xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
New Scientist magazine reported in October that psychologists seem to be reclassifying people who are permanently uninterested in sex, from the old notion that such behavior was a disorder to the emerging position that it is merely a sexual preference of “none of the above.” (Asexuals profess no sexual attraction at all, encompassing loners reluctant to associate with people and gregarious, caring people whose natural inclination is to relate to others nonsexually.) Recent research estimated that 1 percent of the population is asexual, and in previous research, 40 percent of asexuals described themselves as “extremely” or “very” happy. An asexuality support group (AVEN) touts its best-selling T-shirt, “Asexuality: It’s not just for amoebas anymore.”
Jackie Lee Shrader, 49, and his son, Harley Lee, 24, had a brief shootout with .22-caliber handguns, provoked when the pair confronted each other over how to cook skinless chicken for dinner (Bluewell, W.Va., September).
Boston police arrested a wheelchair-confined bank robber, who had become paralyzed when shot during a previous bank robbery.
In August, cardiologist Dr. Lawrence Poliner won $366 million in damages from a federal court jury in Dallas because his practice was virtually shut down through word of mouth for seven months in 1998, a verdict that (after subtracting 25 percent in attorney fees) would reward him with earnings during the shutdown of $39 million per month. The shutdown came after a hospital peer review panel had found errors in 29 of 44 patient-cases of Poliner (but he was reinstated after prominent cardiologists supported him, though the panel did not retract its initial finding).
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa, Fla. 33679 or [email protected]
Copyright © 2001 by Chuck Shepherd
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
