news & Opinion NOV 30-DEC 6, 2011 | WWW.CONNECTSAVANNAH.COM
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news of the weird Lead Story Was Moammar Gadhafi the last of the “buffoon dictators,” asked BBC News in October. His legend was earned not merely with his nowfamous, dirty-old-man scrapbook of Condoleezza Rice photos. Wrote a BBC reporter, “One day (Gadhafi) was a Motown (backup) vocalist with wetlook permed hair and tight pants. The next, a white-suited comic-operetta Latin American admiral, dripping with braid.” Nonetheless, Gadhafi had competition, according to an October report in the journal Foreign Policy. For example, the son of Equatorial Guinea’s dictator owns, among other eccentric luxuries, a $1.4 million collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia. North Korea’s Kim Jong Il owns videos of almost every game Michael Jordan ever played for the Chicago Bulls.
Leading Economic Indicators • In March, William Ernst, 57, owner of the QC Mart chain of Iowa convenience stores, excitedly announced a company-wide employee contest with a prize of $10 for guessing the next worker that Ernst will fire for breaking rules. “Once we fire the person, we will open all the envelopes (containing the entries), award the prize, and start the contest again.” Ernst added, “And no fair picking Mike Miller from (the Rockingham Road store). He was fired at around 11:30 a.m. today for wearing a hat and talking on his cellphone. Good luck!!!!!!!!!!” (After firing
a cashier who had complained about workers found inventories of condoms Ernst’s attitude, he challenged the with the necks tied. woman’s unemployment-compensation Our Animal Overlords claim, but in October, a judge ruled in her favor.) • An Oxford University researcher • Even in a flagging economy, Chrisreported in August on the African tie’s auction house in New York City crested rat, which is so ingenious that was able to attract a record sales price it slathers poison, from chewing the for a photograph. In November, a 1999 A. schimperi plant, onto an absorbent photo by German artist Andreas Gurstrip of fur on its back as protection sky, of a scenic view of the Rhine River, against predators many times larger. sold for $4.3 million. (It is possible, The researcher observed firstof course, that buying the actual hand a dog quivering in fear waterfront property that Gursky after just one failed mouthphotographed from - to enjoy the ful of a crested rat’s fur in Mayoral election on same view every day - would have his laboratory. The noxious Tues. Dec 6th been less expensive.) goo is also used by African • Unfortunately, Manulife tribesmen on their hunting Financial Corp. is a Canadian arrows. firm, and thus it had a very bad • Researching the Ittyyear. If exactly the same company Bitty: In October, Popular had been magically relocated to Science dubbed researcher anywhere in the United States, it Gaby Maimon of Rockefeller would have had an outstanding University as one of its “Brilliant year. Under Canada’s hard-nosed 10” for 2011 for his monitoring accounting rules, Manulife was of neurons in the brains of forced to post a loss last year of fruit flies. Maimon first had $1.28 billion. However, under the to immobilize the flies’ brains in saline more feel-good U.S. accounting rules, and outfit their tiny neurons with even according to the company, it would tinier electrodes - so that he could track have shown a profit of $2.2 billion and which neurons were firing as the flies been flush with $16 billion more in flapped their wings and carried out shareholder value. other activities (work that he believes • Following October arrests by Nigecan be useful in treating human autism ria’s Abuja Environmental Protection and attention-deficit disorder). Board, authorities learned that local • Oh, Dear! (1) An October Associprostitutes earned premium fees by ated Press dispatch from New Orleans selling their customers’ semen to “juju warned that “Caribbean crazy ants” priests,” who use it as “medicines” in are invading five Southern states by rituals. Police who rounded up the sex the millions, and because their death
triggers distress signals to their pals for revenge attacks, up to 10 times as many might replace any population wiped out. Said a Texas exterminator, of a pesticide he once tried, “In 30 days I had 2 inches of dead ants covering (an) entire half-acre,” and still the ants kept coming, crawling across the carcasses. Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi are currently the most vulnerable. (2) Biologists found a shark fetus with one centered eye inside a pregnant dusky shark off the coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, in October. A marine sciences lab in nearby La Paz confirmed that the unborn baby, which filled up a researcher’s hand, had the extremely rare congenital “cyclopia.”
Cutting-Edge Science Japan’s Showa University School of Dentistry has for several years been training future practitioners using life-sized synthetic patients from Orient Industry, based on the company’s “sex dolls,” and recently upgraded to the fancier silicone dolls with humanfeel skin that can cost as much as the equivalent of $9,000 when sold to perverts who custom-order young women for companionship. According to a July CNN report, advanced robotics added to the Showa version allow the doll to utter typical patient phrases, to sneeze, and (when trainees mishandle tools) to gag. CS By chuck shepherd UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE