Jolt your memory with an artificial brain
Scientists at the University of Southern California will soon begin testing an artificial brain, which, if successful, can help people who cannot store future and recent memories of their experiences. One problem with the project (according to a March story in New Scientist): Subjects might not remember anything about the research or consenting to participate in it. Another problem: Nearly everyone is glad not to be able to recall some negative experiences.
• In March, former Northwest Airlines flight attendant Daniel Reed Cunningham was charged with slyly drugging the apple juice of a severely rambunctious 19-month-old baby during a 2002 flight. The mother became suspicious after tasting the juice and so slipped some into a container for later testing (which revealed Xanax).
No Longer Weird
Adding to the list of stories that were formerly weird but which now occur with such frequency that they must be retired from circulation: (61) Parent(s) who leave young children home alone for days at a time, certain that they can care for themselves, while they frolic, as a 31-year-old Placentia, Calif., woman did in December, leaving her kids, ages 7 and 4, for three weeks to go see a North Carolina man she had met on the Internet. (62) And men who steal industrial (slow-moving) vehicles and apparently try to outrun pursuing police cars, as a 29-year-old man did in February with a farm tractor (towing an 18-foot-wide chisel plow), piddling along for 20 miles from near Wheaton, Minn., into South Dakota, “chased” by sheriff’s deputies until he finally crashed.
Weird Science
Israeli Aircraft Industries Ltd. is now testing an “airplane” the size of a credit card (flight time: 20 minutes), containing cameras and transmitters to relay intelligence from battlefields, or from the insides of buildings by going through open windows. And the company TrapTec (Escondido, Calif.) is now in the final testing of “anti-graffiti” sensors that are so responsive that they can identify taggers who use spray paint just by the distinctive hissing sound of the aerosol can (and automatically tell police the taggers’ location, via global positioning system technology).
Leading Economic Indicators
New Frontiers in Advertising: In February, a British ad agency began paying college students about $20 for each three-hour stint in which they walk around in public with a company’s logo semipermanently tattooed on their foreheads. And in December, another British agency signed up Sony Ericsson to pay for draping its advertising messages over large dogs (St. Bernards, Great Danes) whose owners accepted free dog-walking service in public parks in exchange for allowing the “moving billboards.”
People Different From Us
Recent Obsessions in the News: Stanley Jollymore, 90, was written up in Toronto’s National Post for the “ball” he made out of 139,620 metallic wrappers from cigarette packages from his 70 years of smoking (February).
• Gary Duschi, 52, was written up in the Virginian-Pilot (Hampton Roads, Va.) for his 8-mile-long chain of chewing gum wrappers (38-year habit, a million wrappers) (March).
News That Sounds Like a Joke
Burglars broke into a county Humane Society office and stole about $1,800; they apparently entered by squeezing through a dog door (Pittsburgh, January).
• Macy Panel Products was fined by an industrial tribunal after machine operator Keith Sanderson accidentally chopped off the tip of his thumb and then, showing bosses how the accident happened, accidentally chopped off his entire index finger (Newcastle, England, March).s
Undignified Deaths
A 23-year-old professional snowboarder (in Nagano, Japan, for a competition) fell about 50 feet to his death while playfully sliding down the handrail of a staircase at the Panorama Land Kijimadaira hotel (February).
• A 13-year-old boy drowned while trying to swim with a heavy tow chain around his waist (inspired by a scene in the movie “Blue Crush,” where a surfer trains by swimming while towing a large rock) (Port Salerno, Fla., February).
• A 28-year-old student actor accidentally hanged himself while rehearsing, alone, a scene in which his character survives a hanging (Baton Rouge, La., December).
Also, in the Last Month
New Salem Missionary Baptist Church members voted 67-10 to fire pastor Stanley Hall, who had refused to reschedule his consecration service even though it conflicted with the telecast of the Super Bowl (Birmingham, Ala.).
• A 19-year-old woman learning to drive took a turn too fast and mowed down her two kids, her sister and her niece (all survived) (Santa Ana, Calif.).
• A 39-year-old driver, celebrating his car’s 100,000th mile with a bottle of champagne, accidentally smashed into a tree (Boulder, Colo.).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa (FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)