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Letter to the editor

Global Bizarre

By JIM WEBSTER, Times Staff Writer
Published February 8, 2008

He's out of order

To get new lawyer, punch old lawyer

Peter Hafer was in a Georgetown, Ky., court Monday on charges of robbing the local Kmart when he informed the judge that he didn't trust his court-appointed lawyer, Doug Crickmer, and wanted a new one. The judge told Hafer that he didn't get to choose his public defender, which was specifically not the answer that Hafer wanted, so he punched Crickmer. Then he unloaded a barrage on Crickmer, who, again, is a lawyer and this happened in front of a bunch of witnesses. Crickmer went to the hospital, was released, and then went on the Today show, where he said he wouldn't file charges against Hafer. "I certainly don't fault him or blame him or wish him any ill will," Crickmer said. "He just got frustrated, fed up, and he just snapped and I was the nearest target." And, the moral of the story is that violence pays, because Hafer now gets the new attorney he had asked for.

Miracle dragons

Komodo is single mom in truest sense

The Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kan., is celebrating the birth of two baby Komodo dragons. And it was a little bit of a surprise, because the zoo doesn't have any boy Komodos. Well, they didn't have any boy Komodos. Now they have two baby boys. They are believed to be the first in North America known to have hatched by parthenogenesis, which requires no male fertilization. It happens naturally in some invertebrates and plants, rarely in vertebrates, and in Jurassic Park. Only six zoos in the country breed the animals. And at others, births just happen.

Track-a-rock

Old bridge may get new technology

The Honington Bridge near Shipston, England, is 300 years old, but it may not make it another 300 if people keep stealing the rocks it is made of. About 26 of the Cotswold stones from the bridge have been stolen or damaged in the past few years, so council leaders are considering the possibility of microchipping the stones, reports the BBC. They wouldn't be able to track the stones or anything, but if they found one that they suspected of being from the bridge, they could scan it to identify them.

Shhhhhhh!

Actors find lines easy to remember

If you don't like a lot of dialogue in your plays, Britain's National Theatre has a play for you. The theater will stage 30 performances of Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, an experimental play that lasts 100 minutes, has 450 characters, and not one word of dialogue. Also, there is no pesky plot to confuse things. "The point is to explore what's left when you remove language," director James Macdonald told the Daily Telegraph. "The answer is that there's a huge amount." A theater spokesperson say that tickets are selling "well, but not like hotcakes."

Compiled from Times wire services and other sources by staff writer Jim Webster, who can be reached at jwebster@sptimes.com.

[Last modified February 7, 2008, 21:48:39]