And What Were Y-o-u Doing at Age 14? Among the students featured in Popular Science's September list of young inventors was Fabian Fernandez-Han, 14, of Conroe, Texas, who invented a bicycle that, when pedaled, also desalinates seawater (via reverse osmosis) from replaceable 15-gallon canisters. One hour of pedaling produces 20 gallons of drinkable water. Jack Andraka, 15, from Maryland, created a test for pancreatic cancer that is demonstrably much faster and more accurate than current diagnostics (using carbon nanotubes that can be specially activated by applications of the signature pancreatic-cancer protein, Mesothelin).
School officials in Grand Island, Neb., told Hunter Spanjer that the way he signs his name violates the schools' anti-weapons policy and that he'll have to abandon it. Hunter is 3 1/2 years old, deaf, fluent in the language Signing Exact English, and uses a hand flourish as his unique signature (registered with SEE), except that officials say the flourish looks like Hunter is threatening with a weapon. At press time, Hunter's parents were still negotiating with officials.
An unidentified mother of twins was photographed at the Thanksgiving Point Deli in Lehi, Utah, in September apparently toilet-training her toddlers at a table. Another patron witnessed the mother's bringing in what at first glance looked like booster seats, but then the mom undid the kids' jumpsuits and placed them on the potties. A spokesperson for the deli (located 10 miles south of Salt Lake City) said the incident was over by the time it was reported to her, but the witness put a photo on the Internet (picked up by TV stations) so that millions of people could disapprove of the mother's parenting.
Police in Seneca Falls, N.Y., arrested Dawn Planty in August and charged her with statutory rape. Planty came to officers' attention when she called 911 to ask if the dispatcher knew the age of consent in the state because she had had sex with a 15-year-old boy recently and wanted to clear her conscience.
The Washington Post, reporting in August the existence of a newly declassified communication between a cooperating Guantanamo Bay detainee and his lawyer, revealed that the "high-value" prisoner had, without explanation, been rewarded with a pet kitty cat.
On July 4, two peace activists who own a small advertising agency in Malmo, Sweden, pulled off their most audacious stunt yet by hiring a small plane to drop 800 teddy bears emblazoned with democracy-promoting messages over the capital of Belarus. The country's strongman president, Aleksandr Lukashenko, later fired two generals for their inability to prevent the breach of the country's airspace.
Labor Party councillors in the Netherlands demanded that weather forecasters be punished for incorrect predictions - since poor weather drives down resort business, resulting in slower hiring. Hotelier Hoek van Holland lamented that the forecasters, were getting worse "despite having more forecasting tools than ever before." (A week before that, tourist managers in Belgium reportedly called for "less pessimistic forecasts," and one urged meteorologists "to pay as much attention to sun as they do to rain.")
