Radical dentistry was on display in November in London's Science Gallery, where installations offered "art-science collaborations" -- including Taiwan artist Kuang-Yi Ku's "Fellatio Modification Project." Former dentist Ku, complaining that textbooks on mouths tragically under-regard their value in sex, created (the ordinary way) a custom retainer for the client's mouth but then added rubber "bumps" and "cones" and "ribs" and "ripples" that might be pleasing to a partner. [New Scientist, 11-7-2016]

Evolution, according to scientists, likely explains why some "prey" develop defense mechanisms to avoid "predators," i.e., the prey who fail to develop them are unable to procreate (because they're dead), but a team of scientists from Sweden and Australia recently concluded that something similar happens in a species of fish in which males mate basically by huge-appendaged rape. Growing nine generations of the species in the lab, the researchers concluded that the females who can avoid the "rapist" evolve larger brains than those who fall victim. (Researchers, loosely speaking, thus concluded that as males grow bigger penises, females grow bigger brains to outsmart them.) [National Post (Toronto), 11-24- 2016]

Whistleblower goes to jail; responsible industry executives make millions. Long-time Mississippi environmental activist Tennie White is 27 months into a 40-month sentence (for "falsifying" three $150 tests in her laboratory), but high-ranking executives at the Kerr-McGee chemical conglomerate made millions on the case White helped expose: leakage of cancer-causing creosote into communities, including White's Columbus, Mississippi, neighborhood. A detailed investigation by TheIntercept.com in November noted the executives' brilliant response to the 25,000 creosote lawsuits nationwide: put all the liability into one outlying company (eventually going bankrupt) but selling off, highly profitably, the rest of the firm. [The Intercept, 11-25-2016]

Texas is among the most enthusiastic states for jailing low-income arrestees who cannot pay a money bail, especially during devastating family hardships, and the four Houston bail magistrates are particularly harsh, according to a recent report of the Texas Organizing Project. After hearing one financially overwhelmed woman beg sarcastically that $1,000 bail is "nothing" next to her other bills, unsympathetic magistrate Joe Licata shrugged, "It's nothing to me, either. It's job security." [Houston Press, 11-16-2016]

(1) When police in Port Orange, Florida, arrested Anthony Coiro, 76, in November, he admitted that he had a stash of "crazy" pornography, some featuring children. However, he adamantly insisted, "I'm not a pedophile. I'm just a pervert," adding, "a law-abiding pervert." He faces 52 counts. (2) In November in Osaka, Japan, an unnamed arrestee apparently had his sexual molestation charge (against a woman on a crowded train) dramatically downgraded. "Actually," the man indignantly told the judge, he is not a pervert -- but just a pickpocket (a lesser crime). The victim had testified that the man had brushed against her for "3 seconds" and not the "30" she originally told police. [The Smoking Gun, 11-10-2016] [Rocket News via Sankei West, 11-18-2016]

(1) Price tag for one round of a 155mm projectile shot from the Navy's USS Zumwalt: $800,000. (2) Trees killed in California by the now-5-year-old drought: 102,000,000. (3) Recent finding of "water" farthest from the Earth's surface: 621 miles down (one-third of the way to the Earth's "core"). (4) Odds that Statistics Lecturer Nicholas Kapoor (Fairfield University, Fairfield, Connecticut) said he played against in buying a $15 Powerball ticket: 1 in 913,129 (but he won $100,000!). (5) Speed police calculated Hector Faire, 19, reaching in an Oklahoma police chase: 208 mph (but they got him, anyway). (6) Different languages spoken by children in Buffalo, New York, public classrooms: 85. [Washington Post, 11-8-2016] [Los Angeles Times, 11-18-2016] [New Scientist, 11-23-2016] [ABC News, 11-14-2016] [Fox News, 11-16-2016] [Buffalo News, 11-27-2016]

(1) Michelle Keys, 35, among those joyously caught up in Iowa's upset win over highly ranked Michigan in football in November and celebrating that night in Iowa City, was slurring and incoherent and told police she was certain she was standing in Ames, Iowa (120 miles away), and had just watched the "Iowa State - Arizona" game (a matchup not played since 1968). (She registered .225) (2) A 38-year-old woman was arrested in Springwood, Australia, in November when police stopped her car at 3 a.m. at an intersection -- with a children's swing set wedged onto the roof of her SUV. (She had shortly before mistakenly driven through someone's back yard and through the swing set.) (.188.) [Deadspin, 11-13-2016] [Queensland police website, 11-22-2016]

"Sexually-based offenses," a TV show intones, are "particularly heinous," but to the small Delaware liberal arts Wesley College (according to the U.S. Department of Education) even an accusation of sexual misconduct is so heinous that there was no need even to interview the alleged wrongdoer before expelling him. (An informal meeting did occur, but only after the investigation was completed.) The expulsion occurred even though the victim herself had not originally accused that particular student. The expelled student's offense was to have helped set up video for a consensual sex encounter that was (without consent) live-streamed. (The Department of Education accepted a settlement in which Wesley agreed to revamp its code of student rights.) [Washington Post, 10- 13-2016]

-- "Man Mixing LSD and Cough Syrup Saves Dog From Imaginary Fire" (WNYT-TV, Albany, N.Y.), 10-15-2016). (Panicked, he had first sought help from neighbors -- who were unpersuaded by the sight of a fireless fire.)

-- "Santa Claus Speaks Out Against North Pole Ban of Marijuana Sales" (KTUU-TV, Anchorage) (Cannabis is legal in Alaska unless towns ban it, and the legally-named Mr. Claus needs it for cancer pain.)

-- "Dog On Loose Causes Sheep To Have Sex With Their Sisters in Walton On The Hill" (The wild dog has wrecked a planned mating program, leaving female sheep to canoodle with each other) (Surrey Mirror, Redhill, England, 9-22- 2016)

-- Apparently the plan by a 33-year-old unlicensed, un-car-registered driver in Perth, Australia, in November to keep from being stopped by police was to print "POLICE" in large, "official"-looking letters on the sides of her white Hyundai, using a blue dry-erase board marker. (She was, of course, quickly stopped by police.) [Yahoo News (Australia), 11-21-2016]

-- A woman in a quiet north Minneapolis neighborhood told reporters she became fearful after seeing a large swastika spraypainted on a garage door down a nearby alley (just after election day!). (Problem: The base "X" of the correct design has "hooks" that should always extend to the right, clockwise; three of the Minneapolis "artist's" awkwardly hook left.) [City Pages (Minneapolis), 11-29-2016]

(1) In November, a court in Christchurch, New Zealand, ordered the local police to "undo" the 493 bottles' worth of liquor they had recently poured down the city's drain after raiding an unlicensed bar. The court said the police must pay a pumping company to recall the hooch because of environmental regulations. (2) In November, the Littleton, Colorado, city government, faced with the need to "blot" sticky tar on 120 streets whose potholes it was filling, bypassed expensive "detackifiers" in favor of stuffing toilet paper over the tar, causing the streets to have a trick-or-treat look. [The Press (Christchurch), 11-4-2016] [Denver Post, 11-3-2016]

An estimated 3.2 million kids ages 5-12 take mixed-martial-arts classes, training to administer beatdowns modeled after the adults' Ultimate Fighting Championships, according to a January (2013) report in ESPN magazine, which profiled the swaggering, Mohawked Derek "Crazy" Rayfield, 11, and the meek, doll-clutching fighting machine, Regina "The Black Widow" Awana, 7. Kids under age 12 fight each other without regard to gender, and blows above the collarbone, and on the groin, kidneys, and back are prohibited. "Crazy" delivered merciless forearm chest smashes before the referee intervened, and the Black Widow won her match in less than a minute via arm-bar submission. Parental involvement is said to be either "fear" of their child's getting hurt or "encouragement" to be meaner. [ESPN The Magazine, 1-7-2013]

American gangsters traditionally use euphemisms and nicknames ("Chin," "The Nose") to disguise criminal activities, but among details revealed at a November murder trial in Sydney, Australia, was that members of the "Brothers 4 Life" gang might have used "pig latin." In a phone-tapped conversation played in court, one of the men on trial was overheard cunningly telling a henchman that a colleague had been "caught with the un-gay in the ar-kay." A helpful witness then took the stand to explain to the jury that the defendant thus knew there was "a gun in the car." At press time, the trial was still in progress. [Australian Broadcasting Corp. News, 11-16-2016]

-- An "academic" paper composed entirely of gibberish was accepted for a lecture at the International Conference on Atomic and Nuclear Physics in Atlanta last month. Prof. Christoph Bartneck of New Zealand's University of Canterbury said he began writing (using Apple iOS) by entering "atomic" and "nuclear" into his tablet and "randomly" following whatever "autocomplete" suggestions emerged. (Sample sentence: "The atoms of a better universe will have the right for the same as you are the way we shall have to be a great place..." Conclusion: "Power is not a great place for a good time.") [The Guardian (London), 10-21-2016]

-- Divorcing couples who cannot decide who gets to keep a treasured family home leave the decision to a judge, and in October, a court in Moscow ordered a couple to build a brick wall dividing in two their expensive house in an elite neighborhood. Apparently contractors' measurements have been taken, and the couple has assumed dominion over their respective areas, even to the extent that a friend of the wife had become "trapped" on the husband's side and prevented from leaving until she called emergency services. Furthermore, the wife must have a second stairway built, as the existing one is on the husband's side. [Daily Mail (London), 10-21- 2016]

-- The Micropenis Defense: Jacques Rouschop, 44, went to trial in October in Ottawa, Ontario, denying that he had raped two sex workers -- which he said was physically impossible because at the time he, at 5-foot-6, weighed 400 lbs., had a 66-inch waist, and a two-inch-long penis (erect), plus a painful hernia. He was not asked to "flash" the jury, but an examining nurse verified the details. (Despite the lack of DNA evidence, video or a rape kit, Rouschop was convicted.) [Ottawa Citizen, 10-18-2016]

-- A 23-year-old man in Tampa, Florida, was hanging out with his cousin in September, and nearby were a gun and a bulletproof vest -- and the result was predictable. According to police, the first man donned the vest and said he wondered whether it "still worked"; the cousin picked up the gun and said, "Let's see." The cousin, Alexandro Garibaldi, 24, was charged with manslaughter. [WTSP- TV (St. Petersburg), 9-11-2016]

-- Judges can issue "material witness" warrants to lock up innocent people to ensure their trial testimony, but rarely do it to actual crime victims. In December 2015, the Houston, Texas, district attorney obtained such a warrant jailing a rape victim ("Jenny") to secure her testimony against a serial rapist she could identify, because Jenny, exceptionally fragile, was hesitant. She finally took the stand, and the rapist is now serving multiple life terms, but Jenny's added trauma (especially since police mistakenly placed her into the jail's general population instead of a separate wing) provoked her to file a lawsuit against the DA, which is still in progress. And in November, likely to Jenny's satisfaction, the DA, Devon Anderson, failed re-election. [Wall Street Journal, 11-8-2016]

-- Another animal survives with mouth-to-mouth: In November, an 18-year-old man who allegedly tried to steal koi carp fish from a holding tank (pending their return to a pond at Castle Park in Colchester, England) botched the job, resulting in the deaths of most of them, including some of the oldest and most visitor-friendly of the species. Park rangers managed to rescue several, and one ranger even gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to three carp. (A biologist told BBC News that carp are noted for surviving on low oxygen and might not have needed the mouth-to-mouth.) [BBC News, 11-4-2016]

-- More Sperm Wars: Most couples who create embryos to freeze for the future agree that the consent of both is required for actual use. Two former couples are on opposite sides of the issue: Actor Sofia Vergara's ex-boyfriend wants their embryo brought to term (but she does not), and Missouri woman Jalesia McQueen wants two she created with then-husband Justin Gadberry brought to term (but he does not). In the latter case, an appeals court ruled for Gadberry in November (though the couple already have two children from frozen embryos). In the Vergara case, the ex, Nick Loeb, is trying for an extraordinary court ruling based on his "inability to otherwise procreate" (since two subsequent girlfriends adamantly chose abortions). [Forbes.com, 11-18-2016] [Washington Post, 11-17-2016]

-- Victims in News of the Weird stories have been hit by "flying" animals that should not be airborne -- even once by a cow (falling off a cliff) and once by a horse (that fell from a trailer on a highway overpass). On Nov. 17, in Clarksville, Tennessee, an unassuming pedestrian along Dover Road was smacked by a deer that sailed into him after it collided with a minivan. The pedestrian was taken to the hospital with broken bones. [The Leaf Chronicle (Clarksville), 11-18-2016]

-- The debate over whether animals have "rights" enforceable by judges took a sharp turn upward in November when a judge in Argentina ordered the reluctant Mendoza Zoo to release a chimpanzee (Cecilia) to a sanctuary in Brazil because the zoo had denied her the "right" to animal "essence" -- to socialize with other chimps (since her last two playmates had died more than two years earlier). Mendoza Zoo was heavily criticized following the death last summer of Arturo, dubbed the "world's saddest polar bear," since he had suffered an even worse fate, with no playmates for 22 years. [The Independent (London), 11-7-2016]

-- These days, body orifices seem hardly more unusual as storage areas for contraband than one's shirt pocket, but it was news in Fort Pierce, Florida, in October when police said that Rosalia Garcia, 28, badly failed at handling glass crack pipes. Officers were called to a domestic fight in which Garcia's boyfriend accused her of slashing him with her crack pipe, and later, while being booked on the charge, she told police she had another crack pipe in her genitals. Then, in front of an officer, she accidentally cut herself on the pipe as she removed it. [TCPalm.com (Stuart, Florida), 11-21-2016]

-- In America, tens of thousands of pedestrians are hit by cars every year, but rare is the driver who runs over himself. Periodically, News of the Weird updates readers: In October in Orlando, William Edwards, 28, leaving the Dancer's Royale strip club at 2:30 a.m., started his truck, drove, fell out, had it run over his leg, and saw the truck drift down a street and into a home, injuring the occupant. Earlier in October, a 25-year-old man in Scugog, Ontario, backing his car down his driveway with the door open, fell out, had it run over his leg, and saw it hit two mailbox posts. (Both times, as in nearly every similar case, alcohol was involved.) [WKMG-TV (Orlando), 11-22-2016] [Orangeville Banner, 10-4- 2016]

-- Four innocent Texas women caught up in the 1990s' "child sex abuse" panics, who served a cumulative 56 years in prison after their 1997 convictions, were completely exonerated in November by a Texas judge following the recanting of one "victim" and the retracting of the principal forensic "evidence." The four women, then in their 20s, had been accused of genitally abusing nieces, ages 7 and 9, of one of the women. In the 1990s, beginning with the San Diego-area "McMartin School" case, it became easy for prosecutors to convince ready-to-believe jurors that their little toddlers and adolescents were sexually abused in Satanic cults and by hordes of perverts, "proved" by self-assured counselors misapplying "science" and by fantastical "testimony" by children themselves, taken seriously by adults somehow unaware that children have imaginations and a need to please adults. [San Antonio Express-News, 11-23-2016]

Almost all law enforcement agencies in America use the Scott Reagent field test when they discover powder that looks like cocaine, but the several agencies that have actually conducted tests for "false positives" say they happen up to half the time. In October, the latest victims (husband-and-wife truck drivers with spotless records and Pentagon clearances) were finally released after 75 days in jail awaiting trial -- for baking soda that tested "positive" three times by Arkansas troopers (but, eventually, "negative" by a state crime lab). (Why do police love the test? It costs $2.) The truck drivers had to struggle to get their truck back and are still fighting to be re-cleared to drive military explosives. [KUTV (Salt Lake City), 10-31-2016]

Activists told Vice Media in November that 100,000 people worldwide identify as "ecosexuals," ranging from those who campaign for "sustainable"-ingredient sex toys to those who claim to have intercourse with trees (but sanding the bark for comfort might provoke concern about being "abusive"). A University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor studies the phenomenon and knows, for example, of humans who "marry" the Earth or prefer sex while rolling in potting soil or under a waterfall. On one "arborphilia" support blog, a female poster regretted her choice to have "convenient" sex with the sycamore outside her bedroom window instead of the sturdy redwood she actually covets. (Yes, some "mainstream" environmentalists somehow are not completely supportive.) [Vice Media, 11-2-2016] [Inverse.com, 4-22-2016]

-- If You See Something, Say Something: Ricky Berry and his roommate walked in to a CVS store in Richmond, Virginia, in November to ask if it carried sliced cheese but were told no. Minutes later, all the employees walked to the back of the store, hid in a locked room, and called the police. Berry and pal, and a third customer (with a toothache and desperately needing Orajel), were bewildered by the empty store until a Richmond police officer arrived. After observing that the three customers appeared nonthreatening, he mused along with Berry that "this is how weird, apocalyptic movies start." WRIC-TV reported later that the employee who panicked and called police will "possibly" need retraining. [WRIC-TV, 11-23-2016]

-- Groundbreaking Legal Work: In October, a court in Australia's Victoria state began considering an appeal on whether three deaf people might be too intellectually challenged to have planned a murder. The prosecutor offered surveillance video of the three in a lobby planning the murder's details via sign language as they waited for an elevator to take them up to the eventual crime scene. [The Age (Melbourne), 10-4-2016]

-- Pigs are such complex animals that scientists are studying how to tell the "optimists" from the "pessimists." British researchers writing in a recent Biology Letters described how "proactive" porkers differed from "reactive" ones, and, as with humans, how their particular mood at that time distinguished them as "glass half full" rather than "glass half empty." (Unaddressed, of course, was specifically whether some pigs were actually "optimistic" that the chute at the slaughterhouse might lead to a pleasant outcome.) [Los Angeles Times, 11-15-2016]

The Schlitterbahn Waterpark in Kansas City, Kansas, got the message in November and shut down its "world's tallest waterslide" (17 stories; riders reaching speeds of 60 mph) after the neck-injury death of a 10-year-old rider in August. But comparably altitude-obsessed architects in Tokyo said in November that they were moving ahead with proposals for "Next Tokyo 2045" to include a one-mile-high residential complex (twice as tall as the currently highest skyscraper). A spokesperson for principal architects Kohn Pedersen Fox said he realizes that coastal Tokyo, currently in earthquake, typhoon and tsunami zones, would present a climate-change challenge (and especially since the building would be on land once reclaimed from Tokyo Bay). [Washington Post, 11-23-2016] [CNN, 11-16-2016]

(1) San Diego police officer Christine Garcia, who identifies as transgender, was turned away in November as she attempted to enter the Transgender Day of Remembrance at the city's LGBT Community Center -- because organizers thought the sight of a police uniform might upset some people. (Garcia herself was one of the event's organizers.) (2) Chick Magnet: Gary Zerola was arraigned in Boston in November on two counts of rape. He is a defense lawyer, former prosecutor, one-time "Most Eligible Bachelor" winner, and was a finalist in the first season of ABC-TV's "The Bachelor." He was also accused of two counts of rape in 2006 (but acquitted at trial) and another in 2007 (but the charge was dropped). [Los Angeles Times, 11-23-2016] [Boston Herald, 11-23-2016]

It was only a quarter-million-dollar grant by the National Institutes of Health, but what it bought, according to budget scrutiny by The Washington Free Beacon in November, was the development of a multiplayer computer game (inevitably competing for attention in an overstuffed commercial market) hoping to teach good reproductive health habits. "Caduceus Quest" employs role-playing as "doctors, policymakers, researchers, youth advocates" and others to "solve medical mysteries and epidemiologic crises." The target, according to the University of Chicago grant proposal, is African-American and Latino teenagers around Chicago. [Washington Free Beacon, 11-19-2016]

-- On Nov. 16, Richard Rusin, 34, was charged with DUI in St. Charles, Illinois, after he drove off of a street, going airborne, hitting close to the top of one house, rebounding off of another, uprooting a tree (sending it onto a roof), and knocking out electricity to the neighborhood when the car clipped a utility pole guide wire -- and his car landed upside down in a driveway. He was hospitalized. [Patch.com (Geneva, Ill.), 11-16-2016]

-- Allen Johnson Sr., of Meriden, Connecticut, was driving a tractor-trailer up Interstate 89 near Williston, Vermont on Nov. 2 at 63 mph, when, said state police, he apparently tried to stand up in the cab in order to change pants (enabling the rig to roll over). Johnson registered .209 blood-alcohol; it was 9:30 a.m. [WVIT-TV (West Hartford), 11-3-2016]

Recurring Themes: (1) Gwinnett, Georgia, police know exactly who they like for the Nov. 3 armed robbery of an Exxon convenience store: Mr. Quaris Holland, 29. That's because the manager told police Holland had been coming by as a customer "every single day" for "six months." He's still at large. (2) I Have a Gub (sic): The FBI was offering a reward for tips on their suspect in heists at four Boston-area banks in November. Though the man has eluded them so far, at least one issue plagues him: Each of his holdup notes announces that this is a "robery." [Gwinnett Daily Post, 11-17-2016] [KYW-TV (Philadelphia), 11-18-2016]

(1) Simon Berry, 24, of the English village of Bray, was recently acknowledged by the Guinness Book people for his bungee drop of 246 feet to precision-dunk a biscuit into a cup of tea. (2) A sign posted recently (apparently without fanfare) at the Castle House Inn hostel in Stockholm, Sweden, warns visitors: "It is a criminal offense to smoke or wank on these premises." ("Wank" is British slang for self-pleasuring.) The sign contains the familiar "not permitted" circle over a crossed-out item -- but just the cigarette. [BBC News, 11-17-2016] [The Local (Stockholm), 11-4-2016]

Cliche Come to Life: The Kerry, Ireland, county council voted in January (2013) to let some people drive drunk. The councillors reasoned that in the county's isolated regions, some seniors live alone and need the camaraderie of the pub but fear a DUI arrest on the way home. The councillors thus empowered police to issue DUI permits to those drivers. Besides, they reasoned, the area is so sparsely populated that some drivers never encounter anyone else on the road at night. (Coincidentally -- or not -- "several" of the five councillors voting "yea" own pubs.) [BBC News, 1-22-2013]