LEAD STORY -- Work of a Researcher

"Field work is always challenging," explained Courtney Marneweck of South Africa's University of KwaZulu-Natal in a recent journal article, but studying the sociology of a white rhino's dung meant developing a "pattern-recognition algorithm" to figure out "smell profiles" of 150 animals' feces -- after tracking them individually to observe them in the act. Wrote Marneweck, "I think my record for waiting for a rhino to poo was 7 1/2 hours." Conclusion: Rhinos use feces to send distinct social signals on genetically compatible herds, mating access and predator dangers. (Or, in the Los Angeles Times "clickbait" version of the story, rhino dung "has a lot in common with a Facebook post.") [Los Angeles Times, 1-14-2017]

-- "Retiring" the Herd: Settlement of a class-action lawsuit against a group of dairy co-ops was announced in January with milk producers agreeing to pay $52 million on charges they had conspired to fix the dairy supply for years to get top-dollar prices. Among the producers' primary tactics, allegedly, was using what the industry calls "herd retirement," which is "retirement" only in the sense that 500,000 healthy young cows were slaughtered -- just to drive up prices by eliminating otherwise-available milk. The $52 million will be for consumers in 15 states and Washington, D.C. [Washington Post, 1-19-2017]

-- Wrist-Slapping: (1) Rutgers University Athletic Director Pat Hobbs, responding to the NCAA's announcement of violations against the school's sports programs (including failure to penalize 16 football players who tested positive for drugs), told the Asbury Park Press in January that he would immediately dismiss from teams any player testing positive for hard drugs -- upon the fourth violation (if for marijuana only, upon the fifth). (2) In January, the Russian parliament voted 380 to 3 to amend its assault law to allow a spouse one punishment-by-"ticketing" (i.e., not criminal) for domestic violence against his partner -- provided the bodily harm was not "substantial" and that it happens no more than once a year. [Asbury Park Press, 1-11-2017] [USA Today, 1-27-2017]

The "Virtuous Pedophile": Gary Gibson, 65, of Chiloquin, Oregon, admits he is sexually attracted to little girls but never acts on his urges, and therefore, demands that people get off his case. He formed the Association for Sexual Abuse Prevention, campaigning, he says, to keep children safe from other pedophiles whose self-restraint may not match his. Gibson describes himself as a "normal, everyday person," married to a British nurse (whom he met via a Christian singles organization), and has three children and 10 grandchildren -- none so far molested (though in an interview, London's The Sun allowed him to explain his side of various edgy events of his life, such as his having moved for a while to the South Pacific, where little girls sometimes played naked). [The Independent (London), 1-7-2016]

-- Surgery on a 16-year-old Japanese girl, reported in January by New Scientist, revealed that her ovary contained a miniature skull and brain. Doctors say that finding rogue brain cells in ovaries is not that uncommon, but that an already-organized brain, capable of transmitting electric impulses, is almost unheard-of. [New Scientist, 1-6-2017]

-- The neonatal intensive care unit of Texas Health Fort Worth disclosed in January that the secret to keeping the most fragile prematurely born babies alive is to quickly stick them into Ziploc freezer bags to create, according to a clinician, a "hot house effect." (It turns out that merely raising the temperature in the delivery room had only marginal effect.) [KXAS-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 1-11-2017]

Doughnut lovers have legitimately mused for years how U.S. law could condemn, say, marijuana, yet permit Krispy Kreme to openly sell its seemingly addictive sugary delights on America's streets. Sonia Garcia, 51, realized a while back that residents of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, so much needed Krispy Kreme fixes that she earns a handsome living running a black market from El Paso, Texas, bringing in 40 boxes at a time and re-selling from the trunk of her car at a 60 percent markup, pointing out to a Los Angeles Times reporter in January that her trafficking has already put one son through engineering school. (Mexico City now has Krispy Kremes, but apparently the company's distribution system cannot yet vanquish Sonia Garcia's car.) [Los Angeles Times, 1-6-2017]

Reporting from Mbyo, Rwanda, in January on the success of a "reconciliation" program following the country's bloody genocidal wars, London's The Guardian found, for example, Laurencia Niyogira living peacefully and forgivingly alongside neighbor Tasian Nkundiye -- even though, 22 years ago, Nkundiye murdered Niyogira's entire family (except for her and her siblings, left barely alive). (Over a 100-day span in 1994, 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were systematically slaughtered by Hutus.) A survey by the country's national unity commission showed that 92 percent of Rwandans have come to accept reconciliation. [The Guardian, 1-12-2017]

-- Driver Joshua Concepcion-West, 27, was arrested in Apopka, Florida, with an ingenious license-plate cover that he could raise and lower remotely from his key chain (thus avoiding identification by cameras as he passed through turnpike checkpoints). On Jan. 11 at a $1.25 toll plaza, he had neglected to check his rear-view mirror before lowering the cover -- and failed to notice that right behind him was a Florida Highway Patrol car with a trooper watching the whole thing. [WFOR-TV (Miami), 1-13, 2017]

-- Lamest Criminal Defense Ever: Substitute teacher Pete Garcia Hernandez, 49, was arrested in Houston in January and charged with three counts of indecency with a child, involving girls at Looscan Elementary School. The girls had reported earlier that Hernandez had kissed them each on the mouth, but police investigators quoted Hernandez as calling it all an "accident," that "he was speaking close with them and his tongue accidentally went into their mouth(s)." [KHOU-TV, 1-25-2017]

Right to Be Grumpy: Trader Joe's has gained popularity among grocery shoppers in large part by having relentlessly sunny employees, but now that the firm has expanded from mellower California to more brusque New York City, it is learning that cheerfulness is harder to find. The company fired Thomas Nagle recently because, though he said he frequently smiled, he was told his smile was insufficiently "genuine," and, backed by several colleagues, he has filed an unfair labor practice charge (and union organizers have taken notice). The National Labor Relations Board has already ruled (against another employer) that workers cannot be forced to convey that all-important "positive work environment" because they are entitled to have grievances. [New York Times, 11-3-2017]

(1) Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania (pop. 4,300), rarely makes the news, thus allowing it to avoid questions about its awkward name (since it is (a) landlocked and (b) 100 miles from New Jersey). (In January, local residents were disturbed about the odor of a farm's prematurely ripening radishes.) (2) Scientists at Spain's University of Barcelona announced they had reduced the fear of death in some of their 32 research participants by exposing them (using artificial intelligence Oculus Rift headsets) to out-of-body experiences so that they could see and feel themselves "alive" even when they are not actually present. [WNEP-TV (Moosic, Pa.), 1-19-2017] [New Scientist, 1-23-2017]

Undocumented immigrant Jose Munoz, 25, believed himself an ideal candidate for President Obama's 2012 initiative for children, in that he had been brought to the United States by his undocumented parents before age 16, had no criminal record, and had graduated from high school (with honors, even). Since graduation, however, he had stayed at his parents' home in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, jobless, unenterprisingly "vegging," making it difficult to prove the final requirement of the law: that he had lived continuously in the U.S. since graduation (since just lying around the house leaves no paper trail). After initial frustrations, Munoz finally proved his residency by submitting his Xbox Live records documenting that his computer's Wisconsin location had been accessing video games, daily, year after year. [Journal Sentinel, 3-24-2013]

LEAD STORY -- Suspicions Confirmed

Schools' standardized tests are often criticized as harmfully rigid, and in the latest version of the Texas Education Agency's STAAR test, poet Sara Holbrook said she flubbed the "correct" answer for "author motivation" -- in two of her own poems that were on the test. Writing in Huffington Post in January, a disheartened Holbrook lamented, "Kids' futures and the evaluations of their teachers will be based on their ability to guess the so-called correct answer to (poorly) made-up questions." [Huffington Post, 1-5-2017]

-- In December, James Leslie Kelly, 52, and with a 37-conviction rap sheet dating to 1985, filed a federal lawsuit in Florida claiming that his latest brush with the law was Verizon's fault and not his. Kelly was convicted of stealing the identity of another James Kelly and taking more than $300 in Verizon services. He bases his case on the Verizon sales representative's having spent "an hour and a half" with him -- surely enough time, he says, to have figured out that he was not the James Kelly he was pretending to be. He seeks $72 million. [WFTV (Orlando), 1-2-2016]

-- In Hong Kong in December, Mr. Lam Chung-kan, 37, pleaded guilty to stealing a bottle of a co-worker's breast milk at work and drinking it -- but only to help with "stress" in his job as a computer technician. Undermining the health-improvement explanation was a photo Lam sent the woman, showing himself in an aroused state. [South China Morning Post, 12-21-2016]

London's The Guardian reported in January that "dozens" of people have been charged or jailed recently for "defaming" the new Myanmar government, which has been headed (in a prime-minister-like role) since April by Aung San Suu Kyi, who was elected after her release from house detention following two decades of persecution for criticizing the longtime military regime. For her struggle for free speech, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Said the wife of the latest arrestee, Myo Yan Naung Thein, on trial for "criminal defamation" of Suu Kyi's regime, "This is not insulting -- this is just criticizing, with facts. This is freedom of speech." [The Guardian, 1-9-2017]

High Finance: Sometime in 2006, a photographer on assignment roamed a Chipotle restaurant in Denver, snapping photos of customers. Leah Caldwell was one person photographed, but says she refused to sign the photographer's "release" -- and was surprised, nevertheless, to see a photo of herself in a Chipotle promotion in 2014 and again in 2015 (and on her table in the photo were "alcoholic beverages" she denied ever ordering). In January, Caldwell said the misuse of her image is Chipotle's fault for ignoring her non-"release," and thus that she is entitled to all of the profits Chipotle earned between 2006 and 2015: $2.237 billion. [KMGH (Denver), 1-5-2017]

In December, Ashlynd Howell, age 6, of Little Rock, Arkansas, deftly mashed her sleeping mother's thumbprint onto her phone to unlock the Amazon app and order $250 worth of Pokemon toys. Mom later noticed 13 email confirmations and asked Ashlynd if something was amiss. According to the Wall Street Journal report, Ashlynd said, "No, Mommy, I was shopping." [Wall Street Journal, 12-23-2016]

-- The British think tank High Pay Centre reported in January that the average CEO among the U.K.'s top 100 companies (in the Financial Times Stock Exchange index) earns the equivalent of around $1,600 an hour -- meaning that a 12-hour-a-day boss will earn, by mid-day Jan. 4, as much money as the typical worker at his firm will earn the entire year. (Around the same time, the anti-poverty organization Oxfam reported, to an astonished press, that eight men -- six Americans, headed by Bill Gates -- have the same total "net worth" as the 3.6 billion people who comprise the poorest half of the planet.) [The Guardian, 1-3-2017] [New York Times, 1-16-2017]

-- An organization that tracks "high net worth" investors (Spectrem Group of Lake Forest, Illinois) reported recently that, of Americans worth $25 million or more, only about two-thirds donate $10,000 or more yearly to charity. And then there is Charles Feeney, 85, of New York City, who in December made his final gift to charity ($7 million to Cornell University), completing his pledge to give away almost everything he had -- $8 billion. (He left his wife and himself $2 million to live on, in their rental apartment in San Francisco.) A January New York Times profile noted that nothing is "named" for Feeney, that the gifts were mostly anonymous, and that Feeney assiduously cultivated his low profile. [Harper's Index (February 2017)] [New York Times, 1-6-2017]

-- A "disturbingly large" (according to one report) number of smartphone apps are available devoted to calculating how much the user has "earned" per day and per year during restroom breaks answering nature's calls while at work. Australia's News Limited's rough calculation estimated $1,227 for someone making $55,000 a year, but results might vary since there are so many apps: Poop Salary, ToiletPay, Log-Log, Paid 2 Poo, Pricy Poop, Poop Break and perhaps others. [News.com.au via New York Post, 12-9-2016]

"Every major event in my life has been about insects," Aaron Rodriques, 26, told The New York Times in December, home in New York City during a winter break from his doctoral research at Purdue University on the "sweet tergal secretions" of German cockroaches, and on his way to buy a supply of crickets and hornworms. ("Hornworms," he said, have an "amazing defense" where they "eat tobacco for the nicotine, which they exhale as a gas to scare away predators.") "When I'm feeling stressed out," Rodriques said, he might take one out to "calm me down." He met his first girlfriend when she was attracted to his pet giant African millipede (as long as a human forearm), but admits that "for the vast majority" of time in school, "I was alone." [New York Times, 12-29-2016]

Two years ago, News of the Weird updated previous entries by noting that China's Ministry of Culture had cracked down on the centuries-old tradition of festively over-the-top funerals (ceremonies to assure the family that the deceased did not die "faceless") -- by arresting the song-and-dance people (including strippers and pole-dancers) peddling their services to mourners. Even though that ban has been working, nostalgic Chinese can still see great funeral pole-dancing -- in Taiwan -- according to a January report on the death of Chiayi county official Tung Hsiang, featuring 50 "scantily clad" entertainers. (Pole-dancing, itself, is still big in China, where the national pole-dancing team recently performed its annual outdoor show, wearing shorts and halter tops, in the country's northernmost village, Beiji -- where the temperature was minus 33 Celsius.) [Shanghaiist, 1-5-20-17] [Shanghaiist, 12-21-2016]

(1) Woodstock, Vermont, police arrested a 28-year-old man for bank robbery in January, with a key piece of evidence coming to their attention when a disapproving Vermonter noted a paper coffee cup not in its proper recycling bin. The cup held the robber's holdup note and DNA. (2) A 46-year-old man was arrested in December after an evening at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and charged with leaving a server a non-monetary "tip" -- of a Valium pill. [Valley News (Lebanon, N.H.), 1-12-2017] [Morning Call (Allentown), 12-30-2016]

College basketball player Shanteona Keys makes free throws at a 78 percent rate for her career, but on Feb. 16 (2013), she weakly shanked one of those 15-foot shots, causing it to thud to the floor about 8 feet short of the rim -- the worst collegiate free-throw attempt of all time, according to several sports reporters who viewed the video. Keys explained to Deadspin.com that she always brings the ball close to her face when she shoots, "and my fingernail got caught on my nose, so I couldn't follow through correctly." Her Georgia College (Milledgeville) team lost to rival Columbus State 70-60. [Deadspin.com, 2-20-2013]

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals finally pulled the plug on Orange County, California, social workers who had been arguing in court for 16 years that they were not guilty of lying under oath because, after all, they did not understand that lying under oath in court is wrong. The social workers had been sued for improperly removing children from homes and defended their actions by inventing "witnesses" to submit made-up testimony. Their lawyers had been arguing that the social workers' "due process" rights were violated in the lawsuit because in no previous case on record did a judge ever have occasion to explicitly spell out that creating fictional witness statements is not permitted. [OC Weekly, 1-6-2017]

Former elementary school teacher Maria Caya, who was allowed to resign quietly in 2013 from her Janesville, Wisconsin, school after arriving drunk on a student field trip, actually made money on the incident. In November 2016, the city agreed to pay a $75,000 settlement -- because the police had revealed her blood-alcohol level to the press in 2013 (allegedly, "private" medical information). The lawsuit against the police made no mention of Caya's having been drunk or passed out, but only that she had "become ill." [Fox News, 10-26-2016]

(1) John Bubar, 50, was arrested in Parsonsfield, Maine, in November after repeatedly lifting his son's mobile home with his front-end loader and dropping it. The father and son had been quarreling over rent payments and debris in the yard, and the father only eased up after realizing that his grandson was still inside the home. (2) Update: The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reversed itself in December and allowed Mary Thorn of Lakeland to keep her 6-foot-long pet alligator ("Rambo") at home with her despite a regulation requiring that a gator that size needs a more spacious roaming area. Thorn and Rambo have been together for over a decade. [Associated Press via Yahoo News, 12-12-2016] [WFTV (Orlando), 12-21-2016]

"I'm (as) tired of hearing the word 'creep' as any black person or gay person is of hearing certain words," wrote Lucas Werner, 37, on his Facebook page in December after he was banned from a Starbucks in Spokane, Washington, for writing a polite dating request to a teenaged barista. Managers thought Werner was harassing the female, who is at least the age of consent, but Werner charged illegal "age discrimination" and made a "science" claim that "age gap love" makes healthier babies. [NWCN News (Seattle), 12-30-2016]

-- Taylor Trupiano grudgingly paid his $128 "traffic" fine in December, issued by a Roseville, Michigan, officer who caught his car warming up unattended -- in his own driveway. Police routinely issue such tickets (five to 10 each winter, based on a town ordinance) to send drivers like Trupiano a message that unattended cars are ripe for theft, which burdens Roseville's police department. (A police spokesman said the driverless warmups are illegal even for locked cars.) [WXYZ-TV (Detroit), 1-9-2017]

-- Awwwwwww! (1) Jasper Fiorenza, 24, was arrested in St. Petersburg, Florida, in November and charged with breaking into a home in the middle of the night. The female resident said she awoke to see Fiorenza and screamed, but that the man nonetheless delayed his getaway in order to pet the woman's cat lounging on her bed. (2) In December, Durham, Ontario, police officer Beth Richardson was set for a disciplinary hearing ("discreditable conduct") because, earlier in 2016, after being called to intervene at a drug user's home, she had noticed the resident's cat "cowering" in a corner and had taken her to a veterinarian, but without asking the owner's permission. [Tampa Bay Times, 12-1-2016] [CTV News (Toronto), 12-2-2016]

David Martinez, 25, was shot in the stomach during a brawl in New York City in December. He had inadvertently initiated the chaos when, trying to park in Manhattan's East Village just after Saturday midnight, he moved an orange traffic cone that had obviously been placed to reserve the parking space. He apparently failed to realize that the parking spot was in front of the clubhouse of Hells Angels, whose members happened to take notice. [New York Daily News, 12-12-2016]

An unnamed pregnant woman convinced a reporter from Jacksonville, Florida, station WFOX-TV in December that the "positive" urine tests she was advertising on Craigslist were accurate and that she was putting herself through school by supplying them (making about $200 a day). The seller claimed that "many" pregnant women market their urine for tests -- even though the main use of the test seems to be "negotiation" with boyfriends or husbands. [WFOX-TV, 12-16-2016]

"You Have the Right to (Any Ol') Attorney": While poor, often uneducated murder defendants in some states receive marginal, part-time legal representation by lawyers at the bottom of their profession (usually unable to keep their murder clients off of death row), Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of three murders in the 2013 attack and facing a possible death sentence, once again will be represented for free by a team at the top of the profession -- headed by the chief of the New York federal public defender's office. Tsarnaev was previously represented by a team topped by the chief of the Boston federal public defender's office. [Boston Herald, 1-3-2017]

(1) Matthew Bergstedt, 27, was charged with breaking into a house in Raleigh, North Carolina, in December, though he failed to anticipate that the resident was inside, stacking firewood (which he used to bloody Bergstedt's face for his mugshot). (2) On Dec. 5 in New York City, a so-far-unidentified man made five separate attempts to rob banks in midtown Manhattan over a three-hour span, but all tellers refused his demands, and he slinked away each time. (Police said a man matching his description had successfully robbed a bank four days earlier.) [WNCN-TV (Raleigh), 12-27- 2016] [NBC-TV (New York), 12-6-2016]

The Return of Anger Relief: (1) What was billed as the United Kingdom's first "Rage Cage" opened in Nottingham, England, in December, allowing patrons to vent with crowbars, baseball bats and hammers to smash crockery, electronics and glassware -- at prices ranging from about $15 to about $40. (2) In October, a bookstore in Cairo, Egypt, set aside a small, soundproof room where patrons could go scream at the top of their lungs for 10 minutes about whatever stresses them. The store owner pointed to an academic study demonstrating screaming's "positive effect" on the brain. (The prototype store is still Donna Alexander's Anger Room in downtown Dallas, thriving since 2011, offering a variety of bludgeoning weapons, and especially active this election season, with target mannequins gussied up to be "Trump" and "Clinton.") [TalkRadio.co.uk, 12-5-2016] [CNN, 10-27-2016] [New York Times, 11-26-2016]

(1) Two weeks after a Pakistani International Airlines crash killed all 47 on board, some employees of the company figured they needed to dispel the bad karma (for their own safety) and thus sacrificed a black goat on the tarmac at Islamabad airport next to an ATR-42 aircraft (the same model that crashed). (2) Badminton player Mads Pieler Kolding, in a January match in India's Premier Badminton League, returned a volley at a world's record for a shuttlecock -- 265 mph. [NPR, 12-19-2016] [Deadspin.com, 1-12-2017]

Suspicions Confirmed: In January (2013), the National Hockey League labor dispute ended, and players returned to work, but as if on cue, some owners resumed their suspect claims that high player salaries were killing them financially. However, the Phoenix Business Journal reported in December 2012 that the NHL Phoenix Coyotes' bookkeeping methodology allowed them to turn a profit for the season only if the lockout had continued and wiped out all the games. In other words, based on the team's bookkeeping, the only way for the Coyotes to make money was to never play. [Phoenix Business Journal, 12-26-2012]