Remove ImagesNews of the Weird
December 13, 2007
THE MODERN MOTHER
Style and environment-conscious Canadian mothers insist on cloth diapers, especially designer labels of flannel, fleece or wool-knit, according to a November report in Toronto's Globe and Mail. Handmade embroidered diapers—perhaps in tie-dye or camouflage—are priced at up to $80 each (and some babies get to wear them only just after taking care of business in an ordinary diaper).
CULTURAL DIVERSITY
In October, Italy's economic minister, noting that a third of all men over 30 still live with their parents and that rental housing markets are depressed, proposed a tax break worth the equivalent of about $1,400 for each man in his 20s who will finally leave Momma's house. A week earlier in Sicily, one mother publicly turned her adult son over to the police for staying out too late, and also took away his house keys and cut off his allowance. The son, who immediately complained that the allowance was too small, anyway, is 61 years old.
WAR IS HELL
The normal daily tension between India and Pakistan arises in many forms, but one nightly ceremony on the border at Wagah crossing is particularly odd, described by a Los Angeles Times reporter in September as part pomp, part macho posturing, and part Monty Python's Ministry of Silly Walks. Uniformed guards from both countries march toward each other in their inexplicably complicated headgear, "glower fiercely through their mustaches"and puff themselves up, eyeball to eyeball, in a show of confidence for their respective countrymen. But then they meekly shake hands and close the border for the night.
LATEST RELIGIOUS MESSAGES
"This is a college education that I can use," said sophomore Emily Felts, 19, as she praised the homemaking curriculum of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas (which leads to a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities). Men and women may be equal, the school says, but they have different roles, and for women, that includes "how to set tables, sew buttons and sustain lively dinnertime conversation," or how to use the Internet to track grocery coupons, according to an October dispatch in the Los Angeles Times. Felts said she enjoys the work (except vacuuming), but it "doesn't matter what I think. It matters what the Bible says."
QUESTIONABLE JUDGMENTS
In November, a California administrative judge sided with state dental authorities and suspended Dr. Mark Anderson's license, following complaints by female patients that he had massaged their chests to treat a jaw disorder. Anderson's lawyer, citing alleged dental journal articles, had asserted that jaw pain was related not only to pectoral muscles but even calf muscles. In November, Anderson was also indicted for sexual battery against patients.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
In Monticello, N.Y., Steven King, 40, was indicted in October as a result of a traffic stop, for allegedly doing nearly every single thing wrong: intoxicated, driving in oncoming-traffic lanes, with an open beer container, not wearing a seat belt, driving an uninsured car, with expired safety inspection sticker, with license plates belonging to another car, and with his two-year-old daughter-passenger neither in a car seat nor belted in. MTW