The Hastens workshop in Koping, Sweden, liberally using the phrase "master artisans" recently, unveiled its made-to-order $149,900 mattress. Bloomberg News reported in December on Hastens' use of superior construction materials such as pure steel springs, "slow-growing" pine, multiple layers of flax, horsehair lining (braided by hand, then unwound to ensure extra spring), and cotton covered by flame-retardant wool batting. With a 25-year guarantee, an eight-hour-a-day sleep habit works out to $2 an hour. (Bonus: The Bloomberg reviewer, after a trial run, gave the "Vividus" a glowing thumbs-up.) [Bloomberg News, 12-2-2016]

Humans are good at recognizing faces, but exceptionally poor at recognition when the same face's features are scrambled or upside down. In December, a research team from the Netherlands and Japan published findings that chimpanzees are the same way -- when it comes to recognizing other chimps' butts. That suggests, the scientists concluded, that sophisticated recognition of rear ends is as important for chimps (as "socio-sexual signaling," such as prevention of inbreeding) as faces are to humans. [Washington Post, 12-6-2016]

Humanity has accumulated an estimated 30 trillion tons of "stuff," according to research by University of Leicester geologists -- enough to fit over 100 pounds' worth over every square meter of the planet's surface. The scientists, writing in the Anthropocene Review, are even more alarmed that very little of it is ever recycled and that buried layers of technofossils that define our era will clutter and weigh down the planet, hampering future generations. (Don't just think of "garage sale" stuff, wrote Mother Nature News; think of every single thing we produce.) [Mother Nature News, 12-7-2016]

A federal appeals court agreed with a jury in December that Battle Creek, Michigan, police were justified in shooting (and killing) two hardly misbehaving family dogs during a legal search of a house's basement. Mark and Cheryl Brown had pointed out that their dogs never attacked; one, an officer admitted, was "just standing there" when shot and killed. The officers said that conducting a thorough search of the premises might have riled the dogs and threatened their safety. (Unaddressed was whether a dog might avoid being shot if it masters the classic trick of "playing dead.") [Battle Creek Enquirer, 12-21-2016]

(1) Spencer Hanvey, 22, was charged with four burglaries of the same MedCare Pharmacy in Conway, Arkansas, in October and November, using the same modus operandi each time to steal drugs. (Bonus: Oddly, the drugs were not for obsessive-compulsive disorder.) (2) If You See Something, Say Something: Hamden (Connecticut) High School was put into lockdown for an hour on Dec. 15 when a student was seen running in the hallway, zig-zagging from side to side, swinging an arm and leaping into the air. Police were called, but quickly learned that it was just a 12th-grade boy practicing a basketball move and pretending to dunk.

[Arkansas Online, 12-7-2016] [New Haven Register, 12-15-2016]

Low-Tech Pervs: (1) A camera-less Alan Ralph, 62, was arrested in Sarasota, Florida, in December after being seen on surveillance video in October in a Wal-Mart stooping down to the floor to peer up the skirt of a woman. (2) John Kuznezow, 54, was charged with invasion of privacy in Madison, Wisconsin, in November after he was discovered, pants down, up a tree outside a woman's second-floor bedroom window. [WFLA-TV (Tampa), 12-6-2016] [WMTV (Madison), 11-8-2016]

The Immigrants Wanted to Believe: For about 10 years, organized crime rings operated a makeshift U.S. "embassy" in a rundown pink building in Accra, the capital of Ghana, issuing official-looking identification papers, including "visas" that theoretically permitted entry into the United States. The U.S. State Department finally persuaded Ghanian officials to close it down, but it is unknown if any purchasers were ever caught trying to immigrate. The "embassy," with a U.S. flag outside, had well-spoken "consular officers" who reportedly collected about $6,000 per visa. [Ghana Business News, 12-2-2016]

(1) Wu Jianping, 25, from China's Henan province, complained in November that he had been denied home loans at several banks for not providing fingerprints -- because he has no arms (following a childhood accident) and "signs" documents by holding a pen in his mouth. He was not allowed to substitute "toeprints." (2) Classes were canceled in early December in the village of Batagai in the Yakutia region of Siberia when the temperature reached minus 53 Celsius (minus 63 Fahrenheit) -- but only for kids 15 and under; older children still had to get to school. Yakutia is regarded as the coldest inhabited region on the planet. [China Daily, 11-22-2016] [The Sun (London), 12-8-2016]

(1) The government in Saxony, Germany, chose as third-place winner of its 2016 prize for innovation and start-up companies the inventor of the ingenious silent vibrator (leading to shaming of the economy minister Martin Dulig, now known as "Dildo Dulig"). (2) An unknown armed robber made off with cash at the Lotions and Lace adult store in San Bernardino, California, in December -- although employees told police they angrily pelted the man with dildos from the shelves as he ran out the door. [The Local (Berlin), 11-25-2016] [KNBC-TV (Los Angeles), 12-14-2016]

Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Leonard Rinaldi, 53, was arrested in Torrington, Connecticut, in November following his theft of a rare-coin collection belonging to his father. The coins were valued at about $8,000, but apparently to make his theft less easily discoverable, he ran them through a Coinstar coin-cashing machine -- netting himself a cool $60. (2) James Walsh was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Florida, on Dec. 12 at a Wal-Mart after carting out an unpaid-for big-screen TV. Walsh said he had swiped a TV on Dec. 11 with no problem -- but failed to notice that, on the 12th, the store had a "shop with a cop" event at which St. Lucie County deputies were buying toys for kids. [WTIC-TV (Hartford), 11-16-2016] [WPEC- TV (West Palm Beach), 12-12-2016]

Zimbabwe's hyperinflation remains the most storied, but Venezuela is catching up. In mid-December, the government declared its largest-currency bill (the 100-bolivar note) worthless, replacing it with larger denomination money (after a brief cash-in period that has ended and which some drug dealers were likely shut out of). The 100-bolivar's value had shrunk to 2 cents on the black market. Stacks of it were required to make even the smallest food purchases, and since wallets could no longer hold the notes, robbers feasted on the "packages" of money people carried around while shopping. [Wall Street Journal, 12-13-2016]

(1) In October, Chicago alderman Howard Brookins Jr. publicly denounced "aggressive" squirrels that were gnawing through trash cans and costing the city an extra $300,000. A month later, Brookins was badly injured in a bicycle collision (broken nose, missing teeth) when a squirrel (in either a mighty coincidence or suicide terrorism) jumped into one of his wheels, sending Brookins over the handlebar. (2) In October, officials of Alaska's Iditarod reaffirmed an earlier decision to allow mushers to use mobile phones during the 2017 race; "purists" maintain that phones destroy the "frontier-ness" of the event. [Chicago Tribune, 11-22-2016] [Alaska Dispatch News, 10-28-2016]

Update: Every several years, News of the Weird helpfully reminds readers of what is one of the planet's most bizarre local customs: the Christmas tradition in Spain's Catalonia region of decorating Nativity scenes with figurines of traditional Catalonians and famous people, each squatting to answer nature's calls. The update this year, of course, is the availability of squatting Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, joining past presidents (including the all-time best-seller, President Obama), Queen Elizabeth and Pope Francis. (Perhaps the least-tone-deaf explanation for the tradition is that if the manger is fertilized, the coming year's crops can be expected to flourish.) [New York Times, 12-6-2016]

The rebellion against the absurdities of Black Friday this year by the organization Cards Against Humanity came in the form of raising money to dig a pointless hole in the ground. During the last week of November, people "contributed" $100,573, with Cards digging initially for 5.5 seconds per donated dollar. In 2015, according to an NPR report, Cards raised $71,145 by promising to do "absolutely nothing" with it, and the year before, $180,000 by selling bits of bull feces. (Asked why Cards doesn't just give the money to charity, a spokesperson asked why donors themselves don't give it to charity. "It's (their) money.") [NPR via KUOW Radio (Turnwater, Wash.), 11-27-2016]

New York City's Department of Parks and Recreation has completed its two-year project of assigning ID numbers (with arboreal characteristics) to every one of the 685,781 trees in the city's five boroughs. More than 2,300 volunteers walked the streets, then posted each tree's location, measurements, Google Street View image, and ecological benefits for the surrounding neighborhoods (rainwater retained, air pollution reduced). (Privacy activists hope the National Security Agency is not inspired by this.) [Architecture Daily, 11-28-2016]

-- A note in The New York Times in October mentioned a website that comprehensively covers everything worth knowing and wondering -- about shoelaces. Ian's Shoelace Site shows and discusses (and rates) lacing methods, how to mix lace colors, how to tie (comparing methods, variations and, again, ratings), lengths of laces (how to calculate, which formulas to use, what to do with excess lengths), "granny knots," aglet repair and much more -- neatly laid out in dozens of foolproof drawings for the shoelace- challenged (because no one wants to be caught in a shoelace faux pas). [Ian's Shoelace Site, http://bit.ly/1mVIpDO]

-- Though the presidential election of 2016 was certainly more volatile than usual, one reaction to the outcome was the apparent ease with which some in America's next generation of college-trained leaders were sidelined by self-described emotional pain. The Wall Street Journal reported that special attention was given by administrators at Tufts University, the University of Kansas and Ivy League Cornell, among other places, where their young adults could "grieve" over the election and seek emotional support, such as use of "therapy dogs" in Kansas and, at the University of Michigan, the availability of Play-Doh and coloring books for distraction. [Wall Street Journal, 11-9-2016]

-- (1) The county executive in Cleveland, Ohio, complained in November of lack of funds (because the county's credit is "maxed out") for necessary renovations to its well-known sports and concert venue, the Quicken Loans Arena. (2) In November, after a companion asked Victoria Vanatter, 19, what blood-sucking was like, she let him slice her arm with a razor to have a taste, but the two then argued, and Vanatter allegedly grabbed a knife and slashed him for real. Police in Springfield, Missouri, arrested her after both people were stitched up at a hospital. [Cleveland Scene, 11-30-2016] [Springfield News Leader, 11-18-2016]

-- Recurring: The most recent city to schedule a civic-minded conference with community leaders to discuss options for affordable, accessible housing in a meeting place that was highly unfriendly to the non-ambulatory was Toronto, in November. The first proposed site required a seven-step walk-up, but following complaints, officials relocated it -- to a building whose only rest room was in the elevator-free basement. [Toronto Star, 12-7-2016]

-- The Space World theme park in Kitakyushu, Japan, opened a popular (with visitors) ice-skating rink in November, but was forced to close it two weeks later for being hugely unpopular (with social media critics). The park had placed 5,000 fish and other sea animals in the ice deck of its "Freezing Port" rink so that skaters could look down as they glided along, gazing at marvels of nature (all dead in advance, of course, purchased from a fish market). Nonetheless, the park manager apologized for grossing out so many people and closed the exhibit (melting the ice and conducting an "appropriate religious service" for the fishes' souls). [CNN, 11-28-2016]

-- The government-run Channel 2M in Morocco apologized for a segment of its daily TV program "Sabahiyat" that featured a makeup artist demonstrating techniques for obscuring blemishes on women subjected to domestic violence. The model being worked on had been made up with a swollen face and faked bruises. Said the host, "We hope these beauty tips will help (victims) carry on with your daily life." (Bonus: The program aired Nov. 23 -- two days before International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.) [The Guardian (London), 11-27-2016]

-- Cunning Strategies: (1) Shogo Takeda, 24, said he desperately needed a job at the elevator maintenance company in Yokohama at which he was interviewing (with the president) on Nov. 10, but somehow could not resist taking the man's wallet from a bag when the president briefly left the room. (Takeda had dropped off his resume beforehand and thus was quickly apprehended.) (2) Mark Revill, 49, pleaded guilty in November to stalking the actor Keira Knightley. He said he had become frustrated that his flood of love letters was being ignored and so approached the front door of Knightley's London home and "meowed" through the letterbox. [Japan Times, 11-21-2016] [London Evening Standard, 11-21-2016]

(1) A substitute teacher at Sandhills Middle School in Gaston, South Carolina, was charged with cruelty to children in December after she, exasperated, taped two kids to their desk chairs for misbehaving. (2) A second-grade teacher at Landis Elementary in Houston was charged with felony cruelty after video showed her punching a serial troublemaker in the head as he fought her while she walked him to the principal's office. (3) A high school teacher in Glasgow, Scotland, got in trouble in November for proposing in a journal that teachers be allowed to cuss back at students who cuss them. He wrote that limiting teachers to "Don't call me that" sends the wrong message. [The State (Columbia, S.C.), 12-3-2016] [KTRK-TV (Houston), 11-2-2016] [The Scottish Sun (Glasgow), 11-19-2016]

(1) Add goat horns to the "religious covering" items permitted to be worn in government identification cards. It took Mr. Phelan MoonSong of Millinocket, Maine, two trips to the BMV, but his ID, after his name change, was finally approved in December, based on his "Paganism" religion. (2) In December, a 21-year-old man became the most recent to fall to his death during a roadside "pit stop." Four passengers alighted from a car on the side of Interstate 15 near Escondido, California; two urinators returned without incident, and a third also fell about 40 feet but survived. [WGME-TV (Portland), 12-6-2016] [San Diego Union-Tribune, 12-7-2016]

(1) In November, an arranged custody swap of a child from one grandmother to another in a Wal-mart parking lot near Dallas ended when both ladies pulled guns and started firing. One granny was hit in the neck and the other arrested after she also fired at an off-duty officer trying to calm things down. (2) A 22-year-old man pedaling a vending cart through downtown Victoria, British Columbia, in November with large-lettered "420 delivery" on the carrier was stopped by police and found with a stash of marijuana. (Selling recreational cannabis is illegal, even though the man had conscientiously printed underneath the sign, "NO MINORS.") [KDFW-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 11-30-2016] [Victoria Police Department release, 11-10-2016]

Officials at Seaford, England's, 12th-century St. Peter's Church, which is renowned for its eerie quietness, created a 30-minute CD (in 2013) of "total silence," first as a small-scale fundraising project, but later for general sales (since word-of-mouth had attracted orders from the noise-annoyed as far away as Ghana). Those who have heard it said they could make out only the occasional squeaking of footsteps on the wooden floor and the very distant hum of a passing car. Said one admiring parishioner, "People sometimes like to sit down and just have a bit of peace and quiet." [Daily Mail (London), 1-27-2013]

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]