America's foremost advocate for frontal lobotomies as "treatment" for mental disorder, the late Dr. Walter Freeman, performed an estimated 3,500 lobotomies during the 1940s and 1950s before opposition finally solidified against him, according to a December 2013 investigation by The Wall Street Journal. At the peak of his influence, he was so confident that he demonstrated the procedure to skeptics by hammering an icepick ("from his own kitchen," the Journal reported) into both eye sockets of an electrical-shocked patient and "toggling" the picks around the brain tissue, certain that he was severing "correctly." For years, Freeman (a neurologist untrained in surgery) marshaled positive feedback from enough patients and families for the procedure to survive criticism, and he spent his final years (until his death in 1972) securing patient testimonials to "prove" the validity of lobotomies. [Wall Street Journal, 12-13-1013]

-- Each Nov. 1 is a day (or two) of craziness in the isolated mountain village of Todos Santos Cuchumatanes, Guatemala, where Mayan tradition commands continuous horse races through town, jockeyed by increasingly drunk riders, until only a sober-enough winner remains. Collisions occur in the Race of the Souls, and occasionally someone dies, but the misfortune is met with a collective shrug and regarded as a spiritual offering for fertile crops during the coming year, according to an eyewitness this year reporting for Vice.com. Ironically, for the rest of the year, the village is largely alcohol-free except for that on hand to sell to tourists. [Vice.com, 11-5-2013]

-- Since the 13th century, sheepherders in Spain have had the right (still honored) to use 78,000 miles of paths in the country for seasonal flock migrations -- even some streets of Madrid, including a crossing of Puerta del Sol, described as Madrid's Times Square. The shepherds pay a customary, token duty, which, according to an October Associated Press dispatch, the government proudly accepts, given the prominence of Spain's native Merino sheep breed in the world's wool market. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 10-6-2013]

-- Postal worker Umakant Mishra, of Kanpur city in Uttar Pradesh, India, was freed by a criminal court in December -- 29 years after he was charged when a money-order account turned up 92 cents short. Mishra was called to judicial hearings 348 times over the years, but it was not until recently that the government admitted it had no witnesses for the court to hear against him. A December BBC News dispatch reported, citing "official" figures, that more than 30 million cases are pending in Indian courts. [BBC News, 12-3-2013]

The evangelical educational organization Answers in Genesis, which has established a series of children's books and a creationist museum, announced recently that it would enter the bond market to fund its most ambitious project -- a creationist amusement park centered around a "life-size" reconstruction of Noah's Ark, for which it estimates it will need at least $73 million from investors. Issuing bonds might be seen as desperate since AiG has raised only $13.6 million privately since proposing the Ark-park, but a Georgetown University finance professor, contacted by Slate.com, suggested that the bonds' terms place them in the high-risk "junk bond" category (perhaps better described as "faith-based," having virtually no resale value and without an independent bond rating). [Slate.com, 5-12-2013]

-- Took It Too Far: Coughlan elementary school in Langley, British Columbia, announced to parents in November that henceforth it would not just prohibit abusive or unwanted physical contact among its kindergarteners, but all contact. Officials said they were responding to parents who objected to "rough play," but, said another parent, incredulous, "No tag, no hugging, no touching at all. ... I am not going to tell my daughter she can't touch her friends at school. I am going to teach her boundaries." [The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 11-5-2013]

-- Tone Deaf: In South Africa, with one of the highest incidences of rape in the world, one question on its recent nationwide high school standardized drama test asked students to direct (as if staging a play) the rape of a baby, given only certain props. South Africa's Education Department defended the question as assessing pupils' concept of "using metaphor" as a theatrical technique. The question was based on an award-winning play by anti-rape activist Lara Foot Newton (who, of course, wrote primarily for adults). [BBC News, 11-27-2013]

-- In criminal cases, DNA is usually a smoking gun for the prosecution -- except, of course, if there is an "evil twin." In November a judge in Colorado Springs ruled that a suspect, Army Lt. Aaron Lucas, should have the opportunity to blame his brother Brian for a string of sexual assaults because the DNA might be Brian's. Brian has not been charged and denies any involvement, but Aaron said Brian was in two crime-scene states that Aaron was never in. Said a Denver defense lawyer, "The only time I have seen (the evil-twin defense) was on 'Law and Order: SVU.'" [Associated Press via USA Today, 11-16-2013]

-- Of course: Four villagers in northeast Kenya, angry that cheetahs were killing their goats, lay in wait one night in November and then chased down and captured the cheetahs. Cheetahs are regarded as the fastest mammals on Earth, but they lack endurance; Kenyans are marathon prodigies. Indeed, the cheetahs were captured only when they ran out of gas after about four miles of pursuit by the Kenyans, and were handed over alive, and exhausted, to the Kenyan Wildlife Service. [BBC News, 11-15-2013]

Many were shocked to learn in November that some accused "satanic cult" child molesters were still in prison -- even though proven by time, journalism and medical knowledge to have been innocent victims of widespread 1980s and 1990s hysteria. Arrangements have finally been made to release Austin, Texas, day care operators Fran and Dan Keller (after 21 years) and four San Antonio women (imprisoned for 14 years for "assaulting" two adolescent girls). In both cases, juries and judges had been persuaded by testimony about scarring on girls' hymens, and, frightened by the era's high-profile McMartin School and other cases, issued long prison terms. (The Austin case's doctor later admitted he had misdiagnosed the scarring, and the San Antonio doctor's conclusions were vanquished by the Texas Innocence Project and a relentless Canadian researcher.) All six said they intended to pursue full legal exoneration. [Austin American-Statesman, 11-26-2013; Associated Press via Yahoo News, 11-19-2013]

Not Ready for Prime Time: Johnny Deleon, 20, was arrested in Houston in October, caught in the act of removing wheel caps from a Cadillac Escalade in a deli's parking lot. Even in the daylight, Deleon apparently failed to notice the many police cars in the lot (as a ceremonial planning meeting was underway in the deli). Officers, from among 30 inside, dashed out and arrested Deleon. [KPRC-TV (Houston), 10-29-2013]

(1) Once again a fortuitous, unrelated medical exam was credited with possibly saving a life. Los Angeles television personality Julie Chang suffered a concussion in a surfing accident recently, but the routine X-ray also showed a previously unrevealed brain tumor. She was immediately scheduled for surgery and reported to colleagues that she "will be OK." (2) New York animal rights activist Steven Wise pushed the envelope in December by filing a writ of habeas corpus (requiring jailers to prove any legal basis for an individual's detention) for a chimpanzee living at a Gloversville, N.Y., farm (although, in fairness, "Tommy" is being held by an animal "rescuer" who said he is seeking a proper home). (U.S. habeas corpus law has heretofore applied only to humans.) [Fox News, 11-19-2013] [New York Times, 12-3-2013]

(1) Shannon Johanson of Northampton, England, is awaiting sentencing after a conviction for possessing animal pornography, which is one of the categories of "extreme" porn criminalized by a 2008 U.K. statute. The photo is of a woman "performing a sex act" with a dead fish (and, under the statute, whether "dead or alive" is irrelevant). (2) Former 30-year-veteran schoolteacher Mark Berndt, 61, pleaded guilty in November to charges involving at least 20 elementary-school-age children that he had assigned to play the "tasting game" in 2011, in which blindfolded children were fed cookies topped with semen. Berndt has not yet explained how he could possibly have conceived such a game. [Vice.com, 12-5-2013] [Los Angeles Times, 11-14-2013]

Thanks This Week to David Bacque and Gary DaSilva, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Redneck Geek: Edward Teller, the famous theoretical physicist known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb" for his work on the World War II-era Manhattan Project, died in 2003, but his daughter Rene told The Free Press of Kinston, N.C., in November that she had recently discovered two of her father's precious mementos at a thrift shop near Kinston during a road trip to visit relatives. "(Father's) work was so demanding" she said, that he needed "recreational activities" and tried "the things you'd suspect," like chess. However, the two mementos were awards Teller had won at tractor pull competitions. "He'd show up at major tractor pulls" riding just a Cub Cadet mower, Rene said, and "leave the competition in the dust." (Teller's secret, she said, was using "nuclear fusion-based engines," which sponsors ultimately had to ban.) [Kinston Free Press, 11-12-2013]

(Ed. OK, I was hoaxed, and I still don't understand why. Don't hoaxes have to have a point? And no, if you're going to say that the physics was inaccurate here and that that was a tip-off, no, the physics could be wrong in a perfectly good story, and I'd be fine with it. The junk shop exists. It's famous for having all kinds of odd stuff. I still don't see why I should've been on the lookout for this story like I've avoided dozens hundreds of hoaxes/exaggerations in 26 years at this game. But there it is. Guilty!)

-- "It will be sort of my unique factor," said indulgent customer Lucy Luckayanko, describing her then-upcoming $3,000 eyeball jewelry implant from New York City's Park Avenue Laser Vision -- the insertion of a piece of platinum between the sclera (the white part) and the clear conjunctiva. Actually, said the shop's medical director, Dr. Emil Chynn, to WNEW-TV in November, it's "pretty safe." [WNEW-TV (New York City, 11-20-2013]

-- Restaurant Startups: (1) Japan's "cat cafes" allow the pet-starved to relax while dining by caressing house kittens that roam the facilities, but similar eateries have opened recently featuring owls (the Fukurou Sabou in Tokyo, Owl Family in Osaka). (The owls are not caressable and easily spooked by excessive noise.) (2) Liu Pengfei's Five Loaves and Two Fish restaurant in Fuzhou, China, is losing money rapidly despite overflow dining crowds, according to a December China Daily report, because he allows customers to pay only what they wish. (They must also wash out their bowls.) "I want to continue," he said, "as I believe the feeling of trust is contagious." [News Limited (Sydney), 11-5-2013] [China Daily, 12-4-2013]

-- It may be a cliche of domestic conflict, but physicists recently, earnestly, tackled the dynamics of toilet bowl "splash back." A stream delivered by a standing male, because it travels five times farther than a seated male's, produces a splash easily reaching seat and floor -- even without factoring in the "well-known" Plateau-Rayleigh instability -- the inevitable disintegration of a liquid stream "six or seven inches" after its formation. Short of recommending that men be seated, the researchers (speaking to a November conference) suggest "narrowing the angle" by "standing slightly to one side and aiming downwards at a low angle of impact." [BBC News, 11-6-2013]

-- The Human-Rodent Connection: University of British Columbia researchers, intent on judging whether blocking dopamine D4 receptors can reduce the urge to gamble in subjects other than humans, claimed in October to have devised a test that works on the dopamine receptors of rats -- especially those with a gambling problem. With a slot machine-like device dispensing sugar pellets, the researchers claimed they offered rats measured risks and even determined that rats are more likely to take risks immediately following a close loss (as are humans). [Science Daily, 10-29-2013]

Seven years ago, Michael Spann, now 29, suddenly doubled over in pain that felt like he "got hit in the head with a sledgehammer," and began crying blood. Despite consulting doctors, including two visits with extensive lab work at the venerable Cleveland Clinic, the Antioch, Tenn., man told Nashville's The Tennessean in October that he is resigned to an "idiopathic condition" -- a disease without apparent cause. Spann's main wish now is just to hold a job, in that fellow workers, and customers, tend not to react well to a man bleeding from the eyes (even though his once-daily episodes have become more sporadic). [The Tennessean, 10-17-2013]

-- The sex life of the anglerfish, according to a Wired.com interview in November with evolutionary biologist Theodore Pietsch, is as dismal as any on planet Earth. According to Wired: "Boy meets girl, boy bites girl, boy's mouth fuses to girl's body, boy lives the rest of his life attached to girl, sharing her blood and supplying her with sperm." Only 1 percent of males ever hook up with females (because the ocean floor is dark), said Pietsch. The rest starve to death as virgins. [Wired.com, 11-8-2013]

-- Professor Pietsch may know his anglerfish, but Marlene Zuk of the University of Minnesota knows her insects, including the mating mechanics of damselflies, crickets and cockroaches, which she described for The New York Times in November. The damselfly male's penis is a Swiss Army knife-like contraption (necessary to access the female's well-hidden eggs). The cricket easily produces sperm, but then awaits its draining through a "long stem" "for several minutes" to achieve fertilization. Cockroaches, Professor Zuk wrote, mate by "blind trust" as they hook up back-to-back and, with no neck, cannot even glance over a shoulder to check on their work. [New York Times, 11-30-2013]

-- Elephant Whisperer: Nirmala Toppo, 14, is apparently the one to call if wild elephants overrun your village, especially in India's Orissa and Jharkhand states, which are still home to hundreds of marauding pachyderms. Her latest pied-piper act, in June, emptied a herd of 11 out of the industrial city of Rourkela. Said Toppo: "First I pray and then talk to the herd. I tell them this is not your home. You should return where you belong." Somehow, the elephants followed her for miles away from the town, according to an October BBC News dispatch. [BBC News, 10-29-2013]

The daunting problems that faced the launch of the HealthCare.gov website in October were merely symptoms of the federal government's often snail-like pace at integrating digital innovations common to everyday America. A December New York Times report revealed that The Federal Register (the daily journal of the U.S. government) still receives original content from some agencies on virtually obsolete 3.5-inch floppy disks -- and (because of unamended legal requirements) its work-order authorizations from some agencies on disks hand-delivered inside the Washington Beltway by courier. Contractors can be frustrated as well since, though they operate with top-of-the-line digital efficiency internally, they must sometimes downgrade to interface with their government clients. [New York Times, 12-6-2013]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) An already-distinctive man (367 pounds) was arrested in Everett, Wash., for a December grocery store shoplifting because he was also wearing an easily noticed purple sock and over two hours later was still wearing it when police caught up to him and questioned him. (2) A 23-year-old woman was arrested in Crestview, Fla., in November for shoplifting a "toy" from an adult store -- before inquiring about a job there. She had professed her innocence until shown the surveillance video, when she said (according to the police report), "Oh, my God. Look at what I'm doing. ... I'm gonna cry." [The Herald (Everett), 12-4-2013] [Daily News of Northwest Florida, 11-15-2013]

In October, an Ohio judge turned down a petition by Donald Miller Jr., asking to be ruled "alive." "You're still deceased as far as the law is concerned," Probate Judge Allan Davis told him because state law requires challenges to his declaration of death (obtained by Miller's wife in 1994) to be filed within three years. Said Judge Davis, "I don't know where that leaves you." [The Courier (Findlay, Ohio), 10-8-2013]

Escape From L.A.: Hundreds of Los Angeles' down-and-out live not just underneath local freeways but inside their concrete structures, according to a June (2009) Los Angeles Times report. The largest "home" is a gymnasium-sized cavern under the Interstate 10 freeway in the suburb of Baldwin Park. That space is nearly inaccessible, requiring squeezing through a rusty grating, traversing a narrow ledge and descending a ladder to reach "a vast, vaultlike netherworld, strewn with garbage and syringes," with toys and rattles and a cat carcass visible on an upper platform only marginally harder for rats to reach. Authorities fear the area, but every few years, state officials try to seal the entrance (which the homeless quickly unseal as soon as the officials leave). [Los Angeles Times, 5-29-2009]

Thanks This Week to Kevin Kohler, Jim Colucci, Frank Smith, and Gerald Sacks, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Paul Di Filippo, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Matt Mirapaul, Paul Music, Karl Olson, and Jim Sweeney) and Board of Editorial Advisors (Tom Barker, Paul Blumstein, Harry Farkas, Sam Gaines, Herb Jue, Emory Kimbrough, Scott Langill, Bob McCabe, Steve Miller, Christopher Nalty, Mark Neunder, Sandy Pearlman, Bob Pert, Larry Ellis Reed, Peter Smagorinsky, Rob Snyder, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, and Jerry Whittle).

A Swedish TV show, "Biss och Kajs," found itself in the spotlight in November -- in Russia, where government-run television apparently used it to send a political message to Ukraine by highlighting the program's theme of teaching children about bodily functions. The episode Russia chose featured three bulkily-costumed actors sitting around talking -- with one dressed in yellow, one in brown, and the other unmistakably as a large, nude human posterior. ("Biss och Kajs" is highly regarded in Sweden; "biss" and "kajs" refer, respectively to the yellow and brown functions.) Ukraine (against Russia's wishes) is considering a trade agreement with the European Union, and, the Russian station director said, pointedly, "There you have European values in all their glory." [BBC News, 12-3-2013]

-- The Bank of England, arguing before the U.K.'s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in October, warned against limiting the bonuses that bankers have come to expect from their lucrative deals -- because that might encroach on their "human rights." The Bank suggested it is a human rights violation even to ask senior executives to demonstrate that they tried hard to comply with banking laws (because it is the government's job to prove violations). [Huffington Post U.K., 10-8-2013]

-- (1) A young woman, accosted by a robber on Washington, D.C.'s Capitol Hill in October, told the man she was a low-paid intern -- but an intern for the National Security Agency, and that within minutes of robbing her, the man would be tracked down by ubiquitous NSA surveillance. She said, later (reported the Washington Examiner), the man just "looked at me and ran away (empty-handed)." (2) A 29-year-old cafeteria worker at Sullivan East High School in Blountville, Tenn., swore to police on the scene in October that she was not the one who took money from a co-worker's purse, and she voluntarily stripped to near-nakedness to demonstrate her innocence. "See? I don't have it," she said. Moments later, an officer found the missing $27 stuffed in the woman's shoe. [Washington Examiner, 10-15-2013] [Associated Press via Times Free Press (Chattanooga), 10-19-2013]

-- Katarzyna Dryden-Chouen and her husband Clive, busted in a London police raid last year with a marijuana grow operation that had netted an estimated (equivalent) of $450,000, insisted to a jury in October that their massive haul was not for sale but for "personal" use -- in that they worship the Hindu god Shiva, and truly believed that the world would end soon and that they needed a sizable offering to burn. (Actually, the jury bought it. "Distribution" charges were dismissed, but the couple still faces jail for their cultivation activity.) [The Citizen (Gloucester, England, 10-23-2013] [Daily Mail, 11-11-2013]

-- The Seattle City Council voted in October to seize a waterfront parking lot by eminent domain from the 103-year-old owner after negotiations to buy the property on the open market broke down. The state is funding a six-year tunnel-digging project in the area, and the city has decided it needs the property for not-yet-specified uses --except that in one part of the property, the city said it plans to operate a parking lot. [KCPQ-TV (Seattle), 10-22-2013]

-- (1) Larry Poulos was stopped on an Arlington, Tex., street in September, bleeding from a head wound and complaining that he had just been robbed by two men. A friend of Poulos later corroborated that, but police also learned that the money Poulos had been carrying was the proceeds of his having robbed a credit union earlier that evening. He was treated for his wounds and then arrested. (2) At least 44 health workers were struck with a suspected norovirus in September at a Creative Health Care Management convention in Huron, Ohio. (Noroviruses are sometimes called the "Norwalk" virus, named after one notable outbreak in 1968 in Norwalk, Ohio, about 12 miles from Huron.) [Dallas Morning News, 9-5-2013] [Sandusky Register, 9-18-2013]

-- "Masculine" Values: Breakaway former officials of the Boy Scouts of America met in Nashville, Tenn., in September to establish a Scouts-type organization that can freely discourage homosexuality, with one leader promising Fox News that the result would be "a more masculine" program. Another prominent attendee, also quoted in the Fox News dispatch, described his sorrow at the BSA's embrace of gay boys. Since this issue broke, he said, "I've cried a river." [Fox News, 9-8-2013]

-- In November, Sweden's National Housing Board, in charge of building codes, ordered the country's famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi (built anew annually out of fresh ice blocks) to install fire alarms. "We were a little surprised when we found out," said a spokeswoman (who acknowledged that the hotel's mattresses and pillows could catch fire). [The Local (Stockholm), 11-14-2013]

-- Conscience-Cleansing: Greg Gulbransen of Oyster Bay, N.Y., announced in September that he was about to sue the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for dragging its feet in implementing the Gulbransen-inspired 2007 federal legislation that he said would save lives, especially those of toddlers. The unimplemented law would force car manufacturers to install rear-facing cameras as standard equipment, a cause Gulbransen embraced after accidentally, fatally, backing over his own toddler in the family's BMW SUV. [OpposingViews.com, 9-25-2013]

-- An exhaustive American Civil Liberties Union report in November showed that more than 3,200 people are serving life sentences in the U.S. for non-violent offenses (about 80 percent for drug crimes). Most were sentenced under "three-strikes"-type laws in which the final straw might be for trivial drug possession, for instance, or for a petty theft such as the $159-jacket shoplifting in Louisiana, or the two-jersey theft from a Foot Locker. Said the jacket thief, Timothy Jackson, "I know that for my crime I had to do some time but . . . I have met people here whose crimes are a lot badder with way less time." Added his sister, "You can take a life and get 15 or 16 years," but her brother "will stay in jail forever. He didn't kill the jacket!" [The Guardian (London), 11-13-2013]

-- (1) Douglas Yim, 33, was convicted in September of murdering a 25-year-old man in Oakland, Calif., in 2011 after an evening of teasing by the man, who mocked Yim's certainty about the existence of God. (2) A 27-year-old yoga fanatic in St. Austell, England, drowned in a pit in May during a well-publicized attempt to create an "out-of-body experience" to get as close to death as possible but without going over the line. [San Francisco Examiner, 9-4-2013] [Cornish Guardian (Cornwall), 10-30-2013]

-- Recurring Themes: (1) Lawrence Briggs, 18, was arrested in Marshalltown, Iowa, in November after he walked out of a Sports Page store with $153 worth of merchandise he did not pay for. Moments earlier, he had filled out an application to work at Sports Page, and when surveillance cameras exposed him, managers called him in for an "interview," and police made the arrest. (2) Troy Mitchell, 47, was arrested after allegedly robbing the Valley First Credit Union in Modesto, Calif., on May 14th. While he was standing at the teller's window, another employee of Valley First saluted him ("Hi, Troy") because he remembered Mitchell from April 3rd, when he had applied for a car loan. [Times Republican (Marshalltown), 11-5-2013] [The Record (Stockton, Calif.), 10-23-2013]

-- Australian Marcus Einfeld (a prominent lawyer, federal judge, and Jewish community leader) was once so revered that one organization named him a "living treasure," but he fell into total disrepute in 2006 by deciding to fight a simple speeding ticket. By March 2009, Einfeld had been sentenced to two years in prison for perjury and obstructing justice for lying in four elaborate detailed schemes to "prove" that he was not driving that day. His original defense (that he had loaned the car to a friend who then passed away) was accepted by the judge, but dogged reporting by Sydney's Daily Telegraph revealed that Einfeld lied, and lied to cover up each successive lie. Encouraged, reporters went on to uncover Einfeld's bogus college degrees and awards and a double-billing fraud against the government. (The speeding ticket would have cost about $80.) [The Australian, 3-20-2009]

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