Silicon Valley code-writers and engineers work long hours -- with apparently little time for "food" as we know it. Eating is "time wasted," in the words of celebrity inventor Elon Musk, and normal meals a "marketing facade," said another valley bigwig. The New York Times reported in May that techies are eagerly scarfing down generic (but nutrient-laden) liquids like Schmilk and People Chow, largely for ease of preparation, to speed their return to work. The Times food editor described one product as "oat flour" washed down with "the worst glass of milk ever." "Pancake batter," according to a Times reporter. (That supermarket staple Ensure? According to the food editor, it's "fine wine" compared to Schmilk.) [New York Times, 5-25-2015]

Air travelers last year left $675,000 in (obviously) spare change in airport screening bins, reported the Transportation Security Administration in April. Of the cars reported stolen in 2014, 44,828 were with keys left inside them, according to an April National Insurance Crime Bureau release. American credit card holders fail to claim "about $4 billion" in earned "rewards" each year, according to CardHub.com's 2015 Credit Card Rewards Report. [Time magazine, 4-7-2015] [Bloomberg Business, 4-27-2015] [CardHub report (undated except for the year)]

-- (1) Nursing student Jennifer Burbella filed a lawsuit against Misericordia University (near Scranton, Pennsylvania) for not helping her enough to pass a required course that she failed twice. The professional caregiver-to-be complained of stress so severe that she needed a distraction-free room and extra time for the exam, but claims she deserved even more special treatment. (2) Four Columbia University students complained in May that courses in Greek mythology and Roman poetry need "trigger" warnings -- advance notice to super-sensitive students that history may include narratives of "disturbing" events (that have somehow been studied without such warnings for centuries). [Fox News, 5-13-2015] [Washington Post, 5-14-2015]

-- In March, following the departure of Zayn Malik from the British band One Direction, an executive with the Peninsula employment law firm in Manchester told London's Daily Telegraph that he had received "hundreds" of calls from employers seeking advice about workers who were requesting "compassionate" leave because Malik's resignation had left them distraught. (Also, a spokeswoman for the charity Young Minds told the Telegraph she was concerned about Malik fans self-harming.) [Daily Telegraph, 3-27-2015]

Among recent inventions not expected to draw venture capital interest (reported by Popular Science in June): (1) A Canadian software engineer's machine that unspools toilet paper exactly three squares at a time (but please keep fingers away from the cleaver!). (2) A Japanese shoulder-mounted tomato-feeder that provides nourishment to marathoners without their needing to catch tomatoes provided by supporters. (3) Google software engineer Maurice Bos' whiteboard-mounted clock that writes down the exact time, with a marker, at five-minute intervals (after erasing the previous time). [Popular Science, June 2015]

Britain's Home Office, judging requests for asylum by immigrants threatened with deportation but who fear oppressive treatment if returned to their home countries, recently turned down asylum for Nigerian lesbian activist Aderonke Apata, 47, apparently because the office doubted her orientation. Though Apata had submitted testimonials (and even photographs) "proving" her homosexuality, the Home Office was skeptical because she had children from a previous heterosexual relationship. On the other hand, an immigration court in England ruled in April that a Libyan man, identified only as "HU," could not be deported since he is a career criminal and a chronic drunk who would be so unlikely to reform his drinking that he would surely face a lifetime of prison in Libya. [Daily Telegraph, 3-4-2015] [Daily Telegraph, 4-27-2015]

If Only There Was Somewhere He Could Have Turned for Moral Guidance: Suspended Catholic Monsignor Kevin Wallin, 63, was sentenced in May to more than five years in prison for running a meth distribution ring from Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he also operated a sex shop to launder the drug profits. (Though he faced a 10-year sentence, he had a history of charity work and submitted more than 80 letters of support from high-ranking clergy.) [Associated Press via WTIC-TV (Hartford), 5-7-2015]

Walter Merrick, 66, was charged with aggravated assault in the New Orleans suburb of Harvey, Louisiana, in March after an altercation with neighbor Clarence Sturdivant, 64, over the comparative merits of Busch and Budweiser beers. Bud-man Sturdivant fired the only shot, but a sheriff's deputy said Merrick was the aggressor -- since he had offered Sturdivant only a Busch. (In Tulsa, Oklahoma, in April, police found two blood-splattered men in an apartment parking lot at 1 a.m., the result of a dual stabbing spree with broken beer bottles -- over whether Android phones are superior to iPhones.) [Reuters, 5-13-2015] [KTUL-TV (Tulsa), 4-17-2015]

Holly Solomon, 31, pleaded guilty in April to aggravated assault with her Jeep -- against her then-husband -- and has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. The crime occurred in a suburb of Phoenix in November 2012, days after President Obama's re-election, as Solomon ran down her spouse because she was angry that he had neglected to vote for Mitt Romney as expected. However, his no-show did not affect the outcome, as Romney easily won the state's 11 electoral votes without him. [Reuters, 5-21-2015]

Short-Attention-Span Thieves: (1) Alvaro Ortega, 34, was arrested for taking a uniformed police officer's cellphone in the East Coast Catering deli in Bayonne, New Jersey, on May 18. The sleuthing was easy, in that Ortega was the only other person in the deli at the time and sheepishly admitted the theft. (2) Seattle's KIRO-TV reported in May that a Seattle couple holding a Powerball ticket worth $1 million still has it, despite being theft victims. Someone smashed open a window in their car on May 14 and stole, among other items, a pair of sunglasses that was resting atop the lottery ticket, but left it undisturbed. [The Jersey Journal, 5-21-2015] [KIRO-TV, 5-27-2015]

Footnotes: (1) Rusty Sills, 56, previously an "underwear bandit" in West Des Moines, Iowa, was arrested in Pinellas Park, Florida, in March and charged with stealing women's shoes -- sometimes "replacing" them with shoes he no longer fancied. (Police found about 100 pairs in his van.) (2) James Dowdy, 43, on parole for an earlier sock theft, was arrested once again in Belleville, Illinois, after police received reports of socks missing in burglaries. Authorities said Dowdy had been involved in "other types of sock-related incidents (and) using socks in an inappropriate and obscene manner," but details were not reported. (Found in a search of Dowdy's home were notebooks of children's names, ages and types of socks worn.) [WFTS-TV (Tampa), 3-16-2015] [Belleville News-Democrat, 5-20-2015]

Faced with a government fee accepted by most real estate investors who view it as a routine cost of doing business, wealthy Arizona investor Wayne Howard balked. Instead of the ordinary filing-fee rate of $50 for registering a property deed, he demanded that all 2,922 of his deeds be recorded for $500, and when the Pinal County treasurer turned him down, he told the official he would simply use his pull in the legislature to change the law and get his 99.6 percent discount that way. (He almost succeeded. The bill passed the state Senate and was favored in the House, but after the Arizona Republic newspaper exposed Howard's imperial move, it failed, 30-28.) [Arizona Republic, 3-18-2015]

Tombstone, Arizona, which was the site of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (commemorated in a 1957 movie), is about 70 miles from the Tucson shopping center where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others were shot in January (2011). A Los Angeles Times dispatch later that month noted that the "Wild West" of 1881 Tombstone had far stricter gun control than 2011 Arizona. The historic gunfight occurred when the marshal (Virgil Earp, brother of Wyatt) tried to enforce the town's no-carry law against local thugs. Today, however, with few restrictions and no licenses required, virtually any Arizonan 18 or older can carry a handgun openly. [Los Angeles Times, 1-23-2011]

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

When officials in Richmond, California, learned in 2009 that 70 percent of the city's murders and firearms assaults were directly linked to 17 people, they decided on a bold program: to pay off those 17 to behave themselves. For a budget of about $1.2 million a year, the program offers individual coaching, health care coverage and several hundred dollars a month in stipends to former thugs who stick to their "life map" of personal goals and conflict-resolution training. According to an April report on National Public Radio's "This American Life," Richmond is no longer among the most dangerous towns in America, with the murder rate in fact having fallen from its all-time yearly high of 62 to 11 last year. [WBEZ Radio (Chicago) via News.com.au (Sydney, Australia), 4-30-2015]

-- One might believe that a 6th-grader, suspended for a whole year after school officials found a "marijuana" leaf in his backpack, might be immediately un-suspended if authorities (after three field tests) found the leaf was neither marijuana nor anything else illegal. Not, however, at Bedford Middle School in Roanoke, Virginia, whose officials said they had acted on gossip that students called the leaf "marijuana," and therefore under the state schools' "look-alike-drug" policy, the 6th-grader was just as guilty as if the leaf were real. Formerly a high-achiever student, he has, since last September, suffered panic attacks and is under the care of a pediatric psychiatrist, and his parents filed a federal lawsuit in February. [Roanoke Times, 3-14-2015]

-- Biologist Regine Gries of Canada's Simon Fraser University devotes every Saturday to letting about 5,000 bedbugs suck blood from her arm -- part of research by Gries and her biologist-husband Gerhard to develop a pheromone-based "trap" that can lure the bugs from infested habitats like bedding. (She estimates having been bitten 200,000 times since the research began, according to a May Wired magazine report.) Regine holds each mesh-topped jar of bugs against her arm for about 10 minutes each (which Gerhard cannot do because he is allergic) -- leading, of course, to hours of itchiness and swelling in the name of progress. [Wired, May 2015]

The three gentle grammar pedants (one an environmental lawyer calling himself "Agente Punto Final," i.e., "Agent Period") devoted to ridding Quito, Ecuador, of poorly written street graffiti, have been patrolling the capital since November 2014, identifying misplaced commas and other atrocities and making sneaky corrective raids with spray paint. Punto Final told The Washington Post in March that he acts out of "moral obligation" -- that "punctuation matters, commas matter, accents matter." As police take vandalism seriously in Quito, the three must act stealthily, in hoodies and ski masks, with one always standing lookout. [Washington Post, 3-6-2015]

-- Almost half of the DNA collected from a broad swath of the New York City subway system matched no known organism, and less than 1 percent was human. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers announced in February that they had identified much DNA by swabbing passenger car and station surfaces, finding abundant matches to beetles and flies (and even traces of inactive anthrax and bubonic plague) but that since so few organisms have been fully DNA-"sequenced," there was no cause for alarm. The lead researcher fondly compared the bacteria-teeming subway to a "rain forest," deserving "awe and wonder" that "there are all these species" that so far cause humans relatively little harm. [New York Times, 2-5-2015]

-- "I'm doing what God wants," Mike Holpin, 56, told British TV's Channel 5 in April. "In the Bible, God says go forth and multiply," said the unemployed former carny who claims to have fathered at least 40 children (now aged from 3 to 37) by 20 different women. Holpin has been married three times, and lives with his fiancee Diane and two kids in the Welsh town of Cwm. "I (will) never stop," Holpin said. "I'm as fertile as sin..." [Daily Telegraph, 4-1-2015]

(1) A 21-year-old man in Hefei, China, collapsed in May after 14 straight days of Internet gaming, yet when paramedics revived him, the man begged them to leave and put him back in front of the screen. (2) Then, two weeks later in Nanchang, China, a 24-year-old female gamer took only a minutes-long break at an Internet cafe‚ at 4 a.m., to head to a rest room and give birth -- returning with her blood-covered baby in her arms to resume her place at the mouse pad. (London's Daily Telegraph, reporting from Beijing in May, estimated that China has 24 million Internet "addicts.") [Anhui Business Review via Daily Telegraph (London), 5-4-2015] [People's Daily Online via Daily Mail (London), 5-15-2015]

-- It takes only four of the U.S. Supreme Court justices to accept a case for review, but it takes five to stay an execution. On January 23, the Court accepted the case challenging Oklahoma's death penalty chemicals, but the lead challenger, Charles Warner, lacking that fifth "stay" vote, had been executed eight days earlier (using the challenged chemicals), during the time the justices were deliberating. (The case, Warner vs. Gross, was immediately renamed Glossip V. Gross, but Richard Glossip himself was scheduled to die on January 28. Then, without explanation, at least one other justice supplied Glossip's missing fifth vote, and, with one day to spare, his execution was stayed until the challenge to the chemicals is resolved.) [New York Times, 1-26-2015]

-- Only 17 states have specific laws to protect against "revenge porn" (exposing ex-lovers' intimate images online as retaliation for a break-up), but a possible solution in the other states, reported CNN in April, is for the victim to file a "takedown" demand under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which would subject the avenger to penalties for not removing the images. However, to prove copyright, the victim must file copies of the bawdy images with the U.S. Copyright Office, increasing the victim's trauma (though an office spokesman told CNN that only the copyright examiner would see them). [CNN Wire via WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va.), 4-27-2015]

Drivers Hit With Their Own Cars Recently: (1) A 64-year-old woman was knocked down by her in-gear minivan in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, as she got out to retrieve something from her house (March). (2) A man in South Centre Township, Pennsylvania, was hospitalized after leaving his idling car to adjust something under the hood and apparently adjusted the wrong thing, sending the car thrusting forward (February). (3) Jamie Vandegraaf, 23, was slammed by his own car as he leaped from the driver's side (not far enough to clear the door, apparently) to avoid South Portland, Maine, police and U.S. Marshals pursuing him concerning the robbery of a Shaw's supermarket (April). [Associated Press via KARE-TV (Minneapolis), 3-13-2015] [WNEP-TV (Moosic, Pa.), 2-22-2015] [Bangor Daily News, 4-3-2015]

-- Mohamed Nafiu was arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, in April and charged with robbery after he and his pet baboon intercepted a pedestrian leaving a bank and frightened him into fleeing, leaving his money behind. Police said the versatile baboon had also previously snatched victims' valuables. [Information Nigeria (Lagos), 3-28-2015]

-- Police in eastern South Africa were searching in May for the three women who accosted a man in Kwazakhele Township, near Port Elizabeth, raped him in the back seat of a black BMW, collected his semen in a cooler, and sped away without him. Constable Mncedi Mbombo told the Sowetan Live website, "This is really confusing to us because we have never heard of such a thing before." [Sowetan Live (Johannesburg), 5-7-2015]

The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard near Cherokee, Alabama, is reserved as hallowed ground for burial of genuine coon dogs, which must be judged authentic before their carcasses can be accepted, according to a December (2010) report in the Birmingham News. The Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association must attest to the dog's having had the ability "to tree a raccoon." (In March 2010, a funeral for one coon dog at Key Underwood drew 200 mourners.) [Birmingham News, 12-30-2010]

Thanks This Week to Mark Wojahn, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

Among the requirements of "Visual Arts 104A" at the University of California, San Diego is that, for the final exam, students would make a presentation while nude, in a darkened room. Professor Ricardo Dominguez (who would also be nude for the finals) told KGTV in May that a nude "gesture" was indeed required (and disclosed to students in the first class) as a "performance of self," a "standard canvas for performance art and body art." After an inquiry by KGTV, the department chairman announced that nakedness would not be required for course credit -- even though professor Dominguez said in his 11 years teaching the course, no student had ever complained before. [KGTV (San Diego), 5-11-2015]

Sober Driver Pays: Sapearya Sao, then 25 and sober that night in 2013 in Portland, Oregon, was rammed by a drunk hit-and-run driver (Nathan Wisbeck), who later rammed another drunk driver -- but Sao finds himself defending the lawsuit by the two people injured in Wisbeck's second collision. Sao recently settled the lawsuit brought by that second drunk driver, but still faces a $9.8 million lawsuit brought by the estate of the second drunk driver's late passenger, which argues that if Sao had not pursued Wisbeck in an attempt to identify him, the second crash would not have occurred. (Of course, that crash also might not have occurred if the second driver -- 0.11 blood alcohol -- had been sober.) [The Oregonian, 5-12-2015]

-- British forensic scientist Dr. Brooke Magnanti, 39, has written two best-selling books and inspired a TV series based on her life, but she recently filed a lawsuit accusing her ex-boyfriend of libeling her -- by telling people that she was NOT formerly a prostitute. A major part of Magnanti's biography is how she paid for university studies through prostitution -- which has supposedly enhanced her marketability. [The Independent (London), 3-13-2015]

-- Murder "contracts" are ubiquitous in novels and movies, but an actual murder contract cannot be enforced in American courts. However, a recent "contract" case in Norway (according to the Norwegian newspaper Varden, as reported on Vice.com) came down hard on a hit man who got cold feet. The hit man, who stalled repeatedly, was finally sued by the payer, who won a jury verdict (later set aside) for the unrequited killing. Then, because the hit man had attempted to extort even more money from the payer (to find a substitute killer), the hit man was fined the equivalent of $1,200. [Vice.com, 1-15-2015]

About three-fourths of the 1,580 IRS workers found to have deliberately attempted to evade federal income tax during the last 10 years have nonetheless retained their jobs, according to a May report by the agency's inspector general. Some even received promotions and performance bonuses (although an internal rule, adopted last year, now forbids such bonuses to one adjudged to owe back taxes). [Associated Press via Yahoo.com, 5-6-2015]

The long-time swingers' club in Nashville, Tennessee (The Social Club), is seeking to relocate to the trendy Madison neighborhood -- but near two churches and an upscale private Christian school in a state that bars sex businesses within 1,000 feet of a church or school. The Social Club's preferred solution: re-open as the United Fellowship Center and attempt to hold services on Sunday mornings, converting, for example, its "dungeon room" into the "choir room." While courts are reluctant to examine religious doctrine, they often judge cases on "sincerity of belief." (Any shrieks of "Oh, God!" "Oh, God!" coming from the on-premises swing club are not expected to carry weight with the judges.) [The Tennessean via USA Today, 4-24-2015]

Lightly regulated investors' "hedge funds" (the province of wealthy people and large institutions) failed in 2014 (for the sixth straight year) to outearn ordinary stock index funds following the S&P 500. However, at hedge funds, underperformance seems unpunishable -- as the top 25 fund managers still collectively earned $11.62 billion in fees and salaries (an average of over $464 million each). The best-paid hedge fund manager earned $1.3 billion -- more than 48 times what the highest-paid major league baseball player earned. [New York Times, 5-5-2015]

Body cameras for police officers is yesterday's news. At the Sanmenxia canyon rapids in China's Henan province, the issue is body cameras for lifeguards. The all-female White Swan Women's Rafting Rescue Team has complained recently about swimmers deliberately throwing themselves into the water so they could scream for help -- in order to fondle the women when they arrived to save them. Attaching cameras to the women's helmets and legs is expected to deter perverts. [Daily Mail (China), 5-5-2015]

-- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: (1) A veterinarian at Brighton (U.K.) Pet Hospital, operating on Garry, age 2, a black-and-white cat with a tumor-like bulge in his abdomen, found instead (and removed) a large collection of shoelaces and hairbands that might soon have cost Garry his life. (2) Benno, the Belgian Malinois, of Mountain Home, Arkansas, has eaten a ridiculous series of items over his four years, but his latest meal, in April, was 23 live rounds of .308- caliber bullets (all swallowed after Benno had partially gnawed them). Among Benno's other delicacies: a bra, lawn mower air filter, TV remote, styrofoam peanuts, drywall, magnets, and an entire loaf of bread still in the wrapper. [The Argus (Hollingbury, England), 5-7-2015] [Baxter Bulletin (Mountain Home), 5-6-2015]

-- Least Competent Snake: Owner Aaron Rouse was feeding his python, Winston, a tasty rat in May, using barbecue tongs, when Winston got hold of the tongs and would not let go. Rouse, of Adelaide, Australia, decided not to engage in a tug-of-war, but when he returned (believing Winston would see no food value in the metal clamps), the tongs had been swallowed and were halfway through the snake's comically bloated body. After taking X-rays (that of course became Internet attractions), a veterinarian at Adelaide University removed the tongs by surgery. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 5-14-2015]

(1) Daniel Palmer, 26, was arrested in Miami Beach in April only after he returned to the crime scene area to berate his victim, a New York tourist from whom he had snatched a "fake" necklace at gunpoint. Palmer initially got away, but was upset and returned to confront the tourist, who pointed out Palmer's car to an officer. (2) Ms. Joey Mudd, 34, of Largo was arrested in May, along with her husband, Chad, on charges that they routinely shared marijuana and even cocaine with their daughters, aged 13 and 14. Deputies said Ms. Mudd freely admitted that she used the drugs as incentives to get the girls to do their chores and do well in school. [WTVJ-TV (Miami), 4-30-2015] [Bay News 9 (St. Petersburg), 5-6-2015]

"Abstract impressionist" Mark Rothko has appeared in News of the Weird both for the extraordinary prices people pay to own his uncomplicated paintings and for their sometimes-indistinct differentiation from squiggles made by playful toddlers. Sotheby's auction house announced in May that his "Untitled, (Blue and Yellow)" had been sold for $46.5 million. The "Untitled" canvas consists of three unevenly edged rectangles -- a yellow on top of a blue, on top of a small yellow strip. The Sotheby's catalog described the piece (presumably, without irony) as one that shows "how truly miraculous a painting can be." [New York Times, 5-13-2015]

Last Words: (1) "Go ahead and shoot me," said Rodney Gilbert, 57, who was embroiled in a domestic tiff with his girlfriend, Kimberly Gustafson, in Ocala, Florida, in February (2011). According to police, Gustafson, after cocking the gun in front of witnesses, turned to walk away without firing until Gilbert pursued her, shouting his final words several more times. (2) "You're going to shoot? Right here," said now-deceased Roberto Corona, pointing to his chest. Corona was refusing to reveal the whereabouts of his sister in January (2011) to her husband, David Sanchez-Dominguez, who was pointing his handgun at Corona. [Orlando Sentinel, 2-18-2011] [Reno Gazette-Journal, 1-18-2011]

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