Weird

What Recession? A December USA Today analysis revealed that during the first 18 months of the recent recession, beginning December 2007, the number of federal employees with six-figure salaries shot up from 14 percent of the federal workforce to 19 percent. Defense Department civilian executives earning more than $150,000 went from 1,868 to more than […]

Copenhagen, one of the “greenest” cities in the world, endured an added 41,000 extra tons of carbon-dioxide-equivalent in December during the 11-day “climate summit.” The 15,000 delegates required 2,000 limousines (only five of which were electric or hybrid) to get around town, and the world leaders arrived and departed in 140 private jets, some of […]

Russell Vanderwerf, 44, an agent of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, was arrested in Metairie, La., in December and charged with damaging property while staying at the Residence Inn hotel. According to police, Vanderwerf had removed the bedroom door to his suite and in its place installed a plywood plank which […]

Although the U.S. military stateside can direct a drone aircraft halfway around the world to deliver bombs mostly on highly specific targets in Iraq, the Pentagon acknowledged in December that even after six years of war, its signals to the drone are still not encrypted. Thus, Iraqi insurgents can pinpoint drone locations merely by using […]

In December, University of London math professor Simon Blackburn published a complicated, square-root-deriving formula to determine whether a driver has enough room to parallel-park within a given space. By inputting such measurements as a car’s wheel base and the radius of its turning circle, a driver can calculate an exact, when-to-turn steering instruction. A December […]

World’s Laziest Bank Robbers: In December in Cardiff (Wales) Crown Court, James Snell was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a bank robbery from which he made his getaway in his own car with an easy-to-remember personalized license plate (“J4MES”). Mark McAvinew, 52, was arrested in Kansas City, Mo., in December after allegedly robbing […]

In December, a prominent online game player, Buzz “Erik” Lightyear, won the auction for ownership of a virtual space station in the Planet Calypso game, paying 3.3 million Project Entropia Dollars (PEDs), which at various points entered the game’s play-like economy at an out-of-pocket cost of 10 actual U.S. cents per PED. Thus, Lightyear “paid” […]

Clovis, N.M., Nov. 21: “The (grandmother), who said she relied on a walker for mobility, said the (son-in-law) had come into the bathroom while she was using it and had grabbed and twisted her nose until she could hear the bones and cartilage cracking. The man was arrested.” Apple Valley, Minn., Oct. 13: “Officers responded […]

In January, the Berkeley (Calif.) School Board began consideration of a near-unanimous recommendation of Berkeley High School’s Governance Council to eliminate science labs from its curriculum, reasoning that the classes mostly serve white students, leaving less money for programs for underperforming minorities. Berkeley High’s white students do far better academically than the state average; black […]

Ewwwwww! Prominent eastern Idaho prosecuting attorney Blake Hall, 56, was fired in November (and he also resigned from a major national political position) after his conviction for stalking an ex-girlfriend. Evidence at trial revealed that Hall had been tossing used condoms onto the woman’s lawn, a total of 19 collected on 10 different days. Truck […]