NEWS OF THE WEIRD

Lead story

New Scientist magazine reported in October that psychologists seem to be reclassifying people who are 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." 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."

People different from us

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). And Niccolo Rossodivita, 62, shot Billy Cordova, 40, twice in the chest after Cordova followed him around their house prolonging their argument over Jesus Christ's correct name (Wasilla, Alaska, September). And Angela Morris, 19, was charged with assaulting her boyfriend by pouring boiling oil on him during an argument over a Bible verse the two had been reading together (Eugene, Ore., May).

More scenes of the surreal

• According to a September Washington Post dispatch from Culpeper, Va., a conference of people obsessed with spotting the alleged, 7-foot-tall Sasquatch, which is said to be roaming the woods of America, many attendees ("East Coast Bigfoot community") seem consumed by the West Coast Bigfoot community's supposed arrogance. That is, Western witnesses seem to regard Eastern witnesses as delusional, in that Sasquatch obviously lives west of the Rockies.

• Thomas Patrick Remo, 50, was arrested in September in Dallas and charged with practicing medicine (gynecology) without a license; Remo had a stream of female customers who apparently did not think it odd that the exams were free and that he ran his office out of a self-storage locker.

Our litigious society

• Patricia Frankhouser filed a lawsuit in Jeannette, Pa., in November against the Norfolk Southern railway as a result of being hit by a train in January as she walked on railroad tracks. Frankhouser, who suffered various cuts and a broken finger, claimed in the lawsuit that Norfolk Southern should have posted signs alongside the tracks warning people not to walk on them, that trains might be coming.

• 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).

• Frederick Puglisi, 23, was awarded $850,000 by a jury in Ramsey, N.J., in September, for injuries, including a disfigured hand caused by frostbite, suffered when he got drunk at a party, set out on foot, and passed out in a snow bank. The jury determined that his injuries were worth $1 million in damages and that Puglisi was only 15 percent responsible. (Ramsey police and the Bergen county police bore greater fault because they had failed to respond quickly enough to a 911 call about a man passed out in a snow bank.)

Almost all true

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) Municipal officials in Amsterdam tentatively approved a euthanasia-drug home delivery service. (b) Boston police arrested a wheelchair-confined bank robber, who had become paralyzed when shot during a previous bank robbery. (c) Police in Lagos, Nigeria, organized groups of officers into street choirs to help disperse unruly mobs by singing. (d) A British Medical Association official warned that hospitals have recently become "inundated" with serious knife and broken-bottle injuries among barroom-brawling women.

Answer to almost all true: (b), (c) and (d) are true.