News Of The Weird - WCCT

News of the Weird: Milk a Rattler!

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:05:00 EDT

Mix master, and big trash

The beauty pageant each April at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Sweetwater, Texas, requires traditional skills like interview poise, evening-gown fashion and talent, but also some ability and inclination to milk and skin rattlers. High school senior Kyndra Vaught won this year's Miss Snake Charmer, wearing jeweled boots one night for her country-western ballad, then Kevlar boots and camouflage chaps the next as she took on dozens of rattlers in the wooden snake pit. Vaught expertly held up one serpent, offered its tail-end rattles for a baby to touch, then helped hold, measure, milk and skin a buzzing, slithery serpent. A Los Angeles Times dispatch noted that Vaught hoped to be on her way soon to the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

News of the Weird: Frontiers of Parenting

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:00:00 EDT

Plus, masked men, and blowback

Caribou Baby, a Brooklyn, N.Y., "eco-friendly maternity, baby and lifestyle store," has recently been hosting gatherings at which parents exchange tips on "elimination communication" — the weaning of infants without benefit of diapers (as reported in April by the New York Times ). Parents watch for cues, such as a certain "cry or grimace" that supposedly signals that the tot urgently needs to be hoisted onto a potty. (Eventually, they say, the potty serves to cue the baby.) Dealing with diapers is so unpleasant, they say, that cleaning an occasional mess becomes tolerable. The little darlings' public appearances sometimes call for diapers, but can also be dealt with by taking the baby behind the nearest tree. One parent even admitted, "I have absolutely been at parties and witnessed people putting their baby over the sink."

News of the Weird: Well-Earned Retirement

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 7 May 2013 16:05:00 EDT

Watching your wood, and face-melters!

In March, twin sisters Louise and Martine Fokkens, 70, announced their joint retirement after more than 50 years each on the job — as Amsterdam prostitutes. (In February, the minimum age for prostitutes in the Netherlands was raised to 21, but there is no maximum.) The twins estimated they had 355,000 client-visits between them, and Martine noted that she still has one devoted regular who she'll have to disappoint. Louise, though, appeared happier to hang up her mattress for good because of arthritis. The sisters complained about the legalization of brothels in 2000 (with East European women and pimps out-hustling the more genteel Dutch women) and ensuing taxation (which required the women to take on more clients).

News of the Weird: Chocolate Toothpaste and 'Holy Crap' Cereal!

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:20:00 EDT

The Precocious Tots of Finland: A University of Kansas professor and two co-authors, in research in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Finance, found that children age 10 and under substantially outperformed their parents in earnings from stock trading in the few days before and after rumors swirled on possible corporate mergers. A likely explanation, they said, is that the parents or guardians were buying and selling for their children's accounts using illegal insider information that they were cautious about using in their personal accounts, which would more easily arouse suspicion. While the parents' accounts had nice returns, the kids' accounts (including those held by the very recently born) were almost 50 percent more profitable. (The study, reported by NPR in April, covered 15 years of trades in Finland, chosen because that country collects age data that the U.S. and other countries do not.)

News of the Weird: Electric Chastity Belt

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:35:00 EDT

Plus, dripping wet jet-skiers and other security risks

To counter the now-well-publicized culture of rape in India, three engineers in Chennai said in March that they are about to send to the market women's anti-rape lingerie, which will provide both a stun-gun-sized blast of electricity against an aggressor and a messaging system sending GPS location to family members and the police about an attack in progress. After the wearer engages a switch, anyone touching the fitted garment will, said one developer, get “the shock of his life” (even though the garment's skin side would be insulated). The only marketing holdup, according to a March report in The Indian Express, is finding a washable fabric.

News Of The Weird: Undocumented Immigrant Gains Safe Harbor Thanks to Xbox Live Records

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 14:25:00 EDT

Plus, Civil War veterans' benefits and roadkill couture

Undocumented immigrant Jose Munoz, 25, believed himself an ideal candidate for President Obama's 2012 safe-harbor initiative for illegal-entry children, in that he had been brought to the U.S. by his undocumented parents before age 16, had no criminal record and had graduated from high school (with honors, even). Since then, however, he had remained at home in Sheboygan, Wis., assisting his family, doing odd jobs and, admittedly, just playing video games and “vegging.” Living “in the shadows,” he found it almost impossible to prove the final legal criterion: that he had lived continuously in the U.S. since graduation (using government records, payroll sheets, utility bills, etc.). After initial failures to convince immigration officials, reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in March, Munoz's lawyer succeeded — by submitting Munoz's Xbox Live records, documenting that his computer's Wisconsin location had been accessing video games, day after day, for years.

News of the Weird: The Snail Mail App

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 9 Apr 2013 11:15:00 EDT

What to do with all that junk mail

Wait... What? A startup company in Austin, Texas, also serving San Francisco, promises to take its customers' incoming U.S. mail three times a week, photograph it and deliver it back to the customers via mobile phone app, for $4.99 a month. The company, Outbox, provides some value-added services, removing the customer from junk-mail lists and paying bills. Still, Outbox's unorthodox business model assumes that a growing number of people absolutely hate opening, filing or discarding pieces of paper. Co-founder Will Davis told CNN in February that at least he does not fear competition: "No one is crazy enough to do what we're doing."

News of the Weird: Monopoly Money

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:45:00 EDT

Plus, the (tax) number of the beast

In March, Microsoft was fined 561 million euros (about $725 million) by the European Commission after, apparently, a programmer carelessly left out just one line of code in Microsoft's Service Pack 1 of European versions of Windows 7. That one line would have triggered the system to offer web browsers other than Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, which Microsoft had agreed to include to settle charges that it was monopolizing the web-browser business. (Also in March, the government of Denmark said that Microsoft owed it about a billion dollars in unpaid taxes when it took over a Danish company and tried to route its taxes through notorious tax havens such as Bermuda. According to a March Reuters report, Denmark is among the first European countries to challenge such U.S.-standard tax shenanigans and is expecting payment in full.)

News of the Weird: Holy Handguns

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:25:00 EDT

Drug ethics, and city-funded lock-picking

One of the many decisions greeting Pope Francis, as Salon.com pointed out, is whether to officially recognize a Patron Saint of Handgunners — as urged by a U.S. organization of activists for more than 20 years. According to legend, St. Gabriel Possenti rescued an Italian village from a small band of pillagers (and perhaps rapists) in the 19th century by shooting at a lizard in the road, killing it with one shot, which supposedly so terrified the bandits that they fled. No humans were harmed, activists now point out, signifying the handgun was obviously a force for good. The head of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society has noted that, however far-fetched the “lizard incident” may be, it was rarely questioned until U.S. anti-gun activists gained strength in the 1980s.

News of the Weird: Doping on Ice

By Chuck Shepherd — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 12:25:00 EDT

Plus, the price of fashion, and pro teeth-lifting

Leaders of the ice-fishing community, aiming for official Olympics recognition as a sport, have begun the process by asking the World Anti-Doping Agency to randomly test its “athletes” for performance-enhancing drugs, according to a February New York Times report. However, said the chairman of the U.S. Freshwater Fishing Association, “We do not test for beer,” because, he added, “Everyone would fail.” Ice-fishing is a lonely, frigid endeavor rarely employing strength but mostly requiring guile and strategy, as competitors who discover advantageous spots in the lake must surreptitiously upload the hauls lest competitors rush over to drill their own holes. Urine tests have also been run in recent years on competitors in darts, miniature golf, chess and tug-of-war, and in 2011, one chess player, two minigolfers and one tugger tested positive.