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LEAD STORY: Competitive Facial Hair: At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in May in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes “defeated” the usually dominant German contingent in the 18-category pageant, including overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair suggests a long potholder. Said Traver, of the Germans, “They were humble, and you have to respect that.” One defending champ, Jack Passion of Los Angeles, fell short with his navel-length red hair, despite having authored The Facial Hair Handbook after his 2007 victory. Traver acknowledged that no money was at stake (only trophies and “bragging rights”), but added that there are “a lot of ladies” who fawn over men’s facial hair. “Seriously, they exist.”

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In his book Collapse, Jared Diamond claims, “When NASA wanted to find some place on Earth resembling the surface of the Moon, so that our astronauts preparing for the first moon landing could practice in an environment similar to what they would encounter, NASA picked a formerly green area of Iceland that is now utterly barren.” This struck me as wrong. Growing up, I heard the slag fields around Sudbury, Ontario, helped get the lunar astronauts accustomed to the moon’s desolation. I’ve heard similar things about islands in the Canadian arctic and deserts in the American southwest. I can’t see NASA hauling astronauts around the world just to look at places without trees. I wonder if the real explanation is that the astronauts had to take geology lessons. True?
— CAMERON BARR, EDMONTON

You nailed it, friend. Most astronaut field trips were about geology, not getting used to a bleak hell unfit for life. For that they could have stayed in Houston.

The astronauts trained at lots of sites in the U.S. and around the world, at least a couple of which humans had turned into wildernesses. According to Diamond, “Since human settlement began, most of [Iceland's] original trees and vegetation have been destroyed, and about half of the original soils have eroded into the ocean. As a result … large areas … that were green at the time that Vikings landed are now lifeless brown desert.” Similarly, much of the area around Sudbury, Ontario, was a moonscape in the 1960s due to nickel smelting.

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BIG DAY WITH BJ: A man said he and his wife were kidnapped at gunpoint one morning — and they were forced to get in a blue van and held in Piedmont Park until almost 11 p.m., when the man escaped. He said the kidnappers still had his wife — and he was able to escape because the alleged kidnappers, BJ and another guy, slapped him and got distracted when a police car drove by.

An officer asked, “What did the kidnappers want?” The man said he didn’t know, but they made them sit on this blanket all day with ants crawling around.

The officer asked the man if he could describe the weapon. “[He] said there were so many guns around and so many people,” the officer wrote. “I asked [him] how many kidnappers there were and he said two.”

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LEAD STORY: Terrorism Gets Pizzazz: A physical fitness video, purportedly made in April by a U.S.-based al-Qaida operative, gives workout tips to jihadists, urging that they “train as hard as possible” to inflict maximum damage on “the enemies of Allah,” according to an ABC News report. Exercises such as crawling long distances on hands and knees are demonstrated by people in flowing robes. The narrator discourages using gyms and fitness centers because of the “un-Islamic” music and “semi-naked” women. And a video released in May, purportedly from al-Qaida in Somalia, features an English-speaking rap singer making a recruitment pitch to U.S. and European youth, including such verses as: “Mortar by mortar/Shell by shell/Only going to stop/When I send them to hell.”

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My son just finished a three-month karate class. Last night he asked me if karate really would help someone defeat a larger, stronger opponent. I told him I honestly never heard of anyone using any martial art to win a fight outside of a movie. You would think here in New York, with so many muggings (at least at one time) and other violent crimes, there would be stories of people using martial arts to defend themselves. But all we got is Bernie Goetz, and he had a gun. So in all of recorded history, has a skinny black belt ever beaten up a beefy weightlifter? My son’s future athletic choices may depend on it.
— PATRICK CASTILLO, NEW YORK CITY

Well, I’d keep him off the steroids, if that’s what you’re asking. Also, common experience suggests that where big vs. small is concerned, you don’t necessarily want to bet the rent on Goliath. Granted, David wasn’t using karate, and there’s no question the introduction of firearms into the situation tends to skew the odds. Nonetheless, you do occasionally hear of martial arts adepts taking down attackers with their bare hands — including attackers with guns. For example:

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CLOTHES ENCOUNTERS: A 24-year-old man wearing a dress allegedly shoplifted from a drugstore on Boulevard. According to a security guard, the man concealed a soap-and-body-wash set inside his bag. The security guard said he tried to stop the man – but he ran out of the drugstore, along with a woman. The guard said he hopped in his car and caught them about a block away – but the man passed his bag to the woman, and she disappeared between some houses. Apparently, the man took off his dress, threw a rock at the guard’s car, and ran into Zoo Atlanta. Eventually, police caught the man and took him to jail.

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LEAD STORY: Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, now serving a life sentence in the Florence, Colo., “Supermax” prison, filed a 39-page federal lawsuit in March alleging unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment” because the refined-food, low-fiber meals give him “chronic constipation [and] bleeding hemorrhoids.” He demanded fresh, raw vegetables and other high-fiber foods, necessary to “keep one’s body (i.e., God’s holy temple) in good health.” Nichols was joined in the lawsuit by fellow Supermax resident Eric Rudolph (the convicted abortion-clinic and Atlanta Olympics bomber), who claimed “gas and stomach cramps” and observed that “our bodies” are “sacred and should be treated as such.”

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Do bras keep breasts from sagging as you get older? I’ve heard reports that they do nothing at all.
— CURIOUS

Oh, bras probably do something. It’s just that nobody can agree on what it is. I won’t pretend to have the definitive answer, but here’s what we’ve established so far:

1) The medical term for breast sagging is breast ptosis. One often hears that “the French have a word for it,” “it” being any inscrutable aspect of daily life. If the French ever get stumped, however, ask a doctor.

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AFTER-SCHOOL SPECIAL: A mother’s kids didn’t return home from school one day. (They attend a local elementary school.) The mother said her kids weren’t at their school bus stop on Oak Street, so she started searching for them. She said she found her kids at another bus stop three blocks away. While she was there, she found a 6-year-old boy – and he said this isn’t his regular bus stop and he didn’t know where he was. The woman took the boy home and called 911, the elementary school and police. A school employee arrived and called the lost boy’s mother – and she quickly came to collect her son. According to the police officer’s report, the mothers told police “that this was not the first time this happened and that their kids have been dropped off several times at the wrong locations.”

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How lethal are Tasers? I know there’s talk about police being Taser-happy and torturing people with these devices, but has anyone been Tasered to death?
— DUGIE C., CALGARY

News a little slow getting up to Calgary, Dugie? Lots of people have died after being Tasered — which is not to say they were necessarily Tasered to death. According to a widely publicized Amnesty International study last year, 334 people in the U.S. plus 25 more in Canada died between 2001 and 2008 after being zapped with a Taser by cops. The Taser’s defenders say it beats shooting people and reduces the risk of stray bullets injuring bystanders. Wrong argument, says AI. The Taser isn’t a replacement for guns but rather for billy clubs and such — for a lot of cops, it’s become the default method of subduing the unruly. OK, getting whupped upside the head in the old days wasn’t a pleasant experience, but at least it didn’t involve 50,000 volts.

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LEAD STORY: In April at a New York City gallery, the Australian performance artist Stelarc starred in a video of his surgery in which an ear is implanted into his left forearm (right now, just a prosthesis, but to which stem cells will be added), which will house an Internet-accessed, Bluetooth-capable microphone. “Post-evolutionary strategies” are required, Stelarc told the New York Times, because the current state of the body is obsolete. Other exhibits at the Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) exhibit included a genetically modified goat that produces super-strong spider’s silk. In an earlier project, Stelarc wired half his muscles to computers in Paris, Helsinki and Amsterdam, to understand a semi-controllable “split-body experience.” Stelarc’s self-appraisal: “[I'm] never in [my] comfort zone.”

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GRABBING GRANNY: A 73-year-old woman said a man grabbed her right buttock while she was walking on University Avenue. Then, the man reportedly stuck out his tongue at her, grabbed his crotch and shook it. The suspect — a 38-year-old man — had a mohawk haircut and glasses, and he was wearing a tan camouflage jacket, denim shorts, a fanny pack and a visor. The elderly woman told two witnesses what happened — and they stopped the suspect and took him to a nearby church. That’s when police arrived. “The suspect made an outburst that he was sorry for grabbing the victim,” the officer wrote. He went to jail on a simple battery charge.

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THROWING MONEY AROUND: A 19-year-old woman from Rex said she went through a toll booth on Ga. 400 one evening. She said her passenger (a 19-year-old man) got out of the car, put 50 cents in the toll basket and they drove on. A little farther down the road, the male passenger “noticed that the $7,649 was missing, so they got off at Exit 4/Glenridge Connector and turned around and went back to the toll booth,” an officer wrote. According to a toll-booth employee, a woman in a white car said there was money on the ground — and she showed him the money and drove away. He said, “some of the money was in one pile and that some more of the money was blowing around and that he picked up some of the money, but the female never gave him any money. [He] then turned the money in to his boss.”
The woman got $4,520 back — but she’s still missing $3,129. An officer wrote, “When I asked if they could review the security camera [a manager] stated that he was unable to review then and they would have to wait til the day shift manager came in.”

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I recently heard a rumor that sugar processed from beets contains traces of a poison used as a combat weapon in World War II. Is this true? What’s the difference between beet sugar and cane sugar, anyway?
— TOMLOBUR

A good rumor, which this is, is like an Indiana Jones movie. There’s a grain of truth to it, life and death are at stake, and you know Nazis are somehow involved.

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LEAD STORY: The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration recently postponed its crucial program to rejuvenate quarter-century-old Trident missile warheads because no one can remember how to make a key component of the weapons (codenamed “Fogbank”), according to a March 2 report of the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found that, despite concern over the bombs’ safety and reliability, NNSA could not replicate the manufacturing process because all knowledgeable personnel have left the agency and no written records were kept. Said one commentator, “This is like James Bond destroying his instructions as soon as he’s read them.” (The GAO report came two months after the German Interior Ministry reported to Parliament that over a 10-year period, it had lost 332 secret files that were in fact so secret that no one in the Ministry could recall what was in them.)

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HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW: A woman said she and her boyfriend went out drinking on a Sunday night. “The two of them had a conversation about trust, when [the boyfriend] convinced [her] to let him use her Wachovia bank card to get $40,” an officer wrote. When he returned from the ATM, she asked for her card back, but he allegedly refused to return it. Then, she said, the boyfriend pulled off her wig — and returned to an ATM and took all her money — $320.  Continue reading Blotter.

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LEAD STORY: Through the years, News of the Weird has reported on restaurants around the world with singularly quirky themes and signature dishes, such as the one in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, that seats all diners on toilets and the Beijing restaurant whose cuisine features animal penises. Last year, a group of doctors in Riga, Latvia, opened Hospitalis, a medical-themed restaurant whose dining room resembles an OR, with “nurse” waitresses bringing food on gurneys, accessorized with syringes and forceps in addition to knives and forks and with drinks served in beakers and test tubes. Hospitalis’ signature dish is a cake with edible toppings that resemble fingers, noses and tongues.

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My girlfriend and I were fighting over which led to a greater chance of getting cancer, smoking or tanning. I probably average a cigarette a day, and my girlfriend usually goes tanning two or three times a week. Who gets cancer first?
— DAVE, COLUMBUS, OHIO

A slo-mo suicide pact — quel romantique! The competitive aspect bugs me, though. Why not jump out the window hand in hand and have this end in a tie?

Research on light smokers is fairly sparse (heavy smokers get most of the ink), but what there is won’t be much comfort. One Norwegian study, which tracked more than 40,000 people for up to 30 years, found the risk from smoking just one to four cigarettes per day was surprisingly high. For men, the risk of dying from lung cancer was 2.8 times higher than for nonsmokers; for women, it was more than five times higher. The cardio news was bad, too: The risk of death from ischemic heart disease was 2.7 to 2.9 times higher than for nonsmokers. Overall, light smokers’ risk of dying from any cause was about 50 percent greater than nonsmokers’. (This means within a given period of time, you understand. The long-run risk of death for anyone short of the Virgin Mary is a solid 100 percent.)

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SEEING BLOODY RED: At Chastain Square Shopping Center on Roswell Road, a 29-year-old woman said she went to the Dumpster to throw away some cardboard and discovered a box on the ground filled with bloody clothes. So she called police. An officer arrived to investigate. “As I approached the box, I noticed what appeared to be bloody clothing inside,” the officer wrote. Then, he looked closer. “The suspected blood appeared to be some type of red syrup. It also had a sweet smell to it. … To make sure that the substance was not blood, I [got] an ID unit to come out and take pictures of the scene before I started removing contents of the box.” After photos, the officer fully opened the box. “Inside the box was a plastic fake head, pants, a white shirt, and rubber flies and worms. It appeared that someone may have used the items to advertise a game of some sort. The reason for this assumption is because I also found a Chinese to-go box with a bloody fake hand inside. On the box, it advertised a game called ‘Grand Theft Auto in China.’ The game is believed to be full of blood and gore from the display on the box.” The officer discarded the fake bloody contents and filed a police report.

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What are the risks of anal sex if the partners are heterosexual and monogamous? Could one contract some disease? And if so, how bad is it?
— GUERITA2KOO

Anal sex, eh? Well, I suppose anything beats another round of “Gilmore Girls” reruns. But let’s get one basic concept on the table right away. While there’s no denying anal sex has a certain kinky charm, the rectum was designed as an exit, not an entrance. So yeah, you take some risks.

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WOMEN GONE WILD: Two officers responded to a fight call on Cushman Circle and found several women engaged in a verbal spat. A 25-year-old woman reportedly threw something upstairs, trying to hit a 27-year-old woman. One officer grabbed the 25-year-old woman, and the other officer was trying to help when “a puddle of water came pouring down on myself and [the other officer] from upstairs. We were drenched in what appeared to be bleach, but as it turns out, the liquid was only water poured from a bleach bottle.” Police gave both women tickets for disorderly conduct. Apparently, the argument extended to the 25-year-old woman’s mother. She allegedly burned the other woman “with fire on her hand,” police wrote. Also, a man said he was walking his dog, when the mother shouted at him and pointed a sharp object in his face. Apparently, the man’s wife sprayed the mother with pepper spray. The 60-year-old mother went to a psychiatric ward.

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LEAD STORY: Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence said recently that he would install a prosthetic eye with a camera and wireless transmitter (of the size now used for colonoscopies) into the socket from which one of his eyes had been removed as the result of a childhood accident. He hopes to control the prosthetic eye in the same way that his muscles control his good eye, to record what his eyes see, and his first project will be a documentary on people’s attitudes about privacy in an “Orwellian society.” Says Spence: The “best way to make a connection [with an interviewee] is through eye contact. … When you bring in a camera, people change.”

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With modern medicine and hygiene and diet, we’ve extended life expectancy far beyond what it’s ever been. Yet we all still get old and die. Few make it past 80 or 90 years, and almost nobody makes it past 100. Is there any real hope of something that could allow humans to stop or slow the aging process?

— Eric R., Los Angeles
My initial reply was: Want to stop aging? Move to the developing world, where they’ve got the problem licked. With frequent war, famine, and disease, getting old isn’t an issue for vast swaths of the population. On reading your note more carefully, however, I see your beef about aging is that it makes you die, meaning early death probably isn’t the strategy for you. So instead, I give you Cecil’s Guaranteed Longevity Plan. We’ll start with the easy steps and work up.

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FASHION STATEMENT: A 50-year-old man said he has been staying at a hotel on Northside Drive in the Castleberry Hill district for an extended period of time. “[He] stated that he feels that someone is coming into his room and wearing his clothes and then returning his clothes unwashed,” an officer wrote. There were no signs of forced entry to his hotel room.

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LEAD STORY: A 1970s-style San Francisco commune is organized around the practice of “orgasmic meditation,” but for women only, in daily sessions that start promptly at 7 a.m. Men belong to the commune, too, but are useful only digitally to the women and must remain clothed, according to a March report in the New York Times. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, 41, is considered by some former members to be running a “cult,” because of her dominant personality and ability to play on the vulnerabilities of her members, but the three dozen now in residence seem to admire her vision. One man said, according to the Times, that he had improved his own concentration at work (as a Silicon Valley engineer) through “the practice of manually fixing his attention on a tiny spot of a woman’s body.”
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