Category: Bizarre

Bizarre, Media, Society

Seattle To Pay $10,000.00 For Artist To Write Poems, Etc. Describing Bridge

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

It is often that people are concerned with the money diverted to art attached to public works  projects sponsored by government. The basis providing art from legislation or policies can mandate one percent of project costs be dedicated to art deemed reflective of various ideals approved by officials.

But one particular project regarding a bridge in the Fremont Neighborhood of Seattle is puzzling as to any long term benefit to be experienced, or of any tangible substance.

The City of Seattle budged ten thousand dollars and placed a call for bids for an artist to write a work of poetry, essay, or oral history of a drawbridge.

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Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, Politics, Society

Virginia Senate Kills Measure To Repeal Criminalization of Adultery

virginia%20is%20for%20loversA legislative proposal by Sen. Scott Surovell (D–Fairfax) would have seemed a no brainer in any legislative body. Surovell was seeking to decriminalize adultery in Virginia. As I have previously discussed (here and here), Virginia has an anachronistic and facially unconstitutional law that makes adultery a crime. Yet, the Virginia Senate killed the bill this month and reaffirmed its intention to criminalize what the majority deems immoral choices by consenting adults. Adultery will remain a Class 4 misdemeanor despite 13 other states that have repealed similar laws in recent years.

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Bizarre, Congress, Lawyering, Media, Politics

“Think Hard and Fast About Your Priorities”: Federal Judge Chastises Rep. Chaka Fattah For Not Paying His Criminal Defense Lawyers

Chaka_Fattah_official_headshotPennsylvania Democratic Rep. Chaka Fattah faced a rare tongue lashing from U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III over the failure to pay his defense counsel in his corruption and racketeering trial. Judge Bartle snapped at Rep. Fattah to get “your priorities” straight.

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Bizarre, Criminal law

Boston Police Sergeant Adopts Curious Defense To Allegedly Sending Explicit Picture of Himself To Teenage Girl

056c026d-1c66-4d42-9fae-a8e96df290c5-1020x925Boston Police Sergeant Edwin Guzman’s lawyer has a curious defense to Guzman sending a photo of his penis to the sixteen-year-old daughter of a friend: “You can’t tell me someone her age has never seen a picture of a penis on the Internet.” Hmmm, even if it were true, it is hard to see that particular approach resonating with a judge or jury.

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Bizarre, International, Media, Politics, Society

Roman Museum Covers Up Nude Works To Avoid Insulting Iranian President

220px-Capitoline_Venus_Musei_Capitolini_MC0409220px-Hassan_RouhaniThere was a very disturbing scene at Rome’s famous Capitoline Museum recently during a joint press conference between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Italian Premeir Matteo Renzi. The museum had nude sculptures covered up so not to insult the Islamic sensibilities of Rouhani and his staff. One of the statues was the “Capitoline Venus,” a Roman copy of a legendary fourth century B.C. work by Praxiteles. Ironically, it is piece that symbolized the modesty of Venus in covering up after a bath. Not modest enough, it appears, for the Iranians.

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Bizarre, Criminal law

Top Italian Court Rules 100 Euros Is Not High Enough To Constitute A Bribe

Carabiniere_a_Bologna_(April_2006)UnknownAn Italian court this month showed just how hard it is to bribe an Italian police officer. The highest Italian court acquitted a defendant of corruption charges because it found that the man offered the police officer only 100 euros during a drunk-driving traffic stop. That, the court concluded, was not nearly enough to bribe a police officer. While the court did not share the going market rate, it appears to be over 100 euros, which most of us would not viewed as a trivial sum.

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Animals, Bizarre, Criminal law, Society

California Thieves Steal Tanks From Truck . . . Only To Learn That They Have Cornered The Market On Bull Semen

Full_Blood_Wagyu_Bull_in_ChilePolice are dealing with a somewhat unique crime in Turlock, California where thieves stolen tanks from a truck. Since they also stole gasoline from the truck, the thieves might not have been aware of what was in the tanks but had succeeded in stealing $50,000 of bull semen.

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Bizarre, Criminal law, Society

New Jersey Man Pays Homeless Man To Pour Boiling Hot Coffee Over His Head . . . Police Decline To Press Charges

Screen Shot 2016-01-25 at 8.38.18 PMThere is a truly disgraceful story out of Lakewood, New Jersey where homeless man Ronald Leggatt, 65, was offered $5 by a stranger to pour a hot cup of coffee over his own head — twice. Carlos Mejia, 22, of Jackson, posted a video of Leggatt discussing the demeaning act. Mejia witnessed the scene and at first thought the man was going to help Leggatt and was horrified as Leggatt poured the coffee over his own head. The coffee reportedly left burn marks on Leggatt’s face. Mejia confronted the man who paid for the act. Mejia said that the culprit was an Orthodox Jew, who allegedly told Mejia that nothing would happen to him because “we run the town.” (Lakewood has a large Orthodox population). The police located the sadist but decided that there was no crime to charge because the act by Leggatt was voluntary. Others in the Orthodox Jewish community were ashamed by the conduct of the culprit and came forward to help Leggatt.

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Bizarre, International, Politics, Society

Kennedy Airport Allows Another International Flight To Skip Customs

Transportation_Security_Administration_Logo.svg250px-SeaTacTerminalSecurityStories of this kind leave me baffled. With all of the money and harsh measures imposed on the public by the Transportation Security Administration, the TSA itself seems barely accountable for continual stories of bungling and gross negligence. Recently, it was revealed that an international flight was allowed to simply go directly from the aircraft to the streets without passing through customs. People were horrified. Now it has happened again with American Airlines Flight 1223 from Cancun, Mexico and one passenger even alerted the TSA at the time and was told to just leave with the rest of the passengers from Mexico. The only reassuring thought is that any drug mule or terrorist would have assumed that this was a trick since no one is this dumb.

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Bizarre, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Society

Bill Gates Sells Licensing Rights To Tiananmen Square Photos (Including the Iconic “Tank Man”) To The Chinese

Bill_Gates_June_2015130px-Mao_Zedong_portraitI have long admired Bill Gates for his incredible philanthropy around the world. It is for that reason that I was astonished by the news that Gates had sold the rights to a huge number of photos to the Visual China Group. The sale will now placed images from Tiananmen Square, including the iconic Tank Man photo, in the hands of the Chinese who hope to bury them and any memory of the uprising. The sale of Gates’ Corbis likely made a tidy profit but it is a political bonanza for the censors of the Chinese government.

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Academia, Bizarre, Politics, Society

Oberlin President Rejects List of Rambling Demands From Black Students

krislov-marvinFormal_Seal_of_Oberlin_College,_Oberlin,_OH,_USA.svgWe have been reporting on the protests occurring on college campuses and the troubling demands sometimes made by the “Black Lives Matter” movement in terms of academic components and programs, including college newspapers. Oberlin College President Marvin Krislov finally had enough after receiving a list of rambling demands from black students — demands declared to be nonnegotiable for the Administration. Krislov correctly refused to concede core control over the academic mission and yield to such demands which included things like the firing of certain employees and enrolling recently released prisoners.

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Bizarre, Criminal law, International

Swedish Police Search For Pickpocket Who Assaulted and Spat On Mother Who Tried To Help Elderly Victim

sweden tube attackEven in our crime infested world, there is occasionally a crime that takes your breath away. In Sweden, this guy took that distinction when he combined the pickpocketing of an elderly woman and an assault on another woman with children who tried to help her. He punched the mother in front of her children and spat on her.

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Bizarre, International, Politics

Mr. Putin, Please Release Hillary Clinton’s Email

By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor

An open letter to Vladimir Putin, President of Russia225px-Vladimir_Putin_official_portrait

President Putin,

As you are certainly aware,  a great controversy is roiling here in the United States where a former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, maintained, diverted, and in some cases destroyed official email correspondence associated with her duties. She  hosted these records on a personal home-brew email server maintained under her control. We are encountering difficulty obtaining these records and we ask for your assistance.

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Bizarre, Politics, Religion, Society

Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Declares Chess UnIslamic

We have previously discussed the wacky views of Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh like declaring that Twitter is “the source of all evil and devastation.” Now the grand mufti has ruled that chess is forbidden in Islam even though Arabs helped spread chess around the world after conquering Persia in the Seventh Century. Yet, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shia religious authority, has previously issued rulings forbidding chess. Likewise, after the 1979 revolution in Iran, chess was declared haram, or forbidden.
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Academia, Bizarre, Courts, Society

Poll: Ten Percent of College Graduates Believe Judge Judy Is On The Supreme Court

220px-Judge_Judy_next_to_paintingWe will occasionally have polls that leave me deeply depressed and the recent poll, conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is such a case. When college graduates were asked, ten percent said that they believe Judith Sheindlin, aka “Judge Judy,” serves on the Supreme Court. That’s right, Judge Judy.

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