And What Were Y-o-u Doing at Age 14? Among the students featured in Popular Science's September list of young inventors was Fabian Fernandez-Han, 14, of Conroe, Texas, who invented a bicycle that, when pedaled, also desalinates seawater (via reverse osmosis) from replaceable 15-gallon canisters. One hour of pedaling produces 20 gallons of drinkable water. Jack Andraka, 15, from Maryland, created a test for pancreatic cancer that is demonstrably much faster and more accurate than current diagnostics (using carbon nanotubes that can be specially activated by applications of the signature pancreatic-cancer protein, Mesothelin). [Popular Science, September 2012]

-- School officials in Grand Island, Neb., told Hunter Spanjer that the way he signs his name violates the schools' anti-weapons policy and that he'll have to abandon it. Hunter is 3 1/2 years old, deaf, fluent in the language Signing Exact English, and uses a hand flourish as his unique signature (registered with SEE), except that officials say the flourish looks like Hunter is threatening with a weapon. At press time, Hunter's parents were still negotiating with officials. [KOLN-TV (Lincoln), 8-28-2012]

-- An unidentified mother of twins was photographed at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Lehi, Utah, in September apparently toilet-training her toddlers at a table. Another patron witnessed the mother's bringing in what at first glance looked like booster seats, but then the mom undid the kids' jumpsuits and placed them on the potties. A spokesperson for the deli (located 10 miles south of Salt Lake City) said the incident was over by the time it was reported to her, but the witness put a photo on the Internet (picked up by TV stations) so that millions of people could disapprove of the mother's parenting. [KNTX-TV (Bowie, Texas), 9-6-2012]

-- Police in Seneca Falls, N.Y., arrested Dawn Planty in August and charged her with statutory rape. Planty came to officers' attention when she called 911 to ask if the dispatcher knew the age of consent in the state because she had had sex with a 15-year-old boy recently and wanted to clear her conscience. [WHEC-TV (Rochester), 8-21-2012]

-- (1) The Washington Post, reporting in August the existence of a newly declassified communication between a cooperating Guantanamo Bay detainee and his lawyer, revealed that the "high-value" prisoner had, without explanation, been rewarded with a pet kitty cat. (2) On July 4, two peace activists who own a small advertising agency in Malmo, Sweden, pulled off their most audacious stunt yet by hiring a small plane to drop 800 teddy bears emblazoned with democracy-promoting messages over the capital of Belarus. The country's strongman president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, later fired two generals for their inability to prevent the breach of the country's airspace. [Washington Post, 8-16-2012] [New York Times, 8-2-2012]

-- Many Americans are still outraged that no major banking officials were punished for the malpractices that produced the 2008 financial collapse. However, in July, Richard Eggers, age 68 and with an otherwise-unblemished record, was fired by Wells Fargo -- only because of a 49-year-old conviction for attempting to rig a laundromat machine by making a "dime" out of cardboard. Wells Fargo said its hands were tied by a new federal law requiring dismissal of anyone with past convictions for "transactional crimes" (aimed at identity theft and money-laundering). (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which administers the law, has a waiver procedure, but the process is complicated, and Wells Fargo said it feared being fined if it did not terminate Eggers promptly.) [Associated Press via Des Moines Register, 8-29-2012]

-- Overtaking Washington, D.C., in Dysfunction: (1) Ever since Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy found 11,000 "rape kits" lying idle on police shelves in 2009, she has been seeking funding to test them. In a progress report in August 2012, of the 400 kits deemed most likely to yield results, 21 "serial rapists" were identified. (Manpower to find the men is unavailable, and yet to be learned is whether any have committed additional rapes since 2009.) (2) Two hours after an early morning multiple-shooting in Detroit on Sept. 1, a 36-year-old man reported to a fire station to turn himself in. However, firefighters were unable to persuade police to come arrest him, and eventually, reported WXYZ-TV, the firefighters put the man in a taxi and sent him to a police station. [WDIV-TV (Detroit), 8-23-2012] [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 9-2-2012]

-- A 30-year-old man told Providence, R.I., told police in August that he was the victim of a sexual assault, and police are investigating. The man said he had gone to the North Main Street Spa for a professional massage and was unable to avoid a sex act administered by his "masseuse," "Yo Yo." (The Providence Journal did not publish his name because he claims to be the victim of a sex crime.) [Providence Journal, 8-14-2012]

-- In July, Labor Party councillors in the Netherlands demanded that weather forecasters be punished for incorrect predictions -- since poor weather drives down resort business, resulting in slower hiring. One hotelier in Hoek van Holland lamented that the forecasters, ironically, were getting worse "(d)espite having more forecasting tools than ever before." (A week before that, tourist managers in Belgium reportedly called for "less pessimistic forecasts," and one urged meteorologists "to pay as much attention to sun as they do to rain.") [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-15-2012]

-- In a lower-level Norwegian soccer league match in May, player Talat Abunima was ejected for arguing with a referee who had just given him the benefit of a penalty. He was not fouled, he insisted. "(I) tripped over my own feet," he said later. "It was unbelievably clumsy of me and ... I felt I had to speak out." The referee first warned Abunima (a yellow card) for complaining and finally red-carded him, telling a local newspaper afterward, "It was a clear penalty. The player got it all wrong. I don't think the players know the rules properly." [Reuters via TheScore.com, 5-4-2012]

-- Sounds Like a Joke: (1) The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported in July that vandals had wrecked the pen that reptile farmer David Driver employed to confine his herd of 1,600 turtles -- and that they had all fled. (2) Apparently at their wits' end trying to get their rare Chilean flamingos to mate, handlers at the Drusillas Zoo Park in East Sussex, England, began piping in music at night, including songs by the human seduction machine, Barry White ("Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe"). [Chattanooga Times Free Press, 7-19-2012] [Press Association via West Australian (Perth), 8-10-2012]

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) The two robbers who walked into the 7-Eleven in Arlington, Va., in August apparently neglected to coordinate in advance and thus left empty-handed. As the first man pulled a gun and demanded money, the second, a few steps behind, tossed a firecracker on the floor, apparently to intimidate the clerk. However, it mainly served to scare the gunman, who dropped his pistol and ran out the door. (2) A 40-year-old man swiped a cellphone while visiting a patient at the Kagadi Hospital in Uganda in August. The facility is currently treating the country's Ebola virus outbreak, and the phone was in the room of an Ebola patient. Doctors urged the thief to return to the hospital for treatment. [Washington Post, 8-30-2012] [Daily Monitor (Kampala) via New York Daily News, 8-27-2012]

-- Ironies: (1) Five young men died in Ontario, Calif., in September when their car rolled over as many as five times after speeding through a red light at 1:45 in the morning. One of the occupants had sent Twitter messages during the ride referring to being "drunk," "going 120 drifting corners," and, daringly (in two messages), "YOLO" ("you only live once"). (2) A 47-year-old man was accidentally strangled in June in Eastern Cape province of South Africa. He had taken to wearing his recently deceased dog's leash around his neck in remembrance but, bending over, gotten the leash caught in a car's axle as it drove away. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles, 9-2-2012] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-11-2012]

Thanks This Week to John McGaw, Gary DaSilva, Sandy Pearlman, George Elyjiw, Conrad Golbov, James White, and Gary Abbott, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Researchers Having Fun: Scientists from the Primate Research Institute at Japan's Kyoto University reported in an August journal article that they had given helium gas to apes (gibbons), which, predictably, made their voices goofily high-pitched. However, it was not a fraternity prank or lab assistant's initiation, but a way for the scientists to determine whether the famously sonorous gibbons could yell just as loudly at a higher-than-natural pitch. The gibbons succeeded, showing a rare talent similar to that of the world's greatest human sopranos, who maintain their booming amplitude by altering the shape of their vocal tract, including their mouth and tongue. [Reuters via Christian Science Monitor, 8-23-2012]

-- The seaside city of Qingdao, China, is (as described in August by NPR) "not a vacation community for superheroes" even though many beachcombers wear masks while lounging and sunbathing. The garments are "face-kinis," or light cloth coverings that protect against the "terror of tanning." While Western cultures celebrate skin-darkening, many Chinese associate it with lower-status, outdoor occupations, and a pale skin suggests having lived a pampered life. [NPR, 8-20-2012]

-- Fine Points of the Law: (1) Italy's highest court ruled in July that one man's telling another, in front of others, that he has "no balls" can be criminal conduct that warrants payment of damages. Said Judge Maurizio Fumo, such a comment places at issue male virility as well as competence and character. (2) In August, after an eight-day trial, a court in Hamburg, Germany, awarded money damages to a man who called another an "asshole" ("arschloch") in a parking-space dispute and fixed the payment at the equivalent of about $75,000. (Courts in Germany can base the amount of damages on the transgressor's income.) [ANSA (Rome) via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-1-2012] [The Local (Berlin), 8-23-2012]

-- A Saudi Arabian agency is raising the equivalent of about $130 million to break ground in 2013 on an entire city to be managed and staffed by female employees, with three more such cities being contemplated. Raising women's employment rate is a goal of the kingdom, where until last year, nearly all jobs were held by foreigners and Saudi males, including jobs as sales clerks in women's lingerie shops. [The Guardian (London), 8-12-2012]

-- A centuries-old practice of China's upper crust continues today, reported Slate.com in August, except with a bit more circumspection. Rich and/or powerful people on trial or convicted can still get away with hiring replacements to serve their sentences -- but because of ubiquitous Internet videos, only if the replacements facially resemble the perps. Since the rich person winds up paying for his conviction (though a relatively small price), Slate called the practice ("ding zui") sort of a "cap-and-trade" policy for crime. [Slate.com, 8-2-2012]

-- Prayer failed for Leslie Burton, 26, and Terrell Williams, 22, in St. Paul, Minn., in July. As they sat in the back seat of a police car while officers searched their own car, the pair, touching hands (according to the cruiser's video camera), quietly begged divine intervention that the guns in their car not be found. However, not only were the guns spotted, but a subsequent strip search revealed a baggie of suspected Ecstasy pills in Williams' rectum. [Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 7-6-2012]

-- In August, an abbot at the Wat Phra Dhammakaya Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand, reported that Steve Jobs is doing well now as a "mid-level angel." He was reincarnated as "a half-Witthayathorn, half-Yak," which the Bangkok Post took to mean that Jobs continues to be a "giant" and a seeker of scientific knowledge and apparently resides in a "parallel universe" near his former office in Cupertino, Calif. [Bangkok Post via CNBC, 8-24-2012]

-- The mayor of Triberg, Germany, touted his town's new public parking area in July by noting that 12 of the spaces were wider, and well-lit, compared to the others, and would be reserved for female drivers. The harder-to-access "men's spaces" required maneuvering at an angle around concrete pillars. "(M)en are, as a rule, a little better at such challenges," the mayor said, predicting that the men's spots would become a visitors' "attraction" for the town. [The Local (Berlin), 7-12-2012]

-- Bright Ideas: New signs were posted on doors of single-use restrooms in two medical clinics in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in July and immediately confused a transgender activist interviewed by Canadian Broadcasting Corporation News. Three silhouette figures appear on the door: a man, a woman, and what is supposedly a gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender (which is a half-man, half-woman with the right-hand side of the figure wearing a dress and with sloping shoulders and the left-hand side with the thicker pant legs of a man). Said the activist, "I understand they were trying to ... make people feel included, but..." [CBC News, 7-13-2012]

Finally responding to defense lawyers, the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged that it has been trying to keep certain North Carolina inmates locked up even though judges had declared them legally innocent. About 60 prisoners, according to a June USA Today investigation, were victims of an incorrect interpretation of federal gun-possession law supposedly rectified by a May 2011 U.S. Court of Appeals decision, but the Justice Department had continued to demand holds, for 12 months, arguing that somehow it still needed time to consider the men's records. (Some of the inmates are serving time for multiple counts and would only be eligible for sentence reductions.) In August, the department, sportingly, said it would stop opposing release of the men who had been ruled innocent more than a year earlier. [USA Today, 8-14-2012, 6-14-2012]

Not Into Politics: Lowell Turpin, 40, was arrested in Anderson County, Tenn., in July after he became jealously enraged at a stranger's photo on his live-in girlfriend's Facebook page and, demanding to know who the man is, allegedly punched her in the face and smashed her computer. According to the police report, it was a campaign photo of Mitt Romney. [Knoxville News Sentinel, 7-30-2012]

People Who Are a Mess: (1) St. Paul, Minn., police arrested Brian Wutschke, 45, in August after a female pedestrian said she saw him stop his truck beside her and perform oral sex on a dildo. Officers who patted Wutschke down at the scene noted a "vibrating sex toy" that Wutschke had inserted in a bodily orifice but declined to disturb it while it was still running. Wutschke was cited for indecent conduct. (2) Lab technician Coley Mitchell was arrested in a locker room at Georgia Health Sciences University in Augusta in August, intoxicated, with his pants down with two lab monkeys nearby that had been released from their cages. [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 8-23-2012] [Augusta Chronicle, 8-17-2012]

Men Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: A man in Wawa, Ontario, in July, clubbing a mouse with the butt end of a rifle. The 56-year-old man in Sparks, Nev., who brought his handgun with him to "The Bourne Legacy" after the Colorado massacre and was shot in the buttocks when it fell to the floor. Two men who shot themselves in the genitals (a 45-year-old in Birmingham, Mich., in June and 36-year-old Tavares Colbert in Oklahoma City in July). Tough guys like the 18-year-old in Philadelphian who fired the unloaded (he thought!) gun at his own head after his "manhood" was challenged, and the 17-year-old in Largo, Fla., in June who lost in the first round at Russian roulette. Two people didn't even need a gun to shoot themselves: a Modesto, Calif., weightlifter whose dumbbell slipped to the floor in April and landed on a bullet, and a 56-year-old woman in Montoursville, Pa., who apparently carries bullets in her purse, and somehow had one explode, wounding her. [Wawa: [Toronto Sun, 7-21-2012] Sparks: [Associated Press via Salon.com, 8-15-2012] Birmingham: [Detroit Free Press, 6-15-2012] Oklahoma City: [KWTV (Oklahoma City), 7-16-2012] Philadelphia: [Philadelphia Daily News, 6-7-2012] Largo: [Tampa Bay Times, 7-1-2012] Modesto: [Associated Press via WMBF-TV (Myrtle Beach, S.C.), 4-13-2012] Montoursville: [Williamsport (Pa.) Sun-Gazette, 6-11-2012]

Thanks This Week to Corby Kistler, Joe Guidali, Steve Dunn, Peter Smagorinsky, John McGaw, Ken Wilder, Gerald Sacks, Josh Levin, Bruce Leiserowitz, Eddie Earles, David Oldridge, Scott Huber, Hal Dunham, and Sandy Pearlman, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Are We Safe? In August, Daniel Castillo'a Jet Ski broke down in New York City's Jamaica Bay, forcing him to swim to the nearest shore -- at JFK International Airport. As Castillo roamed the grounds, he somehow failed to disturb the airport's $100 million, state-of-the-art Perimeter Intrusion Detection System of cameras and motion sensors, stumbling into the Delta terminal before an employee noticed him. This happened two weeks after the now-notorious "peace" protest of nun Megan Rice, 82, and two colleagues, who cut through fences at the Oak Ridge (Tenn.) nuclear reservation's Y-12 facility that houses more than 100 tons of highly enriched uranium. They braved numerous (though apparently unmonitored or malfunctioning) alarms and sensors for up to two hours before a lone guard stopped them. [ABC News via Yahoo News, 8-13-2012; New York Times, 8-8-2012]

-- Challenging Business Models: (1) In June, owners of the legal brothel Stiletto in Sydney, Australia, revealed their multimillion-dollar expansion to create the country's (and perhaps the world's) first "mega-brothel." (2) Short-stay "love hotels" proliferate in Brazil, but in July in the city of Belo Horizonte, Fabiano Lourdes and his sister Daniela were about to open Animalle Mundo Pet, which they described as a love hotel for dogs. Owners would bring their mating-ready canines to rooms that feature the dim lighting and heart-shaped ceiling mirrors traditional in love hotels (to appeal to the party paying the bill, of course). [Agence France-Presse, 6-20-2012] [Agence France-Presse via Daily Telegraph (London), 7-11-2012]

-- Oh, Dear: New York City is the scene this summer of a particularly nasty turf war among ice cream trucks vying for space on the city's choicest blocks. Most aggressive, according to a July New York Post report, are the drivers of Mister Softee trucks. Said a Yogo frozen yogurt vendor, "If you see a Mister Softee truck, you know bad things are coming," including, reported the Post, such hardball tactics as cutting rival trucks' brake lines. [New York Post, 7-25-2012]

The Treasury Department's inspector general reported in August that the IRS doled out more than $5 billion in fraudulent income tax returns in 2011 (owing to its mission to provide refunds promptly without first vetting the claims). The agency "refunded" $3.3 million to a single address in Lansing, Mich. (supposedly the home of 2,137 different tax filers) and nearly $4 million to three Florida addresses (518 to one in Tampa, 741 to one in Belle Glade, and 703 to a post office box in Orlando). In all, refunds were claimed by, among others, 105,000 dead people. [Associated Press via Washington Post, 8-2-2012; South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 8-6-2012]

-- "Pheromone parties" attract men and women seeking romance not via often-insincere conversation but based on the primal-scent signals emitted by each other's slept-in T-shirts. Organizers have staged parties in New York City and Los Angeles and plan to expand, according to a June Associated Press report. The organizers' initial conclusion: People prefer lovers with a somewhat-different genetic makeup than their own, but not too different. [Associated Press via USA Today, 6-23-2012]

-- In a study published in August, women with the feline-oriented Toxoplasma gondii parasite in their systems showed an elevated risk of depression and suicide perhaps caused by the brain's being deprived of serotonin. Since toxoplasmosis is most often passed via handling of cat feces, women's fondness for and time spent with cats might thus put them at greater risk than previously believed. (T.gondii is believed capable of reproducing only inside cats' intestines, and might, hypothesizes prominent Czech scientist Jaroslav Flegr, have learned that the surest route to the intestines is by hacking into the brains of delicious rats and mice.) [Science Daily, 8-16-2012; The Atlantic, March 2012]

-- 100 Pounds or "15 Minutes"? Wesley Warren Jr., 47, of Las Vegas, suffers from rare elephantiasis of the scrotum, which accounts for about 100 of his 400 pounds and severely hampers urination and sex. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in October 2011 that Warren was on the verge of accepting an offer to cover the expensive corrective surgery, but when the newspaper followed up in June 2012, it found him hesitant because he had become accustomed to his celebrity status (TV's The Learning Channel and "Tosh.0" program and Howard Stern's radio show). Said he, "It was fun going to Los Angeles (for "Tosh.0") in the big van they sent for me." [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 6-18-2012, 10-16-2011]

-- In July, the U.K.'s Wildlife Aid Foundation took in a dying, parasite-infested cuckoo bird, but by the time it had been nursed back to health, it had missed its species's winter migration toward Africa. Consequently, according to BBC News, the foundation bought an airline ticket for a handler to carry the bird to Italy, where satellite tracking indicated it could meet up with the end of the migrating flock, and the handler released it. [BBC News, 8-14-2012]

-- Latest Orangutan News: (1) Jungle Island zoo in Miami uses tricked-out iPads so that orangutans can order food by pointing at their choices on a screen. As zookeeper Linda Jacobs noted, "They have all the intelligence they need (but not) developed vocal chords and voiceboxes." (2) A Taru Jurug Zoo official in Central Java, Indonesia, reported in July that "Tori," its famous, 13-year-old cigarette-smoking orangutan, had been moved with her boyfriend to an isolated island with recreational facilities so she could kick her nicotine habit. At Taru Jurug, visitors kept enabling her by tossing her cigarettes. [Associated Press via Fox News, 5-9-2012] [Jakarta Globe, 7-26-2012]

It has been well known to the U.S. Congress that the Postal Service is guaranteed to run an estimated $5 billion deficit by the end of the year. Still, since the 112th Congress was convened in January 2011, no remedial legislation has been formally offered. However, during that time period, legislators have introduced 60 bills to rename post offices in their districts (passing 38 of them, which represents 17 percent of the legislation passed on all subjects during that time). [ABC News via Yahoo News, 8-1-2012]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) The thief who snatched the brand- new bike from Wheelworks in Belmont, Mass., in August got away, but police saw surveillance photos of him when he returned to the store two hours later and asked to see some locks (presumably so he could secure the bike he had just stolen). Incredulous employees gave chase, but the thief ran faster. (2) Kristen DeCosta, 30, was charged with 17 recent burglaries around Somerset, Mass., in August. According to Police Chief Joseph Ferreira, DeCosta is perhaps the only perp ever not to understand that, since she was wearing a GPS ankle monitor (from an earlier arrest), all 17 break-ins were tracked. [WBZ-TV (Boston), 8-2-2012] [WJAR-TV (Providence), 8-14-2012]

Bill Dillon, 52, was featured in News of the Weird in May 2009 and April 2012 for having served 27 years in a Florida prison for murder after a fanciful conviction based largely on "testimony" of dog-handler John Preston's "wonder" German shepherd that seemingly found precise, impossible scents exactly where prosecutors needed to find them. It wasn't until 2009 that one central Florida judge challenged Preston -- and exposed the dog's incompetence. Dillon was exonerated, Florida's governor apologized, and the state legislature provided generous financial compensation. And on July 18, musician Dillon accepted an invitation from the Tampa Bay Rays to sing the National Anthem before a game, including the now-ironic lyric, "And the land of the free." [Tampa Bay Times, 7-18-2012]

(1) Jacob Kost, 23, was charged with murder after allegedly running down a man with his truck in Cornelius, N.C., in June following a barroom altercation. According to police, the two men were challenging each other as to which one had the best truck. (2) Within the space of a month, in Deep Gap, N.C., and Park City, Utah, 4-year-olds were killed when gravestones fell over on them. The North Carolina girl was at play in June at a Bible study camp. [Salisbury Post, 6-18-2012][WFMY-TV (Greensboro), 6-9-2012; Associated Press via ABC News, 7-7-2012]

Thanks This Week to Neb Rodgers, Bill Bloxham, Peter Smagorinsky, Sandy Pearlman, Gary DaSilva, and Mike Gwilliam, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.