Lead Story Edible "dirt" has recently appeared on the menus of several of the world's most renowned restaurants (e.g., the top-rated Noma in Copenhagen, Shakuf in Tel Aviv, Gilt in New York City). "People are really wowed to see dirt on their plates," said Gilt's head chef. Actually, the "dirt" only looks and feels like dirt. Each chef creates signature tastes from dried or charred powders with the appearance and consistency of sand, soil or ...

Lead Story Ingrid Paulicivic filed a lawsuit in September against Laguna Beach, Calif., gynecologist Red Alinsod over leg burns she bafflingly acquired during her 2009 hysterectomy -- a procedure that was topped off by the doctor's nearly gratuitous name-"branding" of her uterus with his electrocautery tool. Dr. Alinsod explained that he carved "Ingrid" in inch-high letters on the organ only after he had removed it and that such labeling helps in the event a woman ...

Lead Story Civilization in Decline: "Tom Tom," a 2-year-old Yorkshire terrier, was laid to rest at the Oakland Cemetery in Monticello, Ark., in March, even though he was in good health. His owner, Donald Ellis, had just passed away but had left explicit instructions that he wanted Tom Tom buried along with him, and not later on, because he felt that no one could love Tom Tom as much as he did. Ellis' reluctant ...

Lead Story More than a half-million children in the U.S. take antipsychotic medicines and (reported The New York Times in September) "(e)ven the most reluctant (doctors) encounter a marketing juggernaut that has made antipsychotics the nation's top-selling class of drugs by revenue, $14.6 billion last year, with prominent promotions aimed at treating children." In one psychiatrist's waiting room, observed the Times reporter, "(C)hildren played with Legos stamped with the word Risperdal" (an antipsychotic made by ...

Professional Training Required The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration announced in August that it had contract work for up to 2,100 language specialists to transcribe wiretaps, with immediate needs in the Atlanta field office for 144 Spanish experts, along with 12 for Vietnamese, and nine each for Korean, Farsi and "Ebonics." Ebonics is recognized by some linguists as the "nonstandard" form of English spoken by African-Americans. (In one example cited by the Associated Press, offered ...

Updates • The Yaohnanen tribe on the South Pacific island of Tanna believe their true ancestral god is Britain's Prince Philip (based on photographs of him with the queen during a 1974 visit to Tanna's mother nation of Vanuatu) and believe he promised he would return for good on his 89th birthday (June 10, 2010). Although the prince has kept in touch, he failed to show up for the grand celebration, but fortunately, Scottish university ...

Lead Story A recent surge of neo-Nazism in several countries -- including, improbably, Israel, and Mongolia (where some dark-skinned natives are rabidly anti-Chinese) -- has generally been denounced, but Corinna Burt credited it with rescuing her from a life of acting in pornographic videos. According to a hate-group watchdog, the Portland, Ore., woman is "the most prominent National Socialist Movement organizer in the Pacific Northwest." In an August interview with Gawker.com, the white-supremacist Burt (a ...

It's Never Sunny in North Korea • North Korea's World Cup adventure began auspiciously with a hard-fought 2-1 loss to a superior Brazil team, leading the government to release photographs of the North Korean coach supposedly receiving long-distance telepathic strategy signals during the game from Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il. With the country's hopes up, the team was embarrassed in two subsequent games and dispatched from the tournament. Back home in July, the players were paraded ...

The Outer Frontiers of U.S. Immigration Policy The $125 million Jay Peak ski resort in Vermont, with 120-room hotel, ice arena, golf course and the Northeast's largest water park, is just months away from completion, thanks to half-million-dollar investments from each of 250 foreign nationals from 43 countries who, as part of the deal, were given conditional U.S. "green cards" (for permanent residency). At the other end of America's immigration conundrum, prosecutors in Snohomish County, ...

Lead Story Among the promotions offered by New York City's upscale Marmara Manhattan hotel is a "birth tourism" package exploiting the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. For about $35,000, a foreign expectant mother with a visa can spend her delivery week in luxury accommodations (including medical care) -- and assure her baby automatic U.S. citizenship. (That child could then become an "anchor," subsequently making it easier for the parents to acquire "green cards.") Also, The Washington ...

Lead Story While the morbidly obese struggle with their health, those who eroticize massive weight gain are capturing increased attention, according to a July ABC News report. Commercial and personal websites give full-bellied "gainers," such as New Jerseyan Donna Simpson, and their admiring "feeders" the opportunity to express themselves. Simpson became a 602-pound media sensation in March, when she began offering pay-per-view video of herself to an audience of horny feeders. Wrote another gainer-blogger, "Lately, ...

Lead Story "Why are you still alive?" is the question doctors ask Ozzy Osbourne, the hard-rock singer and reality-TV star, who says he is now clean and sober after a lifetime of unimaginably bad habits. In June, he started two new ventures: undergoing the three-month process of genetic mapping (to help doctors learn why, indeed) and becoming a "health advice" columnist for London's Sunday Times. At various points in his life, the now-cholesterol-conscious, vegetarian Osbourne ...

Lead Story A severe but underappreciated American drug problem (sometimes deadly and often expensive) is patients' failure to take prescribed medications -- even to save their own lives (such as with anti-coagulants or cholesterol-regulating statins). In recent pilot programs, according to a June New York Times report, compliance rates have been significantly improved -- by giving patients money ($50 to $100 a month, sometimes more) if they remember to take their drugs. Data show that, ...

Lead Story New York state school officials had promised to crack down on soft test-grading to end the near-automatic grade-advancement by students unprepared for promotion. However, a June New York Post report found that the problem lingers under the current grading guideline called "holistic rubrics." Among examples cited by the Post (from a 4th-grade math test): How many inches long is a "2-foot-long skateboard"? (Answer: 24; "half-credit" answer: 48). Also, if you have 35 ...

Lead Story It's clear, based on a May Time magazine dispatch, that Norway's felons and miscreants are of a superior class than America's. When Norway's brand-new Halden prison opened in April, the country's King Harald V headlined a glitzy gala that celebrated what has been called the world's "most humane" lockup. Among the facilities: a sound studio, jogging trails, a guest house for inmates' visitors, and a scrumptious-smelling "kitchen laboratory" where murderers and bandits can ...