A June 2016 police raid on David Jessen's Fresno County (California) farmhouse caused a $150,000 mess when sheriff's deputies and Clovis Police Department officers "rescued" it from a trespassing homeless man -- with the massive destruction leading to Jessen's lawsuit announced in March. The misdemeanant helped himself to an ice cream bar, some milk and half a tomato, but was otherwise "unarmed"; however, by the time the police standoff ended, the "crime scene" included more than 50 cop cars, a SWAT team (and backups), two helicopters, standby ambulances, a police robot, and a crisis negotiation team. Windows, walls and wrought-iron doors were destroyed; tear gas and a "flash bomb" were employed. (Jessen suspects that the farmhouse's isolation enticed police to decide that it presented an excellent training opportunity.) [TechDirt, 3-13-2017]

-- "Pro-choice" activist Jessica Farrar, a Texas state legislator, introduced a bill in March to create consistency between the state's rigorous regulation of women's reproductive functions and those of men (regulation which, by the way, in either case she calls "invasive" and "unnecessary"). Because Texas's anti-abortion laws highlight "procreation" as a crucial government interest, she believes male use of erectile-dysfunction drugs should be regulated as abortion is. Under her bill, individual use of Viagra or similar drugs must be preceded by "counseling" similar to that required by abortion laws, and since male masturbation involves the "wasting" of precious sperm cells, it, too, would require "beforehand" counseling. [Texas Tribune, 3-12-2017]

-- Jason Sexton told KFSM-TV in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in April that he alone had been digging the massive hole neighbors noticed, now 34 feet deep and with separate tunnels extending off of the main hole. Police had come to check it out, since it was on another person's private property (and not the city's, which Sexton had assumed). He said he had been digging off and on for three years to get an answer to whether "the Spanish" had been in Fort Smith centuries ago, mining iron, and, if so, the site should therefore be a lucrative tourist destination. Sexton said he felt he had to give his explanation: "Nobody in their right mind," he said, "would dig a hole (this big) for no reason." [KFSM-TV, 4-13-2017]

-- At a time of growing awareness that some people seem almost addicted to their cellphones and instant 24/7 communication, police in Brookfield, Wisconsin, released surveillance photos of a woman in the act of robbing banks on March 25 and 27 -- while standing at teller counters and talking on the phone during the entire episodes. Acting on a tip from the photos, police arrested Sarah Kraus, 33, on March 28. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 3-29-2017]

-- College activist Pablo Gomez Jr., 22, was arrested in Berkeley, California, in March and charged with the brutal stabbing death of an elementary school teacher. Gomez, a senior at University of California, Berkeley, is well-known on campus for insisting on a gender identity for which (as an example) the pronoun "he" is an inappropriate reference. (Hence, "they" was charged with what is so far the only homicide in Berkeley this year.) [San Jose Mercury News, 3-27-2017]

-- Paul Perry Jr., 39, sound asleep behind the wheel of his car, with motor running, at 6 a.m. on April 2, was in no position to talk his way out of a DUI ticket, but did offer a gentle challenge to the Youngstown, Ohio, police officer. Several times, according to the police report, Perry offered to "thumb wrestle" the officer to get out of the ticket. From the report: "Perry was advised officers would not thumb-wrestle him." [Youngstown Vindicator, 4-4-2017]

-- Wait, What? A father, 43, and his son, 22, argued on April 9 about who would walk the dog at their home on Chicago's South Side. They apparently thought to settle the issue with a gunfight, and police, who recovered the two weapons, said both men received multiple wounds. The son was killed, and the father was in critical condition. [WLS-TV (Chicago), 4-10-2017]

The eight elite Ivy League universities are better thought of as "hedge fund(s) with classes," according to a March report by the activist Open The Books, and thus there is little reason for taxpayers to have given them the more than $41 billion in grants and entitlements they received over a recent six-year period. The schools are already legendary for their $119 billion "endowments" (based on donations from alumni and aggressive investment). Those endowments are enough, according to Open The Books, that (assuming donations continue to arrive at the same pace) schools could provide free tuition to every student in the eight schools -- in perpetuity. (Even if no new donations are made, the eight schools could provide such free tuition for 51 years.) [Fox News, 3-29-2017]

Federico Musto was suspected recently by Wired.com of audaciously inventing academic credentials to help land his job as CEO of the company Arduino (a circuit-board manufacturer popular in the computer industry among coders creating, among other things, robots and motion detectors). Arduino's work is "open source" -- creating hardware that others, by design, can exploit and modify for their own loftier projects. It might thus be said that Musto's claimed academic "accomplishments" (his so-called MBA from New York University and claimed Ph.D from MIT) are themselves the product of his having "open-sourced" his own, previously modest curriculum vitae. [Wired.com, 4-16-2017]

In January, local government and sexual-assault critics unveiled a consciousness-raising exhibit on Mexico City's trains: a plastic seat onto which is subtly molded contours of a male body, except with genitals sharply exposed. (Men supposedly have been spotted absentmindedly lowering themselves onto the seat only to leap up in shock.) A note on the floor by the body read (in Spanish): "It's uncomfortable to sit here, but that's nothing compared to the sexual violence suffered by women on their commute." [New York Times, 3-31-2017]

(1) Village police in Bangladesh arrested Yasin Byapari, 45, in January on the complaint of his wife -- after she had learned that she was not, as he had told her, his second spouse, but rather the 25th of his 28. (Police found him at the home of No. 27.) The accuser said she had, through sleuthing, tracked down 17 of her "competitors." (2) A male schoolteacher reported in February that he had been kidnapped by four women near Lupane, Zimbabwe, drugged with a beverage and sexually assaulted, in what appears to be a return of the "sperm bandits" said to operate in the area; previously, police set up roadblocks and arrested three women with 31 condoms full of semen. [BDNews24 (Dhaka), 1-24-2017] [Daily Mail (London) via MyNewsGH (Ghana), 3-1-2017]

(1) In same-day competition in March, perennial Guinness Book records jockeys Zoe L'Amore and Ashrita Furman squared off over the record for stopping blades on an electric table fan the most times in one minute using only their tongues. On Italian TV, L'Amore stopped blades 32 times, but Furman, at a different venue, later stopped 35. (2) Norway unseated Denmark as the world's "happiest" country, according to the UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network. (There was no word on whether Denmark was unhappy about losing the top spot.) [UPI News, 3-31-2017] [Reuters, 3-20-2017]

The upscale restaurant at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced in August (2013) that it would soon add a 20-item selection of waters from around the world, priced from $8 to $16 a bottle (and a $12 "tasting menu"). The restaurant's manager, Martin Riese, who is a renowned water gourmet, will sell his own California-made 9OH2O (from "limited editions of 10,000 individually numbered glass bottles" at $14 each). Riese has been certified as a "Water Sommelier" by the German Mineral Water Association. [Ray's and Stark restaurant press release via Eater.com, 8-6-2013]

Samuel West announced in April that his Museum of Failure will open in Helsingborg, Sweden, in June, to commemorate innovation missteps that might serve as inspiration for future successes. Among the initial exhibits: coffee-infused Coca-Cola; the Bic "For Her" pen (because women's handwriting needs are surely unique); the Twitter Peek (a 2009 device that does nothing except send and receive tweets -- and with a screen only 25 characters wide); and Harley-Davidson's 1990s line of colognes (in retrospect as appealing, said West, as "oil and gas fumes"). (West's is only the latest attempt to immortalize failure with a "museum." Previous attempts, such as those in 2007 and 2014, apparently failed.) [CBC Radio, 4-6-2017]

-- Toronto, Ontario, Superior Court Justice Alex Pazaratz finally ridded his docket of the maddening, freeloading couple that had quibbled incessantly about each other's "harassments." Neither Noora Abdulaali, 32, nor her now-ex-husband, Kadhim Salih, 43, had worked a day in the five years since they immigrated from Iraq, having almost immediately gone on disability benefits and begun exploiting Legal Aid Toronto in their many attempts to one-up each other with restraining orders. Approving the couple's settlement in March, Judge Pazaratz added, "The next time anyone at Legal Aid Ontario tells you they're short of money, don't believe it. ... Not if they're funding cases like this." [Toronto Sun, 3-17-2017]

-- In May, a new restaurant-disclosure regulation mandated by the Affordable Care Act is scheduled to kick in, requiring eateries (except small chains and independents) to post calorie counts for all menu items including "variations" -- which a Domino's Pizza executive said meant, for his company, "34 million" calorie listings. The executive called the regulation, for the pizza industry, "a 20th-century approach to a 21st-century question," since for many establishments, orders increasingly arrive online or by phone. [Washington Post, 4-7-2017]

(1) Dennis Smith, 65, was arrested in Senoia, Georgia, and charged with stealing dirt from the elderly widow of the man Smith said had given him permission to take it. Smith, a "dirt broker," had taken more than 180 dump-truck loads. (2) New for Valentine's Day from the SayItWithBeef.com company: a bouquet of beef jerky slices, formed to resemble a dozen full-petaled roses ($59). Also available: daisies. Chief selling point: Flowers die quickly, but jerky is forever. [WAGA-TV (Atlanta), 3-30-2017] [Mother Nature News, 2-1-2017]

In March, Harvard Medical School technicians announced a smartphone app to give fertility-conscious men an accurate semen analysis, including sperm concentration, motility and total count -- costing probably less than $10. Included is a magnification attachment and a "microfluidic" chip. The insertable app magnifies and photographs the "loaded" chip, instantly reporting the results. (To answer the most frequent question: No, semen never touches your phone. The device still needs Food and Drug Administration approval.) [NPR, 3-22-2017]

-- Hipsters on the Rise: (1) The Columbia Room bar in Washington, D.C., recently introduced the "In Search of Time Past" cocktail -- splashed with a tincture of old, musty books. Management vacuum-sealed pages with grapeseed oil, then "fat-washed" them with a "neutral high-proof" spirit, and added a vintage sherry, mushroom cordial and eucalyptus. (2) The California reggae rock band Slightly Stoopid recently produced a vinyl record that was "smokable," according to Billboard magazine -- using a "super resinous variety of hashish" mastered at the Los Angeles studio Capsule Labs. The first two versions' sound quality disappointed and were apparently quickly smoked, but a third is in production. [Washingtonian, 11-30-2016] [Billboard, 1-19-2017]

-- The telephone "area" code in the tony English city of Bath (01225) is different than that of adjacent Radstock (01761) and probably better explained by landline telephone infrastructure than a legal boundary. However, a Bath councilwoman said in April that she is dealing with complaints by 10 new residents who paid high-end prices for their homes only to find that they came with the 01761 code. Admitted one Bath resident, "I do consider my phone number to be part of my identity." [SomersetLive, 4-5-2017]

-- Magnificent Evolvers: (1) Human populations in Chile's Atacama desert have apparently developed a tolerance for arsenic 100 times as powerful as the World Health Organization's maximum safe level (according to recent research by University of Chile scientists). (2) While 80 percent of Americans age 45 or older have calcium-cluttered blood veins (atherosclerosis), about 80 percent of Bolivian Tsimane hunter-gatherers in the Amazon have clean veins, according to an April report in The Lancet. (Keys for having "the healthiest hearts in the world": walk a lot and eat monkey, wild pig and piranha.) [New Scientist, 2-22-2017] [NPR, 3-21-2017; The Lancet, 3-17-2017]

-- Awesome: (1) University of Basel biologists writing in the journal Science of Nature in March calculated that the global population of spiders consumes at least 400 million tons of prey yearly -- about as much, by weight, as the total of meat and fish consumed by all humans. (2) University of Utah researchers trained surveillance cameras on dead animals in a local desert to study scavenger behavior and were apparently astonished to witness the disappearances of two bait cows. Over the course of five days, according to the biologists' recent journal article, two different badgers, working around the clock for days, had dug adjacent holes and completely buried the cows (for storage and/or to keep the carcasses from competitors). [BBC News, 3-15-2017] [NPR, 4-4-2017]

-- News You Can Use: A study published in the journal Endocrinology in March suggested that "whole-body" vibration may be just as effective as regular "exercise." (The Fine Print: Vibration was shown only to aid "global bone formation," which is not as useful for some people as "weight loss," which was not studied, and anyway, the study was conducted on mice. Nonetheless, even for a mouse immobile on a vibrating machine, muscles contracted and relaxed multiple times per second. This "Fine Print" will soon be useful when hucksters learn of the study and try to sell gullible humans a "miracle" weight-loss machine.) [Endocrinology, 3-15-2017]

Wild Maryland! (1) Prince George's County police officer James Sims, 30, pleaded guilty to four counts of misdemeanor "visual surveillance with prurient interest" and in February was sentenced to probation (though his termination investigation was still ongoing). His fourth event, said prosecutors, in a Sports Authority store, was taking an upskirt photo of a woman who, as Sims discovered, was also a cop. (2) A Worcester County (Maryland) judge fined Ellis Rollins $1,000 in February and gave him a suspended sentence -- for the June 2016 ostentatious nude dancing and sex with his wife at an Ocean City, Maryland, hotel window in view of other people on holiday. At the time, Rollins was the Cecil County, Maryland, state's attorney, but has since resigned. [Washington Post, 2-14-2017] [WTOP Radio (Washington), 2-17-2017]

A tanker truck overturned on a Los Angeles freeway on April 4, spilling its contents, injuring seven and inconveniencing hundreds (with at least a few surely tearful, since the tanker was hauling milk). And, at a Parks Canada station restroom in Banff, Alberta, on April 1, visitors found, inexplicably, three black bear cubs inside (although they were not reported to have "used" the facilities, it is still safe to assume that bears relieve themselves "in the woods"). [Los Angeles Daily News, 4-4-2017] [Canadian Broadcasting Corp. News, 4-7-2017]

A News of the Weird Classic (July 2013)

Too Much Information: During a June (2013) debate in a House Rules Committee abortion hearing, U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess of Texas, himself an obstetrician/gynecologist, urged an even earlier ban, based on research on fetal pain, which Burgess said is felt at 15 weeks, and not a law's proposed 20 weeks. "Watch a sonogram of a 15-week-old baby," said Burgess, "and they have movements that are purposeful. ... If they're a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs." (Thus, if they feel pleasure, he concluded, they should also feel pain.) [The Atlantic, 6-18-2013]

Recently, in Dubai (the largest city in the United Arab Emirates), Dubai Civil Defense started using water jetpacks that lift firefighters off the ground to hover in advantageous positions as they work the hoses. Also, using jet skis, rescuers can avoid traffic altogether by using the city's rivers to arrive at fires (and, if close enough to a waterway, can pump water without hydrants). Even more spectacularly, as early as this summer, Dubai will authorize already tested one-person, "Jetsons"-type drones for ordinary travel in the city. The Ehang 184 model flies about 30 minutes on an electrical charge, carrying up to 220 pounds at about 60 mph. [Business Insider, 1-23-2017] [New York Times, 2-15-2017]

-- Convicted murderer Philip Smith (a veteran criminal serving life for killing the father of a boy Smith had been sexually abusing) escaped from prison in New Zealand with the help of a disguise that included a toupee for his bald head -- before being caught. Prison officials confiscated the toupee, but Smith said a shiny head behind bars made him feel "belittled, degraded and humiliated" and sued for the right to keep the toupee. (In March, in a rare case in which a litigant succeeds as his own lawyer, Smith prevailed in Auckland's High Court.) [BBC News, 3-16-2017]

-- In March, star soccer goalkeepr Bruno Fernandes de Souza signed a two-year contract to play for Brazil's Boa Esporte club while he awaits the outcome of his appealed conviction for the 2010 murder of his girlfriend. (He had also fed her body to his dogs.) He had been sentenced to 22 years in prison, but was released by a judge after seven, based on the judge's exasperation at the years-long delays in appeals in Brazil's sluggish legal system. [The Guardian (London), 3-13-2017]

The Cleveland (Ohio) Street Department still had not (at press time) identified the man, but somehow he, dressed as a road worker, had wandered stealthily along Franklin Boulevard during March and removed more than 20 standard "35 mph" speed limit signs -- replacing all with official-looking "25 mph" signs that he presumably financed himself. Residents along those two miles of Franklin have long complained, but the city kept rejecting pleas for a lowered limit. [WEWS-TV (Cleveland), 3-23-2017]

-- The Apenheul primate park in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, is engaged in a four-year experiment, offering female orangutans an iPad loaded with photos of male orangutans now housed at zoos around the world, with the females able to express interest or disinterest (similar to swiping right or left on the human dating app Tinder). Researchers admit results have been mixed, that some males have to be returned home, and once, a female handed the iPad with a potential suitor showing, merely crushed the tablet. (Apps are not quite to the point of offering animals the ability to digitally smell each other.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 2-1-2017]

-- Peacocks are "well known" (so they say) to flash their erect, sometimes-6-foot-high rack of colorful tail feathers to attract mating opportunities. However, as researchers in Texas recently found, the display might not be important. Body cameras placed on peahens at eye level (to learn how they check out strutting males) revealed that the females gazed mostly at the lowest level of feathers (as if attracted only to certain colors rather than the awesomeness of the towering flourish). [Austin American-Statesman, 3-20-2017]

(1) In March, jurors in Norfolk, Virginia, found Allen Cochran, 49, not guilty of attempted shoplifting, but he was nowhere to be seen when the verdict was announced. Apparently predicting doom (since he had also been charged with fleeing court during a previous case), he once again skipped out. The jury then re-retired to the jury room, found him guilty on the earlier count and sentenced him to the five-year maximum. (Because of time already served, he could have walked away legally if he hadn't walked away illegally.) (2) In March, Ghanian soccer player Mohammed Anas earned a "man of the match" award (after his two goals led the Free State Stars to a 2-2 draw), but botched the acceptance speech by thanking both his wife and his girlfriend. Reportedly, Anas "stumbled for a second" until he could correct himself. "I'm so sorry," he attempted to clarify. "My wife! I love you so much from my heart." [Virginian-Pilot, 3-6-2017] [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-18-2017]

It turns out that Layne Hardin's sperm is worth only $1,900 -- and not the $870,000 a jury had awarded him after finding that former girlfriend Tobie Devall had, without Hardin's permission, obtained a vial of it without authorization and inseminated herself to produce her son, now age 6. Initially Hardin tried to gain partial custody of the boy, but Devall continually rebuffed him, provoking the lawsuit (which also named the sperm bank Texas Andrology a defendant) and the challenge in Houston's First Court of Appeal. [Houston Chronicle, 1-25-2017]

An astonished woman unnamed in news reports called police in Coleshill, England, in February to report that a car exactly like her silver Ford Kuga was parked at Melbicks garden center -- with the very same license plate as hers. Police figured out that a silver Ford Kuga had been stolen nearby in 2016, and to disguise that it was stolen, the thief had looked for an identical, not-stolen Ford Kuga and then replicated its license plate, allowing the thief to drive the stolen car without suspicion. [Birmingham Mail, 2-5-2017]

(1) Thieves once again attempted a fruitless smash-and-grab of an ATM at Mike and Reggie's Beverages in Maple Heights, Ohio, in March -- despite the owner's having left the ATM's door wide open with a sign reading "ATM emptied nightly." Police are investigating. (2) Boca Raton, Florida, jeweler "Bobby" Yampolsky said he was suspicious that the "customer" who asked to examine diamonds worth $6 million carried no tools of the examination trade. After the lady made several obvious attempts to distract Yampolsky, he ended the charade by locking her in his vault and calling the police, who arrested her after discovering she had a package of fake diamonds in her purse that she likely intended to switch. [WJW-TV (Cleveland), 3-23-2017] [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 3-31-2017]

At what was billed as part of a cancer fundraising event at the AvantGarden in Houston in February, performance artist Michael Clemmons and a partner, working as the act Sonic Rabbit Hole, had the elegant idea that one give the other an enema on stage, but there was a "spraying" accident. Viewers were led to believe the procedure was authentic, but the artists swore later that the sprayed contents were just a protein shake. "What I did is not all that (extreme)," protested Clemmons. "I don't understand why I'm getting the attention for this." [KPRC-TV (Houston), 2-20-2017]

Two convicted murderers imprisoned in Nepal married each other in February, though it will be at least 14 years before they can consummate. Dilli Koirala, 33 (serving 20 years for killing his wife), and Mimkosha Bista, 30 (with another four years to go for killing her husband), will be allowed to meet (just to talk) twice a month until Koirala's term ends. (A lawyer involved in the case said the marriage, though odd, was perhaps the last chance either would have to meet a suitable match.) [Republica (Kathmandu), 2-24-2017]

"(Supermodels) is the one exception (to U.S. immigration law) that we all scratch our heads about," said a Brookings Institution policy analyst in May (2013). Foreign-born sports stars and entertainers are fast-tracked with American work permits under one system, but supermodels were excluded from that and must thus compete (successfully, it turns out) with physicists and nuclear engineers to earn visas among the slots available only to "skilled workers with college degrees." As such, around 250 beauties are admitted every year. (The most recent attempt to get supermodels their own visa category was championed in 2005 and 2007 by then-U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York.) [Bloomberg Business Week, 5-23-2013]