News of the Weird: January

By Chuck Shepherd

Spectacular Errors

In November, a 77-year-old man in Jacksonville, intending to help his daughter by riding his bicycle to Long Branch Elementary School to pick up her 4-year-old son (his grandson), arrived back home with a kid on the bike but did not realize that he had picked up the wrong boy. Said the picked-up kid’s frantic mother, “(The two boys) don’t even look alike.”

The Modern Mother

Style- and environment-conscious Canadian mothers insist on cloth diapers, especially designer labels of flannel, fleece or wool-knit, according to a November report in Toronto’s Globe and Mail. Handmade embroidered diapers (perhaps in tie-dye or camouflage) are priced at up to $80 each (and some babies get to wear them only just after taking care of business in an ordinary diaper). And, in London, mothers can take babies for workouts, as several gyms recently reacted to warnings about childhood obesity by creating programs to shape up kids as young as 10 months (teaching galloping, “monkey jumps” and forward rolls), and in February, one gym will begin accepting 4-month-olds.

Something About China

The China Daily newspaper reported in November that local markets and beauty salons in Guangdong province were selling low-priced hair bands made from used condoms.

Inexplicable

In October, Beckley, W.Va., police detained a 61-year-old man whom they found at the King Tut Drive-In on a Saturday afternoon, apparently sober, after he had “driven” his four grandchildren, all around age 4, “on a busy street in a 15-foot motorboat pulled by a lawnmower,” according to an Associated Press report. The vehicle was of course unregistered and uninspected, and the children not properly seat-restrained, but the man seemed unaware that he had placed the kids in danger.

Pro (Tough) Choices

As protesters gathered at colleges around the country to criticize federal budget cutbacks that would raise the price of subsidized birth control at student health services, one University of New Mexico student described the imminent horror to Albuquerque’s KFRQ-TV: “(Students shouldn’t) have to make a choice between their birth control and their cell phone bill or their birth control and their gym membership …”

Government In Action

The Army Corps of Engineers announced with great fanfare in June that its repairs and upgrades of levees in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina, would allow the system to hold back a future storm’s flood waters even if the level rose more than 5 feet beyond the Katrina level. However, in November, the corps announced that because of a mistake in calculation (an engineer had used a “minus” sign when a “plus” sign was called for), the expensive levee repairs would actually protect against flooding only 6 inches above the Katrina level.

Great Art!

At press time, two major pieces of art at galleries in London and New York City were basically holes in the floors of the buildings, yet were the subjects of glowing reviews. Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth,” a large crack in the floor of a hall at London’s Tate Modern (on which at least 15 people have suffered minor injuries after tripping) is said to symbolize racial and class divisions in society. Urs Fischer’s “You” at New York’s Gavin Brown Enterprise is actually just a crater, 38 feet by 30 feet by 8 feet deep, that, according to one reviewer, meshes “themes of transparency, transformation, disruption and destruction.”

Thinking Things Through

A 66-year-old man was hospitalized in South Kitsap, Wash., in November after accidentally shooting himself in both legs. Police said he had become frustrated with a stuck lug nut on his Lincoln Continental’s wheel and fired his 12-gauge shotgun at it, resulting in buckshot wounds from his feet to mid-abdomen.

Fine Points of The Law

In November the Food and Drug Administration told Smiling Hill Farm of Westbrook, Maine, that it would have to recall all of its egg nog because it did not list “egg” as an ingredient on the label. Federal law requires the listing to protect people with egg allergies from inadvertently consuming foods that they might not have realized contain egg.

The Continuing Crisis

The existence of the 50-year-old, ultra-secure computer protocol required for a U.S. president to launch nuclear weapons is well-known, through newspapers, books and Hollywood films, but according to papers released by Britain’s National Archive in November, a similarly complex protocol has been in place in that country only since 1998. Before that, a person could arm a nuclear bomb simply by removing two ordinary screws and (according to BBC News) using “an Allen key to select high yield or low yield, air burst or groundburst and other parameters.”

Using Your Brain

The Rhode Island Department of Health fined Rhode Island Hospital $50,000 in November because three doctors so far this year have performed neurosurgery on the wrong side of the patients’ brains.

Just Can’t Stop

In recent incidents, two Wal-Mart customers were arrested for shoplifting after yielding to temptation while walking the aisles of stores in Mukwonago, Wis., and Okaloosa County, Fla. The Wisconsin man (reportedly sober for 16 months) impulsively downed seven 12-ounce bottles of Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg Lemonade that he saw on a shelf. Florida’s Christopher White said “the temptation was too great” when he spotted the White Rain hair spray, and that he removed the nozzles of two containers and drank the contents (and returned the empty containers to the shelf).