USELESS FACT
OF THE WEEK
Primitive brain
UNIVERSITY Of Florida Professor Thomas DeMarse revealed in December that he has constructed a primitive 'brain' ('live computation device') out of 25,000 rat neurons and has taught it to manoeuvre an F-22 fighter jet simulation in a straight trajectory.
The brain had to be "taught," he said, because at first, the plane kept crashing. DeMarse said an organic brain is potentially much more flexible than even the highest-tech computer. The National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health are funding his work, as models for controlling otherwise-risky unmanned aircraft and for developing epilepsy-fighting drugs.
HMMM!
Things people believe
Using parts she bought from the estate of a laser-tech engineer, Julie 'Jitterbug' Pearce, 23, built a UFO-attracting device for the roof of her home in Duluth, Minn., and told the Duluth News Tribune in August that her machine's triangularly patterned strobe light design, looped radio transmissions, and laser light refracted through a quartz crystal may help signal aliens in the area.
WEIRD NEWS
People with issues
Mount Lee Lacy, 21, was arrested for animal cruelty after his girlfriend's mother sent police to his apartment in Gainesville, Florida.
Lacy's aggressive mastiff kept the officers at bay momentarily, but once inside, police noticed another dog, a Jack Russell terrier, that had a bloody paw, and eventually Lacy cheerfully told them that he routinely bit the dog.
According to a police sergeant: "(Lacy) said that biting the dog was good punishment and that's how you train them, that dogs bite (and) so that's what they understand."
Odd-Elvis
MIAMI, (Reuters):
Wade Jones of North Carolina says he snared a plastic cup from which Elvis Presley drank at a concert in 1977 and kept the cup and the water for 27 years before selling the remaining few tablespoons of water on eBay.
The winning bid for the water was US$455. He says he won't sell the cup.
A 40-year-old resident of Belmont, North Carolina, Jones said he was 13 when he attended a Presley concert at the Charlotte Coliseum in February, 1977, six months before the death of the rock 'n' roll icon.
After the concert, Jones went to the stage looking for a souvenir. A policeman gave him the plastic foam cup, from which he had seen Elvis drinking earlier, he said.
Jones said he kept the cup and water in his freezer until 1985, when he transferred the water to a vial and sealed it. Over the years, he said, he acquired a photograph of Elvis holding the cup at that concert as authentication for his claim.
"I promise this thing is 100 per cent legitimate," Jones said.
It was the US$28,000 eBay sale of a 10-year-old grilled cheese sandwich in which some people saw the image of the Virgin Mary that persuaded him to auction off his Elvis water.
"I've been selling on eBay since 2000. People said you ought to sell that Elvis cup," Jones said. "When I heard the recent news ... about the grilled cheese sandwich, I kind of thought about it.
"I didn't get US$28,000, it's true," he said of the winning bid on the three-to-four tablespoons of water. "But I'm happy."
Jones said he got a lot of emails asking how much he wanted for the cup. He's not going to sell, but is offering to allow the highest bidder to 'exhibit' it for a short time. Minimum bid is $300.
"It's something I've had since I was 13 and I'm just not going to get rid of it," he said.
Latest religious messages
In November, a Hindu seer in India's Orissa state drew large crowds, inspired by his calmness in the face of his announced, spiritually induced death, which was to come before noon on November 17.
At noon, however, he was still alive, and, according to Asian Age newspaper, the crowd of 15,000 suddenly turned ugly, berating him for not dying, and police had to intervene.
The man, who is chief cleric of Srignuru Ashram, told reporters, "I wanted to leave my mortal body, but I could not. Please forgive me."
Least competent criminals
Criminals who accidentally leave identification at the scene of the crime are (according to News of the Weird) "no longer weird," but it was nevertheless remarkable that on the night of November 4, in Rapid City, S.D., two burglary suspects, in separate incidents, left ID behind.
Both of them, Daniel P. Ader, 25, and Brian W. Crawford, 26, had apparently removed their pants, for different reasons, leaving their wallets. (Evidence suggested that the reason Crawford had removed his pants, after breaking into a law office, was to photocopy his genitals on the office copy machine).
Converting the lions
In November, a 46-year-old man climbed into an enclosed area at the Taipei (Taiwan) Zoo, apparently to attempt to convert a pride of lions to Christianity by informing them that Jesus is their saviour.
According to witnesses, the lion king sauntered over and briefly sank his teeth into the man's leg, but then, according to one account, 'got bored' and returned to his previous state of lounging, as zoo personnel hustled the intruder away.
Least competent people
A 39-year-old man in Chillicothe, Ohio, was hospitalised in December after an unsuccessful suicide attempt that accidentally blew his own house to pieces and did heavy damage to neighbouring homes.
The man had turned on the natural gas to kill himself, but then realised that other houses might be in danger, and just as he dashed to the basement to turn off the electricity, the house exploded (probably from an electrical spark) and was levelled.
A month before, the man had tried to kill himself with automobile exhaust and a garden hose, but his car ran out of gas before he could die, and he then hooked up a propane tank for the same purpose, but once again, he outlived his fuel supply.
Universal Press Syndicate
