Crazy Stuff in the News

Here are a few items that have been in the news lately that are interesting, or strange, or just plain crazy….

A popular consumer item in North Korea is the refrigerator, made in China. Refrigerators are made available as a reward to stellar performers among civil servants and other elites. The appliances, however, cannot reliably store food because the country's electric grid is so frequently offline and are mostly just status symbols. One item often gets displayed in the refrigerator: books.

Rodger Kelly was arrested in St. George, Utah, in June for rape of a female neighbor He told police that he committed the act to "save" the woman. He claimed that he had discovered her "cold" and unconscious and he had violated her body only "to try and get her temperature up". (I wonder of Emergency Rooms have thought of this proceedure?)

A low-price air carrier, GoAir, in India, announced that in the future it would hire only females for the cabin crew -- because they weigh less than men and expects eventually to save the equivalent of $4 million annually in fuel based on average weights. (I guess this was easier than simply enforcing weight restrictions....)

Sometimes our justice system doesn’t seem quite as fair as we might think:

 

In May, a jury in Tampa decided that Ralph Wald, 70, was not guilty of murdering a 32-year-old man he had shot in the back three times. He said he had caught the man having sex with his wife (successfully claiming that he thought the man was a dangerous intruder in his home). However, Marissa Alexander, 34, of Jacksonville, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison for "aggravated assault" for merely firing a warning shot during an altercation with her estranged husband. The man, Rico Gray, is a serial domestic abuser and admitted that he was threatening Alexander that night and that she never actually pointed her gun directly at him. However, the judge denied Alexander use of the "stand your ground" defense because she had declined to simply walk away from Gray.

Is your head starting to hurt? Okay, I’ll stop for now – but there is more, much more. We humans are a crazy lot…. 

 

Live Long and Prosper….