Monday 3/9/09

Human Interest News — Posted on March 9, 2009

Fire me now
At least one Michigan resident won’t be sorry when he’s soon laid off. After all, he asked for it. Cheboygan Drain Commissioner Dennis Lennox campaigned for the office in November on a pledge that he would work to eliminate the position. His reasoning? Cheboygan County has no drainage ditches to regulate. The 24-year-old Republican convinced the county’s board of commissioners to approve his request, but the state legislature has final say in the matter.

Name that driver
Irish police were on the lookout for a Pole named Prawo Jazdy. After all, the man had over 50 traffic offenses, and each time he gave authorities a different address. But it turns out that Prawo Jazdy is not a man; it’s Polish for driving license. Police officers had apparently assumed that the two words listed at the top right corner of the licenses constituted the driver’s name and recorded it as such. “It is quite embarrassing to see the system has created Prawo Jazdy as a person with over 50 identities,” said a police memo obtained by Irish newspapers. About 200,000 Poles reportedly live in Ireland, attracted by its once-booming economy.

To bark for
Every dog has his day-especially if he’s living it up on his owner’s dime. Discriminating dog owners near Sydney may soon be dropping off their four-legged friends at PawPaws Urban Retreat, a luxury hotel and spa for dogs only. The idea, says Mandy Richards, PawPaws owner, is to give wealthy Australian jetsetters a luxurious place to leave their pooches rather than hire a dog sitter when the owners are traveling. While at the incense-filled resort, dogs bask in the customized spa, enjoy pet massages and special chef-prepared meals. “For me, it was all about creating something that was great for dogs and great for their owners,” Richards told Northside, an Australian newspaper. “I used to ruin my holidays stressing about my dog while she was in the care of a kennel, and I wanted to remove that worry for other people.

A very tall tale
A sensational yarn about a woman swimming across the Atlantic was inspiring enough to fool newspaper and wire editors across the world when they reported American swimmer Jennifer Figge had managed to swim from just off the coast of Africa to Trinidad in 25 days. Had editors reached for their calculators, they’d have discovered Figge’s claim of swimming 2,100 miles in 25 days was a statistical absurdity. Assuming 16 hours a day of swimming, Figge would have had to maintain an average speed of 5.25 mph for the duration. Australia’s Eamon Sullivan set the 100 meter freestyle world record at the Beijing Olympics averaging 4.75 mph. Soon after the story broke, the Associated Press ran a correction, saying Figge swam occasionally, but spent much of her time riding aboard a catamaran.

Eating out
For every law, there’s a cause. And in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, eating your ballot means possibly facing charges of election fraud. Leading up to the constitutional referendum on Feb. 15 that allowed Chavez to stay in power ad infinitum, a general in charge of elections in the oil-rich South American nation warned anti-Chavez voters that eating their ballot receipts as a protest was a violation of election law. Under Venezuelan law, ballots are counted, but the ballot receipts must be collected also to ensure the electronic counts match the paper receipts.