Lead Stories
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In August, the LifeGem corporation, based in Elk Grove Village, announced that it can turn carbon collected from a loved one’s cremated ashes into a high-quality diamond. A DePaul University chemistry professor has agreed that the company’s method sounds plausible: the carbon is purified and converted to graphite in a vacuum induction furnace at about 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit, and then the graphite is subjected to further intense heat and pressure until it crystallizes. Prices start at $4,000 for a quarter-carat blue stone, and red, yellow, green, and colorless LifeGems are in the works.
In March, lawyer Maurice Prefontaine of Edmonton, Alberta, was arrested for skipping his own trial: he’d been charged with contempt of court for a series of outbursts at judges, including referring to Justice Gerald Verville as a “slithering mass [of] vipers.” And in July in Columbus, Ohio, a judge declared a mistrial after defense attorney Christopher T. Cicero rushed the phalanx of deputies surrounding his client, alleged murderer Michael Gordon, and smacked him in the head–according to a bailiff, Gordon had just threatened to “kick [Cicero’s] fat ass.”
The Japanese practice of hiring strangers to act as guests at funerals and weddings (so families won’t lose face if the ceremonies are underattended) was reported by News of the Weird in 1995. According to an August Miami Herald dispatch from Tokyo, entrepreneurs in the field are branching out: Kazushi Ookunitani’s “convenience agency” supplies simulated students to sit in on college lectures to keep the professor’s spirits up. And “friends” of the bride at a recent ceremony (who were paid about $500 each) were given detailed biographies of the people they were to pretend to be, the better to mingle with her actual relatives.
In Southampton, Pennsylvania, a judge ruled that a 19-year-old man must stand trial for shooting a friend who’d given him a wedgie at a Phish concert; the shooter apparently nursed a grudge for months before the attack….In Auckland, New Zealand, a woman undergoing a cesarean delivery caught fire, possibly because a defective cauterizing tool ignited the alcohol-based sterilizing solution used on her abdomen and legs; she sustained only minor injuries, and her baby boy was unharmed….In Dover, New Hampshire, police cited federal forfeiture law in demanding that prosecutors seize an entire McIntosh College dormitory because so much drug activity was taking place inside.
