Among those struggling with psychological issues in modern America are the rich "one-percenters" (especially the mega-rich "one-percent of one-percenters"), according to counselors specializing in assuaging guilt and moderating class hatred. London's The Guardian, reporting from New York, found three such counselors, including two who barely stopped short of comparing the plight of the rich-rich with the struggles of "people of color" or out-of-closet gays. Sample worries: isolation (so few rich-rich); stress, caused by political hubbub over "inequality"; and insecurity (is my "friend" really just a friend of my money?). [The Guardian, 10-17-2015]

Stories surface regularly about a hospital patient declared dead but who then revives briefly before once again dying. However, Tammy Cleveland's recent lawsuit against doctors and DeGraff Memorial Hospital near Buffalo, New York, reveals an incident more startling. She alleges that her late husband Michael displayed multiple signs of life (breathing, eyes open, legs kicking, attempted hugs, struggles against the tube in his throat) for nearly two hours, but with two doctors all the while assuring her that he was gone. (The coroner came and went twice, concluding that calling him had been premature.) The lawsuit alleges that only upon the fourth examination did the doctor exclaim, "My God, he has a pulse!" Michael Cleveland died shortly after that -- of a punctured lung from CPR following his initial heart attack -- an injury for which he could have been treated. [Democrat & Chronicle (Rochester, New York), 10-13-2015]

-- For an October report, Vice Media located the half-dozen most-dedicated collectors of those AOL giveaway CDs from the Internet's dial-up years ("50 Hours Free!"). Sparky Haufle wrote a definitive AOL-CD collector's guide; Lydia Sloan Cline has 4,000 unique disks; Bustam Halim at one point had 20,000 total, before weeding to 3,000. (The AOL connoisseurs file disks by color, by the hundreds of packaging styles, by number of free hours, and especially by the co-brands -- the rare pearls, like AOL's deals with Frisbee and Spider Man. Their collections, said both Halim and Brian Larkin, are simply "beautiful." [Vice.com, 10-7-2015]

-- In 20th-century Chicago, according to legend, one did not have to be among the living to vote on election day, and a 2013 policy of the city's community colleges has seemingly extended rights of the dead -- to receive unearned degrees. City Colleges of Chicago, aiming to increase graduation numbers, has awarded a slew of posthumous degrees to former students who died with at least three-fourths of the necessary credits to graduate. (The policy also now automatically awards degrees by "reverse transfer" of credits to students who went on to four-year colleges, where they added enough credits, hypothetically, to meet City Colleges' standards.) [Crain's Chicago Business, 10-17-2015]

It would be exhaustive to chronicle the many ways that the woman born Carolyn Clay, 82, of Chattooga County, Georgia, is different from us. For starters, she was once arrested for stripping nude to protest a quixotic issue before the city council in Rome, Georgia; for another, her driver's license identifies her as Ms. Serpentfoot Serpentfoot. In October, she filed to change that name -- to one with 69 words, 68 hyphens, an ellipsis and the infinity sign. One judge has already turned her down on the ground that she cannot recite the name (though she promised to shorten it on legal papers to "Nofoot Allfoot Serpentfoot"). [Times Free Press (Chattanooga, Tennessee.), 10-12-2015]

Hinton Sheryn, 68, on trial at England's Plymouth Crown Court in September, denied he was the "indecent exposer" charged with 18 incidents against children dating back to 1973 -- that he would never do such a thing because he would not want anyone to see his unusually small penis. In response, the prosecutor brought in a prostitute known to have serviced Sheryn, to testify that his penis is of normal size. Sheryn was convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison. [Daily Telegraph (London), 9-17-2015] [Plymouth Herald, 10-5-2015]

-- A Jacksonville, Florida, sheriff's SWAT team surrounded a mobile home on Oct. 14 to arrest Ryan Bautista, 34, and Leanne Hunn, 30, on armed burglary and other charges, but since two other women were being held inside, officers remained in a stand-off. Hunn subsequently announced by phone that the couple would surrender -- after having sex one final time. Deputies entered the home around 4 a.m. on the 15th and made the post-coital arrest without incident. [Florida Times-Union, 10-15-2015]

-- A 27-year-old owner of the Hookah House in Akron, Ohio, was fatally shot by an Akron narcotics officer during an October raid for suspected drugs. The man had his arms raised, according to the police report, but dropped one hand behind him, provoking an officer to shoot. Only afterward did they learn that the man was unarmed; they concluded that he was reaching only to secure or to push back the packet of heroin he felt was oozing out of its hiding place in his buttocks. [Akron Beacon Journal, 9-22-2015]

In September, village officials in Uzbekistan's town of Shahartepeppa, alarmed that Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev would drive through and notice barren fields (since the cotton crop had already been harvested), ordered about 500 people into the fields to attach cotton capsules onto the front-row stalks to impress Mirziyoyev with the village's prosperity. [RFE/RL via The Guardian (London), 11-16-2015]

(1) The naked bodies of a man and a woman, both aged 30, were found in August 40 feet beneath a balcony -- in the moat surrounding the Vauban Fort castle on an island in the English Channel. Police speculated that the couple had fallen during exciting sex "gone wrong." (2) A woman was killed in an accidental head-on collision in Houston on June 18 as she was racing after another car. She was angrily chasing her estranged husband, who was with another woman, but neither of those two was hurt. (The driver of the crashed-into SUV was severely injured.) [The Independent (London), 8-22-2015] [KHOU-TV, 6-18-2015]

Jorge Vasconcelos, 25, was traffic-stopped in El Reno, Oklahoma, in October because he was reportedly weaving on the road, but deputies detected no impairment except possibly for a lack of sleep. Then, "out of nowhere," according to a KFOR-TV report, Vasconcelos, instead of quietly driving off, insisted that he was doing nothing wrong and that deputies could check his truck if they thought otherwise. They did -- and found an elaborately rigged metal box in the engine, containing 17 pounds of heroin, worth over $3 million. He was charged with aggravated trafficking.

(1) Norway's notorious 77-murder terrorist Anders Breivik (serving only 21 years because that is Norway's maximum sentence) complained in September that he was feeling so oppressed behind bars that if conditions didn't improve, he would go on a hunger strike and starve himself. (2) In July, artist Hilde Krohn Huse, shooting a video alone in a forest near Aukra, accidentally got hung upside down naked in a tree for nearly four hours. (3) In October, hunters who had shot two elk near Narvik were informed that they had inadvertently wandered into an area of the Polar Park zoo (and that, thanks to them, the zoo's elk population was now down to three). [The Local (Oslo), 9-29-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 7-15-2015] [The Local (Oslo), 10-15-2015]

In the midst of (2010) World Cup fever, readers might have missed Germany's win over host Barbados in June for the Woz Challenge Cup, following an eight-team polo tournament with players not on horses, but Segways. The sport is said to have been created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, whose nerd-populated Silicon Valley Aftershocks competed again (in 2010) in Barbados (but last won the Cup in 2007). Wozniak lamented that his own polo skills are fading, but the San Jose Mercury News reported that Woz's fearlessness on the Segway seems hardly diminished. [San Jose Mercury News, 5-18-2010; ESPN.com, 6-18-2010]

Thanks This Week to Elaine Weiss, Gerald Sacks, Ivan Katz, Chuck Hamilton, Ruth Sewell, and Kathryn Wood, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisers.

In October, a Harvard University debate team (three-time recent champions of the American Parliamentary Debate Association) lost a match to a team of prisoners from the maximum-security Eastern New York Correctional Facility. Prison debaters "are held to the exact same standards" as college debate teams, according to the director of Bard College's Prison Initiative, which coaches the inmates. Prisoners took the "pro" side of public schools having the right to turn away students whose parents had entered the U.S. illegally (though team members personally disagreed). The Bard trainers pointed out that the inmates perfected their presentation despite (or perhaps because of) the prison prohibition on Internet access. [Washington Post, 10-7-2015]

A black alleged gang member, Taurus Brown, 19, under arrest in Clearwater, Florida, in September for having a marijuana cigarette casually tucked behind his ear as he talked politely to a white police officer, tried to flee on foot but was quickly taken down. Asked why he ran, Brown replied (according to the police report): "I don't like white people touching me. White people do weird stuff." [The Smoking Gun, 9-4-2015]

-- The Merit Systems Protection Board is (wrote The Washington Post) "a personnel court of last resort" for federal employees unfairly punished by demotion or firing -- which is just what employee Timothy Korb needed when his federal agency suspended him in 2013, allegedly for revealing at a staff meeting that the agency's actual case backlog was much worse than it was letting on. Korb's employer, ironically, is the Merit Systems Protection Board, and in September 2015, an administrative law judge upheld his claim of unfairness. [Washington Post, 10-2- 2015]

-- Philosophy professor Anna Stubblefield (Rutgers-Newark University) was convicted of aggravated sexual assault against a severely disabled man she was discovered having sex with on the floor in a locked office, but at trial in September, she testified that the man had "consent(ed)" and that the two were "in love." The victim, 34, has cerebral palsy and other ailments, wears diapers, requires assistance for nearly all activities, is intellectually disabled, and does not speak, "except for making noises," according to a brother. Stubblefield had been working with him on the controversial practice of "facilitated communication," in which a facilitator reads a patient's mind via subtleties such as eye movement and articulates the words for him. However, a jury failed to appreciate that facilitated "consent" and quickly convicted her. [NJ Advance Media via NJ.com, 9-25-2015; Inside Higher Ed, 10-5-2015]

In rare bipartisan action, the U.S. Senate is preparing a bill to ban taxpayer funds for those military salutes at sporting events. Teams (the legislators believe) already benefit from the fan-friendly staging of heartwarming patriotic displays. (The Pentagon had paid $5.4 million just to the National Football League over the last four years.) An NFL spokesman, finally playing catch-up, said in September, "(N)o one should be paid to honor our troops." [NJ Advance Media via NJ.com (Newark), 9-30-2015]

-- In a recent resolution, Blount County (Tennessee) Commissioner Karen Miller called for her fellow commissioners and state officials all the way up to the governor to prepare for "God's wrath" for recent national policies (same-sex marriage, etc.) she disagrees with. Though other states might be in for a smiting, Miller's resolution calls on God to spare Blount County (by the "safety of the Passover lamb"). In October, the commission tabled the resolution, 10-5, but she promised to reintroduce it. [WBIR-TV (Knoxville), 10-7-2015]

-- By September, Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser were finally out of the Michigan Legislature -- Gamrat by guard-escorted removal after her formal expulsion and Courser by pre-emptive resignation -- following the pair's months-long "secret" sexual affair and clumsy handling of its revelation. Courser's original defense strategy was to plant a bogus story of a gay-sex scandal, hoping to discredit as hysteria any news about his actual affair, but when that failed, he issued a 1,900-word plea, liberally quoting the Bible, acknowledging his hypocrisy and hoping for salvation from his colleagues (who failed to come through). [Associated Press via New York Times, 9-11-2015]

"Officially" declaring oneself not subject to the laws of any jurisdiction (i.e., a "sovereign") opens a wide range of career choices. The FBI and Las Vegas police say that in Rick Van Thiel's case, once his porn industry career ended (because someone stole his video equipment), he "decided to go into the medical field," becoming "Dr. Rick" with expertise performing dozens of abortions, circumcisions and castrations (plus cancer treatments and root canals). Proudly avoiding actual licensing, Van Thiel promoted "alternative" remedies, with an office in a Nevada compound of trailers that one hesitant "patient" described as something out of a horror movie. Van Thiel, arrested in October, nonetheless staunchly defended his ability (acquired, he said, by watching YouTube medical videos). (Bonus entertainment: In court, he will be acting as his own lawyer.) [Las Vegas Review Journal, 10-9-2015]

In June, Tennessee's much-publicized program to kick drug users off of welfare rolls (and only from welfare rolls, among all people receiving any type of state subsidy) wound up its first year cutting off fewer than 40 people out of 28,559 people on public assistance ("temporary assistance to needy families"). Nonetheless, the sponsoring legislators said they were pleased with the program and planned no changes. The state paid a contractor $11,000 to conduct 468 drug tests, but did not disclose staff costs of processing applications, deciding who to test and managing cases. [WMOT Radio (Murfreesboro, Tenn.), 10-6-2015]

-- Not Ready for Prime Time: It was at 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 8 that, according to Dallas police, Kristopher Jones, 18, and a buddy decided it would be Joy's Donut shop they should rob. As they exited the store (one carrying the shop's cash register), a uniformed, off-duty officer (who apparently had pulled up to the store -- for doughnuts) saw the whole thing and arrested Jones (though his partner was able to flee). [WFAA-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 10-8-2015]

-- I'm Da Man! John Morgan, 28, and Ashley Duboe, 24, were charged in September with robbing the Savings Bank in Ashville, Ohio -- with their apprehension made easier by Morgan's Facebook photos of himself riffling through (and with a mouthful of) his newly acquired stack of bills (a "McStack," he wrote) and describing his current elation: "I got six bands bra ... I'm doing rrree=aaaalll good." (Police were quick to find the Facebook page because Morgan was already on parole from a 2010 bank robbery.) [The Smoking Gun, 9-24-2015]

More Men Who Accidentally Shot Themselves Recently: A 16-year-old boy, in the leg -- for the second time in three months (same leg) (Tulsa, Oklahoma, September). A road-rager waving a gun at a motorist, jarring his trigger finger as he subsequently crashed (Estero, Florida, September). Christen Reece, 23, shot in the head demonstrating to friends the gun's "safety" (Navajo County, Arizona, September). A man celebrating his 21st (and, alas, final) birthday (Dallas, July). A 49-year-old man who failed the "removing the magazine does not clear the chamber" test (Mims, Florida, June). Martin Hoyer, 51, who failed the "waistband is not a holster" test (Wenatchee, Washington, September). Thomas Javier, 26, trying to hide his gun (after being caught urinating in the street) and fumbling it, accidentally shooting himself in the vicinity of the organ in question. (Brooklyn, New York, September). Donald Watson, 43, slipping a for-sale gun into his pocket and somehow firing on his penis (Sioux Falls, South Dakota, September). [Tulsa: Tulsa World, 9-14-2015] [Estero: WINK-TV (Fort Myers), 9-16-2015] [Reece: White Mountain Independent (Show Low, Ariz.), 9-3-2015] [Dallas: New York Daily News, 7-18-2015] [Mims: WTVJ-TV (Miami), 6-15-2015] [Hoyer: Wenatchee World, 9-24-2015] [Javier: New York Daily News, 9-27-2015] [Watson: Sioux Falls Argus Leader, 9-25-2015]

The Power of Love: Before Arthur Horn met his future bride Lynette (a "metaphysical healer") in 1988, he was a tenured professor at Colorado State, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale, teaching a mainstream course in human evolution. With Lynette's "guidance" (after a revelatory week with her in California, searching for Bigfoot), Horn resigned from Colorado State and began seeking to remedy his inadequate Ivy League education. Lecturing at a conference in Denver in September (2009), Horn said he now realizes that humans evolved from an alien race of shape-shifting reptilians that continue to control civilization through secretive leaders. [Rocky Mountain Collegian, 9-28-2009]

Thanks This Week to Joan Condell, John Baker and Bruce Leiserowitz, and to the News of the Weird Board of Editorial Advisors.

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.