In May, the Norwegian Consumer Council staged a live, 32-hour TV broadcast marathon -- a word-for-word reading of the "terms of service" for internet applications Instagram, Spotify and more than two dozen others, totaling 900 pages and 250,000 words of legal restrictions and conditions that millions of users "voluntarily" agree to when they sign up (usually via a mouse click or finger swipe). A council official called such terms "bordering on the absurd," as consumers could not possibly understand everything they were legally binding themselves to. (The reading was another example of Norway's fascination with "slow TV" -- the success of other marathons, such as coverage of a world-record attempt at knitting yarn and five 24-hour days on a salmon-fishing boat, mentioned in News of the Weird in 2013.) [Wall Street Journal, 5-25-2016]

-- The Defense Department still uses 1980s-era 8-inch floppy disks on computer systems that handle part of America's "nuclear umbrella," including ballistic missiles. Also, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office, systems using 1970s-era COBOL programing language are still used for key functions of the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service, among others (including Veterans Affairs, for tracking beneficiary claims). Agencies have reported recruiting retired employees to return to fix glitches in operating systems long since abandoned by Microsoft and others. [CNBC, 5-25-2016]

-- In April, police in Boise, Idaho, told KAWO Radio that they will not relax the year-old ban on dachshund "racing" that was a traditional family entertainment highlight at the annual "Arena-Wiena Extravaganza" -- because all dog-racing in Idaho is illegal. The station had argued that the law intended to target only greyhound racing; that an exception had been carved out for popular dogsled racing (reasoning: individual dogs were not racing each other); and that, in any event, the "race" course was only about 40 feet long -- but reported that the authorities were "dead serious" about the ban. [LoweringTheBar.net, 4-25-2016]

A watchdog agency monitoring charities revealed in May its choice for "worst" among those "helping" U.S. veterans: The National Vietnam Veterans Foundation raised more than $29 million from 2010 to 2014 -- but wound up donating about 2 cents of every dollar toward actual help. The other 98 cents went to administration and fund-raising. (Similarly troubling, according to the watchdog, is that the CEO of NVVF is a staff attorney at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.) [Fox News, 5-17-2016]

(1) A March video featured a black San Francisco State University woman angrily confronting a white student, accusing him of "cultural appropriation" because he was wearing his hair in dreadlocks. (2) A March fitness club ad pitch in Sawley, England, picturing an extraterrestrial with the caption, "And when they arrive, they'll take the fat ones first," was denounced by an anti-bullying organization as "offensive." (3) A May bus-stop ad for a San Francisco money lender ("10 percent down. Because you're too smart to rent") was derided for "ooz(ing) self-congratulatory privilege." [SF Weekly, 4-19-2016] [BBC News, 4-3-2016] [SFGate.com, 5-24-2016]

Gainesville, Florida, performance artist Tom Miller planned a public piece in a downtown plaza during May and June as homage to the music composer John Cage's celebrated "4'33" (which is four minutes and 33 seconds of purposeful silence by all musicians who "play" on the piece). Miller said his project would consist of local artists "installing" sculpture at 15-minute intervals for five days -- except that the "sculpture" would have to be imagined by observers, as (in the tradition of Cage) nothing otherwise perceptible would be there. [Gainesville Sun, 5-31-2016]

-- Tex-ass Justice! Convicted murderer Charles Flores was on Texas' death row for more than 16 years (until June 2 of this year) before the state's highest criminal appeals court finally ruled that the execution might not be justified if the most important evidence was provided by a witness whom the police had hypnotized. The trial judge, and the jury, had accepted that "hypnosis" could lead to "recovered" memory (a popular hypothesis in the 1980s and 1990s, but largely discredited today). There was no physical evidence against Flores, and the trial court was ordered to rethink the validity of hypnosis. [Fusion.net, 5-27-2016]

-- (Government) Crime Scenes: (1) The Massachusetts attorney general disclosed in May that state crime-lab chemist Sonja Farak (who was fired in 2013) worked "high" on drugs "every day" in the lab in Amherst, beginning around 2005. Among her preferred refreshments: meth, ketamine, ecstasy and LSD. (Farak worked at a different Massachusetts crime lab than Annie Dookhan, imprisoned in 2013 for improvising damaging lab results on at least 20,000 convicts.) (2) The U.S. Justice Department revealed in April that in the 20-year period ending about 2000, most FBI forensic unit examiners overstated hair sample "matches" in criminal trial testimony -- helping prosecutors 95 percent of the time. [Boston Globe, 5-3-2016] [Washington Post, 4-18-2016]

-- Robert Williams, 38, was arrested on June 1 in Calhan, Colorado, after challenging his daughter to a duel with handguns. Williams had pointed a gun at his daughter, then demanded that she grab one, too. The daughter's age was not reported, but police said she and Williams both got off shots (that missed). [KDVR-TV (Denver), 6-2-2016]

-- Erick "Pork Chop" Cox, 32, in an angry construction-site clash in DeBary, Florida, in June, used his front-end loader to dump two heaps of dirt onto his boss, Perry Byrd, 57, burying him up to his waist before co-workers intervened. Cox said Byrd had taken the first swing and that he had only accidentally engaged the loader when trying to turn it off, but Byrd claimed that Cox was laughing during the episode. Cox was arrested. [Orlando Sentinel, 6-2-2016]

Suspected drug possessor Darius Dabney finally confessed after a protracted confrontation with the judge in a Cincinnati courtroom in May -- a showdown initiated when the judge noticed an "overwhelming" smell of marijuana accompanying Dabney as he entered the room. Upon extensive questioning (according to a transcript provided by WXIX-TV), Dabney swore that he had no drugs -- though the penalty for lying would be immediate jailing, but producing the drugs voluntarily would result only in their being confiscated, without charges. One more chance, the exhausted, super-patient judge implored, just to be sure. Dabney then sheepishly pulled out a bag of marijuana. "Finally, you come clean," said the judge. "Are you sure (now)?" Dabney then pulled out another bag. "Oh, my lord," said the judge, who still kept his word and only found Dabney in contempt for "coming to court high." [WXIX-TV (Cincinnati), 5-12-2016]

In the most recent instance of a landlord ordering a resident to make his home safe for burglars, Kevin Sheehan of Abingdon, England, was told by his housing association in May that he would be evicted unless he removed his above-ground backyard fish pond (and relocated the 80 koi carp and goldfish). The landlord was concerned that if a trespasser jumped the property wall, he could not anticipate that he would land in the pond and might hurt himself. [BBC News, 5-26-2016]

News of the Weird Classic (June 2012)

Chinese media reported that (in 2012), at the Xiaogan Middle School in Hubei province, high school students studying for the all-important national college entrance exam worked through the evening while hooked up to intravenous drips of amino acids to fight fatigue. A director of the school's Office of Academic Affairs reasoned that before the IVs were hung, weary students complained of losing too much time running back and forth to the school's infirmary for energy injections. After the media reports, the public backlash was less against China's placing so much importance on the exams and more complaining that the government was subsidizing the cost of those injections. [South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), 5-9-2012]

Life is good now for British men who "identify" as dogs and puppies, as evidenced by a BBC documentary ("Secret Life of the Human Pups") showing men in body outfits (one a Lycra-suited Dalmatian, "Spot"), exhibiting "sexual" expressions (stomach-rubbing, ear-tickling and nuzzling their "handlers"), eating out of bowls, gnawing on chew toys, wearing collars (so as not to be a "stray"), and jumping in the air for "treats." (However, decency demands that a Pup must only feign urinating against a lamppost.) Said Spot (aka Tom), "It's about being given license to behave in a way that feels natural, even primal." Added "Bootbrush," "(We) are trying to grasp the positive elements of the archetype of the dog." [The Guardian, 5-25-2016]

-- As an alternative to the more costly in vitro fertilization, researchers at a Dresden, Germany, institute announced (in the recent Nano Letters journal) that they had developed a motorized device tiny enough to fit around a sperm's tail and which could be commanded to propel it to "swim" faster toward the target egg, increasing the chances of fertilization. A prototype is still in the works. [rt.com (Moscow), 1-15-2016]

-- The Internet pornography behemoth PornHub recently added to the glut of physical fitness "apps" with one designed to help users tone up sexual muscles. The BangFit's routines include the "squat and thrust," the "missionary press," and other ways to practice what the company describes as the "one activity people are always motivated to do and (for) which they are never too busy." (Imagine, for example, wrote Mashable.com, "quantify(ing) your dry humps.") [Mashable.com, 5-19-2016]

As Libya's central bank struggles to stabilize a halting economy, it could surely use the estimated $184 million in gold and silver coins that Moammar Gadhafi minted but left buried in an underground vault in the coastal city of Beyda, but the treasure is inaccessible because central bank officials don't know the lock's combination (as The Wall Street Journal reported in May). The latest plan is to have a locksmith squeeze through a 16-by-16-inch hole in the outer vault's concrete wall and once inside to try his hand. If unsuccessful, the government's bureaucrats likely cannot get paid, but even if successful, various anti-government factions may go to extremes to snatch the coins. [Wall Street Journal, 5-13-2016]

Argentina's TV channels have many of the same taboos as U.S. broadcasting, including restrictions on women's hands-on demonstration of how precisely to examine themselves for breast cancer. However, as AdWeek reported in March, the agency David Buenos Aires apparently solved the problem with an explicit TV public service announcement featuring a model (facing the camera, topless) showing exactly how such an exam should go, e.g., where to press down, where to squeeze. The secret? The model was an overweight man with generous-sized "manboobs." [AdWeek, 4-20-2016]

-- Video surfaced in May of students at Winston Churchill High School in San Antonio, Texas, actually playing jump rope with the intestines of cats that had been dissected in biology class. Obviously, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was not pleased, but school district officials called the exercise a valid demonstration of the "tensile strength of the organ" and only reluctantly agreed to investigate further. [MySanAntonio.com, 5-17-2016]

-- When Triston Chase, 20, missed his court date in April in Harnett County, North Carolina, on financial fraud charges, it was revealed that his arrest in December had come when he had been found "residing" illegally, as a civilian, in a barracks at Fort Bragg -- in a facility housing the Army's 3rd Special Forces Group. According to a prosecutor, Chase had been posing as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist "for months." The official investigation of Special Forces' barracks "security" was still underway at the time of Chase's court date. [Fayetteville Observer, 4-27-2016]

(1) Efrain Delgado-Rosales was sentenced to five years in prison in March for smuggling noncitizens into the country. (The Border Patrol had caught him 23 times previously, but had declined to file charges.) (2) Sean Pelfrey, 38, told his judge in May that the two assault charges against him in Framingham, Massachusetts, do not make him a "threat to society," even though the current arrest was his 38th. (3) Matthew Freeland, 29, was convicted of several home-invasion offenses in Kingston, Ontario, in May, and the judge, considering a proper sentence, found only two previous probation orders -- but then, looking further, found 59 convictions and sentenced Freeland to more than two years in prison. [CNN, 3-27-2016] [MetroWest Daily News (Framingham), 5-17-2016] [The Whig (Kingston), 5-15-2016]

Among the critters for which life is most difficult are male nursery web spiders that (according to May research in Biology Letters journal) instinctively "court" females with food wrapped in silk -- offerings that (a) increase the males' chances of scoring and (b) decrease, by 84 percent, their chances that the female will spontaneously eat the male. The study also found that males sometimes try to mate using nonfood items wrapped in silk (with mixed results) and also that sometimes unscrupulous females accept food gifts but nevertheless immediately devour the male. [Washington Post, 5-18-2016]

South Carolina Chutzpah! (1) James Kinley III, 27, was charged in York County, South Carolina, in May with dealing marijuana. He apparently had the (unfounded) belief that York County deputies do not monitor Craigslist -- because that is where Kinley advertised ("I Sell Weed"), in a notice with his photo, address and price ($200). (2) Grady Carlson, 58, went to the Carolina Title Loans office in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on May 25 to apply for a high-interest "payday" loan -- and nervously paced while answering questions. The Carolina employee asked if anything was wrong, and Carlson allegedly disclosed that he needed money -- fast! -- to purchase methamphetamine. A subsequent police search turned up a glass container and drugs. [WIS-TV (Columbia), 5-19-2016] [The Smoking Gun, 5-26-2016]

-- For years, India has been concerned about the gas-release problem posed by its nearly 300 million cows (and 200 million more gas-intensive animals), but researchers in Kerala state revealed a promising breeding answer in May: dwarf cows (about one-fourth the size, producing somewhat less milk but one-seventh the manure and one-10th the methane). (Pound for pound, methane traps 25 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.) (Bonus: The New York Times Style Book apparently now accepts the word "farting" in formal copy -- while reporting that "belching" is the far more serious methane problem.) [New York Times, 5-5-2016]

-- In the early years of News of the Weird, urban readers learned of the custom of various Western locales' charity cow-patty "bingo" games in which cows are fed and turned loose on a field of wagered-upon squares. (In fact, in 1997 Canada's Nova Scotia Gaming Control Commission temporarily banned the game while it investigated whether it could be "fixed" by training the cow to favor certain relief spots.) The event lives on, but a charity fundraiser in Great Falls, Montana, in May was halted when the cow jumped over a fence and had to be chased down. Rather than await the now-nervous (or perhaps constipated) cow, the contest winner was selected by random draw. [KTVQ-TV (Billings), 5-19-2016]

All U.S. states have forms of no-fault divorce, but England still requires that couples prove adultery, abandonment or "unreasonable behavior," which leads to strange claims, according to an April (2012) New York Times dispatch from London. For instance, one divorcing woman's petition blamed her husband's insistence that she speak only in Klingon. Other examples of "unreasonable" behavior (gathered by the Times of London): a husband's objecting to the "malicious" preparation of his hated tuna casserole, another's 15-year silence (except for writing him Post-It Notes), a husband's distorting the fit of his wife's outfits by frequently wearing them, and one's insistence that a pet tarantula reside in a glass case beside the marital bed. [New York Times, 4-7-2012]

By 2009, when Zimbabwe's central bank gave up on controlling inflation, its largest currency was the 100 trillion-dollar bill -- barely enough for bus fare in Harare and not even worth the paper needed to print it. However, that 100 trillion-dollar note (that's "1" plus 14 zeros) has turned out to be a great investment for several astute traders in London and New Zealand, who bought thousands of them at pennies on the trillion and now report brisk sales to collectors on eBay at US$30 to $40 a note -- a six-year return on investment, according to a May report in London's The Guardian, of nearly 1,500 percent. [The Guardian, 5-14-2016]

-- Long-divorced Henry Peisch, 56, has seven children, but only one is still living with his ex-wife (who had originally been awarded $581 monthly support for all seven). (Three children are now independent, and three others successfully petitioned courts to live with Henry.) The resultant hardship (the $581 remains in effect) caused Henry to ask the Bergen County, New Jersey, Family Court several times for a "hardship" hearing, which the court denied (thus even defying the New Jersey Supreme Court). On April 8, Family Court judge Gary Wilcox, noting Peisch's appearance on a related matter, spontaneously "granted" him his "ability to pay" hearing (with thus no opportunity for witnesses or evidence-gathering) -- and summarily jailed him for missing some $581 payments (because, the judge concluded, he did not "believe" Peisch's hardship claims). [Bergen Dispatch, 4-28-2016]

-- Magician and professional gambler Brian Zembic, 55, finally consulted surgeons recently about removing his historic C-cup breast implants, which he bore on a $100,000 bet in 1996 (with a rider of $10,000 annually for retaining them). (He also won a companion game of backgammon to determine who would pay for the original surgery.) He told news sources in May that he had intended to have them removed early on, but that they had "grown on" him and become "a normal part of my life." [Huffington Post, 5-18-2016]

U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona, in a May publication deriding the value of certain federally funded research, highlighted several recent National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation projects, such as the $13 million for exploring musical preferences of monkeys and chimpanzees; the $1.1 million judging whether cheerleaders are more attractive seen as a squad than individually; the $390,000 to determine how many shakes a wet dog needs to feel dry; and the $5 million to learn whether drunk birds slur when they sing. (Also strangely included was the actually valuable study by Michael Smith of Cornell University ranking where on the human body a bee sting was most painful. He found, from personal testing, that "on the penis" was only the third worst -- research that brought Smith a prestigious Ig Nobel prize last year.) [Fox News, 5-10-2016] [Sen. Jeff Flake, "Twenty Questions," May 2016]

(1) Yahoo News Australia reported (with photos) a man in Tallebudgera Creek on the country's Gold Coast swimming with his pet snake. The man, standing chest-deep in water, would toss the snake (apparently a carpet python) a few feet and, according to the videos, the snake would swim back to him each time. (In the man's other hand, of course: beer.) (2) In April, police in Broome (in Australia's far northwest) on traffic patrol stopped a 27-year-old man whose "several" children, including one infant, were unrestrained in his car while "cartons of beer" were "buckled into car seats," according to an Australian Broadcasting Corp. report. He faces several charges, including driving on a suspended license. [Yahoo News Australia, 3-1-2016] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 4-7-2016]

Transgender Blues: Ms. Jai Dara Latto, 23, won the title Miss Transgender UK last September in London, but in February organizers stripped her of the title as being insufficiently trans, passing the crown to Ms. Daisy Bell. Officials had spotted Latto (who has worked as a "drag queen") in a BBC documentary wearing boxer shorts, and since switching underwear is usually such a crucial step for transgenders, officials concluded that Latto must not yet have made a sufficient-enough commitment to qualify for the title. [The Herald (Glasgow), 2-20-2016]

In a recent book, biologist Jennifer Ackerman noted the extraordinary intelligence of birds -- attributed to the dense packing of neurons in their equivalent of humans' cerebral cortex (according to an April Wall Street Journal review of Ackerman's "The Genius of Birds"). For example, the New Caledonia crow, among others, knows how to make and use hooked tools to hide food (and retrieve it from tricky-to-reach places), and the blue jay and others, which store many thousands of seeds during autumn, also steal seeds from less-vigilant birds -- and they even return to re-hide food if they sense they have been spotted storing it earlier. Additionally, of course, the birds' equivalent of the human larynx is so finely tuned as to be regarded as the most sophisticated sound in all of nature. [Wall Street Journal, 4-23-2016]

The president of the New England Organ Bank told U.S. News & World Report recently that she attributes the enormous upsurge in donations in recent years to the opiod "epidemic" that has produced a similarly enormous upsurge in fatal overdoses. Now, one out of every 11 donated organs comes as a result of the overdosing that in 2014 claimed over 47,000 lives. (An organ-sharing organization's chief medical officer reminds that all organ donations are carefully screened, especially those acquired from overdose deaths.) [Washington Post, 5-9-2016]

(1) Nicole Bjanes, casually zipping along Interstate 4 in Volusia County around noon on May 9, saw a red-eared slider turtle come sailing through the air and crash into her windshield, sending her car off the road. The Florida Highway Patrol said the turtle had become airborne after being hit by another car. (It was apparently unhurt and swam away when a firefighter released it into a nearby pond.) (2) On May 10, police in Key West responded to a caller at the scene of a giant banyan tree (common to Florida and featuring vertical roots that thicken, spread and become entangled with the central trunk). A woman had attempted to climb the tree but had fallen among the vertical roots, making her barely visible. Said a proud police spokesperson, "They popped her out like a cork." [WFLA-TV, 5-13-2016] [WPLG-TV (Miami), 5-10-2016]

Prolancia Turner, 26, was arrested on May 13 at Vero Beach (Florida) Outlets mall after she allegedly walked out of a Claire's store with unpaid-for earrings tucked into her waistband. Police reported her "crying and angry" and complaining that, "Everyone steals from this store. Why are you picking on me?" [The Smoking Gun, 5-19-2016]

In 2006, a court in Preston, England, apparently weary of Akinwale Arobieke's repeatedly, unconsensually "touching" men's biceps in public, issued a Sexual Offenses Prevention Order making any such future contact automatic offenses. Arobieke admitted a longtime fascination with buffed-up physiques and continued from time to time to find biceps irresistible, but in May 2016 he convinced a Manchester Crown Court judge to lift the SOPO based on his assurance that he wanted a "fresh start" and would behave himself. The judge seemed not quite sure, but noted that police could still arrest him under other sexual or assault statutes. [Manchester Evening News, 5-5-2016]

At the 10th Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait in March (2012), as medals were presented and winners' national anthems were played, officials were apparently ill-prepared for medalist Maria Dmitrienko of Kazakhstan. Consequently, they cluelessly played, as her national anthem, the humorous ditty from the movie "Borat." (Instead of such lyrics as "sky of golden sun" and "legend of courage," the audience heard "Greatest country in the world/All other countries are run by little girls" and "Filtration system a marvel to behold/It removes 80 percent of human solid waste.") Dmitrienko reportedly kept a mostly straight face, although Kazakhstan later received an official apology. [BBC News, 3-23-2012]