Sweeping generalizations are bad. Except when they’re true. And there’s nothing truer than this week’s having been the best week for fashion, ever. Being as au courant as I am in matters of high fashion takes dedication and time. If you’re jealous, then maybe you shouldn’t have spent most of your week playing Mario Kart. So, for your edification, the newest trends in fashion this week: gowns made of condoms, joint human-dog fashion shows in Japan, and designer space suits. Just remember that you heard it here first.
Unwrap a surprise: Woman or 13-year-old boy?
Cautionary note: The amount of expletives necessary to get across just how screwed up this story is would violate several indecency laws, but NBN just isn’t in a position to fight epic First Amendment battles. So please insert your own as you see fit.
A 33-year-old Czech woman has been linked with a cult — led by her father — which preaches something about The Grail as a source of divine something-or-other (I’ve already got one). But that’s just background.
The craziness comes in because she has pretended to be a 12-year-old girl and a 13-year old boy, has been sought by police in connection with a child-abuse case, and has claimed that she herself was abused.
The story began when Barbora Skrlova was living as the 12-year-old stepdaughter, under the name “Anicka,” of a woman in the Czech Republic. After the woman’s eight-year-old son ended up naked and bound up in a closet, the woman was arrested and “Anicka” was removed and placed in a children’s home. From there, “Anicka” ran away to Denmark, then Norway, but the police have been searching for her – not necessarily as a suspect, but as a possible victim.
In Norway, a woman – presumably Skrlova – signed up as 13-year-old “Adam” for school. “We did react to Adam’s behavior. But it’s not easy to know. Children at that age can be so different,” said the school’s principal.
But “Adam” too had the traveling bug and ran away to a children’s home where he claimed he had been abused.
Last week, police finally caught up with Skrlova and she was extradited from Norway. Czech police now have her in custody and psychiatrists are evaluating her.
Fat for Bombs
Hey, fatty, did you know that your eating habits could be sponsoring abortions, pro-life activists, or any number of charities or causes you abhor? Well, they might if these lawyer-types have a say about it.
StikK is a new online company that takes your money when you fail at life. It was founded by a Yale law professor, a Yale assistant professor in economics, and a Yale MBA student.
Basically, you sign a contract with them promising to achieve a goal — say, to lose weight or to quit smoking — and if you don’t succeed by a set date, you owe them either your integrity or, for the more adventurous, a bunch of money you put up ahead of time.
You file weekly reports on your progress — and to those struggling with truthfulness, don’t even think about cheating because you also designate a “referee” to keep you honest.
If at the end you’re still a spectacular disappointment to mankind, the people at StikK take your money and hand it to someone you’d rather not have it. When you make the contract, you pick either an “anti-charity” (a cause you hate), decide to have your money pooled and sent to a charity but you’re not told which, or you can designate a “friend or foe.” The reasoning behind this disincentive is that you might still indulge if you thought the extra calories or the just-one-more cigarette were helping the homeless.
A University of Chicago law professor lives up to that school’s reputation as fun-haters by forecasting “a future emporium of self-control entrepreneurs, with Sudan, North Korea, the tobacco industry, baby seal hunters, and pedophiles all vying for the business of the overweight, the underdeveloped, and other sufferers from weakness of will.”
Breaking news: School administrators love you
When you’re pulling that baseball cap over your greasy hair en route to discussion section during your Friday morning routine, you should feel lucky that Northwestern actually offers Friday morning classes.
Students at other institutions don’t have the same privilege. Apparently, at plenty of other schools, including University of Illinois and New York University — and this is uncorroborated hearsay solicited from friends because really, what kind of school is going to brag in its brochure about its lack of classes — Friday classes are only for those idiotic enough not to avoid them (and engineers, who may be the same group anyway).
And what comes before every Friday morning? Repeat after me, class: Thirsty Thursday. Ah yes, the awfully cute, alliterative euphemism for “lots of alcohol.” Indubitably.
The thoughtful administrators at the University of Iowa have a deliciously tricky “incentive” plan to get students to stop binge drinking on Thursday nights. The idea — borrowed from a University of Missouri study which correlated students’ drinking habits to their weekly class schedule — is to offer cash to departments when they offer more classes on Friday mornings.
That way, your “academic class schedule starts to interfere with that drinking behavior.” And here I was, this whole time thinking that it’s classes that come first!
Next up: A study to tell us that the sky is up and the ground is down.