Applicants to top colleges and graduateschools often take test-preparation courses from private companies. Recently,those hoping to gain admission to prestigious private high schools and gradeschools have also gone the route of corporate course prep. Now, according to aNovember New York Times report, suchcourses and private coaching are increasingly important for admission to New York City'shigh-achiever public kindergartens, even though the applicants are just 3 and 4years old. Basic coaching, which may cost more than $1,000, includes training achild to listen to an adult's questions and sit still for testing. Minimumqualifications for top-shelf kindergartens include scores at the 90th percentileon the Olsat reasoning test and the Bracken School Readiness knowledge test.
Police Report
- The Public Record: (1) From the police in Findlay, Ohio: "A womancalled the police early Saturday morning (Oct. 31) during an argument with herhusband after he claimed that the woman's daughter performed oral sex on him,and the daughter was better at it." (2) From the Steamboat Pilot (Steamboat Springs, Colo.), Nov. 4: "Policewere called to a report of a suspicious incident in the 2900 block of West AcresDrive where a woman reported that she found feces in her toilet that she didnot think she put there."
- Justifiable Felonies? (1) Five people were arrested in Los Angeles in October and charged withkidnapping and torturing two "loan modification" agents who had takenfees while promising to save their home from foreclosure but had allegedlyfailed to help. (2) Daniel Adler, 61, was arrested in October in Stony Point, N.Y.,and charged with assault. Police said Adler had been solicited by a Sears HomeImprovement telemarketer and agreed to an appointment. But when the employeearrived, Adler allegedly punched him in the face. Adler said he had scheduledthe appointment only to "advise" Sears, in person, to stop callinghim.
- Oops! In an October incident, an off-duty Jacksonville, Fla.,sheriff's deputy forgot to leave her service weapon outside when accompanyingher mother to Shands Jacksonville hospital for an MRI. The powerful magnetsucked her Glock away in a flash, trapping the deputy's hand between themachine and the gun. Repairs, including the lengthy powering-down andre-powering of the machine, and lost revenue were said to have cost thehospital $150,000.
Government In Action
Google 1, FBI 0: In September, Nebraska prison guard Michal Preclik, 32 (who had been onthe job for a year and had just been promoted), was discovered to be on the lamfrom Interpol for drug and fraud crimes in the Czech Republic. The NebraskaDepartment of Correctional Services' background check, using the FBI's National Criminal Information Center database, hadturned up nothing, but when officials subsequently typed Preclik's name intoGoogle, the Interpol wanted poster was one of the top results.
Democracy in Action
When the DRP candidate to head Mexico City's most populousborough was disqualified from the race this year, party officials hatched aplot to elevate a street peddler, "Juanito" Acosta, to run in thegeneral election, with the "understanding" that he would step asideif victorious, in favor of the original candidate, Clara Brugada. Helped by his"everyman" image (according to a NewYork Times dispatch), Acosta won the election. However, his sudden powerand celebrity apparently went to his head, and he refused to relinquish theposition. (He finally agreed, in November, but only after receiving concessionsfrom the party.)
Update
Franciscan monk Cesare Bonizzi, 63, who 15years ago turned from spiritual new age music to heavy metal (inspired, hesaid, by the groups Metallica and Megadeth) and who has spent the last severalyears as the robe-clad lead singer of his own band, Fratello Metallo, announcedhis retirement in November after realizing, he said, that the devil had temptedhim too much with celebrity and turned him away from his brothers.
Undignified Deaths
(1) William Evans, 57, on trial in St.Augustine, Fla., in August for a sex crime that occurred nearly 30 years ago(but not erased by the statute of limitations), committed suicide while awayfrom the courthouse, awaiting the jury's decision. Without knowing that, thejury came back and declared him not guilty. (2) Engineering student KenKitamura, 19, drowned in the Yodogawa River in Osaka, Japan, inAugust. He and several colleagues had constructed a prototype canoe made ofconcrete. When the canoe capsized, Kitamura, who was not wearing a life vest,was unable to make it back to shore.
A News of the Weird Classic (April 1999)
In October 1998, News of the Weird wrote aboutthe on-the-job death by snakebite of serpent-handling preacher John W. (Punkin)Brown Jr. (In a landmark book on Southern snake-handling preachers, Salvation on Sand Mountain, Brown wascalled the "mad monk," the one most "mired" in the"blood lust of the patriarchs.") Because Brown's wife had died threeyears earlier (of a snakebite during services in Kentucky), the Browns' three orphans wereobjects of a custody fight between the two sets of grandparents. In February1999, the wife's parents won primary custody, in a hearing in Newport, Tenn.,largely because Mr. Brown's parents were not able to refrain (despite a judge'sorders) from taking the grandkids to snake-handling services.
© 2009 Chuck Shepherd
