By Chuck Shepherd A 200-exhibit installation on the history of dirt and filth and their importance in our lives opened in a London gallery in March, featuring the ordinary (dust), the educational (a video tribute to New York’s Fresh Kills landfill, at one time the world’s largest), the medical (vials of historic, nasty-looking secretions from [...]
Gen. Than Shwe of Myanmar, leader of Asia’s most authoritarian regime, made a rare public appearance in February but dressed in a women’s sarong. Most likely, according to a report on AOL News, he was challenging the country’s increasingly successful “panty protests” in which females opposed to the regime toss their underwear at the leaders [...]
By Chuck Shepherd The Feral Professor: Tihomir Petrov, 43, a mathematics professor at California State University Northridge, was charged in January with misdemeanors for allegedly urinating twice on the office door of a colleague with whom he had been feuding. (Petrov was identified by a hidden camera installed after the original puddles turned up.) Petrov [...]
New York University arts professor Wafaa Bilal had his camera surgically removed in February — the one that was implanted in the back of his skull in November to record, at 60-second intervals, the places he had left behind (beamed to and archived by a museum in Qatar). The camera had been mounted under his [...]
21st-Century American Exports? In strife-torn Sudan (land of the Darfur murder and rape atrocities and a per-capita annual income of $2,200), an epic, year-long Ponzi scheme engineered by a lowly former police officer has enticed nearly 50,000 victims to invest an estimated $180 million (according to a March dispatch on Slate.com). At the height of [...]
By Chuck Shepherd Tombstone, Ariz., which was the site of the legendary 1881 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (made into a 1957 movie), is about 70 miles from the Tucson shopping center where a U.S. congresswoman, a federal judge and others were shot in January. A Los Angeles Times dispatch later that month noted that [...]
CHUCK SHEPHERD’S NEWS OF THE WEIRD by Chuck Shepherd “Tall, slim, facial symmetry,” “good teeth,” along with classic makeup and dress and graceful movement, might comprise the inventory list for any beauty contest winner, and they are also the criteria for victors in Niger’s traditional “Gerewol” festival — except that the contestants are all males [...]
CHUCK SHEPHERD’S NEWS OF THE WEIRD by Chuck Shepherd The ear has a “G-spot,” explained the Santa Clara, Calif., ear-nose-and-throat surgeon, and thus the moans of ecstasy that Vietnamese “ear pickers” reportedly elicit from their clients might well be justified. A San Jose Mercury News reporter, dispatched to Ho Chi Minh City in January to [...]
News of the Weird By Chuck Shepherd Those Ingenious Western Spies! In January, Saudi officials detained a vulture from Tel Aviv University (part of endangered-species research), calling it a spy and alarming its Israeli handlers that the bird might face a gruesome execution as an espionage agent. Then, a day later, Iran reportedly detained an [...]
News of the Weird By Chuck Shepherd Do Ask, Must Tell (and Show): The Turkish military’s legendary homophobia (rare among NATO countries) comprises both zero-tolerance for homosexuality by service personnel and the requirement of rigorous proof by anyone applying for exemption from service by claiming to be gay. (Homosexuality is the only disqualifier from compulsory [...]
High Fructose Corn Syrup By Megan Garrison The FDA recently rejected a bid to officially change the name of high [...]
Walker was Victorious in Wisconsin Because His Reforms Worked By David H. Landon The folks at MSNBC had a bad [...]
It Takes More than a Tweet By Rana Odeh The victory of Republican Governor Scott Walker over Milwaukee Democrat Mayor [...]
What are the Consequences of Recall Election in Wisconsin? Last Tuesday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) prevailed in an unusual [...]
Obama’s Support of Same Sex Marriage Will Cost Him Swing States By David H. Landon By Election Day, the President’s [...]
President Obama Announces Support of Same-Sex Marriage Most pundits believe that this Presidential election will be decided on the issue [...]
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