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The skinny

By TIMES WIRES
Published January 25, 2007

Look, I'm a sloth. Nothing is what I do

If you look up "sloth" in the dictionary, it says "disinclination to action or labor." If you ask a group of scientists in Germany, they'd say, "No kidding." For three years, they tried to get Mats to cooperate in an experiment studying animal movement. Thing is, nothing could make Mats move if he didn't feel like it. All the scientists wanted Mats to do was get up off the floor, climb a pole, and climb back down. For three years, he wouldn't do it. Not for a cucumber. Not for spaghetti. So the scientists gave up. "Mats obviously wanted absolutely nothing to do with furthering science," said spokesman Axel Burchardt. Mats is now living in a zoo, where no one asks him to do anything. And he obliges.

3.141592653589 ... oh, just forget it

Marc Umile, above, was looking at a list of the world-record holders in an unusual event: people who can recite the most digits of pi by memory. Most people learn pi, the relationship of a circle's circumference to its diameter, about as far as 3.14. But there is a competitive society that memorizes the neverending number out to thousands of digits. Umile noticed that the list was dominated by Europeans and Asians. Well, Umile didn't come remotely close to the record of 67,890 digits, held by a man in China, but he did set a new North American record by taking it out 12,887 digits. He wrote them out in groups, almost like a poem, and recites them rhythmically. "Something you can almost dance to," he told the Philadelphia Inquirer. It took him 2 1/2 years to memorize, and 3 hours, 40 minutes to recite. Umile, 40, isn't even a math guy. He's a filing clerk. He's just really good with numbers.

Debt managers manage thyself

An association that exists to manage billions of dollars in government debt saw its Web site shut down last week because it didn't pay a $35 annual fee to keep its domain name registered. Wadmo.net, the site for the World Association of Debt Management Offices, expired on Jan. 15. It wasn't that they didn't have the money, just that there had been some bureaucratic changes and it wasn't anyone's job to renew it. If you're interested in information on debt management in more than 40 developing countries, you'll be glad to know that the site is back up.

Rio thieves target lucrative locks

Mirna Marchetti, 22, used to have really long, dark hair. It reached down to her waist. Then she rode the bus in Rio de Janeiro, where scissor-wielding thieves lopped off her locks. They also took her purse and cell phone, but police say that the hair was the top target. "This is a new kind of crime," a Rio police officer told Reuters. "They really did mean to steal her hair." Apparently, the thieves can sell it to hairdressers, who can get $250 for extensions made with the hair.

Compiled from Times wires and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster.

[Last modified January 25, 2007, 01:34:39]