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Man’s Other Best Friends
People’s love for their pets reached a new high in December when a British man paid a veterinarian the equivalent of about $450 to perform delicate surgery on a sick office goldfish (typical pet store “replacement” price: $1 to $5). Vet Faye Bethell of North Walsham, England, this month told the Eastern Daily Press that there was “nothing special” about the fish, but that the customer “just liked it a lot.” In fact, the goldfish likely did not even have a pet name—as Bethell in an interview spoke intimately of another patient by name (Cadbury, the skunk). (Bethell’s procedure involved removing the patient from the bowl, flooding its gills with anesthetic-fortified water and using a tiny scalpel to remove lumps that were causing it constipation, with the surgery guided by a miniature heart-rate monitor.)
Iraqi TV Goes “Jerry Springer”
Iraq’s government-run channel, Al Iraqiyya TV, has a reality show reminiscent of American confrontational programs, but is designed to force captured ISIS fighters to acknowledge the pain they have created. One episode of “In the Grip of the Law” (described in a December Associated Press dispatch) showed family members of car-bombing victims on a street corner in Baghdad haranguing one of the men convicted of the crime. A young man in a wheelchair, having lost his father in the attack, faced off against the convict, screaming until the jihadist “began weeping, as the cameras rolled.”
Wait, What?
■ On Nov. 6, a couple (aged 68 and 65) were hospitalized after spending almost 13 hours locked in their car inside their own garage in Alexandra, New Zealand. The night before, they had been unable to remember a salesman’s tutorial on how to unlock their new Mazda 3 from the inside and had spent the night assuming they were trapped because they had forgotten to bring along the battery-operated key. The wife was unconscious when neighbors finally noticed them, and her husband was struggling to breathe. (The door unlocks manually, of course.)
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■ At first, it seemed another textbook case of a wrongly convicted murderer being released after a long prison stint (15 years), based on a re-examination of evidence. Illinois officials freed Alstory Simon, who had “confessed” in 1999 to killing two teenagers (before a defendants’ advocacy organization convinced a judge that the confession had been coerced). That 1999 confession had allowed the man previously convicted, Anthony Porter, to go free, but prosecutors in October 2014 had second—or third—thoughts. They once again believe that Porter was the killer—even though a different defendants’ advocacy organization had originally worked to free him. (In any event, “double jeopardy” prevents Porter’s retrial.)
Government in Action
In a November ruling, France’s minister of housing and minister of ecology jointly announced further streamlining of law books, removing bulky, out-of-date regulations. Among the rescissions, beginning Dec. 1, is the ban on installing toilets in kitchens.
Recurring Themes
■ Hopeful Signs for the New Year: (1) Police in Phoenix estimate celebratory gunfire into the air on New Year’s Eve was down 22% from last year, since the department received reports on only 206 bullets discharged without concern for where they would land. (2) Authorities in Paris estimated that 12% fewer cars were set on fire in France on New Year’s Eve, with only 940 strangers’ vehicles mindlessly torched instead of last year’s 1,067.
■ Recurring, With Different Result: A court in Buenos Aires, Argentina, granted a “habeas corpus” petition in December ordering the freedom of a Sumatran orangutan from Buenos Aires Zoo. Sandra, age 29, is a “non-human person” and thus sufficiently advanced in “cognitive function” to be not merely an object that humans can own without obligation. A Reuters report found no similar judgment on record, but rather, contrary recent rulings in New York (regarding Tommy the chimpanzee) and San Diego (on behalf of orca whales).
© 2014 CHUCK SHEPHERD
