CHUCK SHEPARD | Posted: Thursday, July 17, 2008 12:00 am
At press time, a court in Athens, Greece, was considering a challenge brought by three residents of the island of Lesbos in the Aegian Sea to prevent a Greek gay and lesbian organization from referring to homosexual women as lesbians, arguing that such usage insults their heritage, since Lesbos residents have traditionally been called "Lesbians." On the other hand, Lesbos was also the birthplace of the poet Sappho, a heroic woman among gays and lesbians for her early references to her love of other women.
The continuing crisis
Randall Popkes, 41, and his son Joshua Williams, 22, were arrested in West Des Moines, Iowa, in May and charged with an attempted safecracking at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club. A security officer had noted their license plate as they sped away after a frustrating session in which they had cut into the safe but could not open it. In fact, they had left behind a note for management, according to the Des Moines Register: "(Expletive) you and your safe."
Wedgies in the news
(1) In July, the Utah Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Erik Low, now 40, ruling that a jury should have considered the possibility of a lesser crime than manslaughter in the 2003 shooting death of a man who had just 15 seconds earlier during a fight given Low what was described as a violent wedgie. (2) In June, a 20-year-old window cleaner on Australia's Gold Coast survived a nine-story plunge, suffering only a broken arm and, from falling on his harness, a super wedgie.
People different from us
(1) In Augusta, Maine, in June, Marshall Crandall IV, 39, was sentenced to serve nine months in jail for violating a domestic protection order by reuniting with his girlfriend, even though the woman pleaded with the judge, arguing that the altercations were mutual and that it could just have well been she who was charged with assault that night. Said she, "I picked him up three or four times and slammed him on the ground." (2) Scott Sullivan, 35, was arrested in Van Buren, Ark., in June and charged with kidnapping and assaulting his mother. He told police that he got upset when he learned that her dog had killed his pet skunk.
User-friendly research projects
-- In May, NASA sought subjects for a study into the effects of microgravity on the human body and offered each participant $17,000 to lie in bed for 90 straight days.
-- In April, England's University of East Anglia advertised for subjects for a study of whether a natural compound found in cocoa could cut the risk of heart disease among diabetic women; the participants must be willing to eat chocolates every day for a year.
Update
Artist Martin Creed won Britain's 2001 Turner Prize for his highly acclaimed installation of a lightbulb going off and on indefinitely in an otherwise-empty room. His latest exhibition ("Work No. 850"), at the Tate Britain in July, consists of a runner sprinting through one of the galleries every 30 seconds.
The museum's director described Work No. 850 as a "compelling," "lyrical" piece that "upsets any preconceived ideas" of moving through an art space. News of the Weird's most recent encounter with Creed came in 1996 when he released his "Sick Film," consisting only of shots of people vomiting on camera, and at the time, he said he was considering a similar s-word film, to consist only of people performing an even less tasteful bodily function on camera.
Fine points of law
The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed in June that defendants have a constitutional right to cross-examine witnesses against them and must get a new trial if denied that right.
The challenger was Dwayne Giles, who had tried during his trial to keep incriminating statements by his girlfriend out of court, in that she was not available for him to cross-examine. The reason for her unavailability was that she is dead, and Giles was being tried for her murder. Hence, her statements suggesting Giles' motive cannot be used in court.