BLURRING OUT TEMPTATION

Æ The Associated Press, reporting in August from Jerusalem, noted that the ultra-Orthodox community’s “modesty patrols” were selling eyeglasses with “special blur-inducing stickers” that fuzz up distant images so that offended men will not inadvertently spot immodestly dressed women. (The stickers apparently simulate nearsightedness, in that vision is clear in the near-field.) The “modesty patrols” have long tried to shame women dressed in anything other than closed-neck, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts, but may be losing that fight. A columnist for the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz praised the eyeglasses for shifting the responsibility to men for their priggishness.

RECURRING THEMES

Æ A June Wall Street Journal story featured a hardy, fun-loving group of New Yorkers (the “Innard Circle”) who dine monthly at out-of-the-way ethnic restaurants in order to sample such dishes as camel’s eyeball (“way different from a goat’s eyeball,” said one member) and “crispy colorectal,” and had recently learned, from a non-English-speaking waitress, that they had just consumed bull’s diaphragm. Another member admitted “an element of showing off” to the exercise, and acknowledged that not all rookie members return for a second meal.

Æ The way it usually happens is Mom and Dad start a road trip with their children, but after a rest stop, they fail to notice that one of the kids is not on board, and they may be well down the road before they turn around. However, in June, the family member left behind at a Memphis, Tenn., rest stop was Dad, and for 100 miles, no one grasped that he was missing. The family was traveling in a van, and everyone presumed Dad was in the back. He was still at the gas station, calling his own phone (which was in the back of the van). Dad finally reached Mom in the van by posting to Facebook.

Æ Stores and transportation carriers are, after all these years, still unsure about which “assistance animals” they must allow without violating the federal Americans With Disabilities Act. Under the U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest draft guidelines for airlines, released in February, miniature horses and pot-bellied pigs are allowed on board under certain conditions, but not ferrets, rodents, spiders, snakes or other reptiles. Apparently there is a North American Potbellied Pig Association, whose vice president pointed out to CNSNews.com that swine can be trained to open and close doors and to use a litter box.

A FORTUITOUS INJURY

Æ Fortunately, 9-year-old Jacob Holdaway got hit in the head so hard during a game of kickball in Fairland, Ind., in July that he started vomiting and having severe headaches. Because his parents took him to a hospital for that head smack, doctors found a golfball-sized tumor that might not have been discovered until after it had become dangerously large. Doctors were able to remove most of it and suspect it was benign.

ABSENT-MINDED MUSICIAN

Æ The most recent musician to carry a rare, expensive instrument on public transportation but then forget to take it with him was the person who in July left a borrowed Stradivarius violin on a train when he got off in Bern, Switzerland. Initially, the musician panicked, but the violin was eventually turned in by a good Samaritan. (The last News of the Weird report of such a Stradivarius was the one accidentally left in a New York City taxicab in 2008. That instrument, reported as worth $4 million, was also returned.)

LONG-RANGE KISSING

Æ Several inventors have attempted over the years to transport bodily sensations over the Internet so that couples separated by distance can simulate personal affections to each other. Now comes Hooman Samani of the Singapore company Lovotics, introducing his “Kissenger” at a design conference in Newcastle, England, in June. Kissenger is a large, soft ball with human-like lips and many pressure points, connected in tandem by the Internet, so that the unique lip movements by one lover are received precisely by the other as if their mouths were actually working the kiss.

PAMPERED COWS

Æ In July, London’s Daily Telegraph, in a dispatch from Paris, touted Jean-Charles Tastavy’s experiment feeding three cows with a fine wine for four months (in a mixture, along with their usual barley and hay). (They “loved” it and consumed it “with relish,” said the farm’s owner.) The resulting meat, labeled “Vinbovin,” is now a delicacy in Paris restaurants (despite steeper prices to reflect the increased feeding costs for the cows).

UPDATES

Æ William “The Hackney Mole Man” Lyttle (first mentioned in News of the Weird in 2001) died in 2010 after spending most of his last 40 years compulsively digging elaborate tunnels underneath his home in east London. By the time authorities could stop him, the hollow shafts were endangering the street and adjacent homes. He was ordered to pay the equivalent of $560,000 so that the holes could be filled.