Leading supplier of bones

The Oklahoma City company Skulls Unlimited International is, it claims, the world's leading supplier of bones - cleaning and polishing human and animal heads by picking off the tissue by hand and then using dermestid beetles to eat what's left.

Said owner Jay Villemarette, on the greasiness of the human head: "I am not exaggerating. It is nasty." But, said an employee, you get used to the work: "I've been waist-deep in a dead hippopotamus, and I'd rather do that than change diapers."

Cutting-edge inventions

South African inventor Willem van Rensburg has begun to market the Pronto condom, which he promised can be applied directly from wrapper to penis in three seconds (and, with practice, one second). It's available now only in South Africa, but he has obtained a U.S. patent.

On display at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, in October was a US$250,000, self-service milking machine (introduced in Europe in 2005) in which the cow wanders in, and lasers and video cameras guide the rubber cups to her teats, with a computer directing the actual milking.

Leading economic indicators

An appeals court in Florida finally applied the brakes to the so-called 'contingency fee multiplier' available under state law for lawyers who assist mistreated insurance customers. In extraordinary cases, a lawyer is permitted to recover up to 2 1/2 times the customary fee, which supposedly helps customers with smaller claims to find legal representation.

However, the court said the fee is being granted too routinely, and in one October case, a client won his US$1,315 claim while his lawyer got US$193,750.

Bright Ideas

A Georgetown University student, whose dad bought him a US$2.4 million off-campus house and who wants his eight best friends to live (and party) with him, ran up against a Washington, D.C. zoning law permitting no more than six unrelated people per house.

In October, after researching the issue, the students filed papers declaring themselves a 'church' (The Apostles of O'Neill, after owner Brian O'Neill) because churches are allowed to house up to 15 unrelated people. O'Neill's dad supports the students, as judged from his testy response to a Washington Post inquiry: "Who says they aren't a (real) religion?"

The United Nations Millennium Campaign's worldwide programme to "stand up against poverty" solicited amateur videos for distribution to help dramatise the issue in industrialised nations, but one video drew the attention of a Wall Street Journal reporter in October: Three men were sitting around a table, eating beans and raucously discussing their gas-producing qualities, when the men suddenly turned serious. One looked into the camera and said, "Some folks don't even have a bowl of beans to eat." The videomaker said he was "a little disappointed" that his piece was rejected.

Family values

Christine Marmolejo, 39, of Downers Grove, Illinois, pleaded guilty in October to a plot in which she had her 14-year-old son plant marijuana and prescription drugs in the backpack of another boy to embarrass that boy's mother, with whom Marmolejo had been feuding for years. Marmolejo's son eventually confessed, and now Marmolejo faces an enhanced penalty since she involved a 14-year-old in drug possession.

New-Age punishments

Rosewood Elementary School (Rock Hill, South Carolina) teacher Daniel Johns was investigated in October for having his students line up and stomp the feet of a classmate, as punishment for the kid's own foot-stomping. (No criminal charges were filed.)

And in a non-classroom incident, Alcorn State University Professor Festus Oguhebe was sentenced in Jackson, Mississippi, in November to two years in prison for disciplining his 11-year-old son by tying his hands and then covering him with ants (which Oguhebe said was a traditional punishment in his native Nigeria).

- Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate