xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Scotland Yard agreed in January to pay the equivalent of about $52,000 to London police Sgt. Leslie Turner to settle Turner’s claim that the reason he failed in a 2004 assignment was that he had been “overpromoted” to the job because he is black. Turner said he had been given a job as a guard for Prince Charles, and then for Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, without adequate training and, as a result, made mistakes that caused him to be reassigned.
“The Island of Dr. Moreau” Comes to Life:
–Recently opened archives in Moscow show that in the 1920s, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered his top animal breeding scientist to create interspecies “super warriors.” Stalin’s half-men, half-apes would be “invincible,” “insensitive to pain” and “indifferent about the quality of food they eat.”
–The Associated Press reported in October that Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., in the course of video-game research, is developing a joystick-controlled headset that disorients humans and makes them move in certain ways (a benign “virtual dance experience,” according to one researcher, with potential uses such as keeping the elderly from falling).
–Researchers for Finland’s Helsinki University of Technology’s Air Guitar Project recently demonstrated software that allows a player’s finger movements along the imaginary instrument to be set to music from a library of guitar sounds. According to a November New Scientist report, the virtual guitar hero wears special gloves, allowing his gestures to be tracked by camera. Researcher Aki Kanerva expects players even to develop a distinct air guitar style.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD