Lead Stories
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According to a May story in southern California’s OC Weekly, an obscure provision in the state’s vehicle code allows any ordinary citizen, by means of an anonymous complaint, to force a motorist to attend a hearing at the DMV to “review [his] driving qualifications”–with license suspension a possible outcome. The loophole was intended to allow relatives of unsafe elderly drivers to ease them off the road, but as it’s written the law allows anyone to commit “bureaucratic road rage”: all complaints, even those completely unsupported by witnesses or evidence, must lead to a hearing, and even if the hearing ends in dismissal the victim’s insurance rates can be affected.
Recently launched products: Downloadable “Purring Kitty” software, from British firm Vibelet.com, that enables Nokia cell phones to vibrate continuously for roughly an hour on a full charge, turning the phone into a discreet “massager.” And a fashionable “No-Contact Jacket” for women, with a rubber lining and nylon shell sandwiching conductive fibers that literally crackle with an 80,000-volt electric charge, stepped up from a 9-volt battery; if an assailant tries to lock the jacket’s wearer in a bear hug, he’ll get a jolt powerful enough to throw him to the ground.
People Different From Us
In Bangkok, Thailand, the organizers of the “International Kids Contest,” for children ages 3 to 12, bowed to protests and dropped the “Miss Sexy Body” category from the pageant. In West Seneca, New York, a man drove his pickup into a self-service car wash, hoping to put out a small fire in his engine–but by the time he realized he didn’t have any coins, the fire had spread, eventually destroying four of the car wash’s eight bays. And in Pike Creek Valley, Delaware, a 38-year-old man disposed of some gunpowder by tossing it into his lighted fireplace; he was hospitalized with burns to his head and arms.
