Lead Stories
* In recent months, two different Hindu cults in India have begun to embrace ancient sacrifice rituals, one using horses and the other using the “Nara bali” practice of human sacrifice. In the village of Juna Padia, Assam, 150 priests participate in ceremonies to slaughter 10 horses and collect their deified blood for, they say, peace and prosperity. And in the state of Orissa, because of a paucity of human volunteers to sacrifice, the Kamakhya Temple cult uses human-size effigies made of flour, which its leaders insist are just as powerful in impressing divine forces.
* South Korea’s baby-boomer parents in increasing numbers are sending their preschool youngsters for outpatient mouth surgery to snip the tissue under the tongue because they believe more tongue freedom will permit the children to pronounce the difficult “l” and “r” sounds that have long stigmatized many Asians when speaking English. “Learning English is almost the national religion” in South Korea, according to one educator quoted in a Los Angeles Times report, but many authorities in South Korea say Asians’ pronunciation trouble is purely cultural and that only a very few people are born with tight-enough tongues to be helped by these “frenectomies.”
The In-Turmoil Revenue Service
The IRS admitted to a Washington Post reporter in April that it had paid out $30 million in fraudulent refunds in the last two years to African American taxpayers claiming (at about $40,000 each) the nonexistent slavery reparations credit (and 12 of those were IRS employees). However, the IRS did catch $2.4 billion of slavery claims before refunds went out. The agency also filed formal charges against at least two accountants who have been advising clients to use “Section 861” of the tax code to claim (preposterously, according to every court that has heard the claim) that income tax only applies to Americans who work for foreign companies. That particular scam reached prominence in March when the agency revealed that actor Wesley Snipes had asked the IRS to refund the $7.3 million he paid in 1997 taxes, citing Section 861.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
* Spanish inventor Andres Diaz made the first US sale of his $20,000, side-loading, automatic cat-washing machine late last year to a Miami company, PetClean USA. The three-cycle, 37-nozzle machine processes the cat in 30 minutes, and Diaz swears the cat doesn’t mind it. . .In March, Antrim, Northern Ireland, inventor Trevor Graham was awarded about $8,500 from the Winston Churchill Foundation to study mobile dog-washing equipment in the US.
* Other Recent Inventions: Vladimir Markov’s “anti-rape” jeans, with a locked, coded steel top button designed to discourage attackers who haven’t time to figure out how to open it (Croatia). . .College-student inventors’ pulsating vest composed of eight cellular phones’ vibrating units sewn in to touch acupuncture-friendly parts of the abdomen (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore).
* New Management Incentive Structures: Tyson Foods’ CEO John Tyson was awarded a $2.1 million bonus for last year despite a dismal economic performance and a federal indictment for smuggling in illegal aliens to work at 15 plants in nine states; headquarters officials said the alien problem must have been 15 individual managers out of control.
Weird Science
* “Quorn,” an edible, nutritious fungus that its manufacturer says looks and tastes “like chicken,” made its US debut in January from the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical house AstraZeneca. Quorn (also known as mycoprotein) is sold as chickenlike nuggets or in lasagna or as a ground beef-like substance and is high in protein and fiber and low in calories. Said a sports nutritionist quoted by the Associated Press: “I think it’s got a lot of potential. We just have to make sure ‘fungus’ is not going to appear on the label.”
Least Competent Criminals
“For almost 20 years,” wrote a Boston Globe reporter in March, “convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer has waged a public campaign maintaining his innocence,” most recently demanding DNA tests that would clear him of a brutal attack on an elderly woman. LaGuer’s supporters raised $30,000 for the test, and on March 22, the results came back: The sperm was LaGuer’s. . . .Even worse off was rape suspect Marshall Thomas, 44, who early this year finally received his long-begged-for DNA test that he was sure would free him from a 1999 rape charge. That case is still pending, in Belleville, IL, but Thomas’s DNA was matched to an earlier, unsolved rape, and prosecutors said they planned to file additional charges.
Also, in the Last Month. . .
The premiere of Thailand’s version of The Weakest Link TV show was deeply controversial because the show’s trademark brutality and selfishness so much contravened the country’s alleged sensitivity and generosity. . . A 32-year-old man, fleeing into the woods on foot after a police traffic stop, was quickly captured after being incapacitated by a skunk’s spray (Lewiston, ME). . .Police shut down what an officer called a “full-service, drive-through, drug window” at an apartment house (Syracuse, NYH). . .The Sioux City, Iowa, city council made yet another official request to the Federal Aviation Administration to change its airport designation, which is SUX. *
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, PO Box 18737, Tampa, FL 33679 or Newsweird@aol.com, or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com/.)
This article appears in May 1-7, 2002.
