John Weigel and Olaf Danielson are engaged in a frenzied battle of "extreme birdwatching," each hoping to close out 2016 as the new North American champ of the American Birding Association, and a September Smithsonian piece had Weigel ahead, 763 to 759. Danielson is perhaps better known for doing much of his birding in the nude (and is the author of the provocatively titled volume, "Boobies, Peckers and Tits" -- all common names of popular birds). The old one-year record was 749, and the association attributes the larger numbers this year to El Nino, which has disrupted food supplies and driven birds into different locations. [Smithsonian.com, 9-21-2016]

-- Compelling Explanation: Senate bill 1342, passed in the Idaho legislature earlier in 2016, authorizes schools to use the Bible as a reference in classrooms (despite the U.S. Supreme Court's having specifically condemned a previous version of the bill ever since 1964). The bill's sponsor, Rep. Sage Dixon, said he thought his law was nonetheless constitutional because, "The little Supreme Court in my head says this is OK." (Even so, Gov. C.L. Otter vetoed the bill.) [LoweringTheBar.net, 3-30-2016]

-- Nebraska voters in November will be asked whether to keep the state's longstanding death penalty for murder -- even though retaining it will require them to vote "repeal." The legislature replaced death row last year with mandatory life sentences, and the referendum is to "repeal" or "retain" that legislation. Hence, to abolish the death penalty, voters must select "retain." The state attorney general, and election officials, declined to challenge the confusing arrangement, instead suggesting that Nebraskans are smart enough to figure the whole thing out. [Omaha World-Herald, 9-20-2016]

-- The Arizona legislature passed a child-molestation law recently that made any adult contact with children's genitals a criminal act, but unlike in other states' similar laws, neglected to include a requirement that the outlawed contact be for "sexual" purposes. Consequently, in principle, parents may be criminally liable, for example, for bathing a baby or changing its diaper. The Arizona Supreme Court ruled in September that it is up to the legislature to change the law, but some lawmakers professed indifference, confident that district attorneys will use good judgment about whom to prosecute. [Slate, 9-16-2016]

(1) Robert Napolitan, 34, was arrested in Taylor, Pennsylvania, in September and charged with theft of a drum containing 300,000 pennies from his employer, Pyne Freight Lines. That steel drum weighs several tons and, of course, netted Napolitan only $3,000. (By contrast, in New York City's Diamond District in September, a brazen thief made off with a 5-gallon drum containing 86 pounds of something else -- gold flakes, valued at more than $1 million -- and is still at large.) (2) For some reason, according to a High Point, North Carolina, TV report, Larry Hall of Randolph County took seven-plus weeks out of his life recently and glued pennies to cover (except for windows and chrome) his 2000 Chevrolet Blazer (a total of 51,300 coins). [Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pa.), 9-9-2016] [New York Daily News, 10-1-2016] [WGHP-TV (High Point, N.C.), 10-3-2016]

The 1,496-page German novel "Bottom's Dream," translated into (broken) English, more than twice as long as "War and Peace," recently reached U.S. bookstores as a 13-pound behemoth, bound with a 14-inch spine that, based on a September Wall Street Journal description, will almost surely go unread. The story follows two translators and their teenage daughter over a single day as they try to interpret the works of Edgar Allen Poe, making for slow going for anyone not already conversant with Poe. [Wall Street Journal, 9-24-2016]

-- While other vehicle safety-control engineers work on actually slowing down cars and buses when a risk is detected on the road ahead, one of Volvo's recent innovations appears aimed merely at bullying pedestrians to get out of the way. According to a September report on Treehugger.com, the safety "control" for a Volvo bus consists of progressively louder horn-honking to scare off the pedestrian. [Treehugger.com, 9-23-2016]

-- Simple As That: (1) British farmer Pip Simpson, who lost nearly 300 sheep to rustlers in recent years, recently sprayed his remaining herd of almost 800 sheep a bright luminous orange (harmless, he said, though the sheep's opinions are unknown) to make them less attractive to thieves. (2) Saudi Arabia switched to the 365-day Gregorian calendar on Oct. 2, in part to reduce government expenses. Bureaucrats had been using the Islamic lunar Hijri (354- day) calendar, but now must work a 3 percent longer year for the same salaries. [Westmorland Gazette, 9-27-2016] [Gulf News via RT.com (Moscow), 10-3-2016]

In 2014, British entrepreneur Azad Chaiwala, 33, created the matchmaking service Second Wife -- because, just as men have trouble finding that special person, some Mormons, Muslims and others have at least as much trouble finding that special additional person. (Most clients, he said, are in the United States and the United Kingdom, though bigamy is illegal in both places.) The service was so successful that Chaiwala this year inaugurated Polygamy.com, which he adamantly defended as a moral alternative to adultery and one-night-stand services such as Tinder. [New York Times, 9-21-2016]

(1) The long-rap-sheeted Darren Clinton, 48, was in the process, according to Minneapolis police, of burglarizing a hotel room in September when an occupant returned and surprised him. Clinton, wielding a knife, escaped momentarily, but the occupant summoned his nearby roommates -- the visiting University of Arizona men's cross-country team -- and after a chase, which included jumping several barriers, the runners steered a severely winded Clinton into the arms of a state trooper. (2) Kerry Johnson, 52, was arrested in August in Charleston, West Virginia, and charged with robbing a City National Bank branch. Police said Johnson had been gambling at the Mardi Gras Casino in nearby Nitro when he ran out of money at the blackjack table. (He left a $25 chip to preserve his spot, excused himself, went to the bank, and came back with more money.) [Star Tribune, 10-1-2016] [Gazette Mail (Charleston), 8-3-2016]

Based on recent convictions for indecent exposure, Anthony Hardison, 50, has a public masturbation habit, and it is apparently so bad that he engaged once again in August -- while he was in the lobby of the sheriff's office in Seattle, where he had reported to register as a sex offender. He was arrested. [Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9-19-2016]

Austrian Edition: (1) A massive, mile-long traffic jam on the Austrian A2 highway in October between Inzersdorf and Vosendorf was caused by a huge flock of starlings crashing into cars and falling to the road. Ornithologists told reporters that the birds must have earlier feasted en masse on fermented berries and were navigating under the influence. (2) In September, an unnamed woman was detained at the airport in Graz, Austria, because her suitcase held two plastic containers with her late husband's intestines. She had come from Morocco seeking doctors' opinions whether he had been poisoned (but doctors told local media they would have to examine the entire body to determine that). Police said no laws had been broken. [The Local (Vienna), 10-6-2016] [BBC News, 9-26-2016]

Gary Medrow, 68, has periodically surfaced in News of the Weird since 1991 for his unique behavior of using a false identity to persuade Milwaukee-area strangers over the phone to lift other strangers off the ground -- behavior for which he has occasionally been jailed and ordered to psychiatric care. After a recent period of calm, Medrow slipped in November (2012) and was charged with impersonating a photojournalist to convince two Cedarburg (Wisconsin) High School students to hoist each other on their shoulders. At an earlier hearing, Medrow said that his "addiction" helps him to relieve tension and anxiety. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11-16-2012]

Large kidney stones typically mean eye-watering pain and sudden urinary blockage until the stone "passes" (often requiring expensive sound-wave treatment to break up a large stone). Michigan State University urologist David Wartinger told The Atlantic in September that he had recently happened upon a pain-free -- even exciting! -- way to pass stones before they become problems: the centripetal force from a roller coaster ride. In a 200-trip experiment preparing for a validating "human" trial, he successfully passed stones in his hand-held, silicone model kidney (using his own urine) about two-thirds of the time when sitting in a rear seat at Disney World's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. [The Atlantic, September 2016]

-- With about 30 states having adopted some form of "stand your ground" defense to assault (or murder) charges, five membership organizations, charging up to $40 a month, have signed up a half-million gun owners concerned that law enforcement treat them fairly should they someday be forced to shoot -- providing instructions and a "hot line" to coach members on what to tell police, plus liability insurance and help getting a lawyer. Critics say such organizations are also useful to those who might be prone to shooting people and want advice on how best to get away with it. The U.S. Concealed Carry organization's wallet-sized card, to give to police, asks that the shooter under suspicion be given the same consideration as the officers might give to their own colleagues under suspicion. [Tampa Bay Times, 9-16-2016]

-- In a dozen YouTube videos recently released, Syria's Tourism Ministry praised the country's sandy, fun-filled beaches as ideal vacation spots and its many World Heritage Sites as renowned tourist exhibits -- attempting to distract world travelers from the country's daily bloodshed (and the wartime destruction of those priceless historical sites). Before civil war broke out in 2011, Syria was a fashionable, $8 billion-a-year destination (and the now-devastated city of Aleppo was known worldwide for its food). [Washington Post, 9-2-2016]

Diego the giant tortoise, believed to be more than 100 years old, now lives in semi-retirement on Santa Cruz Island in the Galapagos, but from 1976 to 2010, Diego brought an almost-extinct species back to life by fathering about 800 babies in the captive breeding program on Espanola, another of the Galapagos Islands. Biologists did not realize Diego's prowess until 2010 when DNA tests identified him as the father of 40 percent of all tortoises on the island. Even on Santa Cruz Island, Diego keeps busy, with a "harem" of six females. (Another Galapagos tortoise species did die out in 2012 when the last male, the centenarian Lonesome George, maintained his celibacy until death.) [Fox News, 9-15-2016]

-- The New York City Council, grilling police officials in September about their practice of freely seizing money from detainees under suspicion, asked for a thorough accounting of that money (suspecting that innocent victims rarely get it back unless aided by high-powered lawyers). Though (in "crime-fighting" hyperbole) NYPD routinely boasts of its half-million annual seizures, an NYPD official told the council it would be "impossible" to account for everything -- that keeping track of it all would cause its computers to crash. [Village Voice, 9-16-2016]

-- The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is bureaucratically at the epicenter of the state's drought crisis, but in September KCBS-TV aired video of the department actually using sprinklers to water the artificial lawn at a substation in South Los Angeles. A DWP spokesperson said such watering is routine at substations to "clean" the plastic (and wash off any dog urine, for example). [Reuters via msn.com, 9-18-2016]

Wanda Witter, 80, had been living on Washington, D.C., streets for 10 years, but insisting to anyone who would listen that the Social Security Administration owed her sums that recently reached $100,000, and that she had documents to prove it. However, given her circumstances, most regarded her as just another luckless person confused by homeless life. In June, though, after social worker Julie Turner took a closer look and found, improbably, that Witter was indeed owed $100,000 and even more improbably, that all of her paperwork was carefully organized among the unimpressive possessions she hauled around daily, SSA paid her $999 on the spot, and the remaining $99,999 arrived in August. [Washington Post, 8-23-2016]

-- One branch of the James Harper funeral homes, in Bromley, England, announced its latest promotion via a sign in a front window (reported by the Bromley News Shopper in September): "Wow! Free Child's Battery Powered Vehicle With Every Pre-Paid Funeral Arranged This Month." A Harper spokesperson said the purpose was to encourage residents to think ahead about funerals. [Bromley News Shopper, 9-15-2016]

-- "Considering Cremation?" was the headline of the Aug. 7 advertising supplement to the Tampa Bay Times (and other Florida newspapers), appearing just below a snapshot of a mom, dad and three youngsters frolicking in the grass, seemingly overjoyed (http://bit.ly/2dBv3yk). Nothing about cremation appeared except dates and sites of free cremation seminars, sponsored by the National Cremation Society (whose website is thankfully more somber). [marketplace.tcpalm.com (Stuart, Fla.)]

The most recent immigrant family living high on the hog in the United Kingdom is Arnold Mballe Sube and his wife, Jeanne, both 33, who drew the equivalent of about $130,000 in government benefits last year, but are still feuding with the Luton Borough Council near London over its inability to find (free) housing adequate for them and their eight children. They turned down four- and five-bedroom homes, were housed temporarily in a Hilton hotel, and said they would be satisfied only with a six-bedroom residence. Mr. Sube, from Cameroon, emigrated to France at age 18, then came to England in 2012 to study nursing at the University of Bedfordshire. [The Sun via Daily Mail, 9-8-2016]

Iowa City Jamboree: (1) Thomas Morgan, 42, was charged in a May 7 incident at the University of Iowa's Main Library when, using a men's room urinal, he turned to reveal to a fellow user that he was "measuring" his penis with a hand-lettered cardboard "ruler." (2) Thomas Warren, 49, was arrested in September near the Iowa City home that he, naked, had allegedly trespassed into minutes before. He was discovered passed out in the grass, though his clothes, car keys and driver's license had been left on the doorstep (along with telltale evidence that he had used the doorstep as a toilet). Alcohol and a controlled substance were involved, said police. [The Smoking Gun, 9-21-2016] [Iowa City Press-Citizen, 9-28-2016]

(1) A woman was arrested on Sept. 7 at the Italian Pizza Kitchen restaurant in Washington, D.C. She was chatting up a police officer she did not know, then playfully took a french fry from his plate. He asked her to stop, but she took another, and when the exasperated officer issued an ultimatum, she took yet another. The arrest report for second-degree theft, cited by WUSA-TV, included "property stolen" as "three" "French fried potato(es)." (2) At the seven-mile mark of the Allentown, Pennsylvania, marathon on Sept. 11, more than 100 runners were blocked off by an unanticipated, slow-moving train -- causing the athletes one of their best chances to qualify for the gold-standard Boston Marathon (by posting fast times at Allentown). The train lingered for 10 minutes, though some runners climbed over couplings and continued on. [WUSA-TV, 9-9-2016] [Lehigh Valley Live, 9-13-2016]

Orly Taitz, an Orange County, California, dentist and lawyer, is America's most prominent "birther" (as of 2012, anyway!), having filed dozens of lawsuits, appeals and other legal petitions expressing her certainty that President Obama was not born in America. In her latest legal foray, a California judge tossed her lawsuit against Occidental College (to force release of Obama's college transcripts and other papers). The loss brings birthers' legal record (Taitz's plus a few comrades') to 0-for-258, according to the websites WhatsYourEvidence.com and LoweringTheBar.net. Taitz was described by one critic as "almost charmingly insane." [Huffington Post, 12-3-2012; Lowering the Bar, 10-26-2012]

In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noting a recent uptick in cases of "live-poultry-associated salmonella," repeated its earlier (apparently largely ignored) alert that people should not be kissing chickens (or ducks or turkeys). CDC noted the recent popularity of urban egg farming, but reminded "hipster" farmers and faddish pet patrons that cuddling the animals, or bringing the little darlings into the home (even those that appear clean and friendly), can spread dangerous bacteria for which humans are unprepared. [Huffington Post, 9-16-2016]

-- A recent working paper by two Louisiana State University economists revealed that the state's juvenile court judges dole out harsher sentences on weeks following a loss by the LSU football team (among those judges who matriculated at LSU). The differences in sentences were particularly stark in those seasons that LSU's team was nationally ranked. (All sentences from 1996 to 2012 were examined, for first-time juvenile offenders, except for murder and aggravated-rape cases.) [New York magazine, 9-9- 2016]

-- The NCAA's two-year probation handed to Georgia Southern University's football program in July included a note that two football players were given "impermissible" inside help to pass a course. It turns out that even though GSU's former assistant director of student-athlete services stealthily wrote five extra-credit assignments for each of the players, still, neither player was apparently in good enough shape to pass the course. [CBS Sports, 7-7-2016]

-- A paramedic with the St. Louis Fire Department discovered on Aug. 4 that his car, in the station's parking lot, had been broken into and was missing various items. Minutes after he filed a police report, the station received an emergency call about a pedestrian hit by a car, and the paramedic and crew rushed to the scene. As he was helping the victim, the paramedic noticed that his own gym bag and belongings were strewn about the scene and concluded that the man he was attending to was likely the man who had broken into his car. The paramedic continued to assist the man, and police told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that they would arrest the man as soon as he was discharged from the hospital. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8-6-2016]

-- Raylon Parker, doing his duty in August on a grand jury in Halifax County, North Carolina, listened to a prosecutor lay out a case, and to Parker's apparent surprise, the case was against Raylon Parker (for assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill). Still, he voted on the indictment, which passed (though, due to grand jury secrecy, we do not know which way he voted). One possibility: He voted to indict, assuming a judge would toss it out, tainting the prosecutor's case. However, Parker's judge said the indictment -- signifying "probable cause" -- was still valid and that she would not inquire how Parker had voted. [North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, 8-31-2016]

-- Business is booming for Lainey Morse, the owner of No Regrets Farm in Albany, Oregon, and the founder of "Goat Yoga" -- an outdoor regimen of relaxation carried out among her wandering goats. "Do you know how hard it is to be sad and depressed when there are baby goats jumping around?" she asked, proudly noting that she is booked up right now, with a waiting list of 500. One problem has surfaced, though (as she told a Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reporter): Naive baby goats try to eat flower designs on yoga mats, leading Morse to permit only mats of solid colors. [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 9-16-2016]

-- Wesley Autrey, 42, was arrested by Scranton, Pennsylvania, detectives in September in a drug bust with five bags of heroin and four of cocaine (along with $3,083 cash) and charged with dealing. Autrey (street name, for some reason: "Newphew") wet his pants during the arrest, which police said he did under the mistaken impression that heroin would dissolve when exposed to urine. [Times-Tribune (Scranton), 9-15-2016]

-- Eau de Toilette: Although India's sacred Ganges River remains ridiculously polluted, it retains holy credibility for Hindus, who consume and bathe in it regularly for salvation. Since reaching the Ganges can be difficult for India's poor, the country's postal service (with 155,000 offices) began recently to offer home delivery of the Ganges, in bottles, for the equivalent of about 22 to 37 cents. (Tip: Water bottled in the small town of Gangotri, which is near the origin of the river, is likely cleaner; the other bottler, in the city of Rishikesh, which is holier but located farther down the river, likely presents worshippers a stronger test of faith.) [New York Times, 8-26-2016]

-- "Clitoris activism is hot in France right now," reported London's The Guardian in August, highlighted by the introduction in school sex education of a 3-D model of the organ -- demonstrating, by the way, that it more resembles a "wishbone" or a "high-tech boomerang" than the "small, sensitive" "bud" of dictionary description. French clitoris scholars emphasize that most of the several-inch-long organ is internal and just as highly excitable as its male counterpart, and their wide-ranging societal campaign includes a magazine whose title translates to "The Idiot's Guide to the Clit." [The Guardian, 8-15-2016, 9-15-2016]

Goldfish Revisited: (1) Emma Marsh of Kuraby, Australia, shelled out $500 in September for her goldfish's emergency medical care to remove the pebble stuck in poor Conquer's throat. (Brisbane's Courier-Mail noted that the $500 could have bought 40 replacements -- that $500 is about what an actual bar of gold of Conquer's weight would cost.) (2) Elsewhere Down Under, researchers from Murdoch University in Perth said in August they were working on a goldfish-control program after learning that one species dumped in the nutrient-rich Vasse River in Western Australia could grow to 4 pounds -- and the size of a football.) [Courier-Mail (Brisbane), 9-9-2016] [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News via AOL, 8-17-2016]

Music researcher David Teie announced in September that he had landed a deal with major label Universal Music to distribute his "Music for Cats" (touted in News of the Weird in February). The music, with Teie accompanying on the cello, includes painstakingly timed "purring" and "sucking" sounds designed to relax kitties, and he reiterated plans to move on to special music for other animals. (In a similar vein, artists led by Dominic Wilcox staged a brief August show in London of exhibits and paintings of scenes that Wilcox thought would appeal to dogs, and would, he said, garner "tail wags." One interactive exhibit, for example, featured an open car window simulator hosting an array of scents.) [The Guardian (London), 9-2-2016] [Evening Standard (London), 8-20-2016]

(1) Hippie grandmother Shawnee Chasser, 65, who has lived in a tree since 1992, is under siege by county officials in Miami who plan to tear down her tree house by December unless she brings her property up to code. It's a full-featured, well-appointed tree house -- and she owns the land underneath, but prefers the "heaven" of her high perch, especially when it rains. (2) Six times since 2004, cars have left New Hope Road in Raleigh, North Carolina, and crashed into the home of Carlo Bernarte, and in September he desperately sought help from traffic officials (and indicated that it might be time to move). (He suggested the state install a barrier, but apparently that would block drivers' line of sight.) [Miami Herald, 9-3-2016] [Greensboro News & Observer, 9-8-2016]

A research team at Lund University in Sweden, led by neuroethologist Jochen Smolka, concluded that one reason dung beetles dance in circles on top of dung is to cool off, according to an October (2012) report on LiveScience.com. To arrive at their conclusion, the team went to the trouble of painting tiny silicone "boots" on some beetles, to protect them from the ambient heat experienced by a control group of beetles, and found that the booted beetles climbed atop the dung less frequently. Explained Smolka, "Like an air-conditioning unit, the moist (dung) is cooled by evaporation." [LiveScience.com, 10-22-2012]