News of the Weird

Lead Stories *Six women filed a lawsuit in July in Birmingham, Alabama, in protest of the state’s new ban on the sale of sex toys (“any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs”). According to an Associated Press report, four of the women…

Right Out of a Movie

Last month Miguel Moya was walking to his car in an employee-only parking lot at Miami International Airport when he was approached by a large and rather ominous-looking fellow. The man stood approximately six feet four inches tall and appeared to weigh in excess of 300 pounds. His face was…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *In July in Columbus, Ohio, the prison sentence of convicted child-pornography importer Timothy Rowles, age 29, was bumped from one year to two after he wrote the judge a letter showing a lack of remorse. Rowles asked the judge matter-of-factly if his explicit child-sex magazines could be returned…

Letters

Steroids: Thick Outside, Thin Inside The cover photograph for Ted B. Kissell’s article “Size Matters” (August 13) says it all: no face, no personality, just body. What a sad and pathetic statement for the gay community. The fact that there is so much emphasis placed on physical appearance — and…

News of the Weird

Lead Story *NASA revealed in May that it had inadvertently allowed an astronaut impostor to sit at the mission control console at Alabama’s Marshall Space Center during a shuttle flight in which actual astronauts were preparing to rescue a satellite from space. Jerry Allen Whittredge was arrested in Houston and…

Requiem for a Newspaper

The Miami Herald used fourteen reporters last week to cover the resignation of its publisher, David Lawrence, Jr. Fourteen! With so many people on the story, you might have thought Lawrence had made his announcement from the deck of the burning Ecstasy. Testimonials gushed forth from the governor, lieutenant governor,…

Letters

Apology Accepted With regard to Jacob Bernstein’s article on travel to Cuba (“Passport to Paradox,” August 6), I am writing to clarify that the promise of money to begin a Website [devoted to scholars’ travel concerns] at the American Association for the Advancement of Science came from the John D…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *According to Pat Rusin and her team of researchers at the University of Arizona, the toilet seat is actually one of the least bacteria-laden surfaces in the home. Study results were published in a June issue of New Scientist magazine; three times as many bacteria were found on…

Letters

New Times: Soothsayers; Miami Herald: Mendacious, Deceitful Profit-Seekers, Hmmmmm This letter pertains to Jim DeFede’s article “Only Himself to Blame” (July 30). Mr. DeFede says he was surprised the Miami Herald supported Daryl Jones. The whores at the Herald never surprise me. The question Mr. DeFede should be asking is,…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *On July 1 in South River, New Jersey, Yugoslavian Americans Boris Angelevski and his wife and 31-year-old son, after fighting among themselves about the son’s having become too Americanized, threatened police and barricaded themselves inside their apartment for eleven hours before giving up. Police knew the apartment well…

Only Himself to Blame

The nomination of Daryl Jones to become Secretary of the Air Force may be dead, but his transmogrification into a martyr — crucified on a Republican cross of racism — is proceeding nicely. Indeed, the reaction to Jones’s rejection by the Senate Armed Services Committee last week was both predictable…

Letters

Lawless Miami: Way Too Much Fun! There once was a time when, on election day, all saloons and taverns were closed until the polls were closed. Seems some citizens were known to sell their vote for a drink. And they weren’t Cubans! In addition, lots of deceased voters managed to…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *Distrust of modern medicine has led to the increasing popularity of therapeutic self-trepanning (drilling a hole in the skull), according to a June Chicago Tribune story. Trepanning activist Peter Halvorson said that drilling into his own skull 25 years ago brought him “a heightened, childlike sense of awareness”…

Letters

Inner City, Outer Beauty I’d like to thank New Times for Judy Cantor and Steve Satterwhite’s extraordinary article, “The People’s Gallery (July 16), about our inner-city wall paintings. I have lived in Liberty City for 30 years and have never read anything as uplifting as this article. Not one newspaper…

Dog Fight

This week Daryl Jones is headed into combat — Washington-style. In yet another sign that Jones’s nomination to become Secretary of the Air Force is in serious trouble, Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has decided to reopen Jones’s confirmation hearing so that several members of Jones’s…

Letters

Ollie’s Nifty Fix-it Formula I read Kirk Nielsen’s article “Wheels of Fortune” (July 2) with dismay. If even a portion of what was reported about the Miami-Dade Transit Agency is accurate, this is a bad situation that needs to be fixed. Overtime pay may be a fact of life for…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *The New York Times reported in June that NASA recently successfully field-tested an oil-spill catcher that could have cleaned up the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill. A Huntsville, Alabama, hairdresser named Phillip McCrory came up with the idea to put hair clippings into mesh pillows; 1.4 million pounds…

Letters

Capitalist Tool in Alternative Clothing Has New Times become a tool of the union-busting establishment? Kirk Nielsen’s article “Wheels of Fortune” (July 2) seems to so indicate. He appears to have a problem with the fact that Miami-Dade drivers who have been on the job 30 years own nice houses…

News of the Weird

Lead Stories *Michael Anthony Horne filed a lawsuit against the City of San Antonio in May for a wrongful arrest last year that cost him the ashes of his grandmother. When he pulled off the road to nap, a suspicious patrolman searched Horne’s car and found the ashes. He did…

News of the Weird

Lead Story *In April the CIA debuted its Website for children, featuring games and gimmicks such as allowing kids to put disguises on models’ bodies and to maneuver virtual guards to look for explosives. Back in the real world a month later, the agency failed to discover that India was…

Letters

And Now…Heeeeere’s Robert! Robert Andrew Powell’s “Birth of a Station” (June 25), about the debacle known as WAMI-TV, was hilarious. It made me laugh, it made me cry. Reading his article provided more insightful entertainment than the dreadfully cheesy, hideously stale Ocean Drive TV, Kenneth’s Freakquency, or any other of…

Letters

Erratum Owing to a reporting error, staff writer Jacob Bernstein incorrectly stated in “If El Exilio Doesn’t Get You, Uncle Sam Will” (June 18) that Miami businessman Hugo Cancio violated the terms of the U.S. embargo of Cuba by not securing State Department approval for a Miami Beach concert featuring…