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News%20of%20the%20Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

December 20, 2007

END OF INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT

Software engineers told Fortune in November that they are constructing a filter to eliminate stupid messages to online forums and bulletin boards. Lead researcher Gabriel Ortiz said his team had compiled a database of idiotic comments and that the new software would detect unintelligible remarks and either alert the writer to fix them or divert the message to the recipient’s “junk mail.” Easy dumb messages to filter: those with the tacky, immature repetition of a closing consonant, e.g., “That thing is amazinggggg!!!” More difficult: how to treat sarcasm and irony, in that smart writers sometimes deliberately use dumb statements to mock other writers.

HALF MAN, HALF TREE?

An Indonesian fisherman, Dede, 35, is in reasonably good health except that his hands and feet have huge root-like growths that render his arms and legs useless, according to the November Discovery Channel TV program Half Man, Half Tree. Dermatologist Anthony Gaspari of the University of Maryland flew to Indonesia and determined that Dede’s condition was caused by a genetic inability to restrain the growth of warts (“cutaneous horns”) produced by the human papillomavirus. Gaspari prescribed a regimen of Vitamin A, which he said should reduce the size of the warts enough so that, with surgery, Dede could eventually use his hands again.

THIS WEEK IN CLONES

Twin sisters Doris McAusland and Dora Bennett are 80 years old, live in Madison, Wis., apparently like and dislike the same foods, met their husbands on the same day, from the same church group, had hysterectomies at the same time, always get their hair done together, and, ever since they were toddlers, have worn identical outfits every day (except for that one time they had different shoes), according to a November CBS News report.

WHY ARMIES SOMETIMES LOSE

In October, Taiwan’s minister of national defense, Lee Tien-yu, instituted a policy of requiring recruits and their squad leaders to hug each other, which he thought would build mutual respect. According to the ritual, each would place his right hand on the other’s back and left hand on the other’s waist, with the leader saying, “Brother, I will take care of you,” and the recruit replying, “Squad leader, I respect you.” Lee abandoned the policy three weeks later when critical officials kept challenging Lee to hug some of his military officers in the same way, which he declined to do.

INEXPLICABLE

In October, Beckley, W.Va., police detained a 61-year-old man whom they found at the King Tut Drive-In on a Saturday afternoon, apparently sober, after he had “driven” his four grandchildren, all around age four, “on a busy street in a 15-foot motorboat pulled by a lawnmower,” according to an Associated Press report. The vehicle was of course unregistered and uninspected, and the children not properly seat-restrained, but the man seemed unaware that he had placed the kids in danger. 

TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made a special announcement in October that it is once again safe to eat squirrels in New Jersey. In January, the EPA had discovered lead in tissue samples from local squirrels, but later said the lead might have come from defects in the sampling machine. MTW