Monday 8/18/08

Human Interest News   —   Posted on August 18, 2008

By The Editors of WorldMag.com

Easy collar
Call it an arrest wish. A Plant City, Fla., man repeatedly phoned 911 telling the operator he had a warrant out for his arrest and that he would wait by the pay phone for a cruiser to pick him up and take him to the station. Problem: 47-year-old Peiter Vanvliet had no arrest warrant. But after repeated phone calls, a sheriff’s deputy drove over to the pay phone to arrest Vanvliet for misuse of the 911 phone system.

It’s a small world
According to Microsoft, the fabled Six Degrees of Separation theory holds water. After studying 30 billion computer instant message conversations among 180 million people, Microsoft found just 6.6 degrees of separation between any two users of its Microsoft Messenger instant message program. In essence, any two random people in the Microsoft survey were separated by a string of just 6.6 acquaintances on average. “To me, it was pretty shocking. What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity,” Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz told The Washington Post. “People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore.”

A true fat cat
Princess Chunky has a new name. Or rather, an old one. Moreover, the she is actually a he. The 44-pound stray cat earned national fame when it appeared with an animal shelter employee on Live With Regis and Kelly on July 31, less than a week after being found wandering through a Voorhees, N.J., apartment complex. After the cat’s appearance, a southern New Jersey woman stepped forward and claimed she was forced to abandon the cat when her home went into foreclosure. The cat’s former owner cleared up something else: Princess Chunky is actually a male named Powder. Show host Kelly Ripa probably doesn’t care: “We in the media love a 44-pound cat,” she said. If Powder can gain two more pounds, he could become the fattest cat on record, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

Political pooch
Calling all Yellow-Dog Democrats: Willie Bean Rosco P. Coltrane needs your vote. A pet owner in Fairhope, Ala., has put her 7-year-old Golden Retriever up as a mayoral candidate in the coastal Alabama city of around 12,000. Having missed the official candidate deadline, Willie Bean doesn’t have much of a chance in the crowded seven-man, one-dog race. But dogs have been elected mayor before: In 2004, Rabbit Hash, Ky., elected a black Labrador retriever as its mayor. Owner Tress Turner said she put her pooch in the election after being dogged by customers at her coffee shop about who she was supporting in the anticipated contest.