Volume 13, Number 22, June 1, 2008

(As regular readers know, I sometimes include some personal comments before the actual column begins. I won’t be doing that anymore [for the most part] as many of those comments have a new outlet and will now show up in a new blog I recently started. Check it out at: http://jpdave.blogspot.com/ and feel free to join the crowds and leave a comment - already one has poured in! The first couple of entries were to just get my feet wet, but recent offering seems to be more enjoyable and come close what a blog should be [and are reminiscent of the old Berman’s Bits from years ago, if you know what I mean]. Please take a look and see what’s happening.)

Greetings, and thanks for joining me for another week. Starting us off are a few news stories you may have missed. First, from Reuters, for people with money, an, uh, interesting product caught my eye. In April the Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome (which last year created a watch made from remnants of the Titanic) introduced the "Day&Night" watch, which unfortunately does not offer a reading of the hour or the minute. Though it retails for about $300,000, it tells only whether it is "day" or "night" (using a complex measurement of the Earth's gravity). CEO Yvan Arpa said studies show that two-thirds of rich people "don't (use) their watch to tell what time it is" anyway. Anyone can buy a watch that tells time, he told a Reuters reporter, but only a "truly discerning customer" can buy one that doesn't. Gee, maybe I can make my fortune by selling a car that doesn’t go or radio that doesn’t play….

Next, for unattractive people with money. A plastic surgeon has written a controversial children's book explaining nose jobs, tummy tucks and breast implants. Dr Michael Salzhauer, from Miami, wrote My Beautiful Mommy book, which comes complete with cartoon-style illustrations. He says it's to help four to seven-year-olds prepare for their parents' plastic surgery so they aren't shocked by the results. But the book, which tells the story of a little girl whose mother gets a tummy tuck, breast implants and nose job, has been criticized in the US. It follows the mom through first consultation until after her surgery as she explains to her children what is going to happen. At one point she explains to her daughter, "You see, as I got older, my body stretched and I couldn't fit into my clothes anymore. Dr. Michael is going to help fix that and make me feel better." When it comes to her nose job, the mom warns that she will look different after the bandages come off. The girl asks: "Why are you going to look different?" Mom responds: "Not just different, my dear - prettier!" I mean, are people really that shallow? You bet your sweet bippy they are!

Finally, some plain unattractive people: Police in a Colorado town are searching for two robbers whose masks showed plenty of fashion sense but little modesty: they wore women's thong underwear on their heads. A surveillance video released by police in Arvada, Colo., shows two unarmed men inside the convenience store who allegedly stole an undisclosed amount of cash and cigarettes in the robbery. One man wore a green thong and the other wore blue. Each thong barely covered the man's nose, mouth and chin and left the rest of his face exposed. One also wore a pink backpack in which he stuffed the stolen items. The suspects also wore T-shirts and pants and were described as in their 20s. One had a left arm tattoo. With that description, they should be easy to find… unless they remove their masks.

In something that sounds like it could be the basis for a horror novel, a homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing. Police found the 58-year-old woman hidden in the top compartment of the man's closet and arrested her for trespassing. The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months. One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed. "We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," Itakura said. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side." The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked. She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

A few holidays in June worthy on note: (1) June 1st is Dare Day – okay, ladies, I dare you to, uh, never mind – I am still officially a teacher for another couple of weeks, so…. (2) June 3rd is Repeat Day – got that? (3) June 3rd is Repeat Day – got that? (I am celebrating early). (4) June 5th is the Festival of Popular Delusions Day (yes, Bush is one of our best presidents). (5) We have a twofer on June 6th - Teacher's Day and National Applesauce Cake Day; I am not sure which I am more excited about!

Oops! From Canada’s CBC News, Quebec (presented pretty much as presented) - police were looking for a convicted murderer who escaped from the province's main psychiatric hospital, the Philippe Pinel Institute in Montreal. Krysztof Masiak, 48, was found guilty but not criminally responsible for killing his nine-year-old daughter, Natalie, in 2001. She was found hacked to death in Masiak's apartment, where she had gone after a court granted him the right to see his daughter. Her mother had full custody of the child. Masiak was diagnosed as a paranoid-schizophrenic and admitted to the Pinel Institute in 2002. He was out on day pass but did not return to the hospital at the end of the day. The institute's director, Dr. Jocelyn Aubut, defended the decision to allow Masiak to leave. He told CBC News that patients go through a rigorous evaluation before they leave the premises: "Everyone is assessed by a multidisciplinary team," Aubut said, "We have a psychiatrist, psychologist, a criminologist (gotta love the experts). There are some special objectives tests which are passed. "Every patient has to go before a tribunal before we give them day passes." Police say Masiak has dirty blond hair in a brush cut, and was last seen wearing green military pants, a blue sweater and black boots. He was carrying a backpack. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call the Sûreté du Québec.

Finally, I found the solution to helping students do better in school and especially on standardized testing. From Reuters: every student's dream - turning over an exam paper and finding the answers on the back, and that was exactly what happened to 12,000 lucky British teenagers when they took their GCSE music exam last week. The OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA) examination board admitted that, because of a "printing error," papers sent to schools had answers to questions on the back page. "All exam papers have a copyright statement dealing with source material on the back page," an OCR spokeswoman said. "This one in particular had more detail than is usual in a music paper." The exam board said only 5 per cent of the overall marks on the paper were possibly affected and students would not have to do a re-take as most pupils seemed to have been unaware of their good fortune. (Hey, it would work, wouldn’t it? That way the kids who hate to study still won’t have to.)

Later.