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News Of The Weird
DIGITAL ADULTERY?
September 06, 2007
Ric Hoogestraat is married to Sue and works at a call center in the Phoenix area but spends 30-plus hours a week inside the online Second Life video game, pretending that he's the digitally drawn Dutch Hoorenbeek, a 6-foot-9, muscular babe magnet who lives on his own island. That unnerves Sue, according to an August Wall Street Journal profile, especially since Dutch recently "married" a digital woman and set up housekeeping with their two digital dogs. (The real-life creator of the new Mrs. Hoorenbeek has never met Ric and says she never will.) Dutch and his wife spend hours shopping and motorcycling together, leaving Ric little time for Sue. "Is this man cheating on his wife [meaning Sue]?" the Journal asked. Lamented Sue: "You try to talk to [Ric] or bring [him] a drink, and [he]'ll be having sex with a cartoon."
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT!
World of Warcraft is an online game as popular as Second Life, with warrior-players amassing digital gold coins from every opponent they vanquish, and the greater the lucre, the higher they advance in the WOW ranks. Some players take the easy route, though, and buy their WOW gold coins from dealers, who mostly get them from "Chinese gold farmers" in Nanjing and other cities—men and women hired to play the game 80 hours a week, not for advancement but to score coins that they can sell to other players, at the equivalent of about $1.25 per 100 coins (marked up to $20 per 100, retail), according to a June New York Times Magazine article.
SOLVING TWO FEMALE PROBLEMS AT ONCE
Cytori Therapeutics (cited in a recent Chemistry and Industry Magazine report) has developed a procedure to grow breast tissue from a mixture of stem cells and fat liposuctioned from the recipient's belly, thighs or butt. A spokesman for British plastic surgeons said he was hopeful for success, on behalf of mastectomy patients, but less generous toward women seeking ordinary breast-enlargement. The implanting surgery is still in clinical trials, but is expected to be available in Europe next year.
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS
The New York Times reported in July that at least eight buyers were vying to purchase one of the five parking spaces in the basement of the new condominiums at 246 W. 17th St., for $225,000 each. And in Chappaqua, N.Y., the owner of the Via Genova water bar told WCBS-TV in July that she offers 80 different bottled waters from around the world, with the most popular at $30 and "Bling H2O" priced at $55, but hopes business picks up: "There are so many people that are uneducated about water."
LEAST COMPETENT FRAUDSTER
Belleville, Ill., psychiatrist Ajit Trikha pleaded guilty in June to defrauding Medicare and Medicaid of at least $1.85 million, including invoices claiming he worked more than 24 hours a day on 76 different occasions (40 hours on one day and treating 83 patients in 2 1/2 hours on another). He also claimed to treat patients 1,267 times in Belleville while he was traveling in Europe. MTW