Fun_People Archive
20 Apr
Weirdness, March 27, 1998)

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 98 21:12:48 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: Weirdness, March 27, 1998)

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Excerpted-from: WEIRDNUZ.529 (News of the Weird, March 27, 1998)
		by Chuck Shepherd

* Now They Tell Us:  Researchers at Bristol University in England,
announcing in February the results of a study of 14,000 children, said
bathing every day is not good for a kid.  According to the study, children
who take regular baths are 25 percent more likely to develop asthma and
other allergies because their immune systems are delicate and still
evolving.

* In January, Clinton Ellerman, 21, was sentenced to two years in jail for
vandalizing a mink farm near Salt Lake City as part of an animal rights
protest, and his brother, Joshua, 19, is awaiting trial on federal charges
of bombing a fur breeders' cooperative.  The men are members of the
anti-drug, anti-smoking, anti-punk-rock, pro-vegetarian movement called
Straight Edge.  Utah officials believe that local Straight Edgers are
responsible for more than 40 cases of assault, arson, or vandalism,
including the torching of a McDonald's restaurant, all, apparently in the
name of saving animals.

* In February, sheriff's deputies had a drug house in the northwest Florida
town of Callaway under surveillance, and when four men emerged and drove
off in a rental car, deputies decided to stop them and make the arrests.
Several squad cars surrounded the rental car, and by the time officers went
to open the door, the four men were conveniently covered in white powder.
A hidden bag of cocaine had been sliced open by the air-conditioner fan
blade and had dusted them.  Arrested were Marc St.  George, 29, of Miami,
three others in the car, and three more back at the house.

* The St. Petersburg Times wrote in January that it had documented cases of
20 people, most elderly, who had traveled to Tampa, Fla., in recent months
at their own expense in order erroneously to claim jackpot winnings after
having misread letters from the American Family Publishers sweepstakes
(which processes magazine subscriptions through a Tampa post office box).
One man, Richard Lusk, 88, of Victorville, Calif., believed he had won three
straight $11 million sweepstakes and made two trips to Tampa to collect them
and would have made a third except that his son talked him out of it.

* A January Boston Globe report from Moscow described the Russian passion
of ice-fishing.  One 54-year-old angler, who said he has fallen many times
into the black water of the Moscow River in winter, sat in 0F-degree weather
with a line in each hand, perched over small holes, all day long, with no
fish to show for it, but still exclaimed, "Isn't this great!  This is not
about what you catch.  This is about total relaxation."  More than 100
Russians a year die while ice fishing, and last year, when 75 anglers near
St.  Petersburg were swept away on a platform of ice and were rescued nine
hours later by helicopter, fights broke out over which ones got to be the
last ones aboard so that they could remain fishing even longer.

* Five teenage girls attempted suicide in September in Turkey rather than
submit to "virginity tests" required of girls in government-run foster
homes.  Many families still have physicians run daughters through the test
voluntarily, as part of a Muslim-based social code, and even Turkey's
women's affairs minister, who is female, has defended the practice for the
foster homes.  Some fathers whose daughters have been killed in accidents
still insist that the test be performed on the corpse, for the father's own
peace of mind.

* Ghanan researcher Philip Adongo, explaining to a family planning
conference in Beijing in October why he interviewed spiritual mediums in
addition to other tribespeople in his country:  "If I only heard from the
living, I wouldn't get a very good balance.  This study has been the first
to be conducted of respondents who are deceased."

* An unidentified man stabbed David Fleigelman, 40, in October at the
Sephardic Center synagogue in Brooklyn, N.Y.  According to police, the men
had been arguing about who knows more about the Torah.

	Copyright 1998 by Universal Press Syndicate.

© 1998 Peter Langston