Two suburban Minneapolis elementary schools this fall hired a consulting firm to advise officials on kids' recess, and the leading recommendations (promoting "safety" and "inclusiveness") were elimination of "contact" games in favor of, for example, hopscotch. Some parents objected; recess, they said, should be more freestyle, unstructured. (More consultants' advice: De-emphasize refereed "rules" games in favor of monitors who simply praise effort.) One Minnesota principal noted improvement -- fewer fights and nurse visits now -- but as one parent said, her child feels that recess is no longer really "playing." [Star Tribune, 10-5-2015] [Mercer Island Reporter, 9-24-2015]

Unapparent Problem, Solved: Vladimir Laurent (an insurance executive in Coral Springs, Florida) received his U.S. patent on Sept. 29 and can proceed mass-producing "The Shield" -- his brainstorm to keep men's genitalia from dragging on the inside of toilet bowls while they're seated. Laurent told the South Florida Business Journal that his device was something he "needed, personally" (though he's aware that not all males experience the sensation). The Shield is basically a cup attached to the bowl by suction that allows movement via a ball-and-socket joint. [South Florida Business Journal, 9-30-2015]

Kentucky's government ethics law bars gifts from lobbyists to legislators, but state Sen. John Schickel filed a federal lawsuit in September claiming that he has a constitutional (First Amendment) right to receive them. (The laws were passed after the FBI found several Kentucky politicians selling their votes.) And in May, officials of the American Gaming (gambling) Association and the Association of Club Executives complained to the Pentagon that a threatened prohibition of the use of government credit cards at casinos and strip clubs violated card users' constitutional rights, in that protected activities (such as business strategy meetings) take place at those venues. [TheIntercept.com, 9-24-2015] [Government Executive, 5-21-2015]

Florida Justice: Orville "Lee" Wollard, now 60, was convicted of aggravated assault in 2008 after he fired one "warning shot" into a wall of his home during an argument with his daughter's boyfriend. Believing his shot defused a dangerous situation (the boyfriend had once angrily ripped sutures from Wollard's stomach), Wollard had declined a plea offer of probation and gone to trial, where he lost and faced a law written with a 20-year minimum sentence. Florida has since amended the law to give judges discretion about the crime and the sentence, but Gov. Rick Scott and the state's clemency board have refused to help Wollard, who must serve 13 more years for a crime he perhaps would not even be charged with today. [Miami Herald, 9-30-2015]

Christopher Hiscock, 33, got only a year's probation after his guilty plea for trespassing on a ranch in Kamloops, British Columbia, in September -- because it was a trespass with panache. Since no one had been home, Hiscock fed the cats, prepared a meal, shaved and showered, took meat out of the freezer to thaw, made some coffee, started a fire in the fireplace, did some laundry, put out hay for the horses, and even wrote some touchingly personal notes in the resident's diary ("Today was my first full day at the ranch." "I have to remind myself to just relax and take my time.") In court, he apologized. "I made a lot of mistakes." "Beautiful ranch. Gorgeous. I was driving (by) and I just turned in. Beautiful place." [Kamloops This Week via National Post, 9-30-2015]

Low-benefit (but Internet-connected!) devices now on sale (from February MacLife magazine): HAPIfork (Bluetooth-connected, alerts you if you're eating too fast); iKettle (heat water at different temperatures for different drinks, controlled by phone); an LG washing machine that lets you start washing while away (provided, of course, that you've already loaded the washer); Kolibree "smart toothbrush" (tracks and graphs "brushing habits"). Also highlighted was the Satis "smart toilet," which remotely flushes, raises and lowers the seat, and engages the bidet -- features MacLife touts mainly as good for "terrorizing guests." [MacLife, February 2015]

Scientists have somehow determined that rats dream about where they want to go in the future. Dr. Hugo Spiers of University College London (and colleagues) inferred as much in a recent eLife article based on how neurons in the rodent brain's hippocampus fire up in certain patterns. They discovered similar patterns when a rat is asleep just before conquering a food "maze" as when he awakens and actually gets to the food (as if it plotted by dream). (Buried Lede: Rats have dreams.) [New Scientist, 6-26-2015]

The Power of Prayer: (1) Two men with handguns walked through an open door of a Philadelphia home in July and demanded drugs and cash from the three women inside, threatening pistol-whippings. According to a Philly.com report, a 55-year-old woman in the home immediately burst into loud prayer, causing the gunmen to flee empty-handed. (2) Police in Bellevue, Ohio, initially believed that texting behind the wheel was what caused Marilyn Perry, 62, to crash and badly injure another driver. However, in July, she and her lawyer convinced a judge that she was "looking down" as she drove only because she was praying over "personal problems." [Philly.com, 7-12-2015] [WJW-TV (Cleveland), 7-21-2015]

A year-long investigation by GlobalPost revealed in September that at least five U.S. or European Catholic priests disciplined for sex abuse have surfaced in South America, ministering unstigmatized in impoverished parishes. In Paraguay, Ecuador and Peru (all with softer law enforcement and media scrutiny than in the U.S., and where priests enjoy greater respect), dioceses have accepted notorious priests from Scranton, Pennsylvania, Minneapolis and Jackson, Mississippi, and Catholic facilities in Brazil and Colombia now employ shamed sex-abusers from Belgium and San Antonio, Texas. (The Belgian priest had been allowed to start an orphanage for street kids.) GlobalPost claims the Vatican declined "repeated" phone calls for comment. [GlobalPost via USA Today, 9-17- 2015]

(1) Miami-Dade (Florida) police arrested Eddy Juan, 52, two weeks after someone matching his description was reported at a library at Florida International University, crawling under tables and sniffing women's feet. He was charged with violating a previous sex-offender registration order. (2) In what was originally a domestic disturbance case, Britain's Cambridge Magistrates' Court handed Nelson Nazare, 45, a six-week suspended sentence in September -- for the photo on his seized cellphone of a man having sex with a large fish (plus two woman-dog sex photos). [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9-15-2015] [Cambridge News, 9-3-2015]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/ct-florida-library-foot-sniffer-20150915-story.html

Let the Punishment Fit the Crime: (1) In September, convicted flasher Mark Thompson, 48, of Wimbledon, England, was given a four-month suspended jail term and also banned from wearing shorts on public transportation (since his modus operandi involved "adjusting" them while seated). (2) The Coventry, England, Magistrates Court sentenced Christopher Johnson, 46, in September for outraging public decency. He received a three-year "Criminal Behavior Order" and was banned from going anywhere that has a slide (after his arrest for simulating a sex act on one). [Wimbledon Guardian, 9-23-2015] [Coventry Telegraph, 9-21- 2015]

http://www.wimbledonguardian.co.uk/news/13779217.Train_flasher_banned_from_wearing_shorts_on_public_transport_as_part_of_his_sentence/

Paul Neaverson, 61, was convicted in September in England's Maidstone Crown Court for a robbery his own lawyer called "ridiculous." He had gone to a NatWest bank in Rainham, pointed a knife at a cashier, and demanded that money be placed "on the table" or "into his account" at NatWest, according to the police report. Earlier, he had walked out of an HSBC bank when the teller balked at his robbery demand. He was sentenced to two years in prison. [KentOnline, 9-9-2015]

The mayor of the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, faced with an overcrowded highway D909 through town, "solved" the problem (according to a September 2009 BBC News dispatch) by making the street one-way, sending traffic speedily into the adjacent town of Clichy-la-Garenne. That city's mayor (a political rival of the Levallois-Perret mayor) reacted by making his portion of D909 one-way back toward Levallois-Perret, thus "stranding" all D909 motorists, from either direction, at the city limit. Other officials are working to resolve the impasse. [BBC News, 9-1-09]

Thanks This Week to Pete Randall and Alex Boese, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

The bold, shameless leering of David Zaitzeff is legendary around Seattle's parks, and more so since he filed a civil complaint against the city in September challenging its anti-voyeurism law for placing a "chilling effect" on his photography of immodestly dressed women in public. Though he has never been charged with a crime, he roams freely (and apparently joyously) around short- skirted and swimsuit-clad "gals" while himself often wearing only a thong and bearing a "Free Hugs and Kisses" sign. Zaitzeff's websites "extol" public nudity, wrote the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and explain, for example, that a woman who angles her "bod" to offer a view of "side boob" is fair game for his camera. Zaitzeff's complaint -- that the law criminalizes photography of a person's "intimate areas" (clothed or not) without explicit permission -- is distressing him. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer via SFGate.com, 9-17-2015]

Randy Richardson, 42, vying unopposed for the Riceville, Iowa, school board (having agreed to run just because he has two kids in school) failed to get any votes at all -- as even he was too busy on election day (Sept. 8) to make it to the polls (nor were there any write-ins). To resolve the 0-0 result, the other board members simply appointed Richardson to the office. Riceville, near the Minnesota border, is a big-time farming community, and registered voters queried by The Des Moines Register said they just had too much fieldwork to do that day. [Associated Press via U.S. News & World Report, 9-20-2015]

Researchers recently came upon a small community (not named) in the Dominican Republic with an unusual incidence of adolescent boys having spent the first decade or so of their lives as girls because their penises and testes did not appear until puberty. A September BBC News dispatch referred to the boys as "Guevedoces" and credited the community for alerting researchers, who ultimately developed a drug to replace the culprit enzyme whose absence was causing the problem. (The full shot of testosterone that should have been delivered in the mother's womb was not arriving until puberty.) [BBC News, 9-20-2015]

The serpentine queue extended for blocks in September in Lucknow, India, after the state government of Uttar Pradesh announced 368 job openings (almost all menial) -- eventually resulting in about 2.3 million applications, 200,000 from people with advanced degrees (even though the $240/month positions required only a fifth-grade education, according to an Associated Press dispatch). About 13 million young people enter India's job market each year. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 9-18-2015]

-- At a September convention on ethical issues involving computers, a researcher at Britain's De Montfort University decried the development of devices that might permit human-robot sex. Though no human would be "victimized," the researcher warned that such machines (some already in service) will exacerbate existing "power imbalances" between men and women and pave the way for more human exploitation. One critic challenged, offering that such robots would be no more demeaning to women than, say, vibrators. However, the researcher ominously warned that there may someday be robots resembling children, marketed for sex. (A September USA Today dispatch from Tokyo reported that the company SoftBank had banned sex, via its user agreement, with its new 4-foot-tall human-like robot -- even though "Pepper" features nothing resembling genitalia.) [Washington Post , 9-15-2015] [USA Today, 9-29-2015]

-- Thailand's "Last Resort Rehab" at the Wat Thamkrabok Temple about 100 miles north of Bangkok resembles a traditional drug-detox facility (work, relaxation, meditation) -- except for the vomiting. At the "Vomit Temple," Buddhist priests mix a concoction of 120 herbal ingredients that are nasty, according to the temple's methamphetamine addicts interviewed for a recent Australian TV documentary. Said one, of the rehab agenda: "Vomiting is at 3 p.m. every day. Foreigners must vomit for the first five days. The vomiting is intense." [International Business Times (London), 9-29-2015]

-- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a federal lawsuit in California in September on behalf of an endangered crested black macaque that wandered up to an unattended camera on a tripod and clicked a selfie. The camera belonged to photographer David Slater, who claimed copyright to the photo even though "Naturo" actually snapped it. The shot might be valuable to Naturo since it has become viral on the Internet. (Though the photo was taken in Indonesia, Slater's publisher is based in California.) [CNN, 9-23-2015]

-- Jose Banks, now 40, filed a $10 million lawsuit in 2014 against the federal government because jailers at Chicago's high-rise Metropolitan Correctional Center failed to guard him closely enough in 2012, thus enabling him to think he could escape. He and a cellmate had rappelled 17 floors with bed sheets, but Banks was re-arrested a few days later. Still, he claimed that the escape caused him great trauma, in addition to "humiliation and embarrassment" and "damage to his reputation." (In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals turned him down. Wrote the judges, "No one has a personal right to be better guarded.") [Associated Press via Fox News, 9-26-2015]

Many in conservative Jewish communities still practice the tradition of Kaporos on the day of atonement, but the critics were out in force in New York City's Borough Park neighborhood in September to protest the ritual's slaughter there of 50,000 chickens. (A synagogue raises money by "selling" chickens to members, who then have butchers swing the chickens overhead three times, thus transferring the owners' sins to the chickens. Ultimately, the chickens are beheaded, supposedly erasing the humans' sins. Protesters ask why not just donate money.) A judge refused to block the ritual but ordered police to enforce the sanitation laws governing the beheadings. [New York Daily News, 9-18-2015]

"London Zoo Monkey-Keeper and Meerkat-Keeper 'Fought Over Llama-Keeper'" (a British human love triangle, September, The Guardian). "Man Suffering From Constipation for 10 Years Has 11-Pound Stool Removed" (Chengdu, China, August, Central European News). "Naked Spanish Clowns Anger Palestinians" (a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jerusalem backfired, September, YNet News). "Swedish Porn Star Jumps Into Spanish Bullfighting Ring to Comfort Dying Bull" (Malaga, Spain, September, The Local). [The Guardian (London), 9-25-2015] [Central European News via Fox News, 8-31-2015] [YNet News (Tel Aviv), 9-17-2015] [The Local (Stockholm) via Fox News Latino, 9-22-2015]

(1) In August, Che Hearn, 25, who police said had just shoplifted electronics items from the Wal-Mart in Round Lake Beach, Illinois, was picked up while on foot near the store. Police found that Hearn had actually driven his car to the Wal-Mart but that while he was inside shoplifting, a repo agent (who had followed him to the store) had confiscated it. (2) Astronaut Edgar Mitchell (the sixth man to walk on the moon) told a reporter in August that "my own experience talking to people" has made it clear that extraterrestrials are trying "to keep us from going to war" with Russia and that U.S. military officers have told him that their test missiles are "frequently" shot down "by alien spacecraft." [Lake County News-Sun, 8-7-2015] [Fox News, 8-15-2015]

Peter Frederiksen, 63, a gun shop owner in Bloemfontein, South Africa, was detained by police in September pending formal charges after his wife discovered 21 packages labeled as female genitals in their home freezer. There was no official explanation, but one officer called them the result of "mutilation of private parts of a woman, cut out and kept as trophies." One was marked with the name of a woman, "2010," and "Lesotho" (a kingdom within South Africa). [Associated Press via Huffington Post UK, 9-22-2015]

New Zealand's Waikato National Contemporary Art Award in September (2009) (worth the equivalent of $11,000) went to Dane Mitchell, whose installation consisted merely of the discarded packaging materials he had gathered from all the other exhibits vying for the prize. Mitchell named his pile "Collateral." (Announcement of the winner was poorly received by the other contestants.) [Waikato Times, 9-8-2009]

Thanks This Week to Gerald Sacks, Maria Nilles, Dave Kanofsky, Robin Daley, Chuck Hamilton, and Gary Goldberg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

PlayStations and Xboxes, However, State-of-the-Art: A New York University Center for Justice study released in September warned that, unless major upgrades are made quickly, 43 states will conduct 2016 elections on electronic voting machines at least 10 years old and woefully suspect. Those states use machines no longer made or poorly supported, and those in 14 states are more than 15 years old. There are apprehensions over antiquated security (risking miscounts, potential for hacking), but also fear of election-day breakdowns causing long lines at the polls, depressing turnout and dampening confidence in the overall fairness of the process. The NYU center estimated the costs of upgrading at greater than $1 billion. [Politico, 9-15-2015]

-- In a "manifesto" to celebrate "personal choice and expression" in the standard of beauty "in a society that already places too many harmful standards on women," according to a July New York Times report, some now are dyeing their armpit hair. At the Free Your Pits website, and events like "pit-ins" in Seattle and Pensacola, Florida, envelope-pushing women offer justifications ranging from political resistance to, according to one, "want(ing) to freak out (her) in-laws." Preferred colors are turquoise, hot pink, purple and neon yellow. [New York Times, 7-16-2015]

-- Actress Melissa Gilbert (a star of TV's "Little House on the Prairie"), 51, announced in August that she would run for Congress from Michigan's 8th Congressional District -- even though she is currently on the hook to the IRS and California for back taxes totaling $470,000. Gilbert, a former president of the Screen Actors Guild and member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, promised that she (and her actor-husband) would pay off her tax bill -- by the year 2024. [Detroit Free Press, 8-12-2015]

-- Update: Five years after News of the Weird mentioned it, Japan's Love Plus virtual-girlfriend app is more popular than ever, serving a growing segment of the country's lonely males -- those beyond peak marital years and resigned to artificial "relationships." Love Plus models (Rinko, Manaka and Nene) are chosen mostly (and surprisingly) not for physical attributes, but for flirting and companionship. One user described his "girlfriend" (in a September Time magazine dispatch) as "someone to say good morning to in the morning and ... goodnight to at night." Said a Swedish observer, "You wouldn't see (this phenomenon) in Europe or America." One problem: Men can get stuck in a "love loop" waiting for the next app update -- with, they hope, more "features." [Time.com, 9-15-2015]

-- "Odette Delacroix," 25, of North Hollywood, California, is a petite (86 pounds) model who runs an adult fetish website in which people (i.e., men) pay to watch her tumble around, bikini-clad, with "plus-size" models, up to five at a time, squashing and nearly suffocating her in "pigpiles." "Odette" told London's edition of Cosmopolitan that her PetiteVsPlump website has so far earned her about $100,000. [Cosmopolitan UK, 5-27-2015]

Scientists at North Carolina State and Wake Forest universities have developed a machine that vomits, realistically, enabling the study of "aerosolization" of dangerous norovirus. "Vomiting Larry" can replicate the process of retching, including the pressure at which particles are expelled (which, along with volume and "other vomit metrics," can teach the extent of the virus' threat in large populations). The researchers must use a harmless stand-in "bacteriophage" for the studies -- because norovirus is highly infectious even in the laboratory. [NPR, 8-19-2015]

Relentless Wannabes: (1) Authorities in Winter Haven, Florida, arrested James Garfield, 28, with the typical faux-police set-up -- Ford Crown Victoria with police lights, uniform with gold-star badge, video camera, Taser, and business cards printed with "law enforcement." (Explained Garfield lamely, the "law enforcement" was just a "printing mistake.") (2) In nearby Frostproof, Florida, Thomas Hook, 48, was also arrested in September, his 14th law-enforcement-impersonator arrest since 1992. His paraphernalia included the Crown Vic with a prisoner cage, scanner, spotlight, "private investigator" and "fugitive recovery" badges, and an equally bogus card identifying him as a retired Marine Corps major. Hook's one other connection to law enforcement: He is a registered sex offender. [Bright House News (Orlando), 9-21-2015][Tampa Tribune, 9-11-2015]

(1) Police in Scotland's Highlands were called in September when a Buddhist retreat participant, Raymond Storrie, became riled up that another, Robert Jenner, had boiling water for his tea, but not Storrie's. After Storrie vengefully snatched Jenner's own hot water, Jenner punched him twice in the head, leading Storrie to threaten to kill Jenner (but also asking, plaintively, "Is this how you practice dharma?"). (2) A Buddhist monk from Louisiana, Khang Nguyen Le, was arrested in New York City in September and accused of embezzling nearly $400,000 from his temple to fuel his gambling habit (blackjack, mostly at a Lake Charles, Louisiana, casino). [The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 9-22-2015] [New York Daily News, 9-15-2015]

-- An official of the Missouri Republican Party apologized in September for the "thoughtless" act of using an original Thomas Hart Benton mural in the state Capitol as a writing surface. Valinda Freed and a man were exchanging business cards, and Freed, needing to jot down information on the card, placed it directly on the mural to backstop her writing. [Associated Press via ABC News, 9-21-2015]

-- During a break in a murder trial in Lima, Ohio, in September, a jailer apparently absentmindedly locked inmate-witness Steven Upham in the same cell with the accused murderer he was about to testify against (Markelus Carter, 46). Upham was set to squeal that Carter had confessed the murder to him. Deputies soon rushed to the cell to break up Carter's attempt, with his fists, to change Upham's mind. (At press time, the jury was still deliberating.) [Lima News, 9-17-2015]

Police in South Union Township, Pennsylvania, say David Lee, 46, is the one who swiped a Straight Talk cellphone from a Wal-mart shelf on Sept. 15 (but wound up in the hospital). After snatching the phone, Lee went to a different section of the store and tried to open the packaging with a knife, but mishandled it and slashed his arm so severely that he had to be medevaced to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh (and a hazmat crew had to be summoned to clean up all of the blood Lee had splattered). [KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 9-15-2015]

Stories that were formerly weird, but which now occur with such frequency that they must be permanently retired from circulation: (1) Once again, in July, despite being handcuffed (by a King County, Washington, sheriff's deputy) and placed in the back seat of a squad car, the prisoner managed to drive off alone. Teddy Bell, 26, was apprehended a while later with the help of K-9 officers. (2) And once again (in July in Bergen, Norway) the accused was convicted of murder based on a telltale Internet-search history. Police discovered about 250 computer queries such as "How do you poison someone without getting caught?" (Ultimately, the woman confessed that she killed her husband by lighting a charcoal grill in his bedroom while he slept.) [KOMO-TV (Seattle), 7-25-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 7-9-2015]

Life Imitates the Three Stooges: In January (2009), inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings District Court, dashed out of the building and ran for their freedom. However, when they encountered a street lamp in front of the courthouse, one man went to the right of it and the other to the left, and they slammed into each other, allowing jailers to catch up and re-arrest them. (A courthouse surveillance camera captured the moment, and the grainy video was a worldwide sensation.) [Fox News, 1-29-2009]

Thanks This Week to Richard Player, Richard Judkins, Duane Knight, and Scott Lichtenberg, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.