BEHOLD THE NEXT ECONOMIC BUBBLE: PAINTINGS!
The royal family of Qatar, apparently striving for art-world credibility, purchased a Paul Cezanne painting (“The Card Players”) last year for the equivalent of about $250 million, which is twice as much as the previous most-expensive painting sold for. (Qatar is vying with the United Arab Emirates to become the Middle East’s major intellectual hub.) At the same time that Qatar’s purchase was made public in February, artwork of the probable value of about $200 million became news in reports of the imminent Facebook initial public offering. Graffiti artist (“muralist”) David Choe stood to make about that amount because he took stock instead of money to paint the lewd themes on the walls of Facebook’s first offices. Even though Choe was quoted as saying, originally, that he found the whole idea of Facebook “ridiculous and pointless,” his shares today are reportedly worth up to one quarter of one percent of the company.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
Last year, the Cape Town, South Africa “gentlemen’s club” Mavericks began selling an Alibi line of fragrances designed for men who need excuses for coming home late. For example, as men come through the door, they could splash on “I Was Working Late” (to reek of coffee and cigarettes) or “My Car Broke Down” (evoking fuel, burned rubber and grease).
BIPARTISANSHIP
White supremacist Richard Treis, 38, was arrested in February in St. Louis, along with his alleged partner, black gang member Robert “Biz” Swinney, 22, and charged with running a huge methamphetamine operation. The two, who had met at a prison halfway house, had allegedly meshed their unique talents–Treis as a meth cook and Swinney as a skilled street seller who recruited people to buy restricted pseudoephedrine products from pharmacies. Said a deputy, “They put away their differences to get the job done.”
CAN’T POSSIBLY BE TRUE
“[A] growing number of scientists” are at work on biocomputer models based on movements of slime to solve complex-systems problems, according to a December report in London’s Daily Telegraph. Though slime molds are single-cell organisms lacking a “brain,” said professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of Japan’s Future University Hakodate, they somehow can “organize” themselves to create the most direct route through mazes in order to find food. Said professor Atsushi Tero, of Kyushu University, ordinary computers are “not so good” at finding such ideal routes because of the quantity of calculations required, but slime molds seem to flow “in an impromptu manner” and gradually find the best routes.
MEDICAL MARVELS
Claire Osborn, 37, of Coventry, England, was diagnosed in October with an aggressive, inoperable throat-mouth cancer and given a 50 percent chance of survival. However, less than a month later, during a severe coughing spell, she actually coughed out the entire tumor in two pieces. Subsequent tests revealed no trace of cancer in her body. (Doctors hypothesized that, fortuitously, the tumor was growing on a weak stalk that was overcome by the force of the cough.)
FINE POINTS OF THE LAW
The Houston Funding debt collection company in Houston, Texas, had fired receptionist Donnicia Venters shortly after she returned from maternity leave when she announced that she intended to breastfeed her child and needed space in the office to pump her breast milk. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Houston Funding for illegal discrimination based on “pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions,” but in February, federal judge Lynn Hughes (Mr. Lynn Hughes) rejected the EEOC’s reasoning. The law does not, he wrote, cover “lactation” discrimination.
LEADING ECONOMIC INDICATORS
In December, National Geographic lamented that the number of South Africa’s rhinoceroses killed by poaching increased by a third in 2011, to 443, as a response to the booming street price of rhino horns. MSNBC reported that the horns’ market price “soared to about $65,000 a kilogram, making (them) more expensive than gold, platinum, and in many cases, cocaine.” The reason for the price is an escalating, though science-free, belief in Asia that rhino horn powder can cure cancer.
THE WEIRDO-AMERICAN COMMUNITY
In February, a jury in Thousand Oaks, Calif., acquitted Charles Hersel, 41, of molesting children. Though Hersel admitted through his lawyer that he paid high school students to spit in his face and yell profanities at him, and had offered to pay them money to urinate and defecate on him, jurors found that he must have done those things for reasons other than “sexual gratification” and therefore, technically, did not violate the statute under which he was charged.
LEAST COMPETENT CRIMINALS
According to prosecutors in Camden, S.C., in November, Christopher Hutto, 30, needed money badly to buy crack cocaine, but the best plan he could devise was getting a friend to telephone Hutto’s mother and demand a ransom. Though Hutto, according to the phone call, supposedly had been beaten up by kidnappers and dumped in a secret location and was “near death,” the “kidnapper” asked only for $100. The un-eager mother dawdled a bit until she and the caller had negotiated the ransom down to $60. (The money drop was made, and sheriff’s deputies arrested Hutto running from the site with the booty.)
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