Plan foiled to use dead man for bank withdrawal
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Chowdhury said he studied the science of napping at Carnegie-Mellon University and found a “tremendous amount of research” showing the rejuvenative value of the short “power nap,” which he said improves memory, mood and learning. The Metronaps chair-pods (cost: $8,000) are being separately sold to companies overseas and may soon appear in airport lounges.
Life Imitates
“Weekend at Bernie’s”
Two men and a woman, described in a Cape Times (Cape Town, South Africa) story as loan sharks, brought the corpse of Thozamile Patrick Apolis in a wheelchair into an FNB Provincial bank in June in an attempt to withdraw his pension (signing for it by “helping” Apolis move his hand across the paper), but a skeptical customer, who kept demanding bank officials check for a pulse, scared off the three, who left the body behind.
Unclear on the Concept
According to a police report in the Brainerd (Minn.) Dispatch, in August, thieves had broken into the First Integrity Bank on Excelsior Road in Baxter, Minn., but then used a hammer on a common wall in order to break into the adjacent Lakes Area Eyecare store and make off with numerous pairs of sunglasses. (In most such break-ins, crooks use the store to get into the bank, not the other way around.)
• Federal District Judge Thomas A. Higgins of Nashville, Tenn., had just ordered David Bowman, 41, back to prison for violating his probation (cocaine possession and other offenses), and he asked Bowman if he had anything to say. Instead of asking for leniency, Bowman recited the litany of inconveniences that lay ahead (e.g., crowded bus back to prison, various transfers from bus to bus on the way) and then asked, apparently seriously, if Judge Higgins would please personally drive him back to prison.
To the prosecutor’s suggestion that prison would give Bowman “a chance to think,” Judge Higgins said, “I think part of the problem is that Mr. Bowman doesn’t do as much thinking as maybe we would like him to.”
Inexplicable
New York City judge Laura Blackburne came under fire from the police in June when she helped Derek Sterling (described by police as a “convicted drug dealer” but in a rehab program) escape out a side door of her courtroom so that he could avoid a detective poised to arrest him for a May robbery. She said she was angry that the detective didn’t clear the arrest with her in advance.
Blackburne was already notorious for recently releasing a man charged with attempting to kill a police officer, ruling that he had not received a speedy trial.
• Cynthia Gorden filed a lawsuit in Chicago in May asking a judge to prevent the airing of her appearance on a “Judge Mathis” syndicated television show (for which litigants audition to appear in person in a raucous courtroom setting, making their arguments and allowing Mathis to render a decision). According to the lawsuit, Gorden, who came on the program to aggressively sue her own mother, said it was the program staff’s fault that she wound up embarrassing herself.
Least Competent Criminals
The obviously inexperienced Bradley S. Shugars, 21, was arrested and charged with robbing a Phillips 66 gas station in Avon, Ind., with his cousin, Karl D. Carnes. Police found Shugars in the getaway car, awaiting Carnes at another gas station, and quickly got a confession from Shugars, who started to cry. According to the arresting officer, Shugars self-pityingly lamented, “Everybody can rob you, but you can’t rob nobody.”
Almost All True
Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A British couple who hadn’t been able to break their two-pack-a-day cigarette habit gave it up when their pet parrot developed a respiratory illness. (b) A leading British museum announced an experiment to cover a substantial portion of its utility expenses by converting visitors’ excrement from museum rest rooms into electricity. (c) A local Islamic extremist organization in France, with ties to al-Qaeda, filed several lawsuits against the city of Paris for what it called “discriminatory tax harassment.” (d) Meteorological officials in one Chinese province accused their counterparts in another province of “stealing” “their” clouds, in order to seed them for rain.
Readers’ Choice
Survival Instinct: In September, Jerry Allen Bradford of Pensacola, Fla., had in mind to put his seven German shepherd-mix puppies down because he could not find them homes, and had already shot three and was carrying two other dogs, and his .38-caliber revolver, in his arms. According to a sheriff’s report, that’s when one of the two condemned dogs managed to press his paw on the trigger, firing and hitting Bradford on the wrist. He was treated at a hospital, and the sharpshooter and his three siblings were placed for adoption.
Answer to Almost All True: (c) is not true.
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