As nine states next month ask voters to approve some form of legalization of marijuana, a "new customer base" for the product -- pets -- was highlighted in an October New York Times report. Dogs and cats are struck with maladies similar to those that humans report in cannabis success stories: seizures, inflammation, anxiety, arthritis and other pain and subsequent social withdrawals. The "high"-producing THC element cannot be used because it is notoriously toxic to dogs, but other elements in the drug seem to work well not only for dogs and cats but, by anecdotal evidence, pigs, horses and domesticated wild animals. [New York Times, 10-8-2016]

-- In September, Charles Lawrence III, 60, was sentenced to eight years in prison for attempted sexual assault despite his claim that it was just bad eyesight that caused the problem. He had arrived at a house in Fairfield, Connecticut, to have sex with a male he had met online, but the event turned out to be a "To Catch a Predator" sting. Lawrence, an accountant, claimed that, in text messages with the "boy," he had seen "18" as his age, when, according to police evidence, the text read "13." (Bonus: Lawrence knew "Predator" newsman Chris Hansen socially and commuted daily on the train with him, according to Lawrence's lawyer.) [Connecticut Post, 9-2- 2016]

-- A 23-year-old woman on a bus in Istanbul, Turkey, was attacked by Abdullah Cakiroglu, 35, in September because, as he told police, he had become "aroused" by her wearing shorts. (Initially, he was not arrested, but after a protest on social media, police came to get him -- though for "inciting," not assault.) He told police, "I lost myself" because the woman had "disregarded the values of our country," and "my spiritual side took over, and I kicked her in the face." [The Independent (London), 9-22-2016]

Kevin and Tammy Jones opened their guns-and-coffee store in an old bank building in Hamilton, Virginia, in August, but despite the controversies about the ease of gun acquisition in America, their Bullets and Beans shop has had a harder time pleasing government regulators over the coffee than over the firearms. Kevin told Washingtonian magazine that there were no problems in getting gun-shop and firearms-instruction permits from state and federal agencies, but several local-government roadblocks delayed the coffee-sales permit: the property being zoned for "retail" but not food or drinks; permission to open certain businesses near residences; and a coffee shop's need to have "parking." [Washingtonian, 9-28-2016]

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared Oct. 13 Oilfield Prayer Day to cap a statewide initiative of mass wishing for improved performance of the state's energy industry, which has been in the doldrums recently with the worldwide drop in oil prices. Though the initiative's founders, and the associated Oil Patch Chaplains, were largely Baptist church leaders, the governor emphasized that all religions should be praying for a more prosperous industry. [The Oklahoman, 10-1-2016]

-- In September, a court in Paris upheld France's government ban on people smiling for their passport and identity photos. One official had challenged the required straightforward pose ("neutral," "mouth closed"), lamenting that the French should be encouraged to smile to overcome the perpetual "national depression" that supposedly permeates the country's psyche. [The Guardian (London), 9-29-2016]

-- The baseball-like "pesapallo" might be Finland's national game, reported The New York Times in September, despite its differences from the American pastime. The ball is pitched to the batter -- but vertically, by a pitcher standing next to the batter -- and the batter runs the bases after hitting it, though not counterclockwise but zigzag style, to a base on the left, then one on the right, then back to the left. The game was invented in Finland in 1920 and has achieved minor notoriety, with teams from Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia vying for a "world cup" that so far none has been able to wrest from Finland. (Reassuringly, however, "three strikes" is an out in Finland, too.) [New York Times, 9-27-2016]

-- Too Much Time on Their Hands: In an October profile of tech developer and startup savant Sam Altman, The New Yorker disclosed that "many people in Silicon Valley have become obsessed with the simulation hypothesis" -- that "what we experience as reality" is just some dark force's computer simulation (as in the movie "The Matrix"). "Two tech billionaires," the magazine reported, are "secretly engag(ing) scientists" to break us out of this alternative universe we might be trapped in. (One prominent member of the tech elite remarked at a Vox Media conference in June on how the "simulation hypothesis" seems to dominate all conversation whenever the elites gather.) [Business Insider, 10-3-2016] [The New Yorker, 10-10-2016]

-- Scientists from England's Bath University, publishing in a September issue of Nature Communications, report success in creating enduring live mice without use of a fertilized egg. The researchers showed it possible that a sperm cell can "trick" an egg into becoming a full-featured embryo without a "fertilization" process (in which distinct genomes from sperm and egg were thought to be required, at least in mammals). The scientists were thus able to "challenge nearly two centuries of conventional wisdom." [Science Daily, 9-13-2016]

-- The War on Drugs: (1) In September, police in Thurmont, Maryland, announced the culmination of a two-month-long undercover drug operation at the Burger King with two arrests and a total seizure of 5 grams of marijuana and two morphine pills. (2) On Sept. 21, as part of a six-target raid using "military-type" helicopters by the Massachusetts State Police and the National Guard, drug warriors halted the criminal enterprise of Margaret Holcomb, 81, of Amherst, seizing the one and only marijuana plant in her yard that she had planned to harvest soon for relief of her arthritis and glaucoma. [Frederick News-Post, 9-28-2016] [Daily Hampshire Gazette, 9-30-2016]

-- Couldn't Stop Myself: (1) Joshua Hunt, 31, was arrested in October inside St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had gone to check on his 9-month-old son, who was being treated for an injury. Police said that while in the ward, he snatched another visitor's purse and took a cellphone and credit cards. (2) Brittany Carulli, 25, was arrested in Harrison Township, New Jersey, in October, charged with stealing a medic's wallet from inside an ambulance. The medic had allowed Carulli in the ambulance to grieve over her boyfriend's body after he was struck and killed by a car. [KJRH-TV (Tulsa), 10-6-2016] [WPVI-TV (Philadelphia), 10-3-2016]

(1) Jeffrey Osella, 50, was arrested in August in Westerly, Rhode Island, after allegedly firing corncobs at his neighbor's house, using a PVC "potato gun," as part of their long-running feud. When Osella answered the door, officers said he was shirtless, with corn kernels stuck to his chest. (2) On Oct. 1, Michael Daum, 55, began his year in residence as the town hermit of Solothurn, Switzerland, having been chosen from among 22 self-entertaining applicants. The hermit will be required to maintain the town's isolated hermitage, but also, paradoxically, be called on at times to engage with arriving tourists. [Associated Press via Newark Star-Ledger, 9-2-2016] [The Local (Geneva), 9-27-2016]

Eating Well on Death Row: (1) Condemned Ohio inmate Ronald Post, 53, asked a federal court in September (2012) to cancel his upcoming date with destiny on the ground that, after almost 30 years of prison food, he's too fat to execute. At 480 pounds, "vein access" and other issues would cause his lethal injection to be "torturous." (Update: He won the sentence-commutation, but he died in prison in 2013.) (2) British murderer-sadist Graham Fisher, 39, is locked up in a high security hospital in Berkshire, England, but he, too, has been eating well (at about 325 pounds). In August (2012), he was approved for gastric-band surgery paid for by Britain's National Health Service at an estimated cost, including a private room for post-op recovery, of the equivalent of about $25,000. [Associated Press via Google News, 9-17-2012] [Daily Mail (London), 8-19-2012]

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]