Hmmm!
Indigo-coloured aura
A documentary, The Indigo Revolution, debuts in January, with World Indigo Weekend scheduled for January 27 to January 29, touting 'special', high-energy kids regarded by their doting parents as psychic and endowed with an identifying,
indigo-coloured aura. Indigos are said to act imperially and to be astutely rebellious at authority (though cynics say they're just routinely self-centred brats, the product of excessive parental
coddling). One Indigo parent told the Orange County Register (California) in November that the numerous instances of her own child's prescience led her to offer her services as a facilitator to other Indigo parents (at up to $400 for workshops). Indigos "have a temper," she acknowledged, but not an ordinary temper. "(It) seems geared toward philosophical and existential issues."
Fetishes on parade
Christopher Bjerkness, 27, pleaded guilty in August in Duluth, Minnesota, to slashing almost 100 exercise balls at
fitness centres because of what he told police was a sexual urge).
A separate collection of it was found among the 3,000 items of women's underwear stolen by Mr. Sung Koo Kam, 31, who was sentenced in November to more than four years in prison upon conviction in McMinnville, Oregon.
Human missiles
David Smith Sr., who holds the world record for the longest flight of being shot from a cannon, was blasted about 150 feet in August from Tijuana, Mexico, into California, uninjured, as part of an art project about "dissolving borders." (He showed his passport before blastoff). However, a November 2002
catapult shot of a 19-year-old Oxford University (England) biochemistry student (who was
a member of Oxford's extreme sports club) ended badly, as an inquest in October 2005 heard; he was propelled almost 100 yards, which was just short of
his landing net.
Science on
the cutting edge
The latest technologies and sophisticated biomechanical gaugings are being used to design brassieres to liberate women from the discomfort of which most complain (and
especially buxom women, since a D-cup bra normally carries breasts weighing from 15 to
23 pounds). Leading work (according to a November Wall Street Journal report) is being done in China by engineers for Top Form Inc. (suppliers to Victoria's Secret, Playtex and Maidenform) and by biomechanist Deirdre McGhee at the University of Wollongong in Australia. A British professor, David Morris, teaches 'bra
studies' at De Montfort University in Leicester, and Hong Kong's Polytechnic University recently created a degree programme in bra studies.
A wall of breast
feel free
The Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, Netherlands, announced recently that retail studies student Wendy Rameckers had designed a wall with rows of silicon breasts in various shapes, primarily, she said, to help male shoppers decide what size bra to buy for their women. And prominent British futurist Ian Pearson of
BT Laboratories told reporters
in October that he could see the day when breast implants housed MP3 players (sending signals
to a woman's headphones), to give the implants some actual functionality.
Where the best
surgeons are
The increased expectations of fans have driven today's bullfighters to use riskier moves than their predecessors did, and competition has pressured them to return to work quickly after being gored. As a result, according to a November Wall Street Journal dispatch from Madrid, up to three dozen elite surgeons, highly skilled in complicated procedures, follow the bullfight circuit, on call to repair serious injuries that formerly would kill or maim a matador. In fact, most bullfighters today have already endured several critical gorings but remain eager to work.
weird news
Leading economic indicators
The gigantic hit TV series 'Frasier' grossed $1.5 billion during its 11-year run, but according to the show's executives (responding to a recent lawsuit by the programme's creators for a greater share of the 'profits'), the traditional Hollywood accounting methods reveal that the show earned no profit over its lifetime but actually lost $200 million.
According to a 2004 study by Georgia State University researchers, based on public information, one "investor group" substantially outperforms not only the stock market as a whole but also financial houses' top stock-pickers. That investor group is U.S. senators, who somehow between 1993 and
1998 beat the market by an
average of 12 per cent annually (whereas fund managers are regarded as 'stars' if they beat the market by as little as 3 per cent). The findings received heightened attention recently, following
revelations that a prominent
senator this year made a huge profit selling stock from his blind trust at just the right time.
Awesome animals
Research by a Department of Agriculture scientist and a University of Georgia professor, reported in December, showed that with five minutes' training, certain wasps can detect drugs, bombs and dead bodies as well as dogs can.
The wife of Frank Ficker of Freiberg, Germany, filing for divorce, said in November that she learned of her husband's
infidelity when her parrot, Hugo, imitating Frank's voice,
continually cried out for some woman named 'Uta'.
Least competent criminals
Michael Drennon, 26, was charged with bank robbery in Bensalem, Pa., in October after accidentally dropping his pay stub at the scene, even though
he had cleverly blotted out his
name and address with a black indelible marker. (Bensalem's director of public safety said the stub was easy to read: "We just (held) it under a light.")
Louis Jasick, 34, and a friend, involved in a scavenger hunt, knocked on the back door of the police station in Fruitport Township, Mich., in November to ask if officers would please help with the next item on their list and pose for a photograph of a cop eating a doughnut. The officers obliged but one of them recognised Jasick from a recent felony warrant and arrested him.
Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate. Send your weird news to editor@gleanerjm.com, fax 922-6223 or write to: The Editor, the Gleaner Company Ltd., P.O. Box 40, 7 North Street, Kingston.
