LEAD STORY -- More Bang

American Exceptionalism: Which is more characteristically American -- that a Texas company could invent an ordinary rifle that mimics a machine gun or that America's incomparable legal minds could find a loophole in existing anti-machine-gun laws to permit it to be manufactured and sold? The Slide Fire company's weapon can spray bullets "like a fire hose" from a legal, semiautomatic gun by simple application of muscle, yet an official opinion of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives acknowledges that the agency is powerless to regulate it because of the wording in 1934 and 1986 legislation that otherwise restricts private ownership of machine guns. One gun shop owner told London's Daily Mail in September that the Slide Fire rifle is "not as easy" to use as a machine gun, but still, "(I)t's fairly idiot-proof." [Daily Mail, 9-13-2013]

(1) In July, a New York City judge tossed out Joseph Lozito's lawsuit against the police -- even though two officers had stood by in February 2011, out of harm's way, while a man attacked Lozito as part of a four-murder crime spree. The judge ruled that it was not clear enough that Lozito was in danger when the officers began to ignore him (while they were inside a subway motorman's booth). (2) In September, a federal jury in New York City upheld an employment agency worker's claim that she (an African-American) was racially harassed by her boss. The supervisor, Rob Carmona, had insisted that he could not be liable for race-based harassment because, he, too, is African-American and thus entitled to use the "n-word." [New York Daily News, 7-26-2013] [New York Post, 9-3-2013]

-- Busy Being Superheroes: In separate incidents on successive September days, people dressed as Batman and Captain America rescued a cat from a burning house in Milton, W.Va., and Superman came to the aid of Wonder Woman in Hollywood, Calif. (The West Virginia pair were performing at a function when they noticed nearby smoke, and Superman and Wonder Woman were posing for tourists' tips when a passerby got belligerent.) In July, another Superman tackled a shoplifter on the streets of Sheffield, England, where he was appearing at a fundraiser. (However, less elegantly, two Captain Americas and a Spider-Man brawled briefly in May over access to a contested, lucrative Hollywood street corner.) [WCHS-TV (Charleston, 9-8-2013] [KABC-TV (Los Angeles), 9-6-2013] [Daily Telegraph (London), 7-4-2013] [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 5-30-2013]

-- Our Freedom to Doze Off, Now in Danger: The training technology company Mindflash recently revealed a feature for iPads that prevents student inattentiveness during an online course. Facial recognition software notices a user looking away (or, worse, falling asleep) and thus pauses the course at that point until the eager learner re-engages the screen. (Mindflash assured reporters that the program has more serious uses, such as treatment of autism and Alzheimer's disease.) [Bloomberg Business Week, 8-15-2013]

-- For people who believe that "rave" parties' music is too faint, an August event at England's Liverpool International Music Festival offered a solution: The DaDaFest program featured an ear-crushing sound level especially staged for deaf people's dancing -- since they can "hear" only by the vibrations saturating their bodies; the non-deaf should bring earplugs. Among the performers: deaf DJ Troi "Chinaman" Lee, who claims he easily feels distinctions in his mix of hip hop, R&B, reggae, dance and electro swing. [BBC News, 8-23-2013]

-- In an epic failure, according to Madrid's El Pais newspaper, a 20-story condominium building ("InTempo," likely the tallest residential edifice in the European Union) in the resort town of Benidorm, Spain, was hastily upsized to a planned 47 stories, but a series of architectural mistakes and developer bankruptcies has left it limping, still 65 percent unsold. Most notably, El Pais discovered in 2012 that the then-current design made it impossible to build an elevator shaft to go past the 23rd floor because of space limitation. (The architects resigned, and unconfident developers were forced to turn to financing from one of the shakier banks in the country's feeble economy.) [El Pais, 7-26-2013] [New York Daily News, 8-9-2013]

-- In a YouTube video, reported by the political website RawStory.com in August, well-known tea party activist Jerome Corsi elaborates on the biblical importance of child-bearing and implores followers to "(hold) the line" on the principle that "(s)ex is about the procreation of children." "(S)ex is not about fun," he says. "If you want to have fun, read a book, go to a movie." [RawStory.com, 8-28-2013]

-- Evidently, Surgery Is Kinda Boring: A 36-year-old patient is suing California's Torrance Memorial Medical Center, claiming that anesthesiologist Patrick Yang decorated her face with stickers while she was unconscious and that an aide took photos for laughs, later allegedly uploading them to Facebook. Dr. Yang and the aide were later disciplined but remained in good standing. Some hospitals (not Torrance Memorial yet) prohibit cellphones in operating rooms at all times. [Los Angeles Times, 9-4-2013]

-- According to his road manager, pioneer 1970s musician Sly Stone (of Sly and the Family Stone) has a lot of "real interesting ideas," including once trying to hire "ninja chicks and clowns" for his security entourage. Stone's latest brainstorm, reported London's The Guardian in August: form a musical group of albinos, which Stone says "could neutralize all the racial problems" that plague society. "To me," he said, "albinos are the most legitimate minority group of all." [The Guardian, 8-29-2013]

-- In the concluding race in September of the Rally de Misiones in Campo Viera, Argentina, it was important for drivers to complete the laps even if they had no chance of winning, but near the end, driver Sebastian Llamosas experienced a throttle malfunction and began coasting, still about a half-mile from the finish line. However, in a move reminiscent of actor Slim Pickens jumping on the atomic bomb in "Dr. Strangelove," Llamosas's quick-thinking partner Mauricio Sainz jumped onto the open engine and accelerated the car by hand while Llamosas steered the final distance. [La Voz (Cordoba, Argentina), 9-3-2013]

-- (1) Klaus Eder, a 25-year veteran team trainer for Germany, working its World Cup soccer qualifier match with Austria on Sept. 8, had a rough time despite the players' 3-0 win. Rushing onto the pitch during the game to treat player Marcel Schmelzer, Eder first tore a muscle in his left leg and then, as he fell to the ground, broke a finger. (Schmelzer's injury was comparatively minor.) (2) Dallas police officer Antonio Quintanilla was the victim in an August incident, but handled it by the book -- even though what the perp had done was urinate off a balcony at 3 a.m., onto Quintanilla's head. (Because the bladder-reliever did not know that Quintanilla was a cop, he was given a nonarrest citation.) Quintanilla also calmly helped a colleague investigate the crime scene -- locating the "wet and humid areas where the urine had fallen," according to the police report. [Press Association (London) via The Guardian, 9-8-2013; Bundesliga.com, 9-7-2013] [Dallas Observer, 8-5-2013]

A 35-year-old man was charged with sexual assault in Solvesborg, Sweden, in July, for allegedly following a 50-year-old woman home, apparently intending to flash her. After she made it safely inside before he could expose himself, she noticed some noise at the front door and found that the man had stuck his penis through the door's mail slot. [The Local (Stockholm), 9-11-2013]

One of the world's best-known strategists on the game of checkers passed away in November (2008). Richard Fortman was Illinois state champion six times and in the 1970s and 1980s published a seven-volume handbook on rules and tactics. Many people now considering the game would be astonished to know that, as in chess, there are masters and grandmasters, international rankings, that experts actually study historical opening moves and endgames, and that some play, move-by-move, via the U.S. Mail. A New York Times obituary noted that Fortman played as many as 100 games simultaneously, and won games blindfolded. Until the end, according to his daughter, Fortman spent "hours each day" playing checkers online. [New York Times, 11-30-2008]

Thanks This Week to Kirsi Hannonen and the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

"With its neatly cut lawns and luscious tropical vegetation," wrote a BBC News reporter in July, Miracle Village, Fla., is an "idyllic rural community" of 200 residents -- about half of whom are registered sex offenders, attracted to the settlement near Lake Okeechobee because laws and ordinances elsewhere in Florida harshly restrict where they can live (e.g., not within a half-mile of a school or park). Incumbent residents might have been apprehensive in 2009 when a pastor started the local rehabilitation ministry (one even called it a "nightmare on Elm Street"), but since then, no one could recall a single impropriety involving an offender, and lately, 10 to 20 more applications arrive each week (screened to keep out diagnosed pedophiles and those with a history of drugs or violence). [BBC News, 7-30-2013]

-- Dana Carter's debut as principal of Calimesa Elementary School in California's San Bernardino County was quite inauspicious, as parents quickly objected to his August policy of requiring kids to drop to one knee when addressing him. One parent said her daughter was forced to kneel while awaiting his attention and then to rise only when he lifted his arms. Carter said he would discontinue the policy and insisted he had instituted it for "safety" and not because he imagined himself as royalty. [KCBS-TV (Los Angeles), 8-20-2013]

-- Many consumers already distrust food imports from China, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture nonetheless announced recently (and "quietly," according to NPR) that it would exempt four Chinese companies altogether from USDA inspections of their processed chicken exports. The changes are part of the department's money-saving streamlining that also cuts back domestic regulation -- proposals that have already drawn criticism from the Government Accountability Office because they would replace many on-site USDA inspectors with employees of the food-processing plants themselves. [NPR, 9-5-2013]

-- It was a tough sell for performance artists Doug Melnyk and Ian Mozdzen to defend their controversial show at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in July. (Wrote one reviewer: "What I saw (on the stage) were not one, not two, but three mayonnaise enemas. (I) do not need to see any more mayonnaise enemas for the rest of my lifetime.") Explained Melnyk, to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter in July, if all you're trying to do is "figure out what people want and you make it for them, that's not art. ... (Y)ou're just a shoemaker." [Canadian Broadcasting Corp., 7-20-2013]

-- In August, the Mother Nature Network website showcased an array of camping gear seemingly designed for the daintiest of those ostensibly "roughing" it. The Blofield outdoor couch inflates in minutes to produce a facsimile of a Las Vegas lounge sofa. The Rolla Roaster's 42-inch-long steel fork assures elegance (and evenness) in marshmallow-roasting. For fashion-conscious backwoods women, Teva makes high-heeled hiking sandals ($330). The mother of all Swiss army knives, by Wenga, has so many gadgets that it suggests a parody of a Swiss army knife. To be a camper is to sleep in a tent, though, and why not the trailer-mounted Opera tent, including hardwood floors and a wine cooler? [Mother Nature Network, 8-9-2013]

-- A July direct-mail campaign by Canada's Conservative Party, intended to show concern for the disabled population, might have fallen short, according to a Toronto Star report. The first wave of brochures, "Supporting Jobs for All Canadians" (meaning the disabled as well), featured the well-known wheelchair symbol and a message in a series of Braille dots. However, the brochure was useless to blind recipients, who could neither see the dots nor read them, as the dots were printed on a flat surface. [Toronto Star, 7-26-2013]

-- By her own admission, Joan Hoyt, 61, of St. Louis, has difficulty writing, is easily distracted, needs frequent breaks, and "reads about 2 1/2 times slower than her peers" -- yet wants to be a lawyer. She filed a lawsuit recently against the Law School Admission Council for special accommodations to take the standardized admissions test after the council offered to grant her "only" 156 extra minutes for the exam. She also demanded a room by herself with a "white noise" machine and the ability to bring a computer and food and drinks to the exam. (States have made similar accommodations for bar exams -- but those applicants have already successfully endured the intellectual rigors of law school.) [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9-5-2013]

-- Is oral sex permitted in Orthodox Judaism? If so, must any lubricant used be kosher (or is kosher required only for substances ingested into the body)? These questions were not answered by California's Trigg Laboratories, which decided recently to vie for a kosher label for eight lines of Ecstasy lubricant under its Wet label -- and, following an inspection by the Rabbinical Council of California, was granted it. Many authorities believe that nonkosher products can be used if, like lipstick, they are "applied" but not ingested. [The Guardian (London), 7-17-2013]

-- Because We Can, That's Why: Two onetime roommates at the University of Michigan announced in August that they have developed a smartphone app to accommodate the questionable number of people who seek an easy way to share leftover food on restaurant plates (to save it from wasteful discarding). Using smartphones' location service, one diner could offer to clean another's plate or have a stranger rush to his own table for scraps. "We're not gonna make millions," one of the developers told NPR in July. [NPR, 7-29-2013]

Jian Yang, 33, a media executive in Singapore, told Reuters in September that he was concerned about the diminishing respect the Mattel Corp. is giving Barbie, reducing production in favor of trendier dolls like those modeled after the "Twilight" characters. Yang is apparently protective of his collection of more than 6,000 Barbies that dominate his row house -- which he estimates has cost him the equivalent of nearly $400,000 since he took up the obsession at age 13. He said his parents have come to accept his passion, but acknowledged that he had a few "ex-girlfriends" who felt "insecure" around his supermodels. Yang also owns about 3,000 non-Barbies, and on his last trip to New York bought 65 more. [Reuters, 9-2-2013]

It is now well-known how America's wounded warriors are victimized by the huge backlog of unaddressed Department of Veterans Affairs disability claims, with waits of many months or years. Nonetheless, the department is so proud of shrinking the backlog that it has begun to issue bonus checks to bureaucrats who meet the department's numerical goals in case-reduction (according to data from the Office of Personnel Management reported in the Washington Post in August). However, another Washington Post story, in September, reported that backlog reduction likely resulted merely from quickly approving the easier cases -- while the roster of serious or complicated cases continued to grow, along with appeals of decisions too-hastily made by the bonus-clutching department employees. [Washington Post, 8-25-2013, 9-10-2013]

(1) A 40-year-old woman was killed in a near-head-on collision in August in Spring Lake, Fla., while joy-riding on a back road at night on her dirt bike. She was accidentally hit by her husband, who was also joy-riding, in his all-terrain vehicle, and who also died. (2) A 50-year-old man in Berne, N.Y., was killed in August when, driving an all-terrain vehicle, he virtually decapitated himself on nearly invisible wire strung across a road as one of a series of booby traps he had installed to protect his marijuana plants. [Tampa Bay Times, 8-17-2013] [Albany Times Union, 9-1-2013]

About 20 percent of Japan's adult-video market is now "elder porn," with each production featuring one or more studly senior, and Shigeo Tokuda, 76, among the most popular. He told Toronto's Globe and Mail in October (2010) that he still "performs" physically "without Viagra," in at least one role a month opposite much younger women. His wife and adult daughter learned only two years ago, by accident, of his late-onset career (which began at age 60 when a filmmaker hired him for his "pervert's face"). Tokuda figures the "elder porn" genre will grow with Japan's increasing senior population. [Globe and Mail, 10-3-10]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

In the public libraries of Seattle (as in most public libraries), patrons are not allowed to eat or sleep (or even appear to be sleeping) or be shirtless or barefoot or have bad body odor or talk too loudly -- because other patrons might be disturbed. However, in Seattle, as the Post-Intelligencer reported in September, librarians do permit patrons to watch hard-core pornography on public computers, without apparent restriction, no matter who (adult or child) is walking by or sitting inches away at the next screen (although librarians politely ask porn-watchers to consider their neighbors). Said a library spokesperson: "(P)atrons have a right to view constitutionally protected material no matter where they are in the building, and the library does not censor." [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9-8-2013]

-- Japan and Korea seem to be the birthplaces in the quest for youthful and beautiful skin, with the latest "elixir" (as usual, based on traditional, centuries-old beliefs) being snail mucus -- applied by specially bred live snails that slither across customers' faces. The Clinical Salon in central Tokyo sells the 60-minute Celebrity Escargot Course session for the equivalent of about $250 and even convinced a London Daily Telegraph reporter to try one in July. (Previously, News of the Weird has informed readers of Asian nightingale-feces facials and live-fish pedicures.) [Daily Telegraph, 7-13-2013]

-- Unclear on the Concept: Among people earnestly devoted to palmistry (the foretelling of the future by "expert" examination of the inner surface of the hand), a few in Japan have resorted to what seems like cheating: altering their palm lines with cosmetic surgery. According to a July Daily Beast dispatch from Tokyo, Dr. Takaaki Matsuoka is a leading practitioner, preferring an electric scalpel over laser surgery in that the latter more often eventually heals over, obviously defeating the purpose. He must be careful to add or move only the lines requested by the patient (e.g., "marriage" line, "romance" line, "money-luck" line, "financial" success line). [TheDailyBeast.com, 7-12-2013]

-- Iran's INSA news service reported in January that officials in Shiraz had acquired a finger-amputation machine to perhaps streamline the gruesome punishment often meted out to convicted thieves. (A masked enforcer turns a guillotine-like wheel to slice off the finger in the manner of a rotary saw.) Iran is already known for its reliance on extreme Islamic Sharia, which prescribes amputations, public lashings and death by stoning, and Middle East commentators believe the government will now step up its amputating of fingers, even for the crime of adultery. [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-28-2013]

-- Smiting Skeptics: Measles, despite being highly contagious, was virtually eradicated in America until a small number of skeptics, using now-discredited "research," tied childhood vaccinations with the rise of autism, and now the disease is returning. About half the members of the Eagle Mountain International Church near Dallas have declined to vaccinate their children, and as of late August, at least 20 church members have experienced the disease. The head pastor denied that he preaches against the immunizations (although he did tell NPR, cryptically, "(T)he (medical) facts are facts, but then we know the truth. That always overcomes facts."). [NPR, 9-1-2013]

-- Outraged Jewish leaders complain periodically about Mormons who, in the name of their church, posthumously baptize deceased Jews (even Holocaust victims) -- beneficently, of course, to help them qualify for heaven. Church officials promised to stop, but in 2012 reports still surfaced that not all Mormons got the memo. Thus inspired, a "religious" order called the Satanic Temple conducted a July "pink mass" over the Meridian, Miss., grave of the mother of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, Rev. Fred Phelps Jr. -- posthumously "turning" her gay. (Westboro infamously stages small, hate-saturated demonstrations denouncing homosexuals and American tolerance.) Ten days later, Meridian prosecutors charged a Satanic Temple official with misdemeanor desecration of a grave. [Huffington Post, 7-24-2013] [New York Times, 3-2-2012]

-- Australia's chief diplomat in Taipei, Taiwan, said in August that he was suing local veterinarian Yang Dong-sheng for fraud because Dr. Yang backed out of euthanizing the diplomat Kevin Magee's sick, 10-year-old dog. Instead, Dr. Yang "rescued" the dog, who is now thriving after he patiently treated her. Magee's lawsuit claims, in essence, that his family vet recommended euthanization, that he had paid for euthanization, and that "Benji" should have been put down. Dr. Yang said the fee Magee paid was for "medical care" and not necessarily euthanization. (Benji, frolicking outside when a reporter visited, was not available for comment.) [Taipei Times, 8-17-2013]

-- In August, a prosecutor in Houston filed aggravated rape charges against a 10-year-old girl ("Ashley") who had been arrested in June and held for four days in a juvenile detention center. A neighbor had seen Ashley touching a 4-year-old boy "in his private area," according to a KRIV-TV report -- in other words, apparently playing the time-honored, rite-of-passage game of "doctor." [KRIV-TV (Houston), 8-21-2013]

Smithsonian magazine detailed in August the exhaustive measures that military officials have taken to finally block relentless Richardson's ground squirrels from tunneling underneath Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and interfering with the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles on 24/7 standby. For example, officials had to use trial-and-error to plant underground screens deeper into the ground than the squirrels cared to dig. A day after that report was published, a bus driver in Gothenburg, Sweden, crashed into a tree (with six passengers requiring hospital treatment) after swerving to avoid a squirrel in the road. On the same day, a New York Times reporter disclosed that his own news monitoring for 2013 revealed that squirrels have caused 50 power outages in 24 states in the U.S. since Memorial Day after invading electric company substations. [Smithsonian blog, 8-30-2013] [The Local (Stockholm), 9-1-2013] [New York Times, 8-31-2013]

-- In July, the Czech Republic approved Lukas Novy's official government ID photo even though he was wearing a kitchen colander on his head. Novy had successfully explained that his religion required it since he is a "Pastafarian" -- a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (a prank religion pointing out that all deities' power and wisdom comes from followers' faith rather than from tangible proof of their existence). [Daily Mail (London), 8-1-2013]

-- In August, a judge in Voronezh, Russia, accepted for trial Dmitry Argarkov's lawsuit against Tinkoff Credit Systems for violating a credit-card contract. Tinkoff had mailed Argarkov its standard fine-print contract, but Argarkov computer-scanned it, changed pro-Tinkoff provisions into pro-Argarkov terms, and signed and returned it, and Tinkoff accepted it without re-reading. At least at this stage of the lawsuit, the judge appeared to say that Argarkov had bested Tinkoff at its own game of oppressive, fine-print mumbo-jumbo. [Kommersant (Moscow) via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-8-2013]

He Had a Different Dream: Barely two months before the 50-year commemoration of the March on Washington, Park Police arrested Christopher H. Cleveland and charged him with shooting "upskirt" photos of unsuspecting women lounging on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. According to the officers, Cleveland (who said he was unaware that the photos were illegal) had a computer in his car that contained at least 150 PowerPoint slide presentations of at least 30 images each of his multitude of female photo victims. [Washington Post, 9-5-2013]

While the morbidly obese struggle with their health (and society's scorn), those who eroticize massive weight gain are capturing increased attention, according to a July (2010) ABC News report. Commercial and personal websites give full-bellied "gainers," such as New Jerseyan Donna Simpson, and their admiring "feeders" the opportunity to express themselves. Simpson became a 602-pound media sensation in March (2010), when she began offering pay-per- view video of herself to an audience of horny feeders. Wrote another gainer-blogger, "Lately, I've been infatuated with the physics of my belly ... how it moves with me." When he leans to one side, he wrote, "I feel a roll form around my love handle." One sex researcher called it a "metaphor of arousal." In the end, though, as a medical school professor put it, "The fetish may be in our heads, but the plaque is going to be in (their) arteries." [ABC News, 7-1-10]

Thanks This Week to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.