The Utah Court of Appeals ruled in February that Barbara Bagley has a legal right to sue herself for her own negligent driving that caused the death of her husband. Typically, in U.S. courts, a party cannot profit from its own negligence, but Bagley is the official "representative" administering her husband's estate and has a duty to claim debts owed to the husband. Those debts would include "wrongful death" damages from a careless driver (actually, the careless driver's insurance company), even if the careless driver was herself. Of course, if her lawsuit is successful, the monetary award would become part of the husband's estate, a portion of which will likely go to her. [Salt Lake Tribune, 2-18-2015]

-- Can't Possibly Be True: For a brief period in 1951 and 1952, an educational kit, the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab, was for sale in the United States even though it came with testable samples of four types of uranium ore and three different radiation sources (alpha, beta, gamma). A surviving copy of the kit has been on display recently at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but the radioactive materials had to be removed before the kit could be shipped to Belfast. (The kit had failed to sell well; kids apparently preferred the company's erector sets.) [BBC News, 2-16-2015]

-- In February, the Kansas Humanities Council, providing background to a current, traveling Smithsonian Institution exhibit, posted a description of a 1925 baseball game in Wichita in which the professional, all-black Wichita Monrovians took on members of the local Ku Klux Klan. (Historians guessed that the KKK risked the embarrassment of defeat only because it needed the exposure to overcome declining enrollments.) The Monrovians (champions of the Colored Western League the year before) won, 10-8, and the Klan shut down in Kansas two years later. [Kansas Humanities Council , 2-17-2015]

A 37-year-old Lancashire, England, businessman (identified in later news reports as Duane Walters), fearing surgery for suspected bladder cancer, was discovered to be cancer-free, but on the other hand, he was found to have a uterus, ovaries and cervix -- even though he has fully functioning exterior male genitalia. He was referred to Manchester University Hospital for a hysterectomy (to prevent the possibility of pregnancy) -- and was counseled that he might eventually become menopausal. His condition, "persistent Mullerian duct syndrome," is rare enough when diagnosed at birth but, according to experts cited by the Daily Telegraph, virtually unheard-of at age 37. Walters said he will continue living as a man. [Daily Telegraph, 2-7-2015]

-- Least Competent Terrorists: (1) A recent YouTube compilation of footage gleaned from, in some cases, unedited ISIS promotion videos, claimed to show jihadists accidentally killing themselves. Several fighters in a group photo appear to be blown up when one of them fumblingly detonates a captured bomb, and one man was killed when he apparently tried to reload a mortar launcher too quickly. (2) London's Daily Telegraph reported in January that the "Darkshadow" jihadists from Tunisia and Ivory Coast, who had proclaimed their website-hacking would disrupt international travel, wound up taking down a site consisting merely of bus timetables in Bristol, England. Darkshadow's English translator also misspelled Muslim ("Muslum"). [Daily Mail (London), 2-6-2015] [Daily Telegraph, 1-2-2015]

-- Perspective: ISIS' very public recent executions of a Jordanian pilot and two Japanese citizens were met with starkly different reactions. In Jordan, King Abdullah II led his nation in a call for bloody revenge. In Japan (according to a February Associated Press dispatch from Tokyo), feelings were mixed because of "meiwaku" -- Japan's cultural feeling that the dead victims (and their families) were "causing trouble" by placing themselves in harm's way. Said one man cited by the AP, "In the old days, their parents would have had to commit hara-kiri to apologize." In fact, both victims' families did repeatedly apologize for inconveniencing the government, which had warned citizens to stay away from the war zone. [Associated Press via Cortez Journal (Cortez, Colo.), 2-5-2015]

-- Point Taken: At a February meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, regarding whether meetings should be open to the general public, the representative from Belarus expressed alarm because of potential problems for the security staff. "What if," he asked (according to a Reuters report), "there were topless ladies screaming from the public gallery throwing bottles of mayonnaise?" (According to the official summary, the Mexican delegate apparently earnestly pointed out that some U.N. meetings were already open to the public, but as yet there had been no mayonnaise-droppings.) [Reuters, 2-11-2015]

-- CSI Netherlands: Police in the Dutch town of Haarlem, near Amsterdam, raided an urban marijuana farm after a recent snowfall. In photographs of the neighborhood, all yards and roofs of houses are blanketed in white -- except for a certain portion of the roof of one home, on which the snow had completely melted. Police, deducing that the attic was likely an illegal marijuana greenhouse, made arrests. [Daily Mail (London), 2-9-2015]

-- News You Can Use: If you're in pain, shouting "Owww!" has measurable therapeutic value. Writing recently in the Journal of Pain, researchers from the National University of Singapore hypothesize that the muscle movements in vocalizing somehow divert or confuse pain signals, which otherwise would go unimpeded to the brain. Of subjects who plunged their hands into extremely cold water, those who were allowed to vocalize kept their hands immersed for up to three minutes longer than those who were silent. (The "oww" sound is similar in many languages and is apparently instinctive from birth.) [International Business Times (New York), 2-2-2015]

A company called AudioQuest believes there are serious music listeners sufficiently grossed out by the imperfect sound delivered by ordinary ethernet cables (typically with plastic connectors on each end and selling for around $20) that relief is needed. The company recently introduced the Cat-6 Ethernet cable, whose connectors are made of silver. For those who require the reportedly richer sound, relief is only $10,500 away. [Slashgear.com, 2-12-2015]

Police in Glendale, Oregon, arrested a 27-year-old man and his 22-year-old girlfriend after their 7-week-old son died of starvation. The couple claimed to have been feeding the boy properly, but investigators found that the pair operated an online porn business in which the mother lactated onto various items while the paying customers watched -- and believe that little of the mother's milk remained for the baby. [KPIC-TV (Roseburg, Ore.), 2-19-2015]

(1) Robert Michael Phillips was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February and faces a series of charges after police witnessed him allegedly conducting drug transactions and found heroin in his pocket and crack cocaine in his vehicle. (His rap sheet includes seven convictions and a prison stint.) On his February police intake form, under "occupation," Phillips stated, "drug dealer." (2) John Balmer, 50, was arrested at a Kmart in Hudson, Florida, in January as he attempted to pass a bag (allegedly containing marijuana and methamphetamine) to another person in line. Balmer was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Who needs drugs?" above lettering that read, "No, seriously, I have drugs." [Palm Beach Post, 2-6-2015] [Tampa Bay Times, 1-6-2015]

People With Issues: Self-described Las Vegas "performer" Staysha Randall took 3,200 different piercings in her body during the same sitting on June 7 (2011) to break the Guinness Book world record by 100 prickings. (Veteran Las Vegas piercer Bill "Danger" Robinson did the honors.) Coincidentally, on the same day in Edinburgh, Scotland, the woman with the most lifetime piercings (6,925) got married. Elaine Davidson, 46, wore a full white ensemble that left bare only her face, which was decorated green and sported 192 of the piercings. The lucky guy was Davidson's longtime friend Douglas Watson, a balding, 60-something man with no piercings or tattoos. [Las Vegas Weekly, 6-8-2011] [Daily Telegraph (London), 6-8-2011]

Thanks This Week to Larry Neer, David Nelson, Jan Linders, and Steve Dunn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

A Saratoga Springs, New York, resort has begun accepting totally defeated husbands and wives for a relaxed weekend that includes divorce, bringing to America a concept already successful in six European cities. The Gideon Putnam Resort & Spa charges $5,000 for a couple to check in on a Friday, married, but leave Sunday officially single (complete with all legal niceties and various resort amenities, including, of course, separate rooms). Even though the couple must be fairly level-headed to accept this approach, the facility manager expressed concern that since the resort also books weddings, the "uncouplers" might inadvertently witness difficult scenes. (Gideon Putnam has hosted four divorces so far, but, said the European founder of the package service, "hundreds" of couples have used the services in Europe.) [New York Post, 2-10-2015]

-- Another Animal With a Worse Sex Life Than Yours: No organism has it tougher than the male South-East Asian coin spider, according to research reported by New Scientist in January. It is somehow driven to mate with a female up to four times larger who is almost as driven to eat the male as to mate. After insemination, the male impulsively fights off other males' attempts to disrupt the conception, and that means becoming a more nimble fighter, achieved, according to Matjaz Kuntner of the Slovenian Academy of the Arts and Sciences, by biting off its own genitals, since that organ comprises about one-tenth the spider's body weight. [New Scientist, 1-16-2015]

-- Because We Can: Scientists at the University of California, Irvine (with Australian partners) announced in January that they had figured out how to unboil a hen's egg. (After boiling, the egg's proteins become "tangled," but the scientists' device can untangle them, allowing the egg white to return to its previous state.) Actually, the researchers' paper promises dramatically reduced costs in several applications, from cancer treatments to food production, where similar, clean untanglings might take "thousands" of times longer. [UC Irvine press release, promoting publication in the ChemBioChem journal, 1-23-2015]

(1) The Knoxville (Tennessee) Police Department reminded motorists (via its Facebook page) that all vehicles need working headlights for night driving. Included was a recent department photo of the car of a Sweetwater, Tennessee, motorist who was ticketed twice the same evening with no headlights but only flashlights tied to his bumper with bungee cords. (2) A forlorn-appearing Anneliese Young, 82, was arrested at a CVS pharmacy in Augusta, Georgia, in February after store security allegedly caught her shoplifting a container of "Sexiest Fantasies" body spray that, according to the packaging, "provides a burst of sensuality ... as addictive and seductive as the woman who wears it," "sure to drive any man wild." [WATE-TV (Knoxville), 2-5-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 2-9-2015]

-- The Jeju Island Korean restaurant in Zhengzhou, China, staged a promotion last month to pick up lunch tabs for the 50 "most handsome" people to dine there every day. Judging was by a panel of cosmetic surgeons (who were partnering with the restaurant) and, as contestant-diners posed for photographs, they were evaluated on "quality of" eyes, noses, mouths and especially foreheads (better if "protruding"). [Daily Telegraph (London), 1-13-2015]

-- The owner of the Kingsland Vegetarian Restaurant in a suburb of Canberra, Australia, apologized in February for the cockroach infestation that contributed to a $16,000 fine, explaining that, for moral reasons, he could not bring himself to exterminate living things -- even cockroaches. (Less well-defended were Kingsland's toilet, grease and food-storage shortcomings.) [Brisbane Times, 2-1-2015]

Among the participants at this year's Davos, Switzerland, gathering of billionaires and important people was property developer Jeff Greene, 60, who owns mansions in New York, Malibu and Palm Springs, and whose Beverly Hills estate is on the market for around $195 million. Greene famously won big betting against overvalued sub-prime mortgages before the 2008 Great Recession, but, shortly after landing at Davos, he gave Bloomberg Business his take on the symptoms of current economic turmoil (that he had capitalized on for part of his wealth by exploiting people's desire for expensive houses they ultimately could not afford). "America's lifestyle expectations are far too high," Greene explained, "and need to be adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence." [Daily Mail (London), 1-22-2015]

Sorry, Ladies, He's Taken: In yet another chilling episode of body modification, the otherwise handsome Henry Damon, 37, married father of two, appeared in January at the Caracas (Venezuela) International Tattoo Expo as Red Skull (archenemy of Captain America), who has somehow fascinated Damon for years. The exhibiting of his idolatry began with subdermal forehead implants (ultimately replacing his eyebrows with prominent ridges), followed by going all-in for Red Skull by allowing a medical school dropout to lop off what looks like half of his nose. (How his deep red color was achieved was not mentioned in news reports.) For the record, the "surgeon" called Damon "a physically and intellectually healthy person." [Daily Mail (London), 2-4-2015]

Swedish public broadcaster SVT, capitalizing on the country's supposedly liberal sexuality to promote an upcoming children's series on the human body, produced a one-minute cartoon featuring genitals singing and dancing. However, the SVT program director admitted in January that there was criticism -- not for salaciousness, but because the penis was portrayed with a moustache and the vagina with long eyelashes, which some critics said unfortunately "reinforced gender stereotypes." [Associated Press via WTOP Radio, 1-22-2015]

Mastering the Technology: (1) Donald Harrison, 22, wanted for assault in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, made police aware of his whereabouts when he posted a "selfie" on Facebook from a Greyhound bus with the notation, "It's Time to Leave Pa." He was picked up at a stop in nearby Youngstown, Ohio. (2) Police in Houston arrested Dorian Walker-Gaines, 20, and Dillian Thompson, 22, after they posted selfies on Facebook of themselves enjoying a handful of $100 bills -- photos they took on an iPad they had stolen on Jan. 8 and whose photos automatically uploaded to the victim's iCloud account. (Incidentally, Walker-Gaines has, tattooed across his chest, "BRILLIANT.") [Associated Press via WKBN-TV (Youngstown)), 2-10-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 1-22-2015]

Additional details reported by the Toronto Sun in January on an August 2014 News of the Weird item reveal that the motorist who hit three bicycling teenagers in Innisfil, Ontario, in 2012 (killing one, putting another in a wheelchair) is suing the victims for $1.35 million for "emotional trauma" the incident caused her (though she was not otherwise injured) because they "were incompetent bicyclists" and "did not apply their brakes properly." The boys wore reflective jackets and had no alcohol in their systems, but the driver, Sharlene Simon, admitted to at least one drink and to speeding. (On the other hand, her husband, who was following in another car, is a police officer, and Simon was neither charged nor breath-tested.) [Toronto Sun, 1-10-2015]

(1) A mummified monk in Mongolia became the latest religious figure whose followers insist he is not dead but living in a meditative trance. Dr. Barry Kerzin, among whose patients is the Dalai Lama, called the state "tukdam." Scientists attributed the monk's preserved condition to Mongolia's cold weather. (2) After consulting its substantial research base, The Smoking Gun website reported that Steven Anderson's arrest in Fargo, North Dakota, in January was only the third time that someone operating a Zamboni had been charged with DUI. Anderson, 27, was arrested while (erratically) resurfacing the ice between periods of a girls' high school hockey game. [BBC News, 2-4-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 2-1-2015]

Oklahoma inmate Eric Torpy was reported (in May 2011) as having second thoughts while only six years into his 33-year sentence for armed robbery. According to an Associated Press dispatch, he might especially regret the years 2035 to 2038. His original sentence was 30 years, but he challenged the judge that if he was "going down," it would be in "Larry Bird's jersey" -- the basketball player's number "33." Judge Ray Elliott then accommodated Torpy -- 33 years, not 30. Said Torpy to the reporter, "I'm pretty sure (Bird) thinks I'm an idiot." [Boston Globe-AP, 5-13-2011]

Thanks This Week to Mary Kearney, Dave Shepardson, Chris Schulman, Craig Bossler, Patty Lively, and Wayne Halsa, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

It turns out that a person having a heart attack is usually safer to be in an ambulance headed to a hospital than to already be a patient in a hospital, according to a study by University of North Carolina researchers. It takes longer, on average, for non-ER hospital staff to comply with hospital protocols in ordering and evaluating tests (nearly three hours, according to the study) than it does for ER (and ambulance) staff, who treat every case of cardiac symptoms as life-threatening. Overall, according to a February Wall Street Journal report, the study found the mortality rate for heart-attack victims treated in emergency rooms is 4 percent, compared to 40 percent for patients already admitted for other reasons and then suffering heart attacks. [Wall Street Journal, 2-3-2015]

-- Uh-Oh: The man hospitalized in fair condition in January after being rammed from behind by a car while on his bicycle happened to be Darryl Isaacs, 50, one of the most ubiquitously advertising personal-injury lawyers in Louisville, Kentucky. Isaacs calls himself the "Heavy Hitter" and the "Kentucky Hammer" for his aggressiveness on behalf of, among other clients, victims of traffic collisions. The (soon-to-be-poorer) driver told police the sun got in his eyes. [Associated Press via WKYT-TV (Lexington), 1-27-2015]

-- Elephants in Love: (1) India TV reported in January that a wild male elephant from an adjoining sanctuary had broken into the Nandan Kanan zoo in Odisha, wildly besotted with a female, Heera. The male cast aside two other females trying to protect Heera and mated with her. The male lingered overnight until zookeepers could shoo him away. (2) A frisky male elephant crushed four cars in 10 days in January at Thailand's Khao Yai National Park -- the result, said a park veterinarian, of the stress of the mating season. (Only the last of the four cars was occupied, but no injuries were serious.) [India TV News, 1-1-2015] [The Nation (Bangkok) via 9News (Sydney), 1-12-2015]

-- While nearly all Americans enjoy low gasoline prices, residents of sea-locked Alaskan towns (Barrow, Kotzebue, Nome, Ketchikan) have continued to pay their same hefty prices ($7 a gallon, according to one January report on Alaska Dispatch News). Though the price in Anchorage and Fairbanks resembles that in the rest of America, unconnected towns can be supplied only during a four-month breather from icy sea conditions and thus received their final winter shipments last summer. The price the supplier was forced to pay then dictates pump prices until around May or June. [Alaska Dispatch News, 1-2-2015]

In January, "Captain Mercedes," a registered user of the Reddit.com social media site, announced he had compiled a data file cataloguing every bowel movement he had in 2014 and was offering the file to other users to design hypotheses and visual representations of the data in ways that might improve his relationship with his alimentary canal. According to the data-analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com, the "researcher" used the standard "Bristol stool scale" (seven categories of excreta, by shape and consistency) "and produced interesting hypotheses in the ensuing Reddit conversation." [FiveThirtyEight.com, 1-25-2015] [Reddit.com/user/captainmercedes]

-- (1) A January examination of New York City records through NYC Open Data found that the five most common first names of taxicab drivers licensed by the city are five variations in the spelling of the name "Mohammed." (2) The last McDonald's burger to be sold in Iceland before the chain abandoned the country in 2009 has been on open display at the National Museum of Iceland and was recently moved to the Bus Hostel in Reykjavik, "still in good condition," according to the hostel manager. "Some people have even stolen some of the fries." [Daily Mail (London), 1-14-2015] [Iceland Review, 1-28-2015]

-- Harvard University medical researcher Mark Shrime documented recently how easily made-up research can wind up in reputable-sounding academic journals -- by submitting an article composed by random-generating text software, supposedly about "the surgical and neoplastic role of cacao extract in breakfast cereals" (and authored by "Pinkerton A. LeBrain and Orson Welles"). Of 37 journals, 17 quickly accepted it, some feigning actually having read it, with the only catch being that Shrime would have to pay a standard $500 fee for publication. Shrime warned that some of the journals have titles dangerously close to highly respected journals and cautions journalist (and reader) skepticism. [Fast Company, 1-27-2015]

Ms. Meng Wang filed a lawsuit recently in New York City against Gildan Outerwear over her disappointment with Kushyfoot Shaping Tights. In television ads, Wang wrote, a young model sashays down a city street with her eyes dreamily closed and "moans and utters highly sexually charged phrases" "including 'That's the spot' and 'so good' ... passersby (stop) in their tracks to look at her with mouths agape." Wang said the ad clearly implies that the tights produce an orgasmic sensation of some sort, wrote Gothamist.com, but that she, herself, has come up empty. [Gothamist.com, 1-14-2015]

(1) Margaretta Evans, 63, finally reported her missing son to the Myrtle Beach (South Carolina) Police Department in January. She said Jason Callahan, who would be 38, had been missing since "early June of 1995" when he left home to follow the Grateful Dead on tour in California and Illinois. (2) Riccardo Pacifici, described as the head of Rome's Jewish community, was accidentally trapped while visiting the Auschwitz prison death camp in January on Holocaust Remembrance Day, after staff had departed. When Pacifici and four associates crawled out through a window, security officers spotted them, provoking the New York magazine headline, "Polish Police Detained a Jewish Leader Trying to Escape Auschwitz." [The Smoking Gun, 1-14-2015] [New York, 1-28-2015]

-- Two men remain at large after stealing an ATM from Casino Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, in January. They had smashed through glass front doors, unbolted the machine, put it on a dolly and rolled it to a waiting car (though it briefly toppled over onto one of the culprits). Managers told police the ATM was empty, disabled and scheduled to be moved to another location later that day. A Calgary police officer expressed bemusement at the city's recent ATM smash-and-grab epidemic, since the machines are hard to unbolt, hard to open and emptied several times a day. "It's a very ineffective way to make a living." [National Post, 1-29-2015]

-- Unwise Robbery Target: Police in Champaign, Illinois, charged Clayton Dial, 23, with robbery on New Year's night, for carrying a pellet gun into the Kamakura Japanese restaurant and demanding money from the hostess. However, he fled quickly when chef Tetsuji Miwa walked over, holding his large sushi knife. "He saw the blade," Miwa said later, and "started running." (Miwa and two co-workers gave chase and held him for police.) [News-Gazette (Champaign), 1-1-2015]

One of the legendary American lawsuit successes is the 1970 award of $50,000 to Gloria Sykes, whose brain injury on a San Francisco cable car left the previously modest Midwestern woman with an unrestrained libido. News of the Weird reported a similar such case, from London, in December 2006. Now, in January 2015, the British Columbia Supreme Court awarded Alissa Afonina $1.5 million for her auto-accident brain injury. She was apparently a demure, high-achieving student, but following the 2008 collision, she had no impulse control, become "isolated," had "outbursts," made "inappropriate sexual comments" -- and was able to earn a living only as a dominatrix. (Alfonina's mother, also injured in the accident, was awarded $940,000.) [National Post, 1-29-2015]

"My ultimate dream is to be buried in a deep ocean close to where penguins live," explained the former Alfred David, 79, otherwise known in his native Belgium as "Monsieur Pingouin" (Mr. Penguin), so named because a 1968 auto accident left him with a waddle in his walk that he decided to embrace with gusto. (His wife abandoned the marriage when he made the name change official; being "Mrs. Penguin" was not what she had signed up for.) Mr. Pingouin started a penguin-item museum that ultimately totaled 3,500 items, and he created a hooded, full-body black-and-white penguin outfit that, according to a September (2011) Reuters dispatch, he wears daily in his waddles around his Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek. [Reuters, 9-29-2011]

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