The Job of Researcher
Biologist Regine Gries of Canada’s Simon Fraser University devotes every Saturday to letting about 5,000 bedbugs suck blood from her arm—part of research by Gries and her biologist-husband Gerhard to develop a pheromone-based “trap” that can lure the bugs from infested habitats like bedding. (She estimates having been bitten 200,000 times since the research began, according to a May Wired magazine report.) Regine holds each mesh-topped jar of bugs against her arm for about 10 minutes each (which Gerhard cannot do because he is allergic)—leading, of course, to hours of itchiness and swelling in the name of progress.
The Continuing Crisis
The three gentle grammar pedants (one an environmental lawyer calling himself “Agente Punto Final,” meaning “Agent Period”) devoted to ridding Quito, Ecuador, of poorly written street graffiti, have been patrolling the capital since November 2014, identifying misplaced commas and other atrocities and making sneaky corrective raids with spray paint. Punto Final told The Washington Post in March that he acts out of “moral obligation”—that “punctuation matters, commas matter, accents matter.” As police take vandalism seriously in Quito, the three must act stealthily, in hoodies and ski masks, with one always standing lookout.
Suspicions Confirmed
Almost half of the DNA collected from a broad swath of the New York City subway system matched no known organism, and less than 1% was human. Weill Cornell Medical College researchers announced in February that they had identified much DNA by swabbing passenger car and station surfaces, finding abundant matches to beetles and flies (and even traces of inactive anthrax and bubonic plague) but that since so few organisms have been fully DNA sequenced, there was no cause for alarm. The lead researcher fondly compared the bacteria-teeming subway to a “rain forest,” deserving “awe and wonder” that “there are all these species” that so far cause humans relatively little harm.
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Undignified Deaths
It takes only four of the U.S. Supreme Court justices to accept a case for review, but it takes five to stay an execution. On Jan. 23, the court accepted the case challenging Oklahoma’s death penalty chemicals, but the lead challenger, Charles Warner, lacking that fifth “stay” vote, had been executed eight days earlier (using the challenged chemicals), during the time the justices were deliberating. (The case, Warner v. Gross, was immediately renamed Glossip v. Gross, but Richard Glossip himself was scheduled to die on Jan. 29. Then, without explanation, at least one other justice supplied Glossip’s missing fifth vote, and, with one day to spare, his execution was stayed until the challenge to the chemicals is resolved.)
Recurring Themes
Drivers Hit With Their Own Cars Recently: (1) A 64-year-old woman was knocked down by her in-gear minivan in Lake Crystal, Minn., as she got out to retrieve something from her house (March). (2) A man in South Centre Township, Penn., was hospitalized after leaving his idling car to adjust something under the hood and apparently adjusted the wrong thing, sending the car thrusting forward (February). (3) Jamie Vandegraaf, 23, was slammed by his own car as he leaped from the driver’s side (not far enough to clear the door, apparently) to avoid South Portland, Maine, police and U.S. Marshals pursuing him concerning the robbery of a Shaw’s supermarket (April).
From the Third-World Press
Mohamed Nafiu was arrested in Lagos, Nigeria, in April and charged with robbery after he and his pet baboon intercepted a pedestrian leaving a bank and frightened him into fleeing, leaving his money behind. Police said the versatile baboon had also previously snatched victims’ valuables.
A News of the Weird Classic (January 2011)
The Key Underwood Memorial Graveyard near Cherokee, Ala., is reserved as hallowed ground for burial of genuine coon dogs, which must be judged authentic before their carcasses can be accepted, according to a December (2010) report in the Birmingham News. The Tennessee Valley Coon Hunters Association must attest to the dog's having had the ability “to tree a raccoon.” (In March 2010, a funeral for one coon dog at Key Underwood drew 200 mourners.)
© 2015 CHUCK SHEPHERD
