HIS NEXT CAREER: MAUI CHEF
The day before British army chef Liam Francis, 26, arrived at his forward operating base in Afghanistan, the Taliban shot down the helicopter ferrying in food rations, and Francis realized he had to make do with supplies on hand. In his pantry were only seasonings, plus hundreds of tins of Spam. For six weeks, until resupply, Francis prepared “sweet and sour Spam,” “Spam fritters,” “Spam carbonara,” “Spam stroganoff” and “stir-fried Spam.” He told the Daily Telegraph that he was proud of his work but admitted that “morale improved” when fresh food arrived.
HOG WILD
(1) Among the items that celebrity farmer Cathy Gieseker bought with proceeds from the $12 million Ponzi scheme she, in February, was sentenced for perpetrating (prosecutors called her the “Midwest Madoff”) was a $900 tanning bed for her “show” pigs. (2) Farmer Chang Chung-tou, of Yunlin County, Taiwan, drew praise from environmentalists in December for having “toilet”-trained almost all of his 20,000 pigs to use his 600 specially rigged plots that collect and separate urine and feces. Chang’s farm conserves water and facilitates recycling.
NATURAL SELECTION
(1) Female cane toads are choosy at mating, according to a recent article in Biology Letters. A desirable male is permitted to hop onto the female’s back and start the process, but the female is also able to inflate sacs in her body to bloat herself so large that males slide off before completing insemination. (Also, to test the strength of the male’s grip, the researchers encouraged necrophilia: The scientists doused dead female toads with pheromones to measure males’ horniness.) (2) Female short-nosed fruit bats in China’s Guangdong Province show their preference for certain males by fellating them, according to an October journal article. Researchers observed that licked males were able to copulate longer, thus improving the likelihood of insemination.
TRAY THREE IS OUT OF SPLEENS
Later this year, manufacturer Organovo, of San Diego, will begin shipping its $200,000 ink-jet-type printers that create living organs for patients needing transplants. The 3-D “bioprinter” works by spraying extracted microscopic cells on top of each other, in pass after pass. On the bioprinter’s equivalent of a sheet of paper, and under laboratory conditions, the cells fuse together and grow for weeks until an organ substantial enough for research use is created (and ultimately, substantial enough for human transplants). The bioprinter is faster than growing such organs from scratch, which scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine have been doing for several years.
STICK-DOWN
If you’re wearing a ski mask and carrying a gun and walk into a store to rob it, but there are no employees there to rob, and you abort, is that an “attempted robbery”? Sanjuan Reyes, 22, and two teenagers were arrested in Joliet, Illinois, in January and charged with attempting to rob the Supermercado Viva Mexico. Two acted as lookouts while the youngest, wearing a ski mask and wielding an air pistol, entered the store. Apparently, the only employees on duty were in the back room. The boy waited for a minute or so, then bailed out, and the three fled empty-handed. Joliet’s deputy police chief said a crime was committed.
INCOMPETENT CRIMINALS
(1) Jonathon Smith, 27, was arrested in March in Fairbanks, Alaska, shortly after his release on bail on charges that he tried to buy three trucks from local dealers using forged checks. His latest arrest came at Seekins Ford, where, according to police, he was trying to buy yet another pickup truck with a forged check. (2) Falmouth, Massachusetts, police hired John Yarrington as a confidential informant on February 16, setting him up with $100 in marked bills to make a cocaine buy from dealer Cory Noonan, which Yarrington completed. He left the scene, but less than 10 minutes later, before Noonan could be arrested, Yarrington returned and, according to police, attempted to buy more cocaine on his own.
-Chuck Shepherd, MauiTime
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