Among the breakthroughs demonstrated by the computer chip company Intel's RealSense system is a cocktail dress from Dutch designer Anouk Wipprecht that not only senses the wearer's "mood," but also acts to repel (or encourage) strangers who might approach the wearer. Sensors (including small LED monitors) measure respiration and 11 other profiles, and if the wearer is "stressed," artistic spider-leg epaulets extend menacingly from the shoulder to suggest that "intruders" keep their distance (in which case the dress resembles something from the movie "Aliens") -- or, if the wearer feels relaxed, the legs wave invitingly. The experimental "spider dress" was showcased at January's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. [Daily Mail (London), 1-7-2015]

-- Because Congress and presidents often change their minds, NASA recently continued to build on a $349 million rocket testing tower in Mississippi for a "moon" project that had been canceled back in 2010. The now-idle tower sits down the road from a second rocket testing tower being built for its "replacement" mission -- an "asteroid" project. Critics, according to a December Washington Post examination, blame senators who believe it smarter to keep contractors at work (even though useless) because, Congress and the president might change their minds yet again. Said a high-profile critic, "We have to decide ... whether we want a jobs program or a space program." NASA's inspector general in 2013 identified six similar "mothballed" projects that taxpayers continue to maintain. [Washington Post, 12-15-2014]

-- Un-Government: About 240 of the 351 police departments in Massachusetts claim their SWAT and other specialty operations are not "government" services, but rather not-for-profit corporate activities and are thus entitled to avoid certain government obligations. Even though their officers have the power to carry weapons, arrest people and break down doors during raids, these "law enforcement councils" refuse to comply with government open-records laws for civilian monitoring of SWAT activities. The latest refusal, by the 58 police agencies of the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council, was filed in state Superior Court in December. [Daily News of Newburyport, 12-13-2014; Washington Post, 6-26-2014]

-- DIY Policing in Seattle: A Seattle Times columnist suffered a "smash-and-grab" break-in of his car in October, but was brushed off by the Seattle Police Department and told simply to go file an insurance claim. However, he and his energetic 14-year-old daughter located the perpetrators themselves by GPS and called for police help, only to be chastised by the dispatcher, warning that they could get hurt. Only when a local crime-fighting TV show adopted the case, along with the suburban Sammamish, Washington, police department, was the gang of thieves finally pursued and apprehended (resulting in charges for "hundreds" of smash-and-grab thefts). (Bonus: One alleged perpetrator was quoted as saying the thefts were undertaken "because we knew the police wouldn't do anything.") [Seattle Times, 10-31-2014, 11-7-2014]

-- Ms. Connie Lay passed away in Aurora, Indiana, in November, leaving a last will and testament that calls for her German shepherd, Bela, to be promptly buried with her -- even though Bela is still alive and peppy. Ms. Lay preferred sending Bela to a certain shelter in Utah, but if that "is not possible" or involves "too much expense" (judgments to be decided by a close friend, not publicly named), Bela is to be euthanized. At press time, the friend still had not decided. [WCPO-TV (Cincinnati), 12-17-2014]

-- Mother of All Surgeries: After 15 months of faulty diagnoses, Pam Pope, 65, finally got the (bad) news: a rare, slow-moving cancer of the appendix, "pseudomyxoma peritonei." The malignancy was so advanced that her only hope was the removal of all organs that she could possibly do without. In a six-surgeon, 13-hour operation in May 2014 at Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke, England, Pope parted with her appendix, large bowel, gall bladder, spleen, womb, ovaries, fallopian tubes, cervix and most of her small bowel. She has endured massive chemotherapy, is on a nightly drip for hydration, and still remains frail, according to a December report in London's Daily Mail. [Daily Mail, 12-15-2014]

-- When someone swiped the iPhone of Adam Wisneski, 31, on Jan. 2, he rode his bicycle to Chicago's Shakespeare District police station to file a stolen-property report. He parked the bike inside the door, filled out the form, prepared to leave -- and noticed the bike was missing. He told an amused officer he needed another form. (Officers on duty said perhaps a homeless man who was in the station took it and are "making an effort," said Wisneski, to find it.) [WBBM-TV (Chicago), 1-5-2015]

-- The natural enemy of the "hawkmoth" (for 65 million years) is the bat, but thanks to a recent study by biologists at Boise State University and the University of Florida, we know the reason why so many hawkmoths are able to avoid their predator: They signal each other by rubbing their genitals on their abdomens, which somehow mimics bats' own high-frequency sounds, thus jamming the bats' aural ability to detect the hawkmoths' locations. Professors Jesse Barber and Akito Kawahara, working in Malaysia, tethered a hawkmoth to a wire and then tracked a bat, using slow-motion cameras and high-definition microphones, painstakingly examining the results for a 2014 journal article. [Daily Mail (London), 12-11-2014]

-- Bringing the Total Number of Cow Sounds to Three: A team from Britain's University of Nottingham and Queen Mary University of London found (according to a December BBC News report) that cows make two "distinctly different" call sounds to their calves, depending on whether the calves are nearby (low-frequency mooing, with mouth closed) or separated (higher frequency). The team said it spent 10 months digitally recording cow noises, then a year analyzing them by computer. [BBC News, 12-16-2014]

Not Nearly Ready for Prime Time: (1) A potential robber was turned away from a store on East Harry Street in Wichita, Kansas, on Dec. 11 after he demanded cash, explaining to the clerk that he "had six children and needed the money." The clerk told the man he had too many kids. The man, apparently chastened, fled the store empty-handed. (2) A masked man approached a clerk at Sam's Mart in New Haven, Connecticut, on Nov. 29 and passed a note demanding money while pointing his finger at the clerk (perhaps an inept attempt to feign having a gun in his pocket). According to police, the clerk grabbed the finger and threatened to break it, sending the man fleeing into the night. [Wichita Eagle, 12-12-2014] [New Haven Independent, 12-1-2014]

In a joint operation in December, police in Beijing and three provinces broke up two prostitution rings that specialized in supplying young lactating mothers to Chinese men who pay to be breastfed. Police said that women who provide sex with the "meal" earn higher fees. The women had either stopped breastfeeding their babies or cut back to favor their clients. Critics, according to the South China Morning Post, said this "lactophilia" showed "the moral degradation of China's rich." [International Business Times (London), 12-29-2014]

Jared Walter, 27, returns to News of the Weird after a four-year hiatus, charged with snipping a woman's hair while in line behind her in December at a Dollar Tree store in Oregon City, Oregon. In 2010, he was imprisoned for cutting the hair of three female passengers on municipal buses in the Portland area, and after being released in 2011, sentenced again for a similar incident. (Walter's inexplicable history with female hair actually extends back to grade school, reported Portland's The Oregonian.) [The Oregonian, 12-31-2014]

A 53-year-old man with failing eyesight who had recently undergone intestinal surgery told Sonoma, California, police that on Sunday afternoon, May 1 (2011), a woman had come to his home and instructed him to drop his pants and get face-down on the bed so that she could administer an enema. He said he assumed his doctor had sent her and thus complied; it was over in two minutes, and she was gone. The doctor later said he had no idea who the woman was. (In the 1970s, in the Champaign, Illinois, area, Michael Kenyon famously operated as the "Illinois Enema Bandit" -- and inspired the late Frank Zappa's song "Illinois Enema Bandit Blues.") [Sonoma News, 5-11-2011]

Thanks This Week to Jim Weber and Ivan Katz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

People's love for their pets reached a new high in December when a British man paid a veterinarian the equivalent of $500 to perform delicate surgery on a sick office goldfish (typical pet store "replacement" price: $1 to $5). Vet Faye Bethell of North Walsham, England, told the Eastern Daily Press in December that there was "nothing special" about the fish, but that the customer "just liked it a lot." In fact, the goldfish likely did not even have a pet name -- as Bethell in an interview spoke intimately of another patient by name (Cadbury, the skunk). (Bethell's procedure involved removing the patient from the bowl, flooding its gills with anesthetic-fortified water, and using a tiny scalpel to remove lumps that were causing it constipation, with the surgery guided by a miniature heart-rate monitor.) [Eastern Daily Press (Norwich, England), 1-1-2015]

Iraq's government-run channel, Iraqiyya TV, has a reality show reminiscent of American confrontational programs, but is designed to force captured ISIS fighters to acknowledge the pain they have created. One episode of "In the Grip of the Law" (described in a December Associated Press dispatch) showed family members of car-bombing victims on a street corner in Baghdad haranguing one of the men convicted of the crime. A young man in a wheelchair, having lost his father in the attack, faced off against the convict, screaming until the jihadist "began weeping, as the cameras rolled." [Associated Press via New York Daily News, 12-22-2014]

-- On Nov. 6, a couple (aged 68 and 65) were hospitalized after spending almost 13 hours locked in their car inside their own garage in Alexandra, New Zealand. The night before, they had been unable to remember a salesman's tutorial on how to unlock their new Mazda 3 from the inside and had spent the night assuming they were trapped because they had forgotten to bring along the battery-operated key. The wife was unconscious when neighbors finally noticed them, and her husband was struggling to breathe. (The door unlocks manually, of course.) [Otago Daily Times, 12-13-2014]

-- At first, it seemed another textbook case of a wrongly convicted murderer being released after a long prison stint (15 years), based on a re-examination of evidence. Illinois officials freed Alstory Simon, who had "confessed" in 1999 to killing two teenagers (before a defendants' advocacy organization convinced a judge that the confession had been coerced). That 1999 confession had allowed the man previously convicted, Anthony Porter, to go free, but prosecutors in October 2014 had second -- or third -- thoughts. They once again believe that Porter was the killer -- even though a different defendants' advocacy organization had originally worked to free him. (In any event, "double jeopardy" prevents Porter's retrial.) [Reuters via Yahoo News, 10-30-2014]

-- Undersheriff Noel Stephen of Okeechobee County, Florida, acknowledged to WPBF-TV in December that among the public services his office performs is supervising parents' spanking of children. After two sisters argued on Dec. 29, their father decided to administer a whipping to one and asked Deputy Stephen to drop by and make sure he stayed within the law. That's "not something we advertise to do," said the deputy, but he estimates he has monitored about a dozen spankings. [WPBF-TV (West Palm Beach), 12-31-2014]

-- The Government Accountability Office was on the job in December, issuing an emphatic ruling that the National Weather Service could not legally issue its workers disposable cups, plates and utensils on the job. Such items are "personal," GAO declared, even though most NWS facilities are in remote locations, staffed by two-person shifts that almost force employees to eat on the premises. "You can't run out" and "grab a burger," one employee said. Nonetheless, after a lengthy deliberative process, GAO said its decision is final. [Washington Post, 12-30-2014]

-- In a November ruling, France's minister of housing and minister of ecology jointly announced further streamlining of law books, removing bulky, out-of-date regulations. Among the rescissions, beginning Dec. 1, is the ban on installing toilets in kitchens. [The Local (Paris), 11-12-2014]

-- Championship-Level Theft: China's Gxnews.com.cn reported in December the arrest of a man in Yulin City, accused of stealing more than 2,000 items of underwear from women in his neighborhood, taken within the last year. He hid his stash above ceiling tiles in stairwells in his apartment building, but he drew attention when one of the ceiling spaces caved in from the weight of the garments, showering the stairs in an array of colorful lingerie. (Just within the last month, according to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, two other men, in Zhejiang and Hubei provinces, have been detained for similar crimes. In the latter case, the alleged thief was also wearing lingerie.) [South China Morning Post, 12-21-2014]

-- British makeup artist Jordan James Parke, 23, told London's The Sun in December how he had fallen in love with the look of U.S. celebrity Kim Kardashian and thus had forced himself to spend the equivalent of about $150,000 on "more than 50" cosmetic procedures to adopt her "pouty" look, including lip and cheek fillers, eyebrow tattoos and laser hair removal. "I love everything about Kim ... the most gorgeous woman ever," he said. "Her skin is perfect, her hair, everything about her" (except that, in The Sun report, only her parts above the neck were mentioned). [People Magazine, 12-18-2014]

-- Artist Megumi Igarashi, 42, known as "no-good girl" in Japan, taunted officials with over-the-top pornography twice in 2014, first in July when she designed a kayak in the image of her genitals and then sought donations by sending contributors data on how to make a 3-D-printed model of her vagina. In her December arrest, according to a BBC News dispatch, she had complained of the contradictions in Japanese culture (also cited in previous News of the Weird stories) that allow glorified public displays of the penis as a symbol of fertility, but banish the vulva from public sight. [BBC News, 12-24-2014]

-- Hopeful Signs for the New Year: (1) Police in Phoenix estimate celebratory gunfire into the air on New Year's Eve was down 22 percent from last year, since the department received reports on only 206 bullets discharged without concern for where they would land. (2) Authorities in Paris estimated that 12 percent fewer cars were set on fire in France on New Year's Eve, with only 940 strangers' vehicles mindlessly torched instead of last year's 1,067. [Associated Press via Tucson News Now, 1-1-2015] [Associated Press via ABC News, 1-1-2015]

-- Recurring, With Different Result: A court in Buenos Aires, Argentina, granted a "habeas corpus" petition in December ordering the freedom of a Sumatran orangutan from Buenos Aires Zoo. Sandra, age 29, is a "non-human person" and thus sufficiently advanced in "cognitive function" to be not merely an object that humans can own without obligation. A Reuters report found no similar judgment on record, but rather, contrary recent rulings in New York (regarding Tommy the chimpanzee) and San Diego (on behalf of orca whales). [Reuters, 12-21-2014]

World's Greatest Lawyer: Christopher Soon won an acquittal in February (2011) for his client Alan Patton -- even though Patton had been charged with violating a law that had been written primarily to stop Alan Patton. That law makes it illegal to collect urine from public restrooms. Patton, of Dublin, Ohio, was convicted in 1993 and 2008 (and charged again in October 2010) of waiting in restrooms and, when young boys finished using the urinal (after Patton had obstructed the flushing mechanism), rushing to gather the contents, which he admitted sexually excited him. After Patton's 2008 conviction, the Ohio legislature made that specific act a felony, and Patton's arrest in October was supposed to lead to a triumphant conviction. (The judge did find Patton guilty of criminal mischief, a misdemeanor.) [Columbus Dispatch, 2-17- 2011]

Thanks This Week to Russell Bell and Steve Ringley, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

(Read more weird news at www.WeirdUniverse.net; send items to WeirdNews@earthlink.net, and P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679.)

Richard Rosario is in year 18 of a 25-to-life sentence for murder, even though 13 alibi witnesses have tried to tell authorities that he was with them -- 1,000 miles away -- at the time of the crime. (Among the 13 are a sheriff's deputy, a pastor and a federal corrections officer.) The "evidence" against him: Two "eyewitnesses" in New York City had picked him out of a mugshot book. Rosario had given police names, addresses and phone numbers of the 13 people in Florida, but so far, everyone (except NBC's "Dateline") has ignored the list, including Rosario's court-appointed lawyers. As is often the case, appeals court judges (state and federal) have trusted the eyewitnesses and the "process." (In November, "Dateline" located nine of the 13, who are still positive Rosario was in Deltona, Florida, on the day of the murder.) [WNBC-TV (New York City), 11-21-2014]

-- Pastor Walter Houston of the Fourth Missionary Church in Houston repeatedly refused in November to conduct a funeral for longtime member Olivia Blair, who died recently at age 93 -- because she had come upon hard times in the last 10 years and had not paid her tithe. Ms. Blair's family had supported the church for 50 years, but Pastor Houston was defiant, explaining, "Membership has its privileges." (The family finally found another church for the funeral.) [Houston Chronicle, 11-26-2014]

-- A U.S. Appeals Court once again in September instructed government agencies that it is unconstitutional to make routine business-inspection raids without a judicial warrant. "We hope that the third time will be the charm," wrote Judge Robin Rosenbaum. In the present case, the court denounced the full-dress SWAT raid in 2010 of the Strictly Skillz barbershop in Orange County, Florida, for "barbering" without a license. (All certificates were found to be up-to-date, and in fact, the raiding agency had verified the licenses in a walk-through two days before.) [Courthouse News Service, 9-18-2014]

-- Disappointed: (1) Cornelius Jefferson, 33, was arrested for assaulting a woman in Laurel County, Kentucky, in October after he had moved there from Georgia to be with her following an online relationship. Jefferson explained that he was frustrated that the woman was not "like she was on the Internet." (2) In November, an unnamed groom in Medina, Saudi Arabia, leaped to his feet at the close of the wedding, shocked at his first glimpse of his new bride with her veil pulled back. Said he (according to the daily Okaz), "You are not the girl I had imagined. I am sorry, but I divorce you." [Herald-Leader (Lexington, 10-21-2014] [Daily Mail (London), 11-17-2014]

-- The recovery rate is about 70 percent for the 1,200 injured birds brought for treatment each year to the Brinzal owl-rescue park near Madrid, Spain -- with acupuncture as the center's specialty treatment. Brinzal provides "physical and psychological rehabilitation" so that eagle owls, tawny owls and the rest can return to the wild, avoiding predators by being taught, through recordings of various wild screeches, which animals are enemies. However, the signature therapy remains the 10 weekly pressure-point sessions of acupuncture. [The Local (Madrid), 12-12-2014]

-- Even though one state requires 400 hours' training just to become a professional manicurist, for instance, most states do not demand nearly such effort to become armed security guards, according to a CNN/Center for Investigative Reporting analysis released in December. Fifteen states require no firearms training at all; 46 ignore mental health status; nine do not check the FBI's criminal background database; and 27 states fail to ascertain whether an applicant is banned by federal law from even carrying a gun. (After an ugly incident in Arizona in which a juvenile gun offender was hired as a guard, the state added a box on its form for applicants to "self-report" the federal ban -- but still refuses to use the FBI database.) [CNN, 12-10-2014]

-- Two high-ranking Hollywood, Florida, police officers were absolved of criminal wrongdoing recently even though they had intentionally deleted their colleagues' names from Internal Affairs investigative records. Assistant Chief Ken Haberland and Maj. Norris Redding somehow convinced prosecutors that they were unaware the files were "public records" that should not be altered. The two are still subject to fines and restitution, but have been returned to administrative duty. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12-11-2014]

(1) In October, Reynolds American Inc., whose iconic product is Camel cigarettes, announced it would ban employees at its North Carolina headquarters from smoking in the offices, relegating them to special smokers' rooms. (Critics of the company noted that Reynolds has for years staunchly denied that "secondary smoke" is dangerous.) (2) In September, Guinter Kahn, the South Florida dermatologist who developed minoxidil (the hair-restoring ingredient in Rogaine), passed away at age 80. Dr. Kahn himself had noticeable hair loss, but was allergic to minoxidil. [Associated Press via USA Today, 10-22-2014] [Associated Press via Washington Post, 9-26-2014]

(1) The owner of a wine shop in Highgate, England, said the thief who robbed him in September somehow placed him in a trance so the man could pick his pockets -- and then, brushing past him on his way out, the man brought the shop owner out of the trance. Victim Aftab Haider, 56, pointed to surveillance video showing him staring vacantly during the several seconds in which his wallet was being lifted from his trousers. (2) In October in Scotland's Perth Sheriff Court, Paul Coombs was sentenced to 14 months in jail for a June home invasion in which accomplices conveyed Coombs' threats to the resident because Coombs himself is deaf and does not speak. [London Evening Standard, 12-5-2014] [STV News (Glasgow), 10-30-2014]

Cry for Help: Calvin Nicol, 31, complained that he was obviously the victim of a "hate crime" when thugs beat him up in Ottawa, Ontario, on Nov. 1 -- just because he is intensely tattooed and pierced, with black-inked eyes, a split tongue and implanted silicone horns on his forehead. (Though "hate" may have been involved, so far "body modification" is not usually covered in anti-discrimination laws. However, Nicol suggested one legal angle when he explained that "piercing myself and changing my appearance, and making me look like the person I want to look like is almost a religious experience to me.") [Ottawa Citizen, 11-15-2014]

(1) Three women, whose ages ranged from 24 to 41, were charged with larceny on Black Friday in Hadley, Massachusetts, when they were caught in the Wal-Mart parking lot loaded down with about $2,700 worth of allegedly shoplifted goods. The women had moments earlier begged a Wal-Mart employee for help getting into their car -- because they had locked themselves out. (2) Michael Rochefort, 38, and Daniel Gargiulo, 39, were merely burglary suspects in Palm Beach County, Florida, on Sept. 25, but sheriff's deputies' case against them soon strengthened. While being detained in the back seat of a patrol car (and despite a video camera pointed at them), they conversed uninhibitedly about getting their alibis straight. [The Republican (Springfield), 11-29-2014] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 12-8-2014]

In December, Florine Brown, 29, finally accepted removal, by the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, of the estimated 300 rats, grown from her initial three, inhabiting her house (with the familiar droppings and smell). "I just want them to go to good homes," she said, comforted that a local rat "shelter" would take them in temporarily. "I really depended on the rats to get me by (bouts of depression)." (It turns out rat-removal is a slow process, since they hide. It took several days even to trap the first 70.) [WFLA-TV (Tampa), 12-10-2014]

The long-standing springtime culinary tradition of urine-soaked eggs endures, in Dongyang, China, according to a March (2011) CNN dispatch. Prepubescent boys contribute their urine (apparently without inhibition) by filling containers at schools, and the eggs are boiled according to recipe and sold for the equivalent of about 23 cents each. Many residents consider the tradition gross, but for devotees, it represents, as one said, "the (joyous) smell of spring." [CNNGo, 3-14-2011; MinistryofTofu.com (citing Qianjiang Evening Post), 3-11-2011]

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