"Fantasy sports" are hugely popular, but when fans "draft" players for their teams, they "own" only the players' statistics. Recently, Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs created Fantex Holdings, which will allow investors to buy actual pieces of real players -- namely, rights to 20 percent of the player's lifetime earnings (including licensing and product endorsement deals). The firm told The New York Times in October that it will soon stage an "IPO" for budding NFL star Arian Foster and hopes to sign up many more athletes, plus singers and actors similarly early in their careers. (On the other hand, Fantex's lawyers drew up a 37-page list of potential investment risks, such as injuries, slumps and scandals -- and the fact that the stock will trade only on Fantex's private exchange.) [New York Times, 10-18-2013]

-- "For Japanese boys, the train driver sits alongside footballer, doctor and policeman as a dream job," according to a September Agence France-Presse dispatch, and consequently, the system for the Tokyo metro area (covering 35 million people) runs with the "precision of a finely crafted Swiss watch," where delays, even for as long as a minute, seldom occur. (When they do occur, operators repeatedly apologize and hand out "notes from home" to commuters to present to their bosses to excuse the tardiness.) Among the system's drawbacks is the still-irksome groping of females on packed rush-hour trains, when operators routinely shove as many as 300 riders into cars designed for 150. [Agence France-Presse, 9-23-2013]

-- Among the surprising legacies of the oppressions of communist East Germany is modern-day Germany's commonplace "clothing-optional" lifestyle (FKK, or "Freikoerperkultur" -- free body culture). A September Global Post dispatch counted "hundreds" of FKK beaches across the country and referenced a turned-up snapshot (not yet authenticated) of a young Angela Merkel frolicking nude in the 1960s or 1970s. Foreigners occasionally undergo culture shock at German hotels' saunas and swimming pools, at which swimsuits are discouraged (as "unhygienic"). [Global Post via Salon, 9-22-2013]

-- In December China joined only a handful of countries (and 29 U.S. states) by strengthening the rights of elderly parents to demand support from their adult children -- not only financially (which has been the law for more than a decade) but now allowing lawsuits by parents who feel emotionally ignored, as well. An October Associated Press feature on one rural extended family dramatized China's cultural shift away from its proverbial "first virtue" of family honor. Zhang Zefang, 94, said she did not even understand the concept of "lawsuit" when a local official explained it, but only that she deserved better from the children she had raised and who now allegedly resent her neediness. (A village court promptly ordered several family members to contribute support for Zhang.) [Associated Press via Star Tribune (Minneapolis), 10-22-2013]

-- Recent separate testings in 21 springs in Austria and 18 fonts in Vienna yielded a conclusion that 86 percent of the holy water in the country's churches was not safe to drink -- most commonly infected with diarrhea-causing E.coli and Campylobacter. University of Vienna researchers found samples with up to 62 million bacteria per milliliter of water, and the busier the church, the higher the count. [ABC News via Yahoo News, 9-14-2013]

-- Various studies show "churchgoers" to be happier, more optimistic and healthier than other people, leading some atheists and agnostics to wonder whether the church experience could be fruitfully replicated but minus the belief in God. Hence, the "Sunday Assembly" was created in London, and has now spread to New York City and Melbourne, Australia, with 18 other hoped-for openings by year's end, according to a September report in The Week. Founders seek such benefits as "a sense of community," "a thought-provoking (secular) sermon," "group singing" and an "ethos of self-improvement," exemplified by the motto "live better, help often, wonder more," and they hope that eventually Sunday Assembly will organize Sunday school, weddings, funerals and "non-religious baptisms." [The Week, 9-23-2013]

-- First Things First: An alleged drug ring in the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Sheepshead Bay was busted in September after police cracked a stream of Internet messages offering heroin (called "DOB") and cocaine ("white girl"). Among the messages was one sent at 6:45 one Friday evening advising customers that they had "45 minutes" to get their orders in for the weekend because the sellers would obediently shut down at 7:30 (i.e., sundown) for the Jewish sabbath. [Associated Press via Brooklyn Eagle, 9-11-2013]

-- Los Angeles Animal Services has proposed that the city be established as a Sanctuary City of Feral Cats and that cats should be an exception to property owners' right to evict animals causing damage. Under the L.A. City Feral Cat Program, reported OpposingViews.com, felines "will gain an inherent right" to be on residential or commercial property. Animal Services believes that an enhanced spaying program will eliminate most feral-cat problems, including somehow their toileting excesses and their killing of neighborhood songbirds. [OpposingViews.com, 10-16-2013]

-- "You hired a convicted prostitute and thief to handle state money?" asked an incredulous Connecticut state legislator in September when he learned that Suki Handly had been employed from 2008 to 2012 passing out welfare benefits in the state's Manchester distribution center and that $44,000 was missing. Furthermore, Handly and two others had been found guilty of theft in Connecticut in 2010, yet word of her prostitution and 2010 convictions were not known to state investigators until a chance audit in 2012. (State hiring offices of course promised to strengthen background checks.) [Hartford Courant, 9-15-2013]

(1) Optometrist Robert Deck III, 48, was arraigned in Oakland County, Mich., in October on an indecent exposure charge after an August incident in which he allegedly began to masturbate in his office while fitting a female patient with contact lenses. (2) Edward Falcone, 57, a retired woodshop teacher at Brooklyn High School of the Arts, was arrested for public lewdness in October after students on a school bus reported a motorist masturbating as he followed the bus. (3) Leslie Bailey, 28, was convicted of misdemeanor lewd conduct in San Francisco in October after being spotted by a BART train operator on separate occasions, incompletely clothed, thrusting his hips against an empty seat. [Detroit Free Press, 10-3-2013] [New York Daily News, 10-19-2013] [SF Weekly, 10-21-2013]

Ariel Sinclair, 23, an assistant manager at a Rite Aid drugstore in Virginia Beach, Va., was charged in October with stealing $6,000 from the store's Virginia State Lottery machine. According to police, access to the machine requires an authorized fingerprint, which she supplied, apparently failing to think ahead that this would eventually be difficult to explain. "We work a lot of different cases," said a police spokesman, and "some are (easier) than others." [WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va., 10-18-2013]

(1) Among the things responders mentioned in Public Policy Polling's October release as being viewed more favorably than the U.S. Congress were hermorrhoids, the DMV and toenail fungus. The same firm's polling earlier in the year showed Congress less likable than root canals, head lice, colonoscopies and Donald Trump, but back then, Congress did beat out telemarketers, ebola virus and meth labs. (2) Among the reported personal-residence expenditures provoking Pope Francis in October to remove Limburg, Germany, Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst: his bathtub (equivalent of about $20,000), cupboards and carpentry ($550,000) and artwork ($690,000). (Days later, the Vatican announced that the church would open a soup kitchen at the bishop's mansion.) [Public Policy Polling via USA Today, 10-8-2013; Public Policy Polling, 1-8-2013] [Gawker.com, 10-24-2013; The Independent (London), 10-27-2013]

People With Too Much Money: In April (2008) the Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome (which the year before created a watch made from remnants of the Titanic) introduced the "Day&Night" watch, which unfortunately does not provide a reading of the hour or the minute. Though it retails for about $300,000, it only tells whether it is "day" or "night" (using a complex measurement of the Earth's gravity). CEO Yvan Arpa said studies show that two-thirds of rich people "don't (use) their watch to tell what time it is," anyway. Anyone can buy a watch that tells time, he told a Reuters reporter, but only a "truly discerning customer" will buy one that doesn't. [Wall Street Journal, 4-25-2008]

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

Norwegian public television (NRK), which introduced the now-legendary continuous, live log-burning show (12 hours long, with "color commentary" on the historical and cultural importance of fire), scheduled a new program for this week in its appeal to serenity (labeled "Slow TV"). On Nov. 1, NRK was to televise live, for five hours, an attempt to break the world record for producing a sweater, from shearing the sheep to spinning the wool and knitting the garment (current record: 4:51, by Australians). (In addition to the log, NRK viewers have been treated to live cams on a salmon-fishing boat and, for five days, on a cruise ship.) Said an NRK journalist, "You would think it's boring television, but we have quite good ratings for these programs." [Los Angeles Times, 10-4-2013]

-- Extract of cockroach is a delicacy among some Chinese, believed able to miraculously reduce inflammation, defy aging and cure tuberculosis, cancer and cirrhosis. Quartz reported in August that Yunnan province is a Silicon Valley-type business center, where pulverized roaches can sell for the equivalent of about $89 a pound, and five pharmaceutical companies have contracts with ranches that have formed the Sichuan Treasure Cockroach Farming Cooperative. (In August, a start-up farm in Jiangsu province was, police suspect, vandalized, allowing at least a million cockroaches being prepared for market to flee to adjacent neighborhoods.) [Quartz (qz.com), 8-27-2013] [Agence France-Presse via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-25-2013]

-- When entrepreneur Michelle Esquenazi was asked by a New York Post reporter in September why her all-female crew of licensed bounty hunters (Empire Bail Bonds of New York) is so successful at tricking bail-jumpers into the open, she offered a five-letter vulgar euphemism for a female body part. "It's timeless," she continued. "Of course he's going to open his door for a nice piece of (deleted). ... The thing about defendants is no matter who they are (of whatever color), they're all dumb. Every single last one of them is stupid." [New York Post, 9-27-2013]

-- Hipster Haven: Two fearless entrepreneurs inaugurated services recently in faux-fashionable Brooklyn, N.Y. Lucy Sun, a Columbia University economics major, began seeking work as a $30-an-hour "book therapist," to help readers find the "right" book to read or give as a gift, with attention to clients' "specific situations." In Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood in September, the stylish Eat restaurant began reserving certain nights' meals to be experienced in total silence. On opening night, a Wall Street Journal reporter noted one throat-clearing and a muffled sneeze, but barely any other human sound. Some diners were won over; another said it felt like "being 50 and married." [Gawker, 9-23-2013] [Wall Street Journal, 9-17-2013]

-- It's expensive to go broke in America. Detroit, which most acknowledge acted wisely in filing for bankruptcy protection in July (in the face of debts estimated to be at least $18 billion), will nonetheless be on the hook for bankruptcy legal fees that could total $60 million under current contracts (according to an October New York Times report), plus various expenses, such as the $250,000 to Christie's auction house to price and sell some assets. A fee examiner has been hired to keep the expenses in line, but he charges $600 an hour. [New York Times, 10-8-2013]

-- The Horror: A recent medical journal reported that a 49-year-old man in Brazil said he had recovered from a stroke except that the damage to his brain (in a "subcortical region" associated with higher-level thinking) has caused him to develop "pathological generosity" toward others. A Duke University neurologist told London's Daily Mail that stroke-induced personality changes (such as hoarding) are common, but that this particular change appears unique. Doctors reported in the journal Neurocase that even with medication, this patient's beneficence was unabated after two years. [Daily Mail (London), 9-7-2013]

-- Blood clots can be especially dangerous, often requiring urgent, harshly invasive open-heart surgery to remove the clot before it can be fatal, but a team from UCLA Medical School reported breathlessly in September that a "minimally invasive," cutting-edge machine worked just as well: a vacuum cleaner. When a 62-year-old man arrived at an emergency room with deep vein thrombosis, AngioVac lines were inserted in the leg and neck and sucked out the 24-inch-long clot. The patient was back home and full of energy a week later. [UCLA Medical School press release, 9-18-2013]

-- A "scatological force field" is how a Reuters reporter in September described the way ordinary house termites are able to increasingly resist extermination. They use their own feces to build their nests, and the pathogens seem to form a protective shield that attacks unfriendly bacteria trying to invade the nests. [Reuters, 9-25-2013]

-- "Pig Drinks 18 Pints and Has Fight With Cow" read one August headline from Port Hedland, West Australia, after rampaging wild pigs stole and drank 18 beers from a campsite. International Business Times, summarizing recent research in September, noted that moose, especially, are attracted by fermenting apples; that prairie voles are prominent social drinkers (consuming much more available alcohol when other voles are around); and that African elephants often turn violent to secure the fermenting fruit of the marula tree (although the elephant would require 1,400 pieces of fruit to generate the seven gallons of alcohol that -- if consumed all at once -- would match humans' legal limit for driving). [International Business Times (New York), 9-10-2013]

Americans frequently cite the rigorous, above-board testing of prescription drugs as one of government's most important functions, and health insurance companies use such seals of approval in policy-coverage decisions. However, some consumers seem to prefer unorthodox, untested, unregulated products and, backed by lobbyists for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), are challenging insurers for "discriminating" against these "drugs," especially in the game-changing rules of the new Affordable Care Act. A Forbes.com columnist explained in August what would happen if CAM prevails: "You could start offering dried bird poop for arthritis, call it 'avian nature therapy,' and if an insurer won't pay for it, you can sue." [Forbes.com, 8-26-2013]

-- The NASA space agency reported an intruder on its Ames Research Center website in September, emanating from a site in Brazil manned by someone perturbed by the U.S.'s (and, also, by the way, the Illuminati's) eavesdropping. "Stop spy on us!" and "Obama heartless! Inhumane!" were just two of the messages on the 14 NASA sites taken down temporarily. A Slate.com blogger surmised that the hacker intended to target the National Security Agency -- NSA -- instead of NASA. [Slate.com, 9-19-2013]

-- Criminals Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Tony Taylor was arrested in Chicago in October after driving off with a woman's SUV by convincing her he was a valet parking agent and handing her a claim check. He was detained shortly afterward at a nearby Nordstrom only because he tried to get cash refunds for items that had been in the woman's back seat. (2) A woman notified police in Fremont, Calif., in September that a thief had rummaged through her vehicle at night but had taken only a low-end gift-shop item -- leaving behind a checkbook, some money and an expensive pillow. The item, she said, perhaps looked like a small bag of marijuana, but in reality was a novelty-store bag of dried elephant dung. "It's a great gag gift," she said. [DNA Info Chicago, 10-1-2013] [San Jose Mercury News, 9-18-2013]

Angela Pusateri, 79, may be unconventional, but, according to Jenna, 13, "She really is a cool grandmother." The Hallandale Beach, Fla., woman is a rap-music singer with a new CD ("Who's Your Granny?") and occasional playdates, where she shows up in hockey jersey, jewels, sunglasses and baseball cap. Sample rap: "I can bring the noise better than P-Diddy / I am older and wiser, I ain't a disguiser / I am condo commando in a high-riser, Who's your granny?" Also, "Move over, Trick-Daddy, 'cause this is my town / I gotta shuffleboard posse and we're known to get down." Actually, conceded Jenna to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in September (2008), "Sometimes it's embarrassing." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9-8-2008]

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

Norwegian public television (NRK), which introduced the now-legendary continuous, live log-burning show (12 hours long, with "color commentary" on the historical and cultural importance of fire), scheduled a new program for this week in its appeal to serenity (labeled "Slow TV"). On Nov. 1, NRK was to televise live, for five hours, an attempt to break the world record for producing a sweater, from shearing the sheep to spinning the wool and knitting the garment (current record: 4:51, by Australians). (In addition to the log, NRK viewers have been treated to live cams on a salmon-fishing boat and, for five days, on a cruise ship.) Said an NRK journalist, "You would think it's boring television, but we have quite good ratings for these programs." [Los Angeles Times, 10-4-2013]

-- Extract of cockroach is a delicacy among some Chinese, believed able to miraculously reduce inflammation, defy aging and cure tuberculosis, cancer and cirrhosis. Quartz reported in August that Yunnan province is a Silicon Valley-type business center, where pulverized roaches can sell for the equivalent of about $89 a pound, and five pharmaceutical companies have contracts with ranches that have formed the Sichuan Treasure Cockroach Farming Cooperative. (In August, a start-up farm in Jiangsu province was, police suspect, vandalized, allowing at least a million cockroaches being prepared for market to flee to adjacent neighborhoods.) [Quartz (qz.com), 8-27-2013] [Agence France-Presse via Daily Telegraph (London), 8-25-2013]

-- When entrepreneur Michelle Esquenazi was asked by a New York Post reporter in September why her all-female crew of licensed bounty hunters (Empire Bail Bonds of New York) is so successful at tricking bail-jumpers into the open, she offered a five-letter vulgar euphemism for a female body part. "It's timeless," she continued. "Of course he's going to open his door for a nice piece of (deleted). ... The thing about defendants is no matter who they are (of whatever color), they're all dumb. Every single last one of them is stupid." [New York Post, 9-27-2013]

-- Hipster Haven: Two fearless entrepreneurs inaugurated services recently in faux-fashionable Brooklyn, N.Y. Lucy Sun, a Columbia University economics major, began seeking work as a $30-an-hour "book therapist," to help readers find the "right" book to read or give as a gift, with attention to clients' "specific situations." In Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood in September, the stylish Eat restaurant began reserving certain nights' meals to be experienced in total silence. On opening night, a Wall Street Journal reporter noted one throat-clearing and a muffled sneeze, but barely any other human sound. Some diners were won over; another said it felt like "being 50 and married." [Gawker, 9-23-2013] [Wall Street Journal, 9-17-2013]

-- It's expensive to go broke in America. Detroit, which most acknowledge acted wisely in filing for bankruptcy protection in July (in the face of debts estimated to be at least $18 billion), will nonetheless be on the hook for bankruptcy legal fees that could total $60 million under current contracts (according to an October New York Times report), plus various expenses, such as the $250,000 to Christie's auction house to price and sell some assets. A fee examiner has been hired to keep the expenses in line, but he charges $600 an hour. [New York Times, 10-8-2013]

-- The Horror: A recent medical journal reported that a 49-year-old man in Brazil said he had recovered from a stroke except that the damage to his brain (in a "subcortical region" associated with higher-level thinking) has caused him to develop "pathological generosity" toward others. A Duke University neurologist told London's Daily Mail that stroke-induced personality changes (such as hoarding) are common, but that this particular change appears unique. Doctors reported in the journal Neurocase that even with medication, this patient's beneficence was unabated after two years. [Daily Mail (London), 9-7-2013]

-- Blood clots can be especially dangerous, often requiring urgent, harshly invasive open-heart surgery to remove the clot before it can be fatal, but a team from UCLA Medical School reported breathlessly in September that a "minimally invasive," cutting-edge machine worked just as well: a vacuum cleaner. When a 62-year-old man arrived at an emergency room with deep vein thrombosis, AngioVac lines were inserted in the leg and neck and sucked out the 24-inch-long clot. The patient was back home and full of energy a week later. [UCLA Medical School press release, 9-18-2013]

-- A "scatological force field" is how a Reuters reporter in September described the way ordinary house termites are able to increasingly resist extermination. They use their own feces to build their nests, and the pathogens seem to form a protective shield that attacks unfriendly bacteria trying to invade the nests. [Reuters, 9-25-2013]

-- "Pig Drinks 18 Pints and Has Fight With Cow" read one August headline from Port Hedland, West Australia, after rampaging wild pigs stole and drank 18 beers from a campsite. International Business Times, summarizing recent research in September, noted that moose, especially, are attracted by fermenting apples; that prairie voles are prominent social drinkers (consuming much more available alcohol when other voles are around); and that African elephants often turn violent to secure the fermenting fruit of the marula tree (although the elephant would require 1,400 pieces of fruit to generate the seven gallons of alcohol that -- if consumed all at once -- would match humans' legal limit for driving). [International Business Times (New York), 9-10-2013]

Americans frequently cite the rigorous, above-board testing of prescription drugs as one of government's most important functions, and health insurance companies use such seals of approval in policy-coverage decisions. However, some consumers seem to prefer unorthodox, untested, unregulated products and, backed by lobbyists for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), are challenging insurers for "discriminating" against these "drugs," especially in the game-changing rules of the new Affordable Care Act. A Forbes.com columnist explained in August what would happen if CAM prevails: "You could start offering dried bird poop for arthritis, call it 'avian nature therapy,' and if an insurer won't pay for it, you can sue." [Forbes.com, 8-26-2013]

-- The NASA space agency reported an intruder on its Ames Research Center website in September, emanating from a site in Brazil manned by someone perturbed by the U.S.'s (and, also, by the way, the Illuminati's) eavesdropping. "Stop spy on us!" and "Obama heartless! Inhumane!" were just two of the messages on the 14 NASA sites taken down temporarily. A Slate.com blogger surmised that the hacker intended to target the National Security Agency -- NSA -- instead of NASA. [Slate.com, 9-19-2013]

-- Criminals Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Tony Taylor was arrested in Chicago in October after driving off with a woman's SUV by convincing her he was a valet parking agent and handing her a claim check. He was detained shortly afterward at a nearby Nordstrom only because he tried to get cash refunds for items that had been in the woman's back seat. (2) A woman notified police in Fremont, Calif., in September that a thief had rummaged through her vehicle at night but had taken only a low-end gift-shop item -- leaving behind a checkbook, some money and an expensive pillow. The item, she said, perhaps looked like a small bag of marijuana, but in reality was a novelty-store bag of dried elephant dung. "It's a great gag gift," she said. [DNA Info Chicago, 10-1-2013] [San Jose Mercury News, 9-18-2013]

Angela Pusateri, 79, may be unconventional, but, according to Jenna, 13, "She really is a cool grandmother." The Hallandale Beach, Fla., woman is a rap-music singer with a new CD ("Who's Your Granny?") and occasional playdates, where she shows up in hockey jersey, jewels, sunglasses and baseball cap. Sample rap: "I can bring the noise better than P-Diddy / I am older and wiser, I ain't a disguiser / I am condo commando in a high-riser, Who's your granny?" Also, "Move over, Trick-Daddy, 'cause this is my town / I gotta shuffleboard posse and we're known to get down." Actually, conceded Jenna to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in September (2008), "Sometimes it's embarrassing." [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9-8-2008]

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