my own life and to relish a lifelong love affair with my beautiful self." And then she was off on a solo honeymoon. [Herald Sun (Melbourne), 2-27-2012] [Fargo Forum, 3-15-2012]

On Feb. 1st, the New Jersey Honor Legion -- a civic association with more than 6,000 members in law enforcement -- nominated Frank DiMattina as "Citizen of the Month" for offering his catering hall in Woodbridge, N.J., numerous times for gatherings of police and firefighters. The nomination came three weeks after DiMattina (also known as "Frankie D") was convicted of shaking down a rival bidder for a school-lunch contract in New York City. Federal prosecutors told the New York Daily News that DiMattina is mobbed up -- an associate of the Genovese family's John "Johnny Sausage" Barbato. [New York Daily News, 3-26-2012]

-- In January, Ms. Navey Skinner, 34, was charged with robbing the Chase Bank in Arlington, Wash., after passing a teller a note that read, "Put the money in the bag now or (d)ie." According to investigators, Skinner subsequently told them she had been thinking about robbing a bank and then, while inside the Chase Bank, "accidentally robbed" it. [Daily Herald (Everett, Wash.), 1-30-2012]

-- Emanuel Kuvakos, 56, was arrested in April and charged with sending two Chicago sports team executives emails that threatened them with violence for having stolen his "ideas" for winning "championships." One of the victims was a former general manager of the Chicago Cubs, a team that famously has not won a National League championship in 66 years, nor a World Series in 103. [Chicago Tribune, 4-18-2012]

  -- In April, Arizona (recently the home of cutting-edge legislation) almost set itself up for the impossible task of trying to prohibit any "annoy(ing)" or "offen(sive)" or "profane" language on the Internet. The state House passed the bill, which was endorsed 30-0 by the state Senate, ostensibly to make an anti-stalking telephone regulation applicable to "digital" communications. (Just as the bill was about to go to the governor for signature, sponsors suddenly realized the futility of the bill's directives, and on April 4th, withdrew it.) [Phoenix New Times, 4-4-2012]

-- Finally, a nationally prominent judge has taken on prison "nutriloaf" as a constitutional issue. In March, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner reinstated a dismissed lawsuit by a Milwaukee County Jail inmate who claimed that the mystery meat gave him an "anal fissure." Posner wrote that the lower courts needed to rule on whether the food of indeterminate content is "cruel and unusual punishment," since (citing a Wikipedia entry) an anal fissure seems "no fun at all." [American Bar Association Journal, 3-28-2012]

-- Gay Rights in Limbo: (1) The Missouri House of Representatives, after several times rejecting "sexual orientation" as one of the legally prohibited categories of discrimination, managed to find another category in March (to join "race," "religion" and so forth) that is deserving of special protection: licensed concealed-weapons carriers. (2) The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in April that Joshua Coman, convicted of having sex with a dog, does not have to register as a sex offender. Activists had urged that the sodomy law on which Coman was convicted be declared unconstitutional, since it appears to equate human-animal sex with man-man and woman-woman sex. However, the Court declined, instead noting that Coman had been convicted of a misdemeanor and that only felons are required to register. [St. Louis Public Radio, 3-11-

2012]

In March, West Des Moines, Iowa, police opened an investigation, with video surveillance, of a 59-year-old employee of the state's Farm Bureau on suspicion of criminal mischief. According to police documents cited by the Des Moines Register, the man would look through the employee database for photos of attractive female colleagues and then visit their work space after hours and urinate on their chairs. Not only does the man allegedly have a problem, but the Farm Bureau figured it is out $4,500 in damaged chairs. [Des Moines Register, 3-27-2012]

Amateur Hour: (1) CVS supervisor Fenton Graham, 35, of Silver Spring, Md., was arrested as the inside man (with two accomplices) in two drugstore robberies in April. Surveillance video showed that in the second heist, the nervous perp evidently failed to take the money with him, and Graham (the "victim") was seen taking it out to his forgetful partner. (2) Kyle Voss, 24, was charged with four burglaries in Great Falls, Mont., in April after coming upon a private residence containing buckets of coins. According to police, Voss first took the quarters and half-dollars ($3,000), then days later he returned for $700 in dimes and nickels. By the third break-in, the resident had installed surveillance video, and Voss was caught as he came back for a bucket of pennies. [Washington Post, 4-13-2012] [Associated Press via Fox News, 4-17-2012]

Federal court documents revealed in March that AWOL Army Pvt. Brandon Price, 28, had convinced Citibank in January that he spoke for Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (one of the world's richest men) and convinced the bank to issue Allen (i.e., Price) a new debit card and to change Allen's address from Seattle to Price's address in Pittsburgh. Price/Allen shopped decidedly downscale, running up charges only at Gamestop and Family Dollar, totaling less than $1,000. [Pittsburgh Post Gazette, 3-27-2012]