Monday 03/16/09

Human Interest News — Posted on March 16, 2009

Compliments of the president
There was a surprise name included in the House of Representatives version of a spending bill that was passed by congressmen on Feb. 25. Listed as a cosponsor for a $7.7 million earmark? President Barack Obama, who, while a senator from Illinois, pushed for the earmark despite a campaign pledge to cut pork out of the Washington diet. But to prevent further embarrassment, Obama allies on the Senate Appropriations Committee have promised to scrub his name in conference committee from the request to send millions to “tribally controlled postsecondary vocational institutions.”

Gas guzzler
Short of being on the receiving end of a fat government bailout, there was no way Juan Zamora could pay the bill. Zamora of Washington state says he pulled into a Richland, Wash., Conoco station and used his PayPal debit card to pay for $26 worth of gas for his Camaro. But when he arrived home, he had a message on his answering machine from PayPal asking him to verify a gas purchase of $81,400,836,908. Yes, over $81 billion. To add to his frustration, PayPal pegged him with a $90 overdraft fee, and he had to explain the error to two separate corporate representatives before convincing anyone that his Camaro doesn’t hold $81 billion worth of gasoline. Representatives for PayPal, who have refunded Zamora the overdraft fee, explained that his customer number may have been switched with the cost per gallon.

Party pooper
A group of sales tax protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, already angered by a local 1-cent sales tax hike, have been stymied again when state officials ruled their planned Boston Tea Party-style protest too environmentally hazardous to sanction. City leaders sought the sales tax hike for housing assistance, with large chunks of the revenue to go to people whose homes were destroyed during heavy flooding last June. Prior to the protest, organizer Tim Pugh asked Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources if he could dump real tea into the Cedar River in a modern reprise of the Revolutionary-era protest. Instead, the environmental officials informed Pugh he couldn’t use tea-but he could dump river water back into the Cedar from buckets that said “tea.”

House call
It had to have been one of the easiest lies to catch. State Trooper Trevor Downey was finishing a night shift when he spotted a person erratically driving a 1999 Dodge Avenger about 15 miles southeast of Yakima, Wash. When Downey pulled close to the Avenger in his squad car, the other driver made a quick turn into a driveway and pulled into an open garage. When Downey asked 31-year-old Joseph Takesgun to explain himself, Takesgun apparently told Downey he lived there. Downey knew better, though. Takesgun hadn’t arrived home. He’d arrived at Downey’s home-and taken the trooper’s parking spot. Takesgun was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence.

Laughing matter
Environmentalists don’t think it’s funny, but the fish might. A German scientist recently noticed the aquatic earthworms they were studying were gurgling out a gas they didn’t expect: nitrous oxide. Non-chemists might know it better as laughing gas. Peter Stief of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany explained that marine animals, like the worms, that gobble up nitrogen-rich microbes often burp out laughing gas-a vapor 310 times more onerous to the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. The culprit for the gas? Tiny, nitrogen-rich microbial bacteria that apparently live as well on a lake or river bottom as in another animal’s stomach.