Wednesday Weirdness

A bunch of stuff that defies categorization:

Parental guidance

Andy Scharlott sent this one along from The Smoking Gun, calling attention to the age of the child and his mother:

A South Carolina boy, 12, was arrested Sunday morning after his mother called police to report that he had unwrapped a Christmas present without her permission. According to a Rock Hill Police Department report [a copy of which you'll find if you click the link above], the child opened a Nintendo Game Boy, though he had been directed not to by family members. When the boy’s mother learned that the $85 gift had been opened, she called cops, who charged the juvenile with petty larceny. In an interview with The Herald newspaper, the boy’s mother, a 27-year-old single parent, described her son as a disruptive child, noting that she hoped his arrest would serve as a corrective to disorderly behavior at school and home.

I guess she’s the last parent in America who hasn’t heard of Ritalin … for herself, if not for her son.

Another contender for worst parent of the year:

For nearly 20 years — ever since Pete Costello was 8 — his mother has collected disability benefits on his behalf. In meetings with Social Security officials and psychologists, he appeared mentally retarded and unable to communicate. His mother insisted he couldn’t read or write, shower, take care of himself or drive a car.

But now prosecutors said it was all a huge fraud, and they have video of Costello contesting a traffic ticket to prove it. “He’s like any other person trying to get out of a traffic ticket,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Norman Barbosa said Tuesday. …

The indictment accuses Costello of faking — or at least exaggerating — retardation since August 1997, because that is what prosecutors are confident they can prove, Barbosa said. But the pair first received benefits 10 years before that. The benefits cited in the indictment totaled $111,000.

You know, I have to think that a guy who spends 20 years pretending to be mentally challenged, and then drops his act to contest a traffic ticket while being videotaped, can’t be all that bright. At the very least, give him the benefit of the doubt and declare him “certifiably stupid.” If that’s not an official diagnosis in the DSM IV, it ought to be.

(Thanks to Rannoch Donald for the heads-up.)

You know what they say about idle hands …

My wife likes to build my self-esteem by sending me stories like this one, about husbands who’re demonstrably worse than me:

A man who pleaded guilty to molesting two girls told a judge he did it because of his wife’s excessive bingo playing. “My wife was never home,” Floyd Kinney Jr. said during his plea hearing Friday.

Kinney’s explanation did not sit well with Northampton County Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden. “Some people, when their wives are not home, decide to do other things, like clean their living rooms,” McFadden said. “Your behavior is beyond the pale.”

Spamalotmore

It’s not your imagination — there really is twice as much spam as there was a year ago:

Worldwide spam volumes have doubled from last year, according to Ironport, a spam filtering firm, and unsolicited junk mail now accounts for more than 9 of every 10 e-mail messages sent over the Internet.

Much of that flood is made up of a nettlesome new breed of junk e-mail called image spam, in which the words of the advertisement are part of a picture, often fooling traditional spam detectors that look for telltale phrases. Image spam increased fourfold from last year and now represents 25 to 45 percent of all junk e-mail, depending on the day, Ironport says.

I like Kevin Drum’s comment:

The internet is arguably the apex of human technological development, the most complex and paradigm-changing invention so far in the history of homo sapiens. And what do we mostly use it for? Porn, Justin Timberlake downloads, and penny stock scams. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?

In totally unrelated financial news, the rich are getting richer:

Two percent of adults have more than half of the world’s wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.

While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.

“Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth,” the survey showed. …

“We’ve estimated that the richest 2 percent of adults own more than half of global wealth, while the bottom half own 1 percent,” said institute director Anthony Shorrocks.

He likened the situation to that where, in a group of 10 people, one person has $99, while the remaining nine share $1.

The cutoff for inclusion in the top 1 percent: net assets of at least $1 million, as of 2000. (I assume it’s higher now, but the people who had a million six years ago probably have added whatever wealth it takes to stay in the top percentile.) But this should make you feel better: If you have assets of just $2,200, you’re in the top 50 percent of the wealth distribution.

(Thanks again to Andy Scharlott for this one.)

Smells like terrorism

On the bright side, at least she didn’t ask anyone to pull her finger:

Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.

American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority. …

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.

The flight took off again, but the woman was not allowed back on the plane. “American has banned her for a long time,” Lowrance said.

(Thanks again to Rannoch, who also gets the hat tip for the next one.)

Beyond Gruntgate

Yes, there’s another health-club controversy, and this time it has nothing to do with grunting:

Fitness USA, a gym chain, is investigating an alleged civil rights violation involving a local Muslim woman who says her afternoon prayer was interrupted by a fellow patron, and that her complaint to management about the situation was rejected.

“The manager told me, ‘You have to respect her (the patron), but she does not have to respect your God,’” said Wardeh Sultan of Dearborn. “I’ve had my membership for seven or eight years, and I’ve never had a problem with praying there.

“I told that manager, ‘I can’t believe you said that’” Sultan said. “Honestly, I feel humiliated and I feel ashamed, right now, to go back to Fitness USA.”

I can’t understand or justify the motives of whoever interrupted her prayers, but still … have you ever seen anyone praying in a gym? I’ve belonged to health clubs almost continuously since 1980, and that’s a new one on me.

Speaking of Gruntgate: My friend Nick Bromberg quoted me in this story for the Columbia Missourian.

Tags: Tags: society