London reality show goes a bit too far
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More News That Sounds Like a Joke
British surfboard designer Jools Matthews, working with Intel Corp., built an Internet-ready surfboard with an 80-gigabyte, wireless laptop, powered by solar panels and housing a video camera, for exhibition in June in Devon, England. The waterproofed circuitry adds about 5 pounds to the 9-foot-long board and is carefully placed so as to retain surfers’ balance points.
• A commander at a military conscription unit in Finland told reporters in August that some men recently have been discharged shortly after enlisting because they had become “addicted” to the Internet and longed for their computers. Said the official, Jyrki Kivela: “For people who play (Internet) games all night and don’t have any friends, don’t have any hobbies, to come into the army is a very big shock.” (All males are scheduled for at least six months in the military, but about 20 percent get specially exempted.)
Least Competent Animals
Police in Yuba City, Calif., responded to a motorist’s call and freed a chicken that had flown into a car and become tangled in its windshield wipers (August).
• A black bear drowned in the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania after he resisted several attempts by Samaritans to remove the plastic jar that had become stuck on his head after he had raided a camper’s food supply (July).
• Organizers of a 93-mile homing pigeon race, between the Swedish cities of Ljungby and Malmo, let 2,000 go on a perfectly clear day, but only 500 found their way home (July).
Unclear on the Concept
A New Hampshire judge was suspended, and the state’s attorney general resigned, both over allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from their after-hours behavior (in separate incidents) at the same conference, which had been called in May as a workshop on preventing sexual and domestic abuse. Five women complained of being groped by Judge Franklin C. Jones, 55, and one woman complained that Attorney General Peter Heed had touched her inappropriately on the dance floor. The local prosecutor later said there was not enough evidence to file a criminal charge against Heed.
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 high school principal in Boston was admonished by the school board for trying to shut down football practice as violating the school’s new “zero tolerance” rule for violence. (b) Hong Kong’s mainstream press reported that a lonely widower in Beijing was found to have, as “pets,” 200,000 cockroaches in his home. (c) A 17-year-old boy in New Haven, Conn., arranged for a friend to shoot him in the leg, later explaining that he didn’t want to be sent to Iraq and thus was scheming to avoid the “draft.” (d) A 47-year-old woman in Lumberton, N.C., was charged with animal cruelty for giving pap smears to her Boston terrier. (Answer at end of column.)
Recurring Themes
More Clumsy Gunmen: Drew Patterson, 27, getting his .22-caliber pistol ready after news got out of an escaped fugitive in the area, stuck the gun into the waistband of his trousers and accidentally shot himself in the buttocks (Bristow, Okla., August).
• David Walker, 28, carrying his shotgun back into a pub to settle an argument over whose turn it was to buy, accidentally shot himself and then in July was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal possession of the shotgun (The Crescent, Dinnington, England).
Readers’ Choice
In August in a camping area of Baker Lake, Wash., Fish and Wildlife agents found a black bear passed out amidst three dozen empty (clawed- and bitten-open) cans of locally brewed Rainier Beer. “And the bear definitely had a preference,” said an officer, noting that only one can of Busch beer had been drunk, though many unopened ones were nearby.
Answer to Almost All True: (b), (c) and (d) are true.
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