Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

A bovine idyll.

It was the 229th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.¹ The U.S. Capitol was evacuated for a few minutes,² China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation was planning to buy Huffy Bikes,³ Senator Gaylord Nelson died,⁴ NASA smashed a coffee-table-sized device traveling at 23,000 miles per hour into the Tempel 1 comet,⁵ and Toyota announced that it would open a new $800 million plant in Ontario. The company turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies in the United States because, when compared to Canadians, U.S. workers are too hard to train, often illiterate, and expensive to insure.⁶ A Japanese man recited 83,431 digits of pi,⁷ and the state of Georgia legalized fishing with only your hands.⁸ The owner of the New England Patriots football team took off his 14-karat-gold Super Bowl ring to show it to Vladimir Putin; Putin put the ring in his pocket and kept it.⁹ A member of Britain's parliament identified himself as a Jedi,¹⁰ and a trader for Taiwan's Fubon Securities accidentally purchased $223 million worth of the wrong stocks.¹¹ A woman in Florida won the right to bare her breasts in public, ¹² genetic engineers were growing a SARS vaccine in tomatoes,¹³ and a suicide melon truck exploded in Mosul, killing six people and damaging many melons.¹⁴ In New Zealand a baby boy undergoing penis-enlargement treatment was accidentally given ten times the recommended dose of testosterone by his nurse, causing the boy to become angry and irritable and to develop pubic hair. A doctor warned that the baby might also suffer from painful erections, but that problem had yet to arise.¹⁵

President George W. Bush gave a nationally televised speech about the war in Iraq to an audience of soldiers. Bush, who served in the Air National Guard, said there was “no higher calling” than military service and mentioned the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks five times. After the speech, there was some question as to whether the soldiers had clapped enough.¹⁶ The U.S. Army, having increased the maximum enlistment age from thirty-four to thirty-nine and the maximum age for officer candidate school from twenty-nine to forty-two, having offered $20,000 more for college per soldier, and having lowered its recruitment goal for this June by more than one thousand as compared to the previous year, announced that it had exceeded its June recruitment goal by 507 soldiers.^{17 18 19} A group of U.S. senators visited Guantánamo Bay and said that prisoners there were being treated humanely. Prisoners “even have air-conditioning,” said Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, “and semi-private showers.”²⁰ Scientists in Pittsburgh killed a dog, then resurrected it hours later with fresh blood,²¹ and Sandra Day O'Connor announced that she would retire from the Supreme Court.²² Conservative groups immediately began fighting to keep Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from being nominated to replace her because he is not conservative enough.²³ Sixteen people died when a U.S. Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan,²⁴ and a fourth American soldier in Iraq converted to Islam.²⁵ It was uncertain whether Iran's new president had been involved in taking fifty-two Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979 or not.²⁶ A cleric in Lebanon issued a fatwa banning the shooting of guns into the air,²⁷ China decided to outlaw sexual harassment,²⁸ and a South Korean pastor announced that he had raised enough money to send 1.2 million rabbits to North Korea.²⁹ In Kota Belud, Malaysia, a Kadazandusun Chief Bobolian urged people to stop dressing animals in costumes because doing so offends the spirits and could turn a longhouse to stone.³⁰ A farmer in Nicktown, Pennsylvania, was rendered immobile when he fell through a barn floor and broke his thigh bone. The loud noise of his fall scared his cows, who trampled him to death.³¹ A sixty-million-year-old venomous mouse fossil was discovered by a Canadian,³² fifty new species of snail were discovered in Sri Lanka,³³ and a Zamboni driver in Morristown, New Jersey, was charged with drunk Zamboni driving.³⁴ In Indonesia, the Islamic Defenders Front unsuccessfully attempted to stop a transvestite beauty show.³⁵ A woman in Hoogeveen, the Netherlands, turned one hundred and fifteen,³⁶ a man in New Hampshire was arrested for hiding inside an outhouse tank,³⁷ and a kangaroo was loose in Indiana.³⁸

The estimated number of hedgehogs in Britain was found to have dropped 20 percent since 2001, probably because tidy gardens alienate hedgehogs.³⁹ It was discovered that killer jellyfish will swim away from the color red⁴⁰ and that baby dolphins do not sleep.⁴¹ Two Brooklyn, New York, teenagers were arrested for killing a fifteen-year-old boy for his iPod.⁴² France announced that it would build a nuclear fusion reactor,⁴³ and Canada's parliament voted to allow gay marriages.⁴⁴ Iran sentenced a man to have his eyes surgically removed,⁴⁵ and in Muncie, Indiana, a paraplegic man was on his way to Mount Zion Baptist Church when his motorized wheelchair became stuck on some train tracks. He was thrown ten yards and killed by a thirty-eight-car freight train.⁴⁶ Lightning struck a sleeping child's mattress in Kansas,⁴⁷ sparked a wildfire in Alaska's interior,⁴⁸ shocked a boy in New Hampshire through his video-game controller,⁴⁹ killed both a golfer and a prisoner in Ohio,⁵⁰ and struck the offices of the National Weather Service in Iowa.⁵¹ The Association of British Insurers estimated that global warming will result in $27 billion worth of storm damage annually by 2080.⁵² Scientists in India warned that the Himalayan glacier that feeds the Ganges River would probably melt before the end of this century,⁵³ and in Tobe, Japan, a panther stood on its hind legs and clasped its paws together in the posture of prayer.⁵⁴