Yes, This Is Really How They Do It: The Wolong Panda Training Base in Sichuan, China, released a series of photos to China Daily in October to mark the graduation from captivity, and into the wild, of the 2-year-old Tao Tao. Sure enough, Tao Tao and his mother, Cao Cao, were shown frolicking in the woods, accompanied by trainers each dressed in full-length panda suits, including panda heads, as they appeared to demonstrate climbing trees and searching for food. [China Daily, 10-10-2012]

-- The Lost Art of Cuddling: (1) At the recently opened Soineya "cuddle cafe" in Tokyo, men buy hugging privileges (but no "sex" allowed!) with young women for from 20 minutes to 10 hours at prices (gratuity optional) ranging from the equivalents of $40 to $645, with surcharges for special services (e.g., foot massages, resting heads in each other's laps). (2) The Deluxe Comfort Girlfriend Body Pillow, which began as a boutique-only niche product, recently became available at Amazon.com and Sears.com at around $25. The bolster-like, cuddling-enabled pillow is augmented with two strategically placed mounds and a snuggle-up arm hanging to the side. (There's also an Original Soft and Comfy Boyfriend Pillow, without the mounds.) [Japan Today, 10-3-2012] [Huffington Post, 10-25-2012]

-- "You have wrinkles," the inquiring customer was told, "and your left cheek is larger than your right," explained "Tata," the Bangkok-born woman who recently opened a salon in San Francisco to employ the supposedly traditional Thai art of face-slapping. Frown lines and droopy skin are curable with a 10-minute regimen of well- placed whacks across the cheek (and payment of the $350 fee), Tata told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in October. Masochists are warned that Tata deals in therapy, not punishment. "If you want someone to hit you, go on Craigslist." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 10-22-2012]

-- Among the "Ig Nobel" prizes awarded to earnest academics in September by the Annals of Improbable Research was the one to Patrick Warren and colleagues who delved into excruciatingly detailed predictions (at the behest of a cosmetics firm) about how someone might ultimately look with a ponytail, based on hair characteristics. The team took into account the stiffness of the strands, the effects of gravity and the random curliness or waviness in the hair in a set formula to compute a "Rapunzel Number" for each head. Explaining his particularized work to reporters, Dr. Warren acknowledged (perhaps with underestimation), "I've been working on this for a long time." [BBC News, 9-21-2012]

-- A research team at Lund University in Sweden, led by neuroethologist Jochen Smolka, concluded that one reason dung beetles dance in circles on top of dung is to cool off, according to an October report on LiveScience.com. To arrive at their conclusion, the team went to the trouble of painting tiny silicone "boots" on some beetles to protect them from the ambient heat experienced by a control group of beetles, and found that the booted beetles climbed atop the dung less frequently. Explained Smolka, "Like an air-conditioning unit, the moist (dung) is cooled by evaporati(on)." [LiveScience.com, 10-22-2012]

-- While the U.S. recently nearly elected a multimillionaire as president, Uruguay's chief executive, Jose Mujica, declared his personal wealth in 2010 as the equivalent of about $1,800 and gives away 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly presidential salary in order to remain true to his political roots with the leftist guerrilla group Tupamaros. He has rejected the government-provided mansion and instead lives with his wife at her family's farmhouse, where he helps work the land, according to a November BBC News profile from Montevideo. "I have to do (this)," he told a reporter, "because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less." [BBC News, 11-14-2012]

-- Financial advisers charge the big bucks because of their sophisticated understanding of money and markets -- or maybe because they know how the stars align. A September Marketplace radio program highlighted the newsletters of "financial astrologers" Karen Starich and former Merrill Lynch stock trader Arch Crawford (who left the trading floor because, apparently, astrology is more lucrative). About 300 traders pay $237 a year to learn what Starich knows about Neptune and Saturn, and Crawford's 2,000 subscribers (at least a few of which prefer receiving copies in unmarked wrappers) learned that any new business venture goes south when Mercury is in retrograde. [Marketplace, 9-19-2012]

-- The Continuing Decline of American Manufacturing: A Drug Enforcement Administration agent told the Associated Press in October that factories in Mexico have recently been supplying American markets with especially potent and inexpensive methamphetamine. "These are sophisticated, high-tech (businesses) ... that are operating with extreme precision," said agent Jim Shroba. The 90 percent-pure product offers "a faster, more intense and longer-lasting high." Many Americans, meanwhile, continue to make small batches of inferior meth in 2-liter soda bottles. [Associated Press via Knoxville News Sentinel, 10-11-2012]

In 2011 only 75 worldwide shark attacks on humans were reported, with only 12 fatal, yet researchers writing recently in the journal Conservation Biology found that about 60 percent of all media reporting about sharks emphasized just the serious dangers that human swimmers face. By contrast, only about 7 percent of the reports were focused on shark biology or ecology, though the sorry state of shark survival would seem more important, in that an estimated 26 million to 73 million sharks are killed annually from the harvesting of their fins. [Live Science via Mother Nature Network, 11-13-2012]

Taunting of Third-World Laborers: First, as News of the Weird reported more than 20 years ago, Indonesian coffeemakers made "Kopi Luwak," using only beans that had passed through the digestive tracts of native civet cats. More recently, Thailand's upscale Anantara Resorts began offering coffee using beans similarly excreted by elephants. In both cases, these digestive-tract coffee beans, picked and processed by laborers earning as little as $1 day, wind up as a drink sipped by (in the words of an NPR reviewer) "cat poop fetishi(sts)" who may pay upwards of $10 for a single cup. [ABC News, 10-16-2012] [NPR, 10-16-2012]

Maturity-Challenged: Attorney Thomas Corea of Palmer, Texas, was indicted in August for four felonies related to misuse of clients' trust accounts, and in October a panel of the State Bar of Texas voted to revoke his license. He apparently did not take the news well. On Oct. 31 (according to a judge's later findings), Corea vandalized his rented law office, resulting, said the landlord's representative, in "complete destruction," with "penis graffiti on every single wall throughout the building," with the representative's name written next to several of the penises. Furthermore, at the November sentencing hearing, the judge had to admonish Corea to stop making faces in the courtroom. [Courthouse News Service, 11-7-2012]

Recurring Themes: (1) In November, Jacory Walker, 19, pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery in Waxahachie, Texas, and was sentenced to 37 months in prison. He had made the mistake of asking a teller at the 1st Convenience Bank to access his account (giving the teller his Social Security number), and only then, when realizing he had no money left, deciding to rob the place. (2) Almost No Longer Weird: Demarco Myles, 19, was arrested in Washington, D.C., for rape after he, as rapists sometimes fatuously do, decided that his second victim might have had eyes for him and left her his name and phone number, anticipating a follow-up rendezvous. [Dallas Observer, 11-6-2012] [WRC-TV (Washington), 11-7-2012]

(1) Donna Giustizia lobbied the city of Vaughan, Ontario, in November to chop down all the oak trees in the vicinity of Stephen Catholic Elementary School, claiming that her children and others like them with nut allergies were in danger. She mentioned especially their "anxiety" from even glimpsing acorns on the ground and suggested that the allergic children could be easily bullied by acorn-wielding classmates. (2) In a parental-involvement program with 70 public schools and Walgreen Co., the City of Chicago announced in October that it would give previously uninterested parents $25 gift cards just to come by the schools to pick up their kids' report cards. [The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 11-13-2012] [Chicago Sun-Times, 10-31-2012]

Thanks This Week to Sam Dillon, Russell Bell, Sandy Pearlman, and Mary Croft, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

If an asteroid is ever on a collision course with Earth, it is feasible that the planet could be saved by firing paintballs at it, according to an MIT graduate student whose detailed plan won this year's prize in a United Nations space council competition, announced in October. White paint powder, landing strategically on the asteroid, would initially bump it a bit, but in addition would facilitate the sun's photons bouncing off the solid white surface. Over a period of years, the bounce energy would divert the body even farther off course. The already identified asteroid Apophis, which measures 1,500 feet in diameter and is projected to approach Earth in 2029, would require five tons of paintball ammo. [MIT press release, 10-26-2012]

-- Samuel Cutrufelli, 31, filed a lawsuit in October in Sacramento County, Calif., claiming that Jay Leone, 90, "negligently" shot him. Cutrufelli had burglarized Leone's home in Greenbrae, unaware that Leone was home. When Leone reached for one of his stashed handguns, Cutrufelli shot him in the jaw and then pulled the trigger point-blank at Leone's head, but was out of bullets. Leone then shot Cutrufelli several times, which Cutrufelli apparently felt was entirely unnecessary. [Marin Independent Journal, 10-23-2012]

-- In October, the former captain of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia (on which 32 people died after it ran aground in January 2012) filed a lawsuit against Costa Cruises for "wrongfully" firing him. Francesco Schettino is awaiting trial for manslaughter, accused of sending the ship dangerously close to shore on a personal lark, and was also charged with abandoning ship, since he was spotted in a lifeboat in the midst of passengers' escape. (Schettino said he wound up in the lifeboat only because he "slipped" and fell in.) [Reuters via Los Angeles Times, 10-13-2012]

-- China's legal system apparently is growing to resemble America's. A well-covered (but incompletely sourced) story from Chinese media in October reported that Mr. Jian Feng won the equivalent of $120,000 in a lawsuit against his well-to-do wife for deceiving him and subsequently giving birth to what Feng thought was an ugly baby. Feng discovered that his wife had had cosmetic surgery -- and thus was not, genetically, the beauty that he married but, in reality, plain-looking. [RIA Novosti (Moscow), 10-28-2012]

-- Amateur!: In October, a federal appeals court overturned the bribery conviction of a City of Chicago zoning inspector -- on the grounds that the bribes he was convicted of taking were too small to be covered by federal law. Dominick Owens, 46, was convicted of taking two bribes of $600 each to issue certificates of occupancy, but the law applies only to bribes of $5,000 or more. (Also in October, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel disbanded the city's ethics board after a 25-year run in which it never found an alderman in violation -- even though, during that time, 20 aldermen were convicted of felonies.) [Chicago Sun-Times, 10-11-2012] [Chicago Tribune, 10-3-2012]

-- The government's Health Canada agency announced in October that Avmor Ltd. had agreed to recall one lot of its Antimicrobial Foaming Hand Soap -- because it was contaminated with microbes. (The recall did not disclose whether the danger was due to too many microbes overwhelming the soap or due to the inability of the antimicrobial soap to kill any microbes at all.) [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 10-15-2012]

-- Karma: (1) Tyller Myers, 19, was killed in a collision near Norwalk, Ohio, in September when he ran a stop sign and was rammed by a tractor-trailer. Afterward, police found three stolen stop signs in Myers' truck. (2) A 21-year-old man was killed crossing a highway at 5 a.m. in Athens, Ga., in September. Police said he had just dined-and-dashed out of a Waffle House restaurant and into the path of a pickup truck. [Athens Banner-Herald, 9-14-2012] [Yahoo News, 9-25-2012]

-- The Will of God: Devoted Catholic David Jimenez, 45, had been praying regularly to a large crucifix outside the Church of St. Patrick in Newburgh, N.Y., having become convinced that it was responsible for eradicating his wife's ovarian cancer. He even got permission from the church to spruce up the structure, as befit its power. Then, during a cleaning in May 2010, the 600-pound crucifix came loose and fell on Jimenez's leg, which had to be amputated. From a holy object of worship to precipitator of a lawsuit: Jimenez's $3 million litigation against the archdiocese goes to trial in January. [WCBS-TV (New York), 10-26-2012] [Associated Press via Newsday, 11-7-2012]

Not Mine! (1) James White, 30, was arrested in Grove City, Fla., after being stopped by police patrolling a high-burglary neighborhood, and in a consensual search of his pants, officers found a packet of Oxycodone pills for which White did not have a prescription. However, according to the police report, White suddenly exclaimed, "Oh, wait! These aren't my pants!" (2) Ms. Vida Golac, 18, was arrested in Naples, Fla., in October, and charged with possessing marijuana, which police discovered in her genitals as she was being strip-searched. According to the police report, Golac denied that the drugs were hers and explained that she was just hiding them there for friends. [Sun-Sentinel, 10-20-2012] [Naples Daily News, 10-5-2012]

As a service to taxpayers, the IRS's longtime policy is to pay tax refund claims promptly and only later to refer the refund files for possible audits and collection, in the event of overpayments or fraud. This policy, though, means that ordinary taxpayers are treated better than the nation's wounded warriors who file disability claims with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA's assumption seems to be that wounded veterans are cheating -- and thus most veterans receive at least five evaluations, and each one reviewed over a several-year period, before full benefits can be awarded. (Even though some temporary financial relief is available before final determination, veterans complain that the amount is almost never enough for complicated rehabilitation programs and other support.) [Washington Post, 11-11-2012]

An articulate, functional "cave man" of El Paso, Texas, continues to roam his neighborhood, often naked, and to resist efforts to bring him back onto the grid, according to October coverage by El Paso's KVIA-TV. His mountainside subterranean structure, described as "intricate," might be on land owned by the local water utility, which, pending an investigation, could evict him. Some neighbors say they fear the man, who has allegedly swum in their pools and even swiped items from their laundry rooms, but nonetheless, he swears that he is harmless. "I'm a plasma donor ... drug free" and "sin-free ... baptized and saved." Other neighbors have supported him, he said, and the complainers need to "help the community more." [KVIA-TV, 10-15-2012, 10-17-2012]

Cunning Plans: (1) William Keltner, 52, was arrested in Abilene, Texas, in November, after he underestimated the security at a Wal-mart self-checkout line. He had taken the barcode off of a $1.17 item, placed it on a $228 TV set, and checked himself out, assuming no one would notice. (2) Kerri Heffernan, 31, was charged in October in Massachusetts with robbing banks in Brockton and Whitman. Heffernan perhaps acquired a feeling of doom when, in the midst of one robbery, a teller-friend appeared and asked, "Do you want to make a deposit, Kerri?" [KTXS-TV (Abilene), 11-5-2012] [WBZ-TV (Boston), 10-22-2012]

Election Follies: (1) Robert McDonald tied Olivia Ballou for the final seat on the city council of Walton, Ky., with 669 votes, but only later found out that his wife (exhausted from a hospital's night shift) had not made it to the polls. (The following week, as per voting rules, McDonald and Ballou held a coin flip. Ballou won but relinquished the seat to McDonald for an unrelated reason.) (2) Holly Solomon, 28, was arrested in Gilbert, Ariz., a few days after the election when, police said, she chased her husband with her Jeep and rammed him during a drunken rant blaming him for President Obama's victory (though Arizona's electoral votes went solidly for Mitt Romney). Daniel Solomon was hospitalized in critical condition. [WKRC-TV (Cincinnati), 11-9-2012, 11-20-2012] [Phoenix New Times, 11-12-2012]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Scott Huber, May Foo, James White, Stephan Hopman, John McGaw, Craig Cryer, John Maple, Peter Smagorinsky, Milford Sprecher, and Josh Levin, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

No Do-Overs: By 2009, James Washington believed he had gotten away with a 1995 murder, but then he had a heart attack, and on his deathbed, in a fit of remorse, he confessed to a confidant. ("I have to get something off my conscience," he told a guard in the jailhouse where he was serving time for a lesser, unrelated offense.) However, Washington miraculously recovered from the heart attack and tried to take back his confession, but prosecutors in Nashville, Tenn., were unfazed. They used it to augment the sparse evidence from 1995, and in October 2012 the now-healthier Washington was convicted of the murder and sentenced to 51 more years in prison. [WSMV-TV (Nashville, Tenn.), 10-31-2012]

-- Among the federally funded projects highlighted in the "2012 Waste Book" of U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn were a $325,000 grant to develop a "robosquirrel" (to help study the somehow-confusing interaction between squirrels and rattlesnakes) and a $700,000 grant by the National Science Foundation for a New York theater company to create a musical about climate change and biodiversity (which actually opened this year, in Kansas City, and included among its concepts, according to one critic, "flying monkey poop"). Abuses of the food stamp program were also detailed, such as by one exotic dancer who, while earning $85,000, drew food stamps in an amount roughly equivalent to the sum she spent on "cosmetic enhancements." [Fox News, 10-16-2012]

-- While the Department of Veterans Affairs remains under criticism for inadequate funding for personnel disabled in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it spent in 2010 more than $5 million on training conferences just to teach bureaucrats how to administer parts of its latest collective-bargaining contract, according to an October report in the Washington Examiner. In fact, reported the Examiner, $34 million in payroll goes to department officials who work mainly on union-related activities. [Washington Examiner, 10-1-2012]

-- "I wanted to create a self-portrait that was completely stripped of ... visual prejudice," said Polish-born New York artist Martynka Wawrzyniak, who thus chose the medium of "smell" for her gallery showing in New York City (running through mid-November). For starters, she "scientifically extracted" her hair oils, armpit perspiration and tears (to protest humans' cloaking themselves in deodorant soaps and laundry powders), and blasted visitors with whiffs of it as they entered the gallery. [Wired.com, 10-20-2012]

-- Because We Can: The Tate Liverpool museum in England was host on Oct. 19 to artist Kerry Morrison's Bird Sheet music project in which she laid down a giant blank musical score sheet under a tree and waited for birds to make "deposits" on it, which she took to represent "notes" that composer Jon Hering plans to play straight, as the "sound" of the blackbirds. [Liverpool Daily Post, 7-12-2012]

-- Getting Out the Vote: (1) Just before a primary election in June, Albuquerque, N.M., TV station KOB apparently caught, on camera, a poll worker for two county government candidates offering potential voters miniature bottles of whiskey to sip during free rides to early voting centers. (2) Los Angeles' KCBS-TV reported in October that leaflets sponsored by the Progress and Collaboration Slate for its local candidates in Eagle Rock, Calif., also mentioned an offer of $40 worth of "medical-grade marijuana" as incentive for voting. (3) Carme Cristina Lima, 32, running for town councillor in Itacoatiara, Brazil, was arrested in October for allegedly passing out cocaine packets attached to her campaign leaflets. [KOB-TV, 6-4-2012] [KCBS-TV, 10-19-2012] [TNOnline (Brazil) via Daily Telegraph (London), 10-8-2012]

-- Colleen Lachowicz won her contest for a Maine state senate seat in November despite ridicule by opponents for her admitted devotion to the online game World of Warcraft. "Certainly," said an opposing-party official, "the fact that she spends so much time on a video game says something about her work ethic and ... immaturity." Her WoW character is Santiaga, an "orc (Level 85) assassination rogue" with green skin, fangs, a Mohawk and pointy ears. [Politico, 10-4-2012]

-- In several high-profile races across the country in November, voters rejected candidates who had been accused of wrongdoing and corruption, but Brian Banks survived. He was elected as a Michigan state representative from Detroit, with 68 percent of the vote, even though his rap sheet includes eight felony convictions for bad checks and credit card fraud. (Campaign slogan: "You Can Bank on Banks.") Also, Michigan's 11th Congressional District elected reindeer farmer Kerry Bentivolio, whose brother had described him as "mentally unbalanced." [CBS Detroit, 11-7-2012] [Detroit Free Press, 11-7-2012]

Michael Carrier, 45, was arrested for soliciting prostitution in New Milford, Conn., in August -- not resulting from a police sting, which is usually how arrests for that crime are made. In Carrier's case, he was disturbing other customers at a Friendly's restaurant because, being hard of hearing, he was shouting to the prostitute the terms of their prospective business arrangement. [Republican-American (Waterbury, Conn.) via Boston Globe, 8-18-2012]

Neurosurgeon Denise Crute left Colorado in 2005 after admitting to four serious mistakes (including wrong-side surgeries on patients' brain and spine) and left Illinois several years after that, when the state medical board concluded that she made three more serious mistakes (including another wrong-side spine surgery). Nonetheless, she was not formally "disciplined" by either state in that she was permitted merely to "surrender" her licenses, which the profession does not regard as "discipline." In November, Denver's KMGH-TV reported that Dr. Crute had landed a job at the prestigious Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, where she treats post-surgery patients (and she informed Illinois officials recently that she is fully licensed in New York to resume performing neurosurgery). [KMGH-TV, 11-4-2012]

Among the contestants so far on this year's The Learning Channel cable TV series "Extreme Cheapskates": "Roy" of Huntington, Vt., who reuses dental floss; Jeff Yeager of Accokeek, Md., who combs butcher shops for odd animal parts about to be discarded; and "Victoria" of Columbus, Ohio, who specializes in Dumpster-diving and infrequent toilet flushes that involve, according to one report, personalized urine jars. The season's star is expected to be "Kay," from New York, who is shown on camera demonstrating the nonessential nature of toilet paper by wiping herself with soap and water while seated on the throne. [TLC via Daily Mail (London), 10-1-2012]

Rookie Mistakes: (1) Arthur Bundrage, 28, was arrested in Syracuse, N.Y., in October after he returned to the Alliance Bank -- which he had just robbed minutes earlier -- because he discovered that the employee had given him less than the $20,000 his demand note ordered. Officers arrived to find Bundrage standing by the front doors, trying to get back in. (2) A September theft from a sofa superstore in Northampton, England, ended badly for two men, who had just loaded a pair of couches (worth the equivalent of about $650 each) into their truck and were about to drive off. However, the store manager rushed out and, noticing the truck's unfastened back door, reached in and pulled the sofas out, leaving the men to drive away empty-handed. The sequence was captured on surveillance video, leading store owner Mark Kypta to liken it to "something out of a Benny Hill film." [Syracuse Post-Standard, 10-22-2012] [Daily Mail (London), 10-2-2012]

(1) In October, a 2-foot-long shark fell from the sky and landed near the 12th tee at the San Juan Hills Golf Club in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. A security guard saw the incident, and an attendant placed the shark in a bucket of water (with some salt) and drove it four miles to the Pacific Ocean. (Best guess among observers: An osprey or peregrine falcon had snatched it from the ocean but eventually lost its grip.) (2) In October, a major fire mysteriously started inside Red Lion Liquors (in, coincidentally, Burnsville, Minn.). Since nothing spark-producing was found, fire officials guessed that sunlight, magnified through vodka bottles, had ignited surrounding paper signs, and the heat eventually pressured the vodka bottles' tops to burst, exacerbating the flames. Firefighters, even, appeared amazed, with one quoted as saying, "This is so cool!" [USA Today, 10-25-2012] [KMSP-TV (Minneapolis-St. Paul), 11-4-2012]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Thomason, John Votel, Hal Dunham, and Thomas Sullivan, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.