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October 29, 2009 CELEBELLUM
The human brain's 100 billion neurons may have such specific functions that a few electrically charge only upon recognition of a single celebrity, such as Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton. UCLA researchers, studying the healthy cells of pre-op epilepsy patients, inadvertently discovered this unusual property, which apparently varies with individuals but remains internally consistent, whether the celebrity is represented by picture, name or sound. Patients were presented "hundreds of stimuli," one researcher told The Wall Street Journal in October, but "the neuron would respond to only one or two." For example, neurons were found that reacted only to Jennifer Aniston, only to The Simpsons and only to Mother Teresa.
TED WRONG
In 2002, following an acrimonious family debate, the head of late baseball slugger Ted Williams was cryogenically frozen in the hope that science will some day learn how to revive dead people. An employee of the Arizona lab that stores the head recently disclosed some inside shenanigans, according to a September report in the New York Daily News. According to the employee, to keep Williams' head from sticking to the inside of its storage carton, the head was placed on an empty Bumble Bee tuna fish can inside the container, but the can itself then stuck to the head and had to be whacked off with a monkey wrench. (Since the lab's work is secretive, only first-person reports are likely to emerge on this story.)
ONE-WAY COMMUNICATION
The mayor of the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, faced with an overcrowded highway D909 through town, "solved" the problem recently by making the street one-way, sending traffic speedily into the adjacent town of Clichy-la-Garenne. That city's mayor (a political rival of the Levallois-Perret mayor) reacted by making his portion of D909 one-way back toward Levallois-Perret, creating a dilemma at the city limit. Other authorities are working to resolve the impasse.
DIRTY COPS
In the tiny east Texas town of Tenaha, police allegedly extorted traveling motorists by subjecting them to bogus traffic stops, perhaps finding small amounts of drugs, and then offering to forgo prosecution if the motorists would forfeit their cars and other property. The forfeited items were then sold to fund a special police recreation account. Last year, the ACLU of Texas filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against both the police and local prosecutor Lynda Russell, and in September 2009 Russell asked the state attorney general if she could pay her legal expenses from the alleged extorted recreation account.
DICKING AROUND
(1) In a delicate, two-hour procedure at a hospital in Newport Beach, Calif., in September, firefighters carefully sawed off the inch-thick metal dumbbell-tightening ring into which a man had inserted his penis three days earlier. He told surgeons his plan was to lengthen the organ, to, as he put it, "make me the chief of my tribe." By the time he got to the hospital, his member was swollen to more than twice its normal size, and sawing the ring off (without cutting the skin) was the only way to save it. (2) Judge James Morley dismissed animal cruelty charges in September against former Moorestown, N.J., police officer Robert Melia Jr., who had been caught in 2006 attempting to sexually gratify himself using calves' mouths. Because the state has no anti-bestiality statute, Melia was charged with animal cruelty, but Judge Morley said he was uncertain whether the acts were "cruel" or merely confusing. He reasoned that calves would normally recognize an appendage in their mouths as the prelude to food. If the calf could speak, said Judge Morley, it might merely say, "Where's the milk? I'm not getting any milk." Maui Time Weekly, Chuck Shepherd
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| Entertainment and lifestyle news for Maui, Hawaii and the surrounding Islands. Maui Time Weekly is Mauis only independent and locally owned newspaper.
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