Japan's Tenga toy company appears to be first on the market with a virtual reality bodysuit (for use with the Oculus Rift "Sexy Beach Premium Resort" 3-D game) containing a genital stimulator and the sensation of "groping" breasts -- sending "impulses all over the wearer's body to make it feel like another human being is touching them," according to one reviewer (who expressed dismay that the bodysuit might put sex workers out of business). Said Tenga's CEO, "In the future, the virtual real will become more real than actual real sex." Because of societal pressures, women are expected to be a less-robust market for the device than men. [Attn.com (Los Angeles), 4-5-2016]

-- In March, one District of Columbia government administrative law judge was charged with misdemeanor assault on another. Judge Sharon Goodie said she wanted to give Judge Joan Davenport some files, but Davenport, in her office, would not answer the door. Goodie said once the door finally opened, an enraged Davenport allegedly "lunged" at her, "aiming" her thrust at Goodie's neck. [Washington Post, 4-5-2016]

-- Tennessee state Rep. Jeremy Durham has such a reputation as a "dog" around women working at the capitol that the house speaker issued a directive in April relocating Durham's office to a less-populated building across the street. Further, Durham is allowed access only to certain legislative meetings and to certain staff (i.e., no free-ranging among female staff members). After interviewing 34 people, the state attorney general said he believed that Rep. Durham's unwanted sexual approaches and commentaries were impeding legislative business. [The Tennessean, 4-7-2016]

(1) Chinese courts (according to figures reported by Amnesty International in March) dispense justice so skillfully that more than 99.9 percent of cases result in convictions (1,039 acquittals in 1.2 million cases last year). (2) During its first 33 years (through 2012), the U.S. government's applications for secret search warrants to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court have been approved all but 11 times out of 33,900 cases. (FISC defenders say that is because all requests are finely honed by guidance from the judges, but of course, both the Chinese and U.S. numbers, and reasoning, are, by designation, unverifiable.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-14-2016] [Stanford Law Review, vol. 66, February 2014]

-- "Who's a Good Dog?"/"Yes, You Are": Some are just blessed with doggy charisma, say owners who showcase their pet's charm on "personal" social media accounts, and now specialized marketers scour those sources to match the most popular pooches with advertisers seeking just the right four-legged companion for their image. As The Wall Street Journal reported in April, entrepreneurial dog owners have rushed to create popular Instagram accounts and Facebook posts (and now, even to put their photogenic pups on a live-streaming app called Waggle) to catch agents' eyes (and, they hope, lead to four- and five-figure paydays from such advertisers as Nikon, PetSmart, Residence Inn and Heinz). [Wall Street Journal, 4-6-2016]

-- New Jersey is a big state, but when just one man decided to move away, the state legislature's budget office director warned that the loss of that man's taxes might lead to state revenue problems. Billionaire hedge-fund manager David Tepper evidently pays a bundle, and the budget office director pointed out that the state's reliance on personal income taxes means that even a 1 percent drop in anticipated tax could create a gap of $140 million under forecasts. [Bloomberg News, 4-5-2016]

-- Among the names chosen for Internet start-up ventures (although -- face it -- the more sensible names are already taken): Houzz (home design and remodeling), Kabam (online interactive game company, formerly "Watercooler Inc."), Klarna (e-commerce company that pays the store for your purchases and then collects from you), MuleSoft (makes software to integrate applications) and Kabbage (makes small-business loans online). Wired magazine reported in February that those ventures, and two dozen other inexplicably named startups, are all "unicorns" -- with investors pledging at least $1 billion to each one. [Wired (February 2016)]

Researchers already knew that masked birch caterpillars "rub hairs on their rear ends against a leaf to create vibrations," according to an April National Geographic report, but a forthcoming article by Carleton University biologists describes that "drumming" as actually part of their "sophisticated signaling repertoire" to attract others -- not for mating but for assistance in spinning their protective silk cocoons. The researchers' "laser vibrometer" detects sound likely inaudible to humans, but when the caterpillars feed, it's clearly, said one researcher, "Chomp, chomp, chomp, anal scrape. Chomp, chomp, chomp, anal scrape." [National Geographic, 4-5-2016]

Micro-Crime: (1) According to surveillance video, a man broke into a Five Guys restaurant in Washington, D.C., in the middle of the night on March 18, cooked himself a cheeseburger and fled. (2) Ellis Battista, 24, was arrested for the February break-in at Bradley's convenience store in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in which he took only a pack of cigarettes -- for which he left $6 on the counter. (However, he also damaged the door getting in.) [WJLA-TV (Washington), 4-10-2016] [Las Cruces Sun-News, 3-1-2016]

(1) A 69-year-old man was killed on March 17 while awaiting emergency care at Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, North Carolina. He had been seriously injured in an earlier accident and was in the waiting room when a 59-year-old driver's car crashed through the hospital doors and fatally struck him. (2) A 55-year-old man was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 23 when a 15-foot trailer came loose and crashed into him on a sidewalk. The deceased, who had a lengthy criminal record for sexual assault, might have avoided the trailer if he had not been distracted by watching pornography on his phone as he walked. [WRAL-TV (Raleigh), 3-17-2016] [WGHP-TV (High Point, N.C.), 3-26-2016]

-- Amanda Schweickert, 28, was charged with a felony and three driving offenses in March in Springville, New York, when deputies noticed that her rear license plate was just a piece of cardboard painted to sort of resemble a New York plate (but more likely suggesting the work of an elementary school art class). (New York also requires a front plate, but Schweickert had not gotten around to that yet.) [WIVB-TV (Buffalo), 3-3-2016]

-- Britain's annual Boring Conference (this year, July 5 at Conway Hall in London) brings together those who celebrate the mundane (previous topics include sneezing, toast, vending machine sounds, yellow lines, barcodes), and in anticipation, a BBC News commentator interviewed Peter Willis of the Letter Box Study Group. Willis, 68, was excited at having recently acquired access to a database of all 115,000 mailboxes served by U.K.'s Royal Mail and hopes, with the help of "splendid" mapping software, to visit and photograph each one, to examine the different styles. No doubt speaking for all members, Willis said the lay version of "boring" implies inactivity, but the obsessives in his study group (and in attendance at the Boring Conference) lead active lives, with a wide range of interests. (The conference, by the way, is sold out.) [BBC News, 4-1-2016]

Sri Lanka has, as an "unwritten symbol of pride and culture," the world's highest per capita rate for eye donation, according to a January (2012) Associated Press dispatch from Colombo. Underpinning this national purpose is the country's Buddhist tradition that celebrates afterlives. "He's dead," said a mourning relative of a deceased eye donor, "but he's still alive. His eye can still see the world." Doctors even report instances in which Sri Lankans consider giving up an eyeball while still alive, as a measure of virtue. A new state-of-the-art clinic, funded by Singaporean donors, is expected to nearly double Sri Lanka's export of eyeballs. [Associated Press via Daily Mail (London), 1- 23-2012]

Eva Tiamat Medusa, 55, of the Phoenix area, has almost completed her journey (she calls it "transspecieism") to become a "mythical beast" -- like a dragon video-game character -- through purposeful facial scarring, surgical implants and even removal of both ears. "Tiamat" was born Richard Hernandez before becoming female and now sports such features as reptilian-style skin "scales," green-colored "whites" of the eyes, "horns" on her forehead and, of course, breasts. (However, she is perhaps so far satisfied with one part, as she is still a "pre-op" transsexual.) [Daily Mail (London), 4-5-2016]

-- The Pentagon admitted recently that it has no way to know how many parts or devices are in its equipment inventory -- except by going through its estimated 30 million contracts (on the text-unsearchable electronic database) one by one. For a recent Freedom of Information request from a software developer (for the Pentagon's number of "HotPlug" power-extenders for computers), it quoted a retrieval price of $660 million to cover 15 million hours of work. [Center for Public Integrity via Slate.com, 3-18-2016]

-- Wait, What? (1) The most recent problem with the Defense Department's prospective, ultra-modern F-35 fighter jet, revealed in March, is that its "radar control" sometimes malfunctions and that system updates will not be ready until 2020. In the interim, an Air Force official advised that, as a workaround, the radar could be turned off and then back on again (similar to restarting a glitchy computer). (2) Michael Ford, 36, a U.S. Embassy staff member in London, was sentenced in March to 57 months in prison for having run a "sextortion" email scheme preying on young girls -- from his heavily monitored embassy computer workstation, operating undetected for two years. (One workday last April, for example, he sent 800 emails from his desk "phishing" for gullible social media users.) [The Guardian (London), 3-8-2016] [Washington Times, 3-23-2016]

Ms. Charli Jones Parker, a teacher and girls' basketball coach at the Pickens Academy (Pickens County, Alabama) was arrested on March 28 and charged with having sex with an underage male student. Her husband, James Parker, a math teacher and coach at Pickens, was arrested two days later and charged with having sex with an underage female former student. The district attorney said the incidents were unrelated and resulted from separate investigations. [AL.com, 3-31-2016]

-- Inequality on Parade: (1) The city council in Palo Alto, California, trying to retain some of its Silicon Valley non-millionaires, proposed a subsidy plan in March to help with steep housing costs. In a town where tiny homes sell for $2 million (and are immediately knocked down and rebuilt), subsidies will be available even to families earning $250,000 a year. (2) In February, a family court in England reduced the child-support payments from hedge fund financier Christopher Rokos to the mother of his 7-year-old son from the equivalent of about $17,000 a month to about $11,300 -- though that amount includes more than $1,200 a month for "wine" (perhaps, in case the kid is a handful). [KPIX-TV (San Francisco), 3-22-2016] [Bloomberg Business, 3-11-2016]

-- The giant HSBC Bank, which was let off the hook in 2012 for its money-laundering by paying a $1.9 billion settlement and promising to vigilantly guard against future money laundering, was revealed in March to be regressing. HSBC's monitor said that the bank somehow failed to stop transactions by a company whose professed business included exporting miniskirts to Iran (which would be against international sanctions but also not exactly smart business). In another incident, a 19-year-old Mexican man in the drug-cartel-intensive Sinaloa state was allowed to open a private-wealth account with just a bagful of cash, claiming to be a "shrimp farmer." [Wall Street Journal, 3-29-2016]

In March, Kingdom Church, in the south London district of Camberwell, was fined the equivalent of about $10,900 by the Southwark Council for its amplified music and incessant "loud preaching," ritually performed "almost daily" at around 3 a.m. A spokesperson told the London Evening Standard that the timing was necessary because that is when evil spirits are most likely to be present. [London Evening Standard, 3-18-2016]

Downloads and Uploads: (1) A new weight-loss device being tested in the U.S. ("AspireAssist") is billed as a less-expensive alternative to bariatric surgery, with the ability to evacuate up to 30 percent of recently eaten food from the stomach before digestion. A tube, through a port in the stomach, sucks ("aspirates") the food. (2) Researchers at HRL Laboratories in California, in a recent journal article, reported that test subjects without airplane-pilot knowledge nonetheless performed flight simulations 33 percent better than a control group after the researchers uploaded electrical signals to certain piloting-helpful areas of their brains. [CTV News (Toronto), 2-28-2016] [Frontiers in Human Neuroscience via Daily Mirror (London), 3-23-2016]

-- Latest Behavior Standards: (1) The town council in Bracebridge, Ontario, approved a new municipal bylaw in March ending existing prohibitions on people engaging in "yelling, shouting, hooting or similar noises." (Other noise controls, such as on audio devices, or by humans between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., remain in effect.) (2) Also in March, the city council in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was considering a proposed anti-bullying bylaw prohibiting gossip or (according to the National Post) "rumor- mongering, name-calling, taunting, mocking and ostracizing" -- not only in the streets and parks but in "public" places such as bars and restaurants. [Toronto Star, 3-23-2016] [National Post, 3-19-2016]

Veterinarian Tristan Rich, in Melbourne, Australia, was credited in March with saving the life of a 9-year-old goldfish ("Bubbles") by removing its brain tumor. Dr. Rich had to first figure out how to keep Bubbles out of water long enough to operate, but finally rigged a contraption to continually splash water over the gills. This was Dr. Rich's second heroic goldfish surgery. (Bubbles' breed was not reported; ordinary goldfish can be purchased for less than $1.) [Yahoo News Australia, 4-1-2016]

Bad enough that Alfonso Mobley Jr., 26, is a "sovereign citizen," self-proclaimed as exempt from obeying laws or paying taxes, but on April 5 he also lost both hands -- when a bomb he was working on exploded in Columbus, Ohio. The bomb was made of the same material as that in the November terrorist attacks in Paris. A 2010 FBI report labeled sovereign citizens a domestic terrorist group, but Mobley's associate (who was not hurt) told police the bomb was to be simply a diversion for their planned bank or armored-car robbery. [Columbus Dispatch, 4-6-2016]

(1) First it was "Pastafarians" of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster insisting on wearing colanders for driver's license photos. Then, in Portland, Oregon, last year, a man who goes by "Bishop" insisted on his own driver's license "religious covering" -- a "fox" hat to honor his "seven drums" religion. The DMV turned him down, but in March 2016, he won his appeal. (2) In the latest episode of an over-the-top obsessive cat, Sarah Nathan's "Brigit," age 6, had her cover blown in March when she collected a dozen boxer briefs and about 60 socks -- all apparently klepto-lifted from neighbors in Hamilton, New Zealand. Nathan admitted that she may ultimately have to stash some underwear around her farm just to keep Brigit stimulated. [KATU-TV (Portland), 3-12-2016] [Stuff.co.nz, 3-21-2016]

The varsity girls' basketball teams at predominantly white Kenmore East High School near Buffalo, New York, have, for several years (until 2011), psyched themselves up in a pre-game locker room ritual by chanting, inexplicably, "One, Two, Three, (n-word (plural))!" before running out onto the court. Although the white players called use of the word a "tradition" (passed down from year to year), and not a racial "label," the team's only black player not surprisingly had a problem with it and reported it to school officials. According to a December (2011) Buffalo News report, it was always a players-only tradition, and no adult was aware of the chant, but upon learning of it, officials immediately banned it. [Buffalo News, 12-12-2011]

Department of Veterans Affairs employee Elizabeth Rivera Rivera, 39, was fired after her arrest (followed by a February guilty plea) for armed robbery, but when she was sentenced only to probation, an arbitrator ordered the VA to rehire her -- and give her back pay she "earned" while sitting in jail awaiting trial. (She had been the driver for a man arrested for a street robbery in San Juan, Puerto Rico.) Rivera's union had demanded the reinstatement without salary penalty -- for "fairness" -- because the same Puerto Rico VA office had earlier hired a convicted sex offender, and the office's hospital director, recently charged with DUI and drug possession, avoided VA discipline because of technicalities about the traffic stop. [Daily Caller, 3-22-2016]

Turmoil in Selma, Alabama, March 1965: The historic "Bloody Sunday" at the Edmund Pettus Bridge ultimately became a turning point in the battle for voting rights. Turmoil in Selma, Alabama, March 2016: The town is riven by demands for stricter enforcement of the ordinance requiring horses on the street to be wearing diapers -- a campaign led by Ward 8's Councilman Michael Johnson (an African-American): "I'm tired of it because there's other things I could be doing than dealing with horses." [Selma Times Journal, 3-23-2016]

-- Urges: (1) Ms. Ashton Barton, 33, charged with shoplifting a vibrating sex toy from a CVS pharmacy in Largo, Florida, in February, tried for police sympathy by explaining that she was in a troubled marriage. "My husband doesn't want to touch me anymore," and "I would rather do this than be unfaithful." (2) Neighbors of a loudly frisky couple in a Stockholm, Sweden, apartment building were so frustrated by the noise that they reached out to the country's health minister, Gabriel Wikstrom -- who took the side of the randy couple (according to a translation by Stockholm's The Local): "Sounds nice for them, I think. Good for their wellbeing and thus public health as well." [The Smoking Gun, 2-29-2016] [The Local, 3-11-2016]

-- Nice Tries: (1) Benjamin Grafius, 39, charged with several instances of indecent exposure to Amish people near New Holland, Pennsylvania, told police that he targeted them because he knew they would not use phones to call police (March). (2) Valerie Godbout, 33, visiting Orlando from Montreal and charged with drug possession after alerting police with erratic driving, told the officer that she was on the wrong side of the road because that's the way traffic works in Canada. (It's not.) (March). (3) Emily Davis, 21, caught by police displaying her recently deceased grandmother's handicap-parking badge, explained that she was merely "using it in her honor." (Portsmouth, England, February). [Associated Press via KDKA-TV (Pittsburgh), 3-22-2016] [Orlando Sentinel, 3-16-2016] [Metro News (London), 2-26-2016]

-- German researchers, publishing in March, revealed that female burying beetles uniquely discourage their mates from pestering them for sex after birth -- thus explaining how the male of this species is observed actually helping with child care. The females apparently release a chemical "anti-aphrodisiac" to the father's antennae. Said the lead researcher (a woman), "They are a very modern family." Said another biology professor (also female), "Burying beetles are supercool." [New York Times, 3-23-2016]

-- Science magazine called the "butthole" "one of the finest innovations in the past 540 million years of animal evolution" -- in that, until it developed, animals' only channel of waste removal was through the same opening used for food intake. However, the recent discovery, announced at a March conference by a University of Miami biologist, that gelatinous sea creatures called comb jellies can excrete via other pores, was labeled by the magazine as "stunn(ing)." [Science, 3-23-2016]

-- The Emerging American "Right" of Rejecting Science: In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared that measles had been eliminated in the United States, but by 2014 Americans had resurrected it (677 reported cases), and researchers from Emory University and Johns Hopkins set out to learn how -- and recently found the dominant reason to be the purposeful decision by some Americans to refuse or delay widely available vaccinations (especially for their children). (The researchers found similar, but less-strong conclusions about whooping cough.) [Slate.com, 3-25-2016]

(1) An 86-year-old woman died in February in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, when she tripped and got her medical alert necklace caught on her walker, strangling herself. (2) A 25-year-old off-duty New York City police officer was killed on a highway near Elizabeth, New Jersey, in March. According to the police report, the officer had rear-ended another car and had gotten out to "discuss" the matter, then suddenly pulled his service revolver and threatened the driver using road rage-type language. As the officer backed up while pointing the gun, a passing driver accidentally, fatally struck him. [Associated Press via WNEW-TV (New York), 3-2-2016] [WABC-TV (New York City), 3-2-2016]

Joe Vandusen said he has had no contact whatsoever with his estranged wife for "16 or 17 years" and that both moved long ago to other relationships (Joe currently living with a woman, raising both his two children and her two, as well). Nonetheless, Vandusen's "real" wife recently gave birth, from another father, and, without claiming Vandusen as the father, filed in February for child support from him. In the Vandusens' home state of Iowa (like the law in many states), he must pay, irrespective of any DNA test (unless he gets an expensive court order to "de-establish paternity." [WQAD-TV (Davenport, Iowa), 3-23-2016]

(1) Ervin Brinker, 68, pleaded guilty to Medicaid fraud as CEO of the Summit Pointe health care provider in Michigan and was sentenced in January to 32 months in prison. He had embezzled $510,000 in "mental health" payments and apparently spent it all on a Florida fortune teller. (2) Two of the three candidates for the Republican nomination for county property appraiser in Erwin, Tennessee, in November died before the election, leaving Rocky McInturff the only survivor. However, he is ineligible for the nomination because he lost badly on election day by one of the two dead candidates. [Associated Press via Daily Mail (London), 1-13-2016] [WCYB-TV (Bristol, Tenn.), 3-2-2016]

Albuquerque police encountered Leonard Lopez, 26, inside a Chevy Cobalt car (that was not his) just after midnight on March 30 after neighbors reported a man screaming inside, flashing the car's headlights. A panicked Lopez was upside down, with his feet on the dashboard and his head and shoulders wedged under the steering wheel, hands and arms tucked inside his sweatshirt. He was charged with burglary, and police guessed he was probably going through opiate withdrawal. [Albuquerque Journal, 3-30- 2016]

(1) Yet Another Way to Tell If You're DUI: Maryann Christy, 54, was arrested in Roselle, Illinois, in January when police spotted her driving through town with a 15-foot-tall tree firmly lodged in the grille of her car, sticking straight up. She was apparently too intoxicated to recall where she "acquired" the tree or how many minutes earlier that was. (2) Peak Truck-Spill Karma: On March 23 on Interstate 95 near Melbourne, Florida, two tractor-trailers collided, spilling their contents on the road. One truck was carrying Busch beer and the other various Frito-Lay products. [Chicago Tribune, 3-7-2016] [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 3-23-2016]

Anti-Theft ID Breakthrough: For people who become stressed when asked to prove their identities by biometric scans of fingerprints, hand prints or eyeballs, Japan's Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology has developed a chair frame that authenticates merely by sitting down: a butt-scanner. Professor Shigeomi Koshimizu's device produces a map of the user's unique derriere shape, featuring 256 degrees of pressure at 360 different points and could be used not only to protect vehicles from theft, but also, when connected to a computer, to prevent log-ons by those with unauthorized posteriors. [TechCrunch blog via PhysOrg.com, 12-26-2011]