Among the health and fitness apps for computers and smartphones are sex-tracking programs to document the variety of acts and positions, degrees of frenzy and lengths of sessions (via an on-bed motion detector) -- and menstrual trackers aimed at males (to help judge their partner's fertility but also her predicted friskiness and likelihood of orgasm). Several have chart- and graph-making potential for data (noise level, average thrust frequency, duration, etc.), and of course, the highlight of many of the apps is their ability to create a "score" to rank performance -- even encouraging comparisons across a range of populations and geography. (Sociologist Deborah Lupton's app research was summarized in the July Harper's Magazine.) [Harper's, July 2015]

(1) Scientists from Australia's James Cook University told reporters in June that they had spotted an aggressive fish that can walk on land making its way toward the country from Papua New Guinea. The native freshwater "climbing perch" can live out of water for days and has survived short saltwater treks from PNG toward Australia's Queensland. (2) In July, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department posted a warning photo of a so-far-rare Texas Redhead -- an 8-inch-long centipede with gangly white legs tipped with venom-delivering fangs and which eats lizards and toads. [Business Insider Australia, 6-3-2015] [Washington Post, 7-6-2015]

-- Reuters reported in early July that a big loser in the nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers was (since all negotiators have gone home to sell the deal) the brothel industry of Vienna, Austria, which hosted that final round. With so many (male, mostly) diplomats in town for two stressful months, business had been robust -- especially compared to the previous round in notoriously expensive Lausanne, Switzerland. [Reuters, 7-5-2015]

-- The Undernews From Wimbledon: The All England Club, host of tennis's most hallowed tournament, is, formally, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, at which presumably Britain's 11,900 croquet "regulars" aspire to play -- although their British Open Championship is actually held at the nearby Surbiton Croquet Club, which this year hosted 50 competitors from four continents, according to a July New York Times dispatch. The leading U.S. player -- Ben Rothman of Oakland, California, the "croquet pro" at Mission Hills Country Club near Palm Springs -- is the reputed "world's leader" in prize money ($4,500). [New York Times, 7-6-2015]

Maryland state Delegate Ariana Kelly was charged with trespassing and indecent exposure in June after she arrived at her ex-husband's home to drop off their kids and learned that his girlfriend was inside. According to police, she started banging on the door and ringing the bell repeatedly and, aware that her husband had a camera trained on the doorway, she faced it, exposed her breasts and shook them, one in each hand, toward the lens. Eventually, she dared an officer to arrest her. (The Washington Post reported that Kelly is a member of a legislative task force studying maternal mental health issues.) [Washington Post, 7-14-2015]

-- An 87-year-old man, taking his license renewal driving test in Deerfield, Illinois, in June, accidentally crashed into the driver's license office (based on brake/accelerator confusion). Neither he nor the examiner was injured. [Chicago Tribune, 6-11-2015]

-- An 83-year-old man, driving around Cape Coral, Florida, in May, suffered a fatal heart attack at the wheel, and the uncontrolled car came to rest in shrubbery ringing the Florida Heart Associates building. [Fort Myers News-Press, 5-11-2015]

-- Wrong Place, Wrong Time: (1) A court in Lincoln, Nebraska, which had already sent Paul Boye to prison for at least 10 years for shooting his girlfriend, ordered him in June to cover her resulting medical bills. The woman had taken a .22-caliber bullet, which left a scar cutting right through her tattoo reading "Happiness Is A Warm Gun." (2) A task force of Benton, Arkansas, police and U.S. Marshals tracked down Tieren Watson, 26, in June after he had spent several days on the lam as a suspect in a shooting. When arrested, he was wearing a T-shirt reading "You Can Run, But You Can't Hide." [Lincoln Journal Star, 6-13-2015] [The Smoking Gun, 6-18-2015]

Mine worker Joshua Clay claimed in a lawsuit that a foreman had twice taunted him for complaining about conditions -- by restraining him and spray-painting his testicles white. Clay filed against Kielty Mine in Mingo County, West Virginia, in July, alleging that the company had forced him to work on the dirty side of a coal-dust conversion machine -- a practice forbidden by federal regulations -- and that when he complained, he was subjected to off-the-books discipline. [Courthouse News, 7-16-2015]

A KPHO-TV news story in Phoenix featured a local doctor advising expectant mothers against "tweaking" the result of home pregnancy tests. Some women, apparently, had discovered the magic of "Photoshopping" the pink reading on the home test's strip -- to take a faint pink line (not a certified pregnancy) to make it bold (pregnant!). Although the doctor warns of the general hazard of "false positives," the 415-word news story does not explain how Photoshopping a not-positive reading into a positive one improves the likelihood of conception. [KPHO-TV, 7-7-2015]

(1) Josefina Tometich, 64, was arrested in Fort Myers, Florida, in June, charged with shooting out the back window of Christopher Richey's pickup. Richey had fetched a "perfect-looking" mango from the street in front of Tometich's house, but Tometich insisted it was hers since it had earlier fallen from her tree. (An attorney consulted by WBBH-TV said wind-blown mangoes landing on public property is a legal "gray area.") (2) In one of the most successful redresses of grievance in history, the Venezuelan government gave Marleny Olivo a new apartment in April. Only days before, as President Nicolas Maduro toured her neighborhood in Aragua state, she had hurled a mango at him with her phone number on it, hitting him just below the ear. The new president (a "man of the people") called her, listened to her story, and ordered a housing upgrade. [WBBH-TV, 6-30-2015] [BBC News, 4-25-2015]

Awkward: (1) A 26-year-old carpenter, trying to break open an ATM at an ICICI Bank in Delhi, India, at 2:30 a.m. on July 8, accidentally locked himself in the tiny space behind it (used to service the machine safely) and phoned police to come rescue him. (2) A carjacker in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 16 commandeered a car from a woman at gunpoint and climbed in. However, according to the woman, she is short and he was very tall, and after fumbling a bit trying to adjust the seat, he gave up (having driven only a few feet) and ran off. [The Times of India, 7-9-2015] [Nebraska Radio Network (Omaha), 7-16-2015]

As News of the Weird has noted, some observant Jews are magnificently creative in devising workarounds to ancient ritual restraints. For instance, the KosherSwitch theoretically allows Jews to defeat the restriction on engaging electricity during Shabbat. By employing a laser circuit that periodically malfunctions, or delays, in connecting a switch to a power flow, it permits the user technically to not be the direct cause of the electricity. (The KosherSwitch is currently the subject of a crowd- funding project sponsored by the device's patent holder.) Less ingenious, as News of the Weird noted in 2010, is the Yom Kippur workaround for "fasting" coffee addicts: caffeine suppositories. [Tablet Magazine, 7-6-2015]

Time magazine reported in August (2010) that among the entries in "Detroit Hair Wars" (showcasing pieces by 34 stylists) were The Hummer (stylist: "Little Willie"), in which a mass of extensions is shaped to resemble the vehicle, including four large, rolled "tires" -- with metallic hubcaps and front grid added; and Beautiful Butterfly (stylist: Niecy Hayes), featuring extensions thinned, teased and stretched so that four angelic "wings" arise from the model's head. Both stylings appear to be at least 2 feet long, dwarfing the models' heads. [Time, 8-2-2010]

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

The whimsical premise of the iconic movie "Groundhog Day" (that someone can wake up every day believing it is the previous day) has largely come to life for a patient of a British psychologist writing recently in the journal Neurocase. Dr. Gerald Burgess' patient, following anesthesia and root-canal treatment, was left with a memory span of only about 90 minutes and awakens each day believing it is the day he is to report for the same root canal. He has been examined by numerous specialists, including neurologists who found no ostensible damage to the usual brain areas associated with amnesia. The patient is able to manage his day only by using an electronic diary with prompts. [University of Leicester press release, 7-14-2015]

Apparently, "uncooperative" child dental patients (even toddlers) can be totally restrained on a straitjacket-like "papoose board" without parental hand-holding, even during tooth-pulling, as long as the parent has signed a "consent form" (that does specifically mention the frightening practice). A recent case arose in Carrollton, Georgia, but a Georgia Board of Dentistry spokesperson told Atlanta's WSB-TV that such restraints are permitted (though should have been accompanied by an explicit warning of potential physical or psychological harm). The father of the "screaming" girl said he was initially barred from the exam room and was led to believe, when he signed the consent form, that he was merely authorizing anesthesia. [Georgia Newsday, 7-2-2015]

(1) A shortage of teachers led Howard S. Billings high school in Chateauguay (in the French-sensitive province of Quebec, Canada) to announce that 11th-grade French classes would this year be conducted using only the Rosetta Stone computer program. (2) Among the new rules proposed by California's Occupational Safety and Health Standards agency in May was one to require actors in pornographic movies (whose male actors OSHS has already ordered to wear condoms) to wear goggles -- lest bodily fluids splash into their eyes during scenes. (Further, all equipment and surfaces of sets must be decontaminated after each scene and at day's end.) [CTV News (Montreal), 2-24-2015] [Washington Post, 5-29-2015]

(1) The mayor of Whitesboro, New York, defending to a Village Voice reporter in July the 19th-century-based town seal that features a white settler appearing to push down an American Indian man, denied any racism and said the image is "actually" a typical "friendly wrestling (match) that took place back in those days." (According to Whitesboro's website, the Native American supposedly uttered, after the "match," "UGH. You good fellow too much.") (2) In April, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to stop relocating whistleblowing employees to "offices" that were abandoned jail cells. The bureau had insisted that the transfers were not punishment for reporting agency misconduct -- even though one of the "offices" had no desk, computer or phone and required the employee to walk past prisoners' cells to get to work. [Village Voice, 7-7-2015] [Washington Post, 4-3-2015]

-- Lindsey Perkins pleaded guilty in June in Newport, Vermont, for an incident in which she joy-rode on the roof of a station wagon with her 5-year-old son while a 20-year-old man drove at 50 to 55 mph on the state's scenic Route 14 near Coventry. [Associated Press via WCAX-TV (Burlington), 6-22-2015]

-- In February, the Office of Residential Life at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut), intending to tout its dedication to inclusiveness and the creation of a "safe space" for minority students, posted a notice on its website inviting applications from the "LBTTQQFAGPBDSM" communities. The probable translation: the lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, flexual, asexual, (vulgar word), polyamorous, bondage/discipline and sadism/masochism communities. [The Week, 2-25-2015]

-- Cosbying 2.0: A court in Castrop-Rauxel, Germany, fined a 23-year-old man in July after he admitted that, one evening last year, he put "four or five drops" of a sedative into his girlfriend's tea without her knowledge -- so that she would doze off for the evening and not bother him while he played video games. She had come home after a hard day at work, expecting peace and quiet, but began complaining about the boyfriend's machine-gun-fire game. [The Local (Berlin), 7-8-2015]

-- The Washington Post's running tally counts more than 400 people shot to death in the United States by law enforcement already this year with five months to go, but 2014 figures from Norway reveal that officers there shot at people only twice all year. Proportionally (64 times as many people live in the U.S.), American police would still have fired only 128 rounds last year if they showed Norway's restraint. (Bonus fact: Norway's cops missed their targets both times.) [Washington Post, 7-8-2015]

Pharmaceutical companies justify huge drug price markups on the ground that the research to develop the drug was, itself, hugely expensive. In February, a Canadian company, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, decided to raise the price of two heart-saving drugs (Nitropress, Isuprel) by 212 percent and 525 percent, respectively, even though it had conducted no research on the drugs. That was because, reported The Wall Street Journal, all Valeant did was buy the rights to the already-approved drugs from another company (which, of course, had thought the drugs -- research and all -- had been fairly priced at the lower amounts). Said a Valeant spokesperson, "Our duty is to our shareholders and to maximize the value" of our products (even, apparently, if it owned the product for less than a day before jacking up the price as much as five-fold). [Wall Street Journal, 4-26-2015]

At a charity event in Philadelphia in July, in the course of attempting to set a Guinness Book record for pogo-stick workouts, Jack Sexty, 25, bounced 88,047 straight times (over a 10-hour, 20-minute session) -- to add to his several previous Guinness records. Sexty, who said he was physically uncomfortable at times during the 10-hour ordeal, suggested that he may have "inadvertently" set yet another pogo record -- as maybe the only person ever to answer a "number two" call of nature while pogoing. He explained that a guy had offered to hold a pot underneath him as he jumped and did his business -- but Sexty confessed, "I couldn't be very accurate (aiming for the pot)." [Bristol Post (Bristol, England), 7-4-2015]

But A Successful Parent: Scott Birk, 31, was arrested in New Berlin, Wisconsin, in July, thanks to a big boost the police got from his 6-year-old daughter. A Wal-mart security guard noticed, on video, someone breaking into a jewelry case and pocketing earrings, and approached Birk as a suspect, in time to overhear the girl tell her dad "several times" to stop breaking into jewelry cases. Officers running an ID check found no driver's license and asked how he had gotten to the store, and he said they walked. But Daddy, she said, we came in our car, and she cheerfully pointed it out to police. A search turned up more items stuffed in Birk's shorts, and he was charged with theft and violating a previous bail condition. [WISN-TV (Milwaukee), 7-3-2015]

Summer is state-fair season, i.e., the time of sugar- and fried-fat-based comfort snacks that rarely appear anywhere except at state fairs. Recent samplings: caviar-covered Twinkie (Minnesota), mac-and-cheese cupcake (Minnesota), deep-fried Oreo burger (Florida), deep-fried gummy bears (Ohio), deep-fried beer (Texas) -- and old favorites such as chicken-fried bacon (Texas), spaghetti ice cream (Indiana), Krispy Kreme chicken sandwich (California) and the hot-beef sundae (Indiana, Iowa). [Yahoo Food, 6-29-2015; GrubStreet.com, 6-24-2015]

Playboy magazine has long published an audio edition, and the Library of Congress produces a text edition in Braille. However, as a Houston Chronicle reporter learned in August (2010), a Texas organization (Taping for the Blind) goes one step further, with volunteer reader Suzi Hanks actually describing the photographs -- even the Playmates and other nudes. "I'd say if she has large breasts or small breasts, piercings or tattoos," said Hanks. "I'll describe her genitalia. I take my time describing the girls." "Hey, blind guys like pretty, naked girls, too!" [Houston Chronicle, 8-12-2010]

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

Among the protesters at New York City's Gay Pride Parade on the Sunday after the Supreme Court's historic gay-marriage decision was a group of men outfitted in Jewish prayer garments and representing the Jewish Political Action Committee, carrying signs reading, for example, "Judaism prohibits homosexuality." However, the men were very likely not Jewish, but in fact Mexican laborers hired for the day. A representative of the committee told The New York Times that the men were "supplemental" -- necessary because the committee's rabbis would not permit their students (who normally staff such protests) to be exposed to the sights of same-sex exuberance typical for the parade. [New York Times, 6-28-2015]

-- WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids, Michigan, seemingly uncovered an antiquity -- if not a potential vulnerability -- in the Grand Rapids public school system in June when it reported that the heating and cooling systems at 19 schools are controlled using a Commodore Amiga computer (released in the 1980s, about the same time as Windows 2.0), operating on an early Internet modem. It had been installed by a computer-savvy student and, according to the maintenance supervisor, still works fine. Fortunately, the supervisor said, the student still lives in the area and is available if problems arise. [WOOD-TV, 6-11-2015]

-- Recurring Theme: Government officials who insist on such "bells and whistles" as redesigning their department's logo are often ridiculed for wasting taxpayer money (yet design consultants continue to sell the illusion that a new logo can give a bureaucracy a refreshing rebirth). In May, Tennessee officials unveiled a new state logo (which cost only $46,000 -- not counting the expense of changing signs, cards, stationery, etc.), which consists of the letters "TN" in white inside a red box with a blue trim underneath. (A Watchdog.org critic suggested a contest to design a superior one, but open only to kids age 12 and under, with the prize a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate.) [WSMV-TV (Nashville), 5-22-2015]

Adultery is illegal in Japan -- except, as a Tokyo District Court judge ruled in a "psychological distress" lawsuit filed by the jilted wife, when it is done by a company to retain a good customer. A night club hostess who had carried on with the married man proved that she did so only as "makura eigyo," or "pillow sales tactic." Said the judge, "As long as the intercourse is for business, it does not harm the marital relationship at all." (The ruling, from 2014, was first publicized this year.) [Japan Times, 6-10-2015]

In 1993, the owner of the iconic 5Pointz building in New York City began allowing graffiti artists to use the walls for their masterpieces, but by 2013 had grown weary of the building's look and had the walls whitewashed. In June 2015, nine of the artists filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the owner compensate them, substantially, for destroying their creations -- and they stand a good chance of collecting (under the Visual Artists Rights Act) if they prove their particular works are of "recognized stature" and not merely art of an "ephemeral nature." At its height, 5Pointz attracted more than 350 artists' works from around the world. [New York Daily News, 6-12-2015]

-- A June entry in Wired.com's "Absurd Creature of the Week" series warned of the Beaded Lacewing that preys on termites by first immobilizing them with a "vapor-phase toxicant" released from its anus. The silent-but-deadly gas is reportedly powerful enough to disable six ordinary termites for up to three hours (plenty of time for a sumptuous meal of termite) and weaken several more that might get caught in the backdraft. Wired.com also learned of the related species Chrysoperla comanche, whose anal weaponry is in solid form, wielded by "master contortionists" who lift their abdomens in order to directly contact their victims' head. [Wired.com, 6-24-2015]

-- Suspicion Confirmed: In June 2015 research, scientists from Britain's University of Exeter and Queen Mary University of London warned that owners of "domestic" cats seem not, on average, to appreciate what vicious killers their pets are and urge, for instance, that they be kept indoors more often lest they decimate the neighborhood's bird and small-mammal populations. Estimates of the yearly death toll generated by housecats are "in the magnitude of millions" in the United Kingdom and "billions" in the United States. [Ecology and Evolution, 6-19-2015]

-- The "parasitic ways" of the cuckoo bird were remarked upon "as far back as Aristotle," wrote a Wall Street Journal book reviewer in May, but some biologists may not have believed the behavior because it was so cold-blooded. The bird, according to Nick Davies' book "Cuckoo: Cheating by Nature," lays its eggs in other species' nests to trick those birds into incubating the cuckoos, who then hatch and kick the eggs of their host out of the nest. The mother cuckoo, it is said, times her mating schedule so that her eggs mature just before the victims' eggs would. Hence, according to Davies, she is "nature's most notorious cheat." [Wall Street Journal, 5-30-2015]

To cover various general expenses (such as helping the indigent), the average hospital mark-up for patient care in the United States is about 3.4 times costs (according to a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report in June), but 50 of the nation's 5,000 hospitals charge more than 10 times the cost, with the North Okaloosa Medical Center near Pensacola, Florida, billing at 12.6 times costs. According to the co-author, professor Gerard Anderson, the 50 "are marking up the prices because no one is telling them they can't." (Forty-nine of the 50 are for-profit hospitals, and 20 are in Florida.) [Washington Post, 6-8-2015]

Former British Navy sailor Alan Reynolds, 55, of Porthleven, England, was convicted in April of a burglary in which he stole items from the home of a colleague to pursue his fetish for waterproof clothing -- to enrich his fantasy, he told a judge, of imagining himself a prisoner of war. Photos and videos taken from his home show him in bright yellow waterproof trousers and green waterproof poncho, removing layers of clothing from underneath and "smelling" them. [Western Morning News (Plymouth), 4-9-2015]

Confused: (1) Christopher Furay, 33, pleaded guilty in Pittsburgh in April to six bank robberies -- the first four in which surveillance video revealed him to have a reddish beard and the last two in which the video revealed him to be wearing a fake red beard covering his reddish beard. Furay did not explain. (2) In June, police in Roseville, Minnesota, quickly located J&J Construction's missing equipment trailer (stolen from a work site) -- parked near the Washington County Courthouse, where the thief apparently had left it while he answered a court summons. WCCO-TV reported that the man was soon jailed on a separate charge. [Associated Press via WTAE-TV (Pittsburgh), 4-21-2015] [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis), 6-30-2015]

Sy Allen, arrested in March in Colchester, England, on suspicion of possessing drugs with intent to sell, relied on a fairly common strategy: As officers burst into the room, he swallowed the "evidence." As in the other cases, police decided to wait for nature to take its course in order to recover the suspected drugs. Unlike in the other cases, Allen managed to hold out, with no bowel movement, for 23 days -- but not a 24th. He was arrested. [East Anglican Daily Times, 5-13-2015]

In November (2010), after her fourth-grade son was allegedly slapped by his teacher at a Kansas City, Missouri, elementary school (son, black; teacher, white), Lisa Henry Bowen submitted a 40-page list of reparations she expects from President Obama and two dozen other officials, including: $1.25 million cash, $13,500 in Wal-mart gift cards, free college education, Disney World vacations, private tennis lessons, an African safari, her mortgage paid off, home remodeling, nine years of free medical and dental coverage, and a nine-year "consulting contract" with the school district at $15,000 a month. Anticipating criticism that she had taken it too far, she added that opponents can (original punctuation) "kiss my entire black (rear end)!!!!!! I haven't begun to go far enough!!!!!!!" [Pitch Weekly (Kansas City), 11-11-2010]

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