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October 30, 2008
USING HIS HEAD
Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes while his brain was exposed, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center surgeons tried to locate the defective area. In "deep brain stimulation," doctors find a poorly responding site and use electrodes to arouse it properly. As Adcock, conscious but pain-free, picked out melodies, doctors probed until suddenly Adcock's playing became disjointed, and electrodes were assigned to that spot. By October, according to an ABC News report, Adcock, with a button-activated chest pacemaker wired to his head, was back on stage, as quick-fingered as ever.
BIGGER IS BETTER
(1) Clair Robinson, 23, told an interviewer in September that she believes the only reason she survived the deadly flesh-eating infection recently was because she had too much weight for the bacteria to consume. "Being big saved my life," she told Australia's Medical Emergency TV show. (2) Though Mayra Rosales, 27, stands charged with capital murder in Hidalgo County, Texas, she was not ordered to jail pending trial but was allowed home detention because of her obesity. At about 1,000 pounds, Rosales requires special transportation and facilities and was ruled by a judge in August certainly to be no "flight risk."
TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Brian Hopkins, 25, severely burned in 2006 after climbing onto the roof of an empty train at Boston's South Station at 2am, filed a lawsuit in August against Amtrak. Though admitting that he was trespassing at the station when he was zapped by 27,500 volts of overhead wire, Hopkins said Amtrak ought to have known that people trespass and climb on top of trains, and therefore should have parked its train in a less-accessible place.
NOT GETTING OFF
Complaints were lodged with the Swedish government in June against the state-run retail pharmacy Apoteket, alleging illegal sex discrimination, in that its stores stock sexual aids that benefit women (e.g., vibrators) but none that particularly benefit men. Said one complainer, "(A) woman with a dildo is seen as liberated, strong and independent, whereas a man with a blow-up plastic vagina is viewed as disgusting and perverted." The government's Equal Opportunities Ombudsman rejected the complaints.
WRONG END
In September, the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the 18-year sentence of a 73-year-old South Bend man who had insisted that he was only trying to revive his 68-year-old wife after she became fatally incapacitated in June 2007. However, police noted that he had not called 911, nor checked her vital signs, nor performed CPR, but that instead, his "reviving" consisted of performing an oral sex act on her (which the judges concluded was merely the fulfillment of a desire that his wife had long since denied him).
I SCREAM
Food engineers in Japan, especially, are notorious for their odd-flavored ice creams that challenge the palate, as News of the Weird has noted several times. In August, voters at the Taste of Britain festival selected their own regional favorites, some of which rivaled Japan's (e.g., ice creams of sausage and mash, pork pie, cheddar cheese, Worcestershire sauce, Welsh rarebit and even haggis). The Japanese still love their ice cream, though. Among the flavors at this year's Yokohama Ice Cream Expo in August (celebrating the 130th anniversary of ice cream in Japan) were beef tongue, octopus, eel and beer. MTW
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