Archives for May 2011

Once upon a time, DJ Chucky D. wrote “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” And while he’s written raps that have more popular appeal in our modern times, such as his famous Bah! Humbug!, none seem more salient to me. It’s not that our era is any more dangerous than any other, far from it, it’s just that the lunatics, once relegated to the fringes where it was hoped they they would forget how to procreate, now permeate our headlines. This blog is a standing testament to the idiocy of others. I would rather write about many things, the Sunday science blogs come to mind, but the vast majority of our Hippo readers are fascinated by boobs or our impending robot overlords. Mostly boobs. In fact, I could dedicate a week to the wonderful world of mammaries and receive nary a complaint. Well, maybe I’d get one from that one woman who fervently desires that I write about nothing more interesting than puppies and, preferably, only cute ones at that.

As you may have surmised, she’s not a regular here.

But, today, I thought I’d take a look at some dangerous things. Allan Dowd writes that I stand a good chance of getting laid again since I never smile.

That could be construed as dangerous to some.

Women find happy men less sexually attractive than those with expressions that show pride or hint that they have done wrong and know it, according to Canadian researchers.

The study published online Tuesday in the American Psychological Association journal Emotion showed pictures of the opposite sex to both men and women. Participants were then asked for their initial reactions on sexual attractiveness based the expressions they saw.

“Men who smile were considered fairly unattractive by women,” said Jessica Tracy, a University of British Columbia psychology professor who directed the study.

“So to the extent that men think that smiling is a good thing to do if they want to be found sexually attractive our findings suggest that’s not the case,” Tracy said.

The men’s reaction was just the opposite.

“Women who smile are absolutely very attractive. That was by far the most attractive expression women showed,” Tracy said in an interview.

The researchers admit they are not sure why men and women reacted differently to smiles. In a man, a big smile may make him appear too feminine or more desperate for sex.

The study also adds fuel to the notion that women are attracted to bad boys.

Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do …. sorry. I can make this one easy for the shrinks, guys who smile all the time are either trying to sell you something or steal something. Usually both. Even women, who are still baffled by how to use a toilet seat after millennia of practice, can figure that out.

They could have just paid me and saved a lot of time.

Nevertheless, there are some things you take for granted that they’re going to be safe. Walking down the street and not being killed at random is one of them. You would be wrong. Especially if you live in – you guessed this one already didn’t you? – Florida. Reuters reports that more people get killed while walking to their corner grocery in Florida than any other state.

And not by drive by shootings or anything obvious like that.

Several major cities in the state — Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, Miami-Fort Lauderdale — took the top spots on a list of the most dangerous metropolitan areas for pedestrians published by a U.S. transportation reform group on Tuesday.

The “Dangerous by Design” report, produced by Transportation for America, ranked cities with populations over a million people in terms of the danger to pedestrians relative to the amount of walking in a given area.

Riverside, California, Las Vegas, Memphis, Phoenix, Houston, and Dallas filled out the top ten in that order.

The author of the report emphasized the role of planning in the dangerous cities for pedestrians.

The common factor urban sprawl, low-density areas that are organized around wide, high-speed streets known as arterials.

Most of the over 47,700 pedestrian fatalities during the last decade were on these arterial roads, researcher Michelle Ernst said.

Did you notice that the list also focuses on states with much higher speed limits and crappy roads? Golly, I wonder if that’s a factor as well?

Another thing you might think is inherently safe, going to a party with your friends, also could be fraught with peril. UPI tells us the fun loving tale of a man who crashed a party and pulled a gun when he was asked to leave.

A California jury convicted a party crasher who pulled a gun only to be disarmed by a partygoer trained in mixed martial arts.

Gregory Anthony McFarland Jr., 24, was convicted May 26 of felony assault with a firearm, gun enhancements, being a felon in possession of a firearm and residential burglary, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

Police said McFarland and some friends crashed a Daly City party March 25, 2009, and refused to leave when asked. Investigators said McFarland, who was “extremely intoxicated,” brandished a .380 semiautomatic handgun and threatened to shoot the revelers.

However, another partygoer, who is a mixed martial artist, “promptly executed a flawless wrist lock, nearly breaking the suspect’s wrist,” San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said.

McFarland fled without his gun, only to be found by police vomiting in a neighbor’s yard.

He faces as much as 20 years and eight months in prison at his sentencing July 8.

“What’re you in for?”

“Murder. How bout you?”

“Getting my ass kicked in Frisco by some chi-chi personal trainer.”

“Oh, you’re going to love shower time.”

I don’t think I need to add anything more.

Yet, having been raised a Catholic, and even having gone to Catholic school, there is one group of people that I feared but, for all the right reasons, not because I thought they’d pull a 9MM Glok on me.

Nuns gone bad?

UPI has this story as well. Must be a fun day over at UPI, don’tcha think?

The FBI is hunting for two robbers who held up a bank in Palos Heights, Ill., while wearing nun masks and habits and wielding guns, officials said Monday.

The holdup occurred Sunday afternoon at a TCF bank branch, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The robbers, sporting get-ups like those in the 2010 movie “The Town,” displayed handguns when they ordered an employee to give them an undisclosed amount of money, officials said.

They fled in a light-colored sedan.

Nuns on the run? Hasn’t that been done to death?

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Today is a day of hot dogs and Bar-B-Q’s and family picnics. A day when the great unwashed can relax and watch NCIS marathons while drinking beer and waving a little flag. All of that is well and good since the closest most of us ever get to war is watching a rerun of Patton on TV or reading a Tom Clancy novel. And that is the best tribute I can think of to pay our troops. They have sacrificed themselves on foreign lands to keep our shores free from violence. That is not some opaque abstraction, it is raw truth. Men and women from all walks of life have shed their blood and given their lives so the likes of you and I can rest a little easier.

Even so there are those who, from the safety of their recliners, demand extremism in response to every perceived slight. Some of those advocate pure pacifism even if it means the loss of whatever liberties remain. To them I can only say that the idea is sound, a world without violence is a laudable goal, but its execution is flawed since we do not live in such a world. Then there are others who demand, loudly, to know why we don’t deplete our nuclear stockpile whenever we are wronged. To them I note that there is a reason, and a very good one. Many people have issued a response to that call, but the clearest is probably Robert Heinlein’s from his 1959 book, Starship Troopers.

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him…but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing…but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—’older and wiser heads,’ as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be

Today, as you may have guessed, is Memorial Day, a holiday first made official on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan. The original holiday was designed to honor the fallen, on both sides, of the Civil War. The holiday was just as divisive as the war until after World War 1 when it was rededicated to all soldiers who gave their lives in the service of their country. In 1971 Congress passed the National Holiday Act which moved the observance of Memorial Day from May 30th to the last Monday of the month of May. Whether that was a good thing or not, I cannot say. Three day weekend = Good, forgetting why we have that weekend = Bad.

Speaking of people who forget, several groups in England want World War II re-enactments to ban any Nazi uniforms. Because, well, because … who do they think was on the other side during WWII? They wrap it all up under flag of “not offending people” but it should be wrapped with the moldy fish in a newspaper and discarded in the trash. I’m not a big fan of re-enactments, but if they are going to do them, then both sides kind of need to be there for any of it to make sense.

There are millions of stories of heroism that can be used to define Memorial Day. Some of them I have heard personally from the men and, now, women who lived through them. I fear that picking any one over another would only serve to denigrate the ones I missed, so I won’t do that. Instead, I ask you to take a minute out of your busy life and visit a VFW Post or AMVETS Hall near you so you can hear the stories directly from the mouths of the heroes who were there.

In parting, I leave you with this memorandum from an Army veteran.

“It is the soldier, not the reporter, Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the soldier, not the poet, Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the soldier, not the organizer, Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.
It is the soldier, Who salutes the flag, Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag, Who allows the protestor to burn the flag.

– Charles M. Province

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I love doing these Sunday Science blogs. Ever since René Descartes proudly claimed “Cogito ergo sum!” (I think, therefore I am), mankind has realized that its ability to think is what truly separates us from the lower life forms. Sentience, by definition, means being not only capable of making a flint tool or using a stick as a weapon, any monkey can do that, but to be fully self aware. To know not just what you are at the moment, but to understand your past and be capable of planning for your future. To truly comprehend yourself and your place in the world. To understand that your ability to question your existence is proof of it. That’s a whole lot of meaning to pack into 3 little Latin words.

But where does it come from? Is consciousness a divine gift, a random gathering of neurons or something else?

Our old pal Ian O’Neill takes a look at that question and has an interesting alternative. What if quantum theory explained human sapience?

Consciousness: How do you go about explaining that? Indeed, many scientists are currently studying what happens in the brain and how the mind relates to the outside world, but quantifying what gives us consciousness is proving to be a rather tough nut to crack.

Is there some supernatural influence? Is it purely biological? Or is there something else, something more… physicsy?

In a fascinating column for New Statesman, writer Michael Brooks touches on this tricky subject, and it reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend not so long ago.

“Don’t you think our consciousness might be explained by the Large Hadron Collider?” my friend asked. (Full disclosure: There was gin and tonic involved, so this wasn’t an everyday discussion.)

“What do you mean?” I asked in reply.

“Well, the LHC is probing states of matter that existed immediately after the Big Bang, so it’s bound to throw up some new physics — don’t you reckon it might uncover some sort of particle, or energy, that might explain our connectivity with the Universe?”

(By “energy,” she wasn’t referring to energy in the physical sense, she was playfully baiting me with New Age philosophy.)

Possibly inspired by the crazy science butchered in the TV series FlashForward — in which everyone on the planet gets knocked out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, having visions 6 months into the future, after an experiment apparently went awry in a particle accelerator — my friend was quick to point out that quantum physics, by its nature, is weird, and consciousness is, well, weird, so there must be some connection.

While this may be attractive — after all, quantum mechanics brought us Schrodinger’s-very-confused-dead-or-alive-(or both)-Cat — there is a fundamental flaw in this logic. And as Brooks mentions in his article, “strange quantum effects don’t fit in with our everyday experience of the world, they have been invoked to resolve myriad things we don’t yet understand, such as supernatural phenomena.”

Although consciousness is not a supernatural phenomenon, science has yet to explain it. In this world of high technology, where we seem to have an answer for everything, it seems odd that we don’t yet have an answer for what makes us, us. Why shouldn’t quantum theory explain consciousness?

Brooks mentions Deepak Chopra’s book “Quantum Healing,” in which Chopra jumped to the conclusion that quantum entanglement links everything in the Universe, and therefore it must create consciousness. However, even respected scientists aren’t immune to the pull of the mystery of quantum mechanics.

Roger Penrose, famous British physicist, recently argued “that we will need to invoke ‘new physics and exotic biological structures’: rewriting quantum theory to make sense of consciousness,” Brooks writes.

Although Brooks calls Penrose’s point of view “disappointing,” I don’t find it surprising as this is the same physicist that saw odd patterns in the cosmic microwave background radiation and jumped to the conclusion that it must be a gravitational wave signal from a previous universe. In the end, Penrose was making shapes out of random noise — akin to imagining bunny shapes in the clouds.

So why is there this apparent connection between consciousness and quantum theory? Brooks calls it the “conservation of mysteries,” where you have two separate mysteries, but for some reason, we think there must be causation (i.e. one mystery causes the other).

This is along the same lines as the logical fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc (“with this, therefore because of this”) and it applies to a whole host of scientific (and pseudo-scientific) reasoning. Just because quantum theory acts mysteriously, it doesn’t mean quantum theory explains the mystery of consciousness.

Of course, quantum theory might explain consciousness, but that can only be proved or disproved through scientific method rather than by simply making stuff up.

How can you not love a guy who loves trance music and drinks gin? If he didn’t already work at Discovery News he’d fit right in here.

But, love him or not, he’s 100% right. The belief that quantum theory can explain human consciousness doesn’t even rise to the level of a hypothesis at this point.

That being said, if true it opens up some interesting possibilities. In 2006 James Rollins wrote a book called Black Order. In it he cogitated about the idea of quantum consciousness and what it might really mean. He came to the conclusion – well the characters in his book did, I have no way of knowing what he thinks – that the development of the mind will eventually lead man to become what many believe already exists, God.

The idea being that God is not an abstract concept of beginnings but a goal for mankind to ultimately achieve. And that to achieve it we must first come to grips with the quantum nature of thought. That we must understand our minds are not simple computers but complex collections of neurons which are evolving even as I type. And that this evolution could lead us to a truly higher level of consciousness, one that would give mankind abilities currently only ascribed to the divine.

Of course in his book the scientists carry guns, survive explosions and outsmart Nazis, which isn’t the traditional methodology used for scientific discourse. Although it would garner a lot more headlines, and open some interesting debates, if it did.

On the other hand, we currently only use about 10% of our brains so we may not be as self aware as we think.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

We all have our little fetishes. Most of them, in the grand scheme of things, are harmless. You want to be wrapped in latex and spanked by an Amazon? More power to you I say. If you feel the need to dress like a hamster so that you can remain in touch with your feral core, go for it. Not sure if you have a fetish? Not a problem, that’s why God created the internet. Just click here to read a list of the ten most popular fetishes. If you see something you like you’re good to go. If not, I’m sure a simple Google search will get you in touch with what you need to touch.

But make sure you understand the terms before you go an play. As a way of warning, one gentleman in Australia woefully misunderstood the term “blow job” and stuck an air compressor in his butt cheek. Doctors say he’ll live but never forget the experience. He’d actually inflated himself to the point where flesh was separating from muscle before he was rescued. Yet another item on the long list of things I’ll never try.

In other words if you and your partner, or partners as the case may be, agree that doing such and such will be a rewarding experience for all involved, have at it and go with my blessings.

That being said, this next dude still freaks me out. The Telegraph (UK) reports on a man who doesn’t just love his cars, he makes love to them.

Edward Smith, who lives with his current “girlfriend” – a white Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, insisted that he was not “sick” and had no desire to change his ways.

“I appreciate beauty and I go a little bit beyond appreciating the beauty of a car only to the point of what I feel is an expression of love,” he said.

“Maybe I’m a little bit off the wall but when I see movies like Herbie and Knight Rider, where cars become loveable, huggable characters it’s just wonderful.

“I’m a romantic. I write poetry about cars, I sing to them and talk to them just like a girlfriend. I know what’s in my heart and I have no desire to change.”

He added: “I’m not sick and I don’t want to hurt anyone, cars are just my preference.”

Mr Smith, 57, first had sex with a car at the age of 15, and claims he has never been attracted to women or men.

But his wandering eye has spread beyond cars to other vehicles. He says that his most intense sexual experience was “making love” to the helicopter from 1980s TV hit Airwolf.

As well as Vanilla, he regularly spends time with his other vehicles – a 1973 Opal GT, named Cinnamon, and 1993 Ford Ranger Splash, named Ginger.

Before Vanilla, he had a five-year relationship with Victoria, a 1969 VW Beetle he bought from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

But he confesses that many of the cars he has had sex with have belonged to strangers or car showrooms.

His last relationship with a woman was 12 years ago – and he could not bring himself to consummate it, although he did have sex with girls in his younger days.

Mr Smith, from Washington state in the US, kept quiet about his secret fetish for years, but agreed to be interviewed as part of a channel Five documentary into “mechaphilia”. He is shown meeting other enthusiasts at a rally in California

Talking about how his unusual passion developed, Mr Smith said: “It’s something that grew as a part of me when I was a kid and I could not shake it.

“I just loved cute cars right from the beginning, but over the years it got stronger once I got into my teenage years and was my first having sexual urges.

“When I turned 13 and the famous Corvette Stingray came about, that car was pure sex and just an incredible machine. I wanted it.

“I didn’t fully understand it myself except that I know I’m not hurting anyone and I do not intend to.”

He added: “There are moments way out in the middle of nowhere when I see a little car parked and I swear it needs loving.

“There have been certain cars that attracted me and I would wait until night time, creep up to them and just hug and kiss them.

“As far as women go, they never really interested me much. And I’m not gay.”

Mr Smith is now part of a global community of more than 500 “car lovers” brought together by internet forums.

First the good news, he isn’t breeding.

Now the bad news, he likes to fondle stranger’s cars.

How would you like to wake up one morning and see some random dude in your driveway doing – actually, how the heck does he do that? – God knows what to your little sports car?

And even if you called the cops on him, what would the actual charge be? How could you even begin to explain it to the 911 operator.

“911, what’s that nature of your emergency?”

“There’s some guy having sex with my car.”

“There’s someone in your car having sex?”

“No, there’s someone ON my car having sex.”

“Do you know the person he’s having sex with?”

“There is no other person, like I said he’s having sex WITH my car.”

“Have you been drinking?”

You can see how this might take a while.

However, like he said, he’s not really harming anyone and he has no friends, so I guess we shouldn’t worry about him too much. On the other hand, there are at least 499 other people who are just like him, so maybe you should park your smooth ride in a garage, just to be safe. I know I wouldn’t want to clean that off one day.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

People have been getting naked in public ever since there was a public to get naked in. It had been a time honored way to have fun and make the occasional political protest. From the first Bacchanalia to Lady Godiva, history is littered with naked people. I would feel free to bet that you’ve been naked at some point in your life, even if not in public. And even if you were in public, you’re still not alone. Just Google naturist movement and the first thing you get is Wikipedia article offering you multiple choices on who you might wish to get naked with. Yes, there’s even one for devout Christians. See? Nobody has to be left out.

But -and you knew there was going to be a “but” didn’t you? – there is a time and a place for everything. Being naked on a beach? Both good and fun. Being naked in church? Only if you’re being baptized and you’re under the age of 1. Today we are going to take a peek at a few examples of how to do it wrong.

A teacher in Georgia decided to celebrate his new found love of transcendental meditation by showing his third eye to everyone in school.

A teacher who stripped off his clothes and walked naked around a Georgia elementary school gave cops a New Age explanation for his behavior, claiming that he had achieved a “new level of enlightenment” and “wanted everybody to be free now that his third eye was open,” according to a police report.

For allowing others to see his third eye last Friday afternoon at the B.C. Haynie Elementary School, Harlan Porter was charged with public indecency. The 31-year-old educator, pictured in the mug shot at right, was booked into the Clayton County Jail on the misdemeanor charge and released after posting $2000 bond.

Since Porter’s April 22 stroll–which came at about 3:20 PM–was not witnessed by any students, who had been dismissed, he avoided more serious charges.

—-EDITED FOR LENGTH—-

According to cops, fellow teachers reported that Porter “did not drink sodas or other canned beverages and maintained a strict vegan diet” and was not known to take drugs or drink alcohol. “However on the date in question they noticed that he was drinking a coke and had gone to taco bell to get tacos for lunch,” reported Officer Khari Reed.

It is unknown what role, if any, the Mexican delicacy may have played in Porter’s ill-advised decision to unveil his third eye, though Reed did note that the teacher “had recently learned that his employment contract would not be renewed.” Reed also reported that Porter had previously been “diagnosed schizophrenic,” though the school’s principal told cops the educator had never exhibited “strange behavior.”

Taco Bell made him do it? That gives a whole new spin on thinking outside the bun.

Even so, he still is in better shape than the guy who got naked on a NY subway, yelled profanities and then attacked a cop. There’s video of that mess if you’re inclined to click the link.

Of course no story about public nudity would be complete without an obligatory Florida reference. And, you know me well enough to know that I would never disappoint you. A man there was recently arrested after claiming to be King of the World.

Police in Florida’s Big Coppitt Key near Key West say a Pennsylvania man ran naked through the streets shouting about his apparent global royalty.

Someone apparently forgot to tell the local law enforcement about the ascension of 43-year-old Richard Gervasi to the world throne.

When deputies arrived, he allegedly charged after one… so cops called to the scene shot a taser at him.

But his majesty would not go down easy… in fact, after being tased, he pulled the taser prongs out of his skin and got up, according to KeysNet.com.

So they tased him again… and again.

Not surprisingly, police believe generous portions of alcohol and a helping of LSD played a role.

No, I blame Taco Bell.

But what about people who take the crap spewed by Dr. Phil seriously? Yes, there really are some. Jamie Gray tells about the guy who got naked in Idaho as part of his ‘therapy.’

A naked man was arrested walking down the street in the North End on Thursday night, just after 6:30 p.m.

Boise Police say 20-year-old Jonathan Palmer was walking in the area of 15th and Hill when they caught up with him. Lt. Kent Lipple says dispatchers received several calls from people saying they’d seen him.

Lipple says Palmer was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but rather, Palmer wanted to conquer his own fears and help the public conquer its fears too.

“He wanted to face his fear of being naked in public,” Lipple said.

According to Lipple, Palmer told arresting officers: “I want the public to understand it’s okay to see a naked man walk down the road.”

Lipple says the man was cooperative and articulate. Palmer was arrested on a misdemeanor public nudity charge.

See? Be nice to the cops and they’ll toss out the felony charges. No word on whether or not Mr. Lipple visited Taco Bell before his therapeutic epiphany.

Closer to home and also based on a personal form of therapy, Megan Craig tells about a woman who believed walking naked to a police station was a spiritual experience, literally.

A woman found standing naked outside the Gurnee Police Station told police that spirits told her to take her clothes off and walk to the police department, according to an official.

The 52-year-old local woman showed up at the department on O’Plaine Road at about 7:30 a.m. on May 23, said Gurnee Police Cmdr. Jay Patrick. Three officers found her standing at the southwest corner of the building.

The woman allegedly told the officer she was “awakened by the spirits in her apartment” and that they told her to remove her clothes before proceeding to the police facility, Patrick said.

One of the officers wrapped the woman in a blanket.

She was taken to Vista Medical Center East in Waukegan by the Gurnee Fire Department and voluntarily admitted herself for psychological evaluation, Patrick said.

Police are not releasing the woman’s name, since she wasn’t charged with a crime.

I’m sure our producers will be inviting her to our next annual Nude Hippo romp at Six Flags. After all, she’s already nearby. As is a Taco Bell.

However, there’s one guy who can’t blame Taco Bell. Sam Tyson tells a whimsical tale of a naked man who tried to rob a house while walking around with a computer mouse stuck in his butt.

A burglary call for Oconee County sheriff’s deputies turned bizarre Monday morning when their suspect was found naked with a USB-powered computer peripheral in his rectum and apparently drugged, an incident report shows.

Authorities responded to Bernwood Circle near the town of Seneca late Monday morning after a resident complained of a burglar. When deputies arrived, they found Noah Smith, 24, lying face down and naked inside the doorway of the victim’s home, the report stated.

When the deputy tried to make contact with Smith, he slapped the deputy. In return, the deputy deployed his taser, which had no effect on Smith, the report stated.

With reinforcements, deputies approached Smith again in the victim’s bedroom. A deputy managed to handcuff Smith before he jumped off the victim’s bed and tried to kick other deputies in the room, the report stated.

Then, according to the report, Smith was pepper sprayed. Undeterred, Smith continued to kick at the officers and otherwise evade capture. He was struck with a police baton several times, and Smith attempted to bite the deputy.

Smith’s head and mouth were covered with a blanket to prevent him from biting. He was wrestled down so shackles could be placed on his legs and his arms were hog-tied, the report stated. An EMS crew responded and provided a stretcher to which Smith was also tied.

Deputies and officers from the Seneca Police Department opined that Smith might have been high on mushrooms, and identified equipment that could be used to get high in the victim’s home.

During a medical exam at a nearby hospital, medical personnel found a USB cord hanging from Smith’s rectum. An X-ray revealed the culprit — a mouse — lodged inside Smith.

He told emergency room personnel that he could not remember what had happened to him.

After the medical exam, he was charged with resisting arrest, 1st and 3rd degree assault a battery charges, and indecent exposure. Smith was transported to the Oconee County Detention Center.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I occasionally like mushrooms on my tacos so, who knows, maybe our our intrepid nudist hit the .99¢ value menu before he headed out for his little date with destiny …. and tasers.

In case you aren’t getting enough nudity in your news, click here for highlights from Naked News, a truly inspirational news program that, sadly, has nothing to do with Taco Bell.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Every now and then people come up with an idea that’s so incredibly dense, so obtuse, that it requires an immediate face-palm upon hearing it. For example, a man once invented a glass hammer. You’re smart, you can see the possible problems with that. Kind of like a concrete parachute. Or how about the wonderful people who invented water soluble swim wear? Sure it’s lightweight and cheap, but would you like to be diving into a pool and suddenly find yourself doing your best Lady Godiva impression? Granted, spectators (such as me) might appreciate your efforts, but still ….

And we can never forget the genius who wanted to prove how manly men could be and invented sand covered toilet paper. Sorry, there’s not enough testosterone on the planet to get me to try that particular item.

But as dumb as those things may be you can avoid them. There are some things you can’t avoid. When you take a shower and catch a glimpse of yourself in a mirror, I doubt you’re confused as to what your gender is. I know I’ve never once caught myself wondering if I was girl. I did once wear a dress to impress a girl. But that had specific consequences that would cause any man to say, “She did that? Yeah, I’d do it for that.”

In other words, even in my one time drag experience, I never doubted I was a man. And, for the record, neither did she.

Yet, some people will try and deny anything, including their gender. And if they can’t do that, they’ll deny their child’s. Four years ago a couple in Sweden named their child Pop and refused to disclose its gender. They said they were doing this to support the feminist movement. These people are what the scientific community calls clueless idiots. Feminism is about empowering woman (GOOD IDEA!), not neutering men (BAD IDEA!).

Just FYI, they stopped giving media updates about two years ago. My guess is that the kid finally figured out what its gender is and ruined all their fun. He/she would have been about the right age.

Nevertheless, unrestrained by the bonds of common sense, a Canadian couple has done the same thing and inflicted the name Storm upon their hapless spawn. Tom Blackwell, from the Montreal Gazette, has the whole story.

It is nothing if not an unorthodox approach to child rearing: A Toronto couple says it is trying to raise a genderless child, refusing to reveal baby Storm’s sex to encourage a more neutral approach to the infant.

Hiding the 4-month-old’s sex from the outside world is a “tribute to freedom and choice” that they hope will let Storm grow up unfettered by the values of others, Kathy Witterick and David Stocker have been quoted as saying.

Experts, however, question whether the odd experiment will work or be good for the baby, and note that gender identity is a complex, mysterious force that has at least as much to do with biological factors present at birth as the person’s social interactions.

In fact, there is little hard, scientific data on exactly what does make people feel and act like a boy or a girl, but some evidence points to gender identity being hard-wired, says Michele Angello, a U.S. psychologist.

Angello specializes in helping “gender-variant” people – those born with the body of one sex but convinced they are the other. Many go on to have sex-change operations. The way people act toward them certainly affects how they feel about themselves; whether it actually moulds their identity to start with is another question, she said.

She said it is certainly important for parents to support children who do not conform to the stereotypical behaviour of their physical sex, but suggested that the Toronto parents may be veering too far toward neutrality.

“Many people feel forced to raise their kids in a certain way because they are one or the other gender,” she said.

“Then we go to the other extreme, where there is no such thing as gender, which is not necessarily living in the real world.”

Other experts in the area say the idea is unlikely to do any harm, but will soon become next to impossible to keep going. All say it is important to discourage stereotyping that, for instance, pressures women to avoid certain careers or discourages boys from pursuing certain activities deemed feminine.

Witterick and Stocker’s project with Storm was featured at length last weekend in the pages of the Toronto Star, sparking a largely negative response from the publication’s readership.

The couple could not be reached for comment. According to the report, though, they have striven to curb the impact of sexual stereotyping on their two sons, Jazz, 5, and Kio, 2, as well, encouraging them to choose clothes and playthings that are sometimes less than boyish. Jazz loves to paint his fingernails and wear pink. Kio, like his brother, is sometimes mistaken for a girl, the Star said.

It’s one thing to teach your child to have an open mind. In fact it’s probably a good idea. There’s nothing wrong with being tolerant of others or exploring realms of your own personality that can lead to exciting new concepts. People have known that ever since the first Uni-Sex hair salons popped up in the 70’s.

But the way we are born is an integral part of who we are. Denying one’s sexuality is about as useful as denying there’s air. You can’t escape it and live.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Now that Oprah Winfrey has said her goodbyes and is packing up for Los Angeles, we no longer have a national broadcast talk show coming from Chicago.  Phil Donahue may have been the first one, but then there was Jenny Jones, Jerry Springer and even Danny Bonaduce had a show…but wait….Jerry is still around…he just left Chicago for a tax-break in Stamford, Connecticut.  Now in his 20th year, he is as irrelevant as he ever was.  You can catch him every morning at 3 am on WCIU-TV, The U, Channel 26.  (Another broadcast airs at 11 am, but unless you have a job, that is too early to watch it then)

Years ago, I got in on the fun and just plain silliness that took place behind the scenes of The Jerry Springer Show…which comes off as a circus on TV, but it takes a lot of hard work to make that all happen…Well, at least for everyone, except Jerry.  He gets by on just his good looks alone. Honestly, I’ve always found Jerry to be funny, smart and pretty normal.

This is a never-before-seen segment of my coverage of The Jerry Springer Show.  For the first time ever, JERRY SPRINGER GETS NUDE!!!  (Ah, OK, I think that concept worked better with Carmen Electra or Ginger Zee…So, um, sorry!)

Click here to watch a bonus uncut portion of my conversation with Jerry Springer.

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When I was a wee little Big Bad, I had a crush on a teacher. Her name was, unfortunately for her, Mrs. Keyhoe and she closely resembled the image to the left. Although she dressed more conservatively. Nevertheless, like all young men of a certain age, I was embarrassed by those feelings and thoughts. Beyond getting her a birthday card once, I never let my feelings show. Well, so I thought. I may as well have tried to hide a 747 in my locker for all the success I had. Naturally, I got “the talk” and then sent to my room, which was okay with me at the time since a little privacy went a long way back then.

Let’s face it, those pre-teen and teenage years are awkward and difficult. Boys and girls feel tingly sensations in places where nothing tingled before. Whereas the scariest things used to be those that went bump in the night, kids are suddenly faced with things that go sproing or mmmm-ooooo-yeahhhhh (depending on their gender). Add in the fact that nowadays kids are also faced with wildly conflicting messages – your sexual purity is the best path to financial surety versus if you want to be down with the in crowd you need to go down on the in crowd – and you realize that parents are faced with a moral quagmire that’s difficult to navigate. That’s ignoring the fact that many parents should never have been allowed to procreate in the first place.

Now toss gasoline on that fire. You send your kids to school, hopefully the one truly safe place in their fragile young lives, only to find out that the very people you’re entrusting them to are actually giving out the kind of extra credit that kids can only earn with their Underoos around their ankles.

And, as it turns out, the number one destination for teachers who want to have sex with students is Texas. Seeming to prove what they say in their ads, “it’s a whole nother country.”

Paul Thompson from the Daily Mail (UK), has all the sordid details.

Police in Texas have arrested another two teachers for allegedly having sex with their students.

Angela New, 39, was jailed after she allegedly slept with an 18-year old from her school a month before he was due to graduate.

And April Alexander, 26, was jailed after being accused of having sex with a 16-year old student on more than 25 occasions.

The arrest of the two women follows the jailing of mother of three Brittni Colleps, who allegedly staged a sex orgy at her home while her serviceman husband was away on duty.

Colleps is accused of inviting the boys to her home in Arlington, Texas, where she allowed their sex romps to be filmed on cell phone cameras.

The 27-year old is facing up to ten years in jail after being charged with five felony counts of inappropriate relationships between a student and a teacher.

In the latest incidents, biology teacher Alexander was arrested at her home in Irving, Texas, after police received a tip off that she had been seeing one of her former students.

A police investigation alleges she began a relationship with a former student two years ago.

The teen told police they had sex on more than two dozen occasions at MacArthur High School in Irving and in Alexander’s car.

Alexander resigned from the school last November without giving a reason for her departure.

She was arrested at her home on Wednesday night after police took statements from her victim, who is now aged 18.

Garland police spokesman Joe Harn said, ‘When we send our kids to school, we trust that they are in safe hands and that it is a safe zone.

‘When something like this happens, it violates that trust’.

A day after Alexander’s arrest, police in Gladewater, Texas, arrested 39-year old Angela New.

School chiefs had been tipped off about her alleged affair with the 18-year old and launched an investigation before calling in police.

New, who taught English at Union Grove High School, is accused of having sex with the 18-year old on April 22nd.

Had the offence taken place a month later – after the teen graduated – she might not have been charged as he was no longer a full-time student and at the age of consent.

Schools Superintendent Brian Gray said they received information about the alleged liaison between New and her student, and after talking to both parties called in police.

If you click on Paul’s link above you can see all the mug shots. Well, except for Carrie Schaefer (in the bonus section near the bottom) who seems to have sent a professional head shot to to the media.

Do you really hire a publicist for this situation? I’m just asking.

I know it’s fun, especially for guys, to joke about stuff like this, but there’s a reason these relationships are both legally and morally reprehensible. They can lead to many psychological problems for the child and can horribly skew their relationships with their peers.

Think of it this way, while you might think it would have been cool to do the mattress mambo with your teacher, how would you feel if you found out she/he was boinking your precious baby?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

There are days I rant and rave, while worrying and gnashing my teeth, about the impending take over by our robot overlords and then there are days like this. Days where I figure we’ll probably be better off. The kind of day where it’s painfully obvious that humanity has jumped the rails and is just lying in the ditch waiting for something new to pass by.

Most of us, at one time or another, have had parents. Those people who seemed incredibly dense when you were young yet, somehow, managed to look kind of smart as you matured. Well, the was the common conception. After all, if they’re smart enough to procreate they must be smart enough to be responsible adults as well. Right?

Wrong.

Thanks to websites like Bad Parenting and Bad Breeders, with the former going for laughs and the latter being more insightful, it’s becoming clear that many people should not be allowed to breed. At the very least they should be required to pass some basic test before we untie their tubes and set them free.

Yesterday I wrote about a very good family. Today I’ll note that they’re outnumbered, at least, three-to-one.

We’ll take a look at the losers in chronological order based on the age of each child involved.

Starting with an infant. Isabelle Zehnder tells about grandma’s ‘gone wrong’ moment.

It was a bizarre abduction, to say the least. Before leaving her home in Southern California and coming to Northern California, (ED: the infant’s grandmother) Ericka Gallego told her roommate and friends that she had given birth to a baby girl. When she returned home with the baby her roommate became suspicious.

Jaime Portugal said Ericka is his roommate in El Monte. Ericka told people she was pregnant and had just held a baby shower, he said. Ericka told people the baby was 2 ½ weeks old.

Portugal became suspicious something was wrong when the baby looked too mature to be a newborn. “She wasn’t all there from the get-go,” he said. “She was always a little off her rocker.”

“It’s a good feeling to know the baby’s going back to her mother,” he said.

A contractor and handyman from El Monte, Martin Jimenez, said he also knew Ericka and that he was suspicious about her claims she’d recently given birth. He went to a local Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Baldwin Park and was told they had no records of her giving birth.

He said he’d suggested previously that she should seek psychological help. He was concerned enough to call police.

Police actually had Ericka in custody Sunday night. Captain Steve Warne of the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office said, “Ericka was arrested late last night. Our detectives interviewed her and others in the early morning hours (of Monday). We haven’t specifically established a motive. We consider this an act criminal in nature.”

“Ericka Gallego never had permission to take Ramy from her house. We believe she snuck into the home without the parents’ knowledge. The parents had no idea Erika was in the possession of their baby until we notified them,” Warne said.

First off, a big tip of the Nude Hippo hat, even though the producers are too cheap to actually give us hats, to Martin Jiminez for calling the cops and helping this family get reunited. As to the grandmother, “WTF WAS SHE THINKING?!?!!”

Yeah, that about sums it up.

But not all stories about bad parents involve people who are clearly delusional. Some are just patently evil. For example, Erin Alberty tells us of the nice mommy who wanted to sell her, 13 year old, daughter’s virginity.

A Salt Lake City woman is accused of trying to sell her 13-year-old daughter’s virginity for $10,000.

The woman’s boyfriend reported the alleged plot to police after finding text messages on the woman’s phone detailing negotiations with a man identified only as “Don,” said Salt Lake County prosecutor Sim Gill.

The woman, 32, had promised Don that her daughter would perform oral sex and other sex acts in exchange for $10,000 and later confessed the deal to police, Gill said.

The girl told police she initially consented to the arrangement but later decided she didn’t want to follow through, Gill said.

The mother also admitted to taking the girl to a Victoria’s Secret store, where she opened the dressing room door for Don to watch the girl model bras and thong underwear, Gill said.

The woman is also accused of sending pictures of the girl wearing lingerie to another man in exchange for money.

The negotiations for the pictures and the sex acts are alleged to have occurred from April 1 to May 18, Gill said.

Gill would not discuss details of any investigation of the man known as Don or the other man who received photos of the girl. He would not comment on whether police have identified those men or whether their ages are known.

The woman is charged with two first-degree felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child and two second-degree felony counts of sex exploitation of a minor.

The Salt Lake City Tribune, and all other media outlets, are honoring the police’s request not to name the mother for fear of harming the child, so we here are Nude Hippo will respect that as well.

But, seriously, when did this seem like a good idea? How do you go from “Honey, would you like to wear your school sweatshirt to the dance?” to “Honey, let’s go to Victoria’s Secret so mommy can be a pimp.”

I would have thought the gap between those thoughts was a gaping chasm, not a fine line.

As to the men involved in this venture, I hope there’s a special place in hell for them.

But, for our final story, we turn to Texas where the kids are in their 30’s and share the loving story of their demented dad. Steve Campbell reports on a story that would be funny as heck if it weren’t so sad.

On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, John Joe Gray, a “free-standing man” and fugitive from the law, is locked and loaded for the coming apocalypse or authorities – whichever shows up first.

“It’s coming,” he says. “It’s time this country knows God is coming.”

A rifle is slung across his back and a gun belt around his waist holds a revolver and extra cartridges. A knife is strapped to the other side of his lean torso. A battered felt hat frames a deeply lined face and bushy beard.

Dangling from a nearby tree, a hangman’s noose strangles a weathered sign that sums up his stance: “Solution to tyranny.”
Warily covering Gray’s flanks are two of his six children, sons Jonathan, 39, and Timothy, 33. The dark-bearded, fit and tanned brothers are as well-armed as their 62-year-old father.

Ten feet behind her brothers and father, long-haired Ruth Gray, 31, stands solemn and silent. She, too, is armed to the teeth.

Next to her is teenager Jessica Gray, “who is old enough,” according to her father, Jonathan. She has on a cowboy hat that the wind keeps blowing off, a long denim skirt, a sequined denim vest and cowboy boots. She’s packing a pistol and binoculars.

This is one stubborn side of what has been called America’s longest-running standoff with law enforcement.

But it’s been a single-sided siege. Henderson County authorities have pointedly ignored the would-be war.

For more than 11 years, John Joe Gray and his country clan have been holed up inside their own private prison, a 47-acre strip of Trinity River bottomland about 100 miles southeast of Fort Worth in Henderson County.

They’ve scraped out a harsh life here ever since Gray was bailed out of jail in January 2000 after he was charged with assaulting a state trooper on Christmas Eve 1999.

During a traffic stop, Gray and the driver of the car told two Department of Public Safety troopers that they were armed. When ordered to get out, the driver did but Gray wouldn’t budge.

One trooper pushed Gray out, and he then lunged for the other officer’s sidearm. Gray bit the trooper as they struggled for control of the weapon, according to investigators.

An Anderson County grand jury indicted him on two felony counts – assaulting a public servant and taking a peace officer’s weapon.

“We’re here because two highway patrolmen lied about what happened,” Gray said last week. “Land of the free and home of the brave? That’s a bunch of bull.”

He has refused to be taken alive and in a long-ago letter to authorities, the family warned officials to “bring extra body bags,” if they come for him. Authorities kept tabs on the compound for months but haven’t maintained an active presence for years.

“We fear no man,” John Joe Gray maintains. “We believe in an eye for an eye and a bullet for a bullet.”

But nobody’s storming the gate.

Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt, who is the fourth lawman in the post since 2000, says, like his predecessors, that he’s not willing to risk a gunbattle just to arrest Gray.

“John Joe Gray is not worth it. Ten of him is not worth going up there and getting one of my young deputies killed,” he said.

The hardscrabble compound has no phone, no refrigeration, no power.

Contact with the outside world is through a handful of “supporters” and via shortwave radio, John Joe Gray said.
Drinking water comes from springs, and Gray and his sons say they subsist by growing beans, potatoes, corn, squash, tomatoes and peppers on fields they plow with donkeys. They can vegetables and dry meat to get through the year, they said.

They also raise goats and chickens and catch catfish, carp and drum from the Trinity and hunt deer on the wooded property. Friends bring them staples they can’t produce themselves. Last year, they harvested their first crop of peaches.
One supporter, who frequently visits the farm, said eight children are inside the compound. The kids are armed at an early age, she said. They are equally adept at reciting the Constitution or Scripture.

“It’s sort of Wild West. It’s what a traditional American family looked like 100 years ago,” said Dolores McCarter of Arlington, who says she once worked for Homeland Security and now operates a small nonprofit called Dee’s House that helps battered women and children.

“John is standing as a free man. He loves his family. They are prepared to live out their lives there,” McCarter said. “Some people pity them and they … pity us.”

No, I feel no pity for this particular fool. For his family, maybe, but not him.

“Why not? You heartless S.O.B.!”

Well, because, the statute of limitations ran out years ago. This paranoid moron is as free to shop at WalMart as you and I. He, and his family, can leave at any time. Even if he did get picked up on the outstanding warrant, a judge would cut him free in a nanosecond. And that would be the end of that.

In other words, he’s ruined the minds and lives of his family for nothing.

Then again, that does seem to be the common denominator in all our stories today, doesn’t it?

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Sometimes in life we are faced with troubles that force us to feel as though we are lost at sea surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of our failures. Many people panic in these situations and wait for someone to throw them a lifeline. They end up floating helplessly, staring at the debris, until someone gives them a new direction. Much like the Ohio man who removed his mask during a bank robbery simply because the teller told him to, self aware initiative is not their strong suit. But, there are others, seemingly rare and far between, who realize that the only recuse available to them is the one they provide themselves. So they swim for the nearest shore, no matter how distant that horizon might seem at the time. They know that, sometimes, just the attempt will draw the help they need but, even if it doesn’t, they still have their fate in their hands.

The dilemmas can take many forms. Anything from personal tragedy to astounding good fortune can force people well out of their comfort zone. Today Chi Chi Zang writes about a man who found over $40,000 in his new house. He knew that the money would provide short term solutions to many problems, but that the right life-lesson would provide benefits for generations. I wonder how many of us would have had his courage?

When Josh Ferrin closed on his family’s first home, he never thought he’d make the discovery of a lifetime — then give it back.

Ferrin picked up the keys earlier this week and decided to check out the house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Bountiful. He was excited to finally have a place his family could call their own.

As he walked into the garage, a piece of cloth that clung to an attic door caught his eye. He opened the hatch and climbed up the ladder, then pulled out a metal box that looked like a World War II ammunition case.

“I freaked out, locked it my car, and called my wife to tell her she wouldn’t believe what I had found,” said Ferrin, who works as an artist for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City.

Then he found seven more boxes, all stuffed full with tightly wound rolls of cash bundled together with twine — more than $40,000.

Ferrin quickly took the boxes to his parent’s house to count. Along with his wife and children, they spread out thousands of bills on a table, separating the bundles one by one.

They stopped counting at $40,000, but estimated there was at least $5,000 more on the table.

Ferrin thought about how such a large sum of money could go a long way, pay bills, buy things he never thought he could afford.

“I’m not perfect, and I wish I could say there was never any doubt in my mind. We knew we had to give it back, but it doesn’t mean I didn’t think about our car in need of repairs, how we would love to adopt a child and aren’t able to do that right now, or fix up our outdated house that we just bought,” Ferrin said. “But the money wasn’t ours to keep and I don’t believe you get a chance very often to do something radically honest, to do something ridiculously awesome for someone else and that is a lesson I hope to teach to my children.”

He thought about the home’s previous owner, Arnold Bangerter, who died in November and left the house to his children.

“I could imagine him in his workshop. From time to time, he would carefully bundle up $100 with twine, climb up into his attic and put it into a box to save. And he didn’t do that for me,” Ferrin said of the man who had worked as a biologist for the Utah Department of Fish and Game.

Bangerter purchased the home in 1966 and lived there with his wife, who died in 2005.

After most of the money was counted, Ferrin called one of Bangerter’s sons with the news.

Kay Bangerter said he knew his father hid away money because he once found a bundle of cash taped beneath a drawer in their home, but he never considered his dad had stuffed away so much over the years.

“He grew up in hard times and people that survived that era didn’t have anything when they came out of it unless they saved it themselves,” Kay Bangerter, the oldest of the six children, told the Deseret News. “He was a saver, not a spender.”

Bangerter called the money’s return “a story that will outlast our generation and probably yours as well.”

“I’m a father, and I worry about the future for my kids,” Ferrin said. “I can see him putting that money away for a rainy day and it would have been wrong of me to deny him that thing he worked on for years. I felt like I got to write a chapter in his life, a chapter he wasn’t able to finish and see it through to its conclusion.”

I know that may people think me a jaded and profane curmudgeon. And, in some cases I am. But I still cry when Old Yeller dies and I like to believe that I still retain some shred of human dignity.

Maybe not a lot, but enough to know that my first bourbon of the day will be hoisted in honor of Josh Ferrin.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!