NEWSQUIRKS
Curses, foiled again
When Lewis and Clark County Sheriff Leo Dutton received a text message from a Helena, Mont., teenager asking to buy marijuana, Dutton realized the boy had misdialed his drug dealer’s number. He directed the texter to meet a detective posing as the dealer. When the texter arrived with a friend, the detective identified himself. One of the boys fainted. No citations were issued, but Dutton said they faced worse punishment from their parents. (Helena Independent Record)
Revolting grammar
A ceremonial banner hung in China’s Forbidden City intended to congratulate local police for catching a suspect in the theft of rare handicrafts. Instead, it appears to be an invitation to a revolution. Actually it’s just a typo, a common occurrence in Mandarin Chinese, which is rife with homonyms. The slogan read, “To shake the great strength and prosperity of the motherland, and to safeguard the stability of the capital,” but the word for shake, “han,” is pronounced the same as the intended word: guard. When pictures of the subversive-reading banner were posted on the Internet, many Chinese reacted not by demanding freedom but by mocking the literacy level of the person who designed the banner. (The New York Times)
Poetry Ph.D.s cheap
Ninety-three of 162 U.S. public research universities have adopted a “differential tuition” scale that charges students in potentially high-earning fields more than those with less earning potential. Business and engineering students typically pay more than English majors, for instance. Before 1988, only five institutions used the sliding scale, according to Glen Nelson, who researched the issue while at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In the past three years, Nelson said, 18 institutions have adopted the practice, with business students paying 14 percent more tuition and engineering students paying 15 percent more. (Omaha World-Herald)
Define “certain goods”
FBI Special Agent Frederick C. Kingston decided to take a joy ride in a 1995 Ferrari F50, which was being stored in Lexington, Ky., as evidence in a car-theft case. Within seconds of leaving the warehouse, Kingston lost control of the high-performance vehicle, which “fishtailed and slid sideways” and then crashed into a curb, bushes and a small tree, according to his passenger, Assistant U.S. Attorney J. Hamilton Thompson. Declaring the rare automobile a total loss, Motors Insurance Co. sued the government for the $750,000 it had paid the stolen car’s owner five years before the FBI recovered it. The Justice Department refuses to pay the Michigan company, insisting it is immune to tort claims when “certain goods” are in the hands of law enforcement. (Detroit News)
Compiled from the nation’s press by Roland Sweet. Authentication on demand.
