San Francisco's best-paid janitor earned more than a quarter-million dollars cleaning stations for Bay Area Rapid Transit in 2015, according to a recent investigation by Oakland's KTVU. Liang Zhao Zhang cleared almost $58,000 in base pay and $162,000 in overtime, and other benefits ran his total income to $271,243. He worked at San Francisco's Powell Street station, a hangout for the homeless, who notoriously sullied the station 24/7 (urine, feces, and needles, especially), necessitating overtime hours that apparently only Zhang was interested in working. In one stretch during July 2015, he pulled 17-hour days for two and a half straight weeks. [KTVU, 2-7-2017]

An Abbotsford, British Columbia, burglar was successful in his Feb. 7 break-in at a home, but his getaway was thwarted by a snowfall that blocked him in on a roadway. He eventually decided to ask a passerby for help -- and inadvertently picked out a man (of the city's 140,000 residents) whose house he had just broken into (and who recognized him from reviewing his home's security camera footage). The victim called police, who arrested the man (and reported that it was the second residential break-in that night in which the snowfall had foiled a burglar's getaway.) [Vancouver Sun, 2-7-2017]

-- In Portland, Oregon, in January, Ashley Glawe, 17, a committed "goth" character with tattoos, piercings and earlobe holes ("gauges") was, she said, "hanging out" with Bart, her pet python, when he climbed into one of the lobes. She couldn't get him out, nor could firefighters, but with lubrication, hospital emergency workers did (thus avoiding an inevitable split lobe if Bart had kept squeezing his way through). [The Oregonian, 2-1- 2017]

-- Iraqi forces taking over an ISIS base in Mosul in January reported finding papers from at least 14 Islamic State "fighters" who had tried to claim "health" problems, asking commanders to please excuse them from real combat (and martyrdom). One (a Belgian man) actually brought a note from a doctor back home attesting to his "back pain." Five of the 14 were initiated by volunteers from France, a country that endures a perhaps-deserved national reputation for battle-avoidance. [Washington Post, 2-7-2017]

Legislators in Iowa and Florida recently advanced bills giving women who receive legal abortions up to 10 years (or longer, in Iowa) to sue the doctor if the abortion winds up causing them "emotional distress." (Doctors in all states are already liable, of course, for actual "negligence" in their practice.) In the Iowa version (which the Des Moines Register reported would likely face amendments), even a signed consent form by the patient would not immunize the doctor (but might mitigate the amount of damages awarded). [Des Moines Register, 1-17-2017] [Miami Herald, 2-9-2017]

German art collector Rik Reinking paid the equivalent of about $138,000 in 2008 for a resplendent, complex drawing by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye, but it was one created in ink on the skin of (the still-alive) tattoo parlor manager Tim Steiner -- to be delivered only upon Steiner's death, when his skin will be displayed in Reinking's collection. (The deal also requires that, in the meantime, Steiner personally showcase his back at galleries three times a year, and BBC News recently caught his latest appearance.) [BBC News, 2-1-2017]

Higher Math: The first robots to have survived journeys close to the "core" of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan (which melted down in a 2011 earthquake) returned a reading of 530 "sieverts" per hour. (Some scientists label just 4 Sieverts an hour fatal to half the people exposed to it.) Since the robots stopped short of the actual nuclear fuel, and since they only visited one of the three cores, the true danger of Fukushima remains unknown. (On a more optimistic note, scientists in February said they have developed a computer chip that would survive on the surface of Venus for 21 days, eclipsing the old record of two hours -- long enough to send back meaningful data, including the temperature. The current estimated temperature is 878 degrees Fahrenheit.) [Washington Post, 2-8-2017] [Ars Technica, 2-8-2017]

-- Prominent Tallahassee, Florida, pastor O. Jermaine Simmons, a community leader who ministers to the homeless and downtrodden, was rescued by police on Jan. 17, naked and hiding behind a fence after making a run for it when the husband of his mistress found the two in bed. The husband, screaming, "I'm gonna kill him," ran for his handgun, and the mistress summoned police, but by Jan. 30, all involved had declined to press charges. Simmons, married with a son, is highly regarded for good deeds such as running a "cold night" shelter. [Tallahassee Democrat, 1-30- 20178]

-- The decidedly uncelibate Catholic priest Don Andrea Contin, 48, of Padua, Italy, was accused by three women in December of having as many as 30 different lovers over the years, organizing "orgies" on church property, visiting a "swingers'" resort in France several times, making pornographic home videos of his trysts, "encouraging" one woman to have sex with a horse and "always" carrying a briefcase full of vibrators, sex toys and bondage equipment. Contin has not yet been charged with a crime but, said a Catholic official, is "finished" as a priest. (Bonus: The boxes for his home videos were labeled by the names of Popes.) [The Independent (London), 2-5-2017]

In January, a New York City judge dismissed the original indictment of John Kennedy O'Hara, 55, who had been convicted in 1996 of the crime of "felony voting" -- the only person convicted under that state law since Susan B. Anthony, who cast a ballot in 1872 even though females were barred from the polls. O'Hara was indicted for voting in 1992 and 1993 after registering in Brooklyn elections from a "bogus" address -- a basement apartment that was considered uninhabitable. (A judge in 2017 determined that the apartment "could" have been habitable.) O'Hara paid $15,000 in fines and did 1,500 hours of community service. [New York Times, 1-13-2017]

Recurring Themes: Once again, in January, curiosity got the better of a perp. Adriana Salas, 26, allegedly stole a truck in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and drove it to Fort Smith, 260 miles away, but then could not resist stopping by the local sheriff's office to ask whether the truck had been reported stolen. (It had; deputies, taking a look outside, read Salas her Miranda rights.) [KFSM-TV (Fort Smith), 25-2017]

(1) Belgium's federal parliament decided to keep supplying free beer and wine during legislative sessions (over the objection of its ethics committee) because, since drinkers would continue to drink off-premises, anyway, serving the items on-premises would at least improve attendance. (2) On Jan. 30, as police, with a search warrant, approached the front door of child-porn-possessing suspect Brian Ayers, 57, they spotted him inside, hatchet in hand, pounding away at his tablet computer. Ayers, of Florence, New Jersey, was free at the time, pending sentencing in another New Jersey court on earlier counts of distributing child porn. [Politico.eu, 1-20-17] [NJ.com (Burlington, N.J.), 2-1-2017]

Those Clever Toddlers of Finland: A University of Kansas professor and two co-authors, in (2013) Journal of Finance research, found that children age 10 and under substantially outperformed their parents in earnings from certain stock trading. A likely explanation, researchers said, is that Mom and Dad were buying and selling in their children's accounts if they had illegal insider information -- because they feared getting caught by regulators if they used it for their personal accounts. The kids' accounts (including those held by babies) were almost 50 percent more profitable than their parents'. (The study, reported by NPR, covered 15 years of trades in Finland, which, unlike the U.S. and most other countries, collects traders' ages.) [NPR, 4-9-2013]

On Jan. 31, doctors at Stanley Medical College and Hospital in Chennai, India, removed a live, full-grown cockroach from the nasal cavity of a 42-year-old woman whose nose had been "itchy" earlier in the day. Two hospitals were unable to help her, but at Stanley, Dr. M N Shankar, chief of ear-nose-throat, used an endoscope, forceps, and, for 45 minutes, a suction device -- because, he said, the roach "didn't seem to want to come out." Another doctor on the team noted that they've removed beads and similar items from the nasal cavity (demonstrating the splayed-out trespasser in full wingspan), "but not a cockroach, especially not one this large." [Times of India, 2-3-2017]

Zachary Bennett and Karen Nourse have found Manhattan quite affordable, reported the New York Post in January -- by simply not paying, for six years now, the $4,750 monthly rent on their loft-style apartment in the Chelsea neighborhood, citing New York state's "loft law," which they say technically forbids the landlord from collecting. Since the other eight units of their building are "commercial," the landlord believes it doesn't need a "residential certificate of occupancy," but Bennett and Nourse believe the law only exempts buildings with at least two residences, and for some reason, the landlord has obstinately declined to initiate eviction or, until recently, to sue (for back rent, fees, and electricity). [New York Post, 1-8-2017]

The colossus PornHub dot com, in its annual January rundown, reported its several sites had 23 billion "visits" in 2016 (about one-fourth from females), during which time its videos were viewed 91 billion times. In all, earthlings spent 4.6 billion hours watching PornHub's inventory (that is 5.2 centuries' time doing whatever people do when viewing porn). USA took home the gold for the most "page views" per capita, just nipping Iceland. Online visitors from the Philippines, for the third straight year, remained (per capita) on the sites the longest per visit. The top search term on PornHub from U.S. computers was "step mom." [The Daily Dot, 1-5-2017]

-- Late last year, Oxford University professor Joshua Silver accused Britain's Home Secretary of a "hate" crime merely because the Secretary had made a speech urging that unemployed Britons be given preference for jobs over people recruited from overseas. Silver denounced this "discrimination" against "foreigners" and made a formal complaint to West Midlands police, which, after evaluation, absolved Secretary Amber Rudd but acknowledged that, under the law, the police were required to record the Secretary's unemployment speech as a "non-crime hate incident." [BBC News, 1-12-2017]

-- The British Medical Association issued a formal caution to its staff in January not to use the term "expectant mothers" when referring to pregnancy -- because it might offend transgender people. Instead, the Association's memo (reported by the Daily Telegraph) suggested using "pregnant people." The BMA acknowledged that a "large majority" of such people are, in fact, "mothers," but wrote that there may be "intersex" and "trans men" who also could get pregnant. [Daily Telegraph, 1-29-2017]

-- In 2001, Questcor Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to make Acthar Gel, a hormone injection to treat a rare form of infantile epilepsy, and gradually raised the price from $40 a vial to $28,000 a vial. The British company Mallinckrodt bought Questcor in 2014 and apparently figured the vials were still too cheap, raising the price to $34,000. However, the Federal Trade Commission noticed that Mallinckrodt also during the latter period bought out -- and closed down -- the only company manufacturing a similar, cheaper version of the product, thus ensuring that Mallinckrodt had totally cornered the market. In January, the FTC announced that Mallinckrodt agreed to a $100 million settlement of the agency's charge of illegal anti-competitive practices. ("$100 million" is only slightly more than the price of giving one vial to each infant expected to need it in the next year.) [Futurism, 1-18-2017]

-- Precocious: Girl Scout Charlotte McCourt, 11, of South Orange, New Jersey, saw her sales zoom recently when she posted "brutally honest" reviews of the Scouts' cookies she was selling -- giving none of them a "10" and labeling some with dour descriptions. She was hoping to sell 300 boxes, but as of the end of January, had registered 16,430. For the record, the best cookie was -- of course -- the Samoa, rated 9, but longtime favorites like the Trefoil ("boring") rated 6 and the Do-Si-Do ("bland") 5. The new Toffee-tastic was simply a "bleak, flavorless, gluten-free wasteland." [NJ.com, 1-31-2017]

Applicants for passports in Switzerland are evaluated in part by neighbors of the applicant, and animal-rights campaigner Nancy Holten, 42, was rejected in January because townspeople view her as obnoxious, with, said a Swiss People's Party spokesperson, a "big mouth." Among Holten's "sins" was her constant criticism of the country's hallowed fascination with cowbells -- that make, according to Holten, "hundred decibel," "pneumatic drill"-type sounds (though a hit song, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper," by the group Blue Oyster Cult, skillfully employed the cowbell -- before it was satirized in an epic "Saturday Night Live" sketch starring Christopher Walken). [The Independent (London), 1-19-2017]

In January, Texas district judge Patrick Garcia was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct after a dispute outside the courthouse in El Paso. An April trial date was set for Garcia, who was accused of giving the middle finger, in public, to another judge. [Associated Press via KTVT-TV (Dallas-Fort Worth), 1-20-2017]

Not Ready for Prime Time: A suspect pointing a gun attempted a robbery at a laundromat in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, in February was not immediately identified. (The official reason for not initially identifying him was that, though detained, he had not yet been booked; less likely, perhaps, police might have been trying to spare him embarrassment in that the laundromat's overnight clerk, a woman named Naou Mor Khantha, had simply taken his gun away from him and shot him three times. He was hospitalized in serious condition.) [Philly.com, 2-3-2017]

-- What Goes Around, Comes Around: (1) In January, Jesse Denton, 24, driving a stolen truck, tried to flee police on Interstate 95 near Brunswick, Georgia, but accidentally crashed head-on into another vehicle. Seconds later, Denton was then fatally hit by another motorist as he ran across the highway to escape the crash scene. (2) A 37-year-old Saanich, British Columbia, man did not die but nearly bled out before being heroically rescued following his parking-rage blunder. Angered that another driver had parked too close to his own car, he grabbed a knife and stabbed a tire on the other vehicle with such force that he wound up slashing the main artery in his leg. [Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville), 1-26-2017] [Global News BC, 1-27-2017]

(1) Thomas Pinson, 21, was arrested in St. Petersburg, Florida, in January and charged with domestic battery for roughing up his mother (even though, presumably lovingly, he had her full name tattooed on his chest). (2) Police arrested a 22-year-old knife-wielding man in a restroom on a train in Dusseldorf, Germany, in January. The man, naked, appeared "quite annoyed" at being hassled, did not have a ticket to ride, and said he was using the knife to shave his genital area because he was not welcome at home. [The Smoking Gun, 1-9-2017] [Associated Press via WJLA-TV (Washington, D.C.), 1-10-2017]

The Washington Post reported in April (2013) that the federal government spends $890,000 a year on totally useless bank accounts. The amount is the total of fees for maintaining more than 13,000 short-term accounts the government owns but which have no money in them and never will again. However, merely closing the accounts is difficult, according to the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, because they each previously housed separate government grants, and Congress has required that, before the accounts are "closed," the grants must be formally audited -- something bureaucrats are rarely motivated to do, especially since, as Citizens noted, there is no additional penalty for not auditing. [Washington Post, 4-24-2013]

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]