At a conference in August, researchers from North Carolina State University demonstrated their latest technological advance in aiding "first responders" to peacetime and wartime disasters: cockroaches. Outfitting Madagascar hissing cockroaches with electronic backpacks that include antennas, batteries, cameras and microphones, the scientists hacked the bugs' nervous systems to steer them remotely into the tiniest of openings -- a crucial step toward finding survivors of earthquakes or bomb damage in densely built-up and populated areas. Said one researcher, to ABC News, "(S)omewhere in the middle (of tons of rubble) your kid is crying," and huge machines are "not very efficient" at finding him. [ABC News, 9-13-2012]

-- Cue the Black Helicopters: A website that tracks sometimes-obscure federal government purchases disclosed in August that the Social Security Administration had recently requested a price for 174,000 hollow-point bullets and that the National Weather Service had requested a price for 46,000 rounds of ammo for semi-automatic pistols. (The latter was subsequently corrected; it was actually the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Office that needed bullets.) Both agencies told reporters that they have armed officers investigating potential crimes. [CNSNews.com, 8-16-2012; Washington Post, 8-14-2012]

-- Weapons for the 21st Century: Thousands of farmers in the northeastern India state of Assam are growing the world's hottest chili peppers and selling them to the army to make weapons, reported London's The Guardian in a July dispatch. One expert said a "few drops" of "bhut jolokia" "could make you senseless." Blasting a container of it into a terrorist hideout, he said, would "make them all drop their guns" after "just one breath." (Bhut jolokia has also been used traditionally to repel elephant attacks.) [The Guardian, 7-29-2012]

-- In a tactical risk, Russian gay rights leaders went to court in Moscow in March to demand the right to hold a rally not only this year but, daring the city to oppress them, also a rally every year for the next 100 years. However, the city did not blink. It rejected the demand, and in August, a Moscow city court ruled that the city could be gay-rights-rally-free until the year 2112. [BBC News, 8-17-2012]

-- Because the words were not those ordinarily used by vandals keying a car's paint, Newcastle, England, police looked immediately to a better-educated vandal and arrested University of Newcastle professor Stephen Graham, who had been a prominent critic of neighborhood parking rules that allowed outsiders to use the few spaces on his street. Scratched into several outsiders' luxury cars' exteriors were words such as "arbitrary" and "really wrong" and "very silly" (as opposed to the usual crude vandal references to anatomy and maternal promiscuity). [Daily Telegraph (London), 8-30-2012]

(1) Arrested in New York City in August on charges that he used a tiny camera in a folded newspaper to crudely peek up female subway riders' skirts: Dr. Adam Levinson, assistant professor at the prestigious Mount Sinai school of medicine. (2) Arrested in Beverly Hills, Calif., in July and charged in a string of vandalism incidents (shooting metal marbles from a slingshot at windows of dozens of businesses and homes): investment banker Michael Poret, 58, of the Rodeo Drive office of UBS Financial Services. [New York Daily, News, 8-2-2012] [Los Angeles Times, 7-18-2012]

-- Carl Funk, 58, told Broward County, Fla., judge John Hurley (on a video feed from jail to a courtroom) that he is innocent of the seven-year-old charges (trespassing and open-alcoholic-container counts) and that, besides, he is now wheelchair-bound in pathetic medical condition and should be allowed to go home. The judge was skeptical, but finally, according to a South Florida Sun-Sentinel report, he offered to fine Funk only $50 on the charges, and Funk agreed to plead guilty. "Good luck, Funk," said Judge Hurley. At that point, Funk rose from his wheelchair and quickly walked away. Wrote the Sun-Sentinel: "Raising both hands, Judge Hurley declared, 'He's been cured.'" [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7-14-2012]

-- Missouri Associate Circuit Judge Barbara Peebles was suspended in September and recommended for removal by the state judicial commission for various offenses, including being late for work and destroying a court document in order to avoid embarrassment. The most serious charge, according to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch report, was that she allowed her "clerk," Whitney Tyler, who was Peebles' personal friend and hairdresser (and apparently without formal legal training), to dispose of as many as 350 cases as Tyler saw fit. Said one lawyer, "Until the judge (showed up), (Tyler) was the judge." [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9-1-2012]

A sign at the entrance of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor asks that visitors "conduct yourself with dignity and respect at all times. Remember, this is hallowed ground." However, as the New York Post reported in September, visitors to the National September 11th Memorial in New York City show no such restraint, with some treating that hallowed ground more like a "Disney attraction." They sit (or worse, lie down) on the bronze-plaque names of the dead, and lay (and spill!) their drink cups on them, creating an "almost cheerful" atmosphere, the Post said. The head of New York City's retired association of emergency medical service firefighters said the elegant memorial more resembled a visitor's "kitchen table." [New York Post, 9-2-2012]

-- "Number 1" Complaints: (1) Albert Sultan filed a lawsuit in August in New York City against his hard-charging former boss, real estate broker Jack Terzi, accusing Terzi of various workplace abuses including (to make a point in front of co-workers) deliberately urinating on an item of Sultan's clothing. (2) Timothy Paez, 22, was arrested in Boulder, Colo., in July based on an incident at Shooters Grill and Bar, in which, after being rejected by a woman, he later approached her and allegedly urinated on her leg. (3) Australia's Illawarra District Rugby Union reported in July that it was investigating an unnamed Avondale player who had allegedly urinated all over his uniform pants during play so as to discourage his Vikings opponents from trying to tackle him. [New York Daily News, 8-11-2012] [Daily Camera (Boulder), 7-30-2012] [Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 7-6-2012]

-- July was especially active for bestiality arrests. Among them: Shane Walker, 38, and his wife, Sarah, 33, at a motel in Mesa, Ariz., where Sarah had supposedly planned to consummate her dream of sex with a German shepherd. Cody Slaughter, 22, in Yuma, Ariz., after an investigation revealed sexual assaults against a dog, a horse and a pig. And Dana Kintz, 28, pleaded guilty in St. Louis to performing sex acts on the dog belonging to her and her boyfriend, Shawn Ingram, 37. [New York Daily News, 7-4-2012] [Yuma Sun, 7-6-2012] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7-11-2012]

Desperate Cries for Help: (1) The two aspiring robbers arrested for hitting Zhen Yang's convenience store in Gatineau, Quebec, in June were also immortalized by the store's surveillance video. As Yang resisted the masked, knife-wielding men, he spritzed one with a can of bear spray, sending the second man fleeing and temporarily blinding the first. As the heavily doused man tried to climb over the counter, Yang punched him, over and over again, on his buttocks. Police picked up both shortly afterward. (2) Latasha Singletary, 30, was arrested in Fall River, Mass., in June after allegedly robbing the same liquor store three times in a 24-hour period. The owner recognized her immediately because she had robbed the store two years earlier, as well. [Toronto Sun, 6-6-2012] [WLNE-TV (Providence, R.I.), 6-15-2012]

(1) A 44-year-old man dressed as Bigfoot (in a military-style ghillie suit) was accidentally run over by two cars on U.S. 93 south of Kalispell, Mont., on Aug. 26. Friends of the man said he was wearing the costume to convince people of Bigfoot's existence. (2) Former NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman acknowledged in July that he had recently met with his long-estranged father after 42 years. Mr. Philander Rodman lives in the Philippines, and by his count, has fathered 29 children by 16 mothers. [KAJ-TV (Kalispell), 8-27-2012] [Associated Press via New York Times, 7-2-2012]

Thanks This Week to Bruce Leiserowitz, Sandy Pearlman, Lance Ellisor, Gary Davidson, Jim Watson, Barry Rose, Jeff Ammons, John Beyrau, John McGaw, Steve Hopman, Ted Poppke, Roger Meiners, and Sherry Trujillo, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.