Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Wednesday Weirdness

Well, here it is Wednesday again.  Plenty of weird things have been going on this last week but here are a few that may not have made a big splash.

We start with the truly weird.  I can always count on Weird Asia News for some doozies. Seems a woman in China learned about a way to cure her daughter's mental illness. It involved a making a soup. Simple enough. Except that the key ingredient wasn't something that she could pick up at the local market.  She had to hire help.  A hitman to be precise.  This soup calls for a man's head and the hitman provided one from a local drunkard.  We know about this because they were, of course, caught.  The hitman gets to spend the rest of his life in jail and Mom got charged with "concealing the evidence".  I seriously doubt the daughter was helped much.

Also from China, we have news of the latest Internet filter just released. It's designed to block harmful images, among other things. Problem is, it's a little overzealous. The program, called Green Dam thinks Garfield the cat, Johnny Depp and a slice of pork are all equally harmful. So it's kind of indiscriminate. Surprise.

Lets move from government censorship and other bad ideas to a study carried out researchers in Scotland.  They showed a video of a trained chimp making and using a tool to other chimps. (Not sure why this was under a weird news header, I think it's kinda cool).  Those who saw the full video, copied the tool making exactly. Interstingly, some of the chimps who didn't see the full video still made the tool but were able to use the parts more creatively. Those who saw the whole video, amde the tool exactly like they saw it whether or not that was going to be the best use of the tool and its parts in a given circumstance.  Kind of a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing.

We continue moving westward and arrive in Florida where we have our stupid criminal of the week.  A man went through the drive through at the local Wachovia branch and deposited $200 and a baggie of marijuana and cocaine. He was arrested and charged with possession. Guess he wanted to keep it safe.

In close competition with this fellow is one Kristin Banfield of Washington State who claimed her dog forced her to commit fraud. Seems the pooch ate her checks. So naturally she had to resort to stealing money from her ex-husband's account. Police say this was just the first of her excuses.  She's under investigation for identity theft and fraud.

Next we have with Bill Fulton in Oregon who had a wallet returned to him. After 63 years. Seems he dropped it while watching a basketball game back in 1946. it feel behind the bleachers and stayed there until workers began recent renovations on Baker Middle School. Fulton says having the wallet returned to him after so many years has caused him to to reflect on his life.

And last I leave you with this year's winner of the ugliest dog contest. Pabst beat out Rascal, the former champion, to take this year's title.  Go check out this link to see the runner-up. And here's Pabst in all his glory. I think he's so ugly, he's cute. And frankly nowhere near as scary as Rascal.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Pabst marks the first time in 7 years that a chinese-crested didn't win.... I know this and yet I'm a cat person. Go figure.