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Odds & Ends
By Devin D. O'Leary
NOVEMBER 9, 1998:
Dateline: Japan--Japan is hoping that the newly enacted
"Happy Monday" law will boost a sagging Asian economy.
The law, which went into effect earlier this month, will shuffle
some of the nation's many public holidays next to a weekend as
a way of encouraging people to have more fun. Japanese economists
are hoping that these new three-day weekends will boost consumption,
encourage travel and bolster the entertainment industry. The newly
created Association for the Promotion of Three-Day Weekends believes
that the new Monday/Friday holidays will create an estimated 520
billion yen ($4.37 billion) windfall for the sluggish Japanese
economy.
Dateline: Montana--A hunter from Great Falls, Mont., got
a two-for-one trophy when he bagged an unusual buck on the opening
day of hunting season. Robert Kercher shot a large male deer only
to discover the head of a second buck tangled in its antlers.
Biologists for the state Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks
surmise that the second skull was the loser in a head-butting
battle. The two combatants apparently became entangled during
an antler-clash. One of the bucks was eventually killed, possibly
by predators, and dragged around until its body fell off. Wildlife
officials aren't sure how long the buck carried the other antlers
around with him.
Dateline: Oklahoma--An Oklahoma City judge taught a courtroom
spectator that justice is not a game when she sentenced him to
two days in jail for playing with a yo-yo. Judge Nancy Coats sent
34-year-old Charles Knost to jail for contempt for behavior "totally
inappropriate for a courtroom." Knost, who was in the courtroom
with a defendant, told the judge that he had just quit smoking
and played with the yo-yo when he got nervous.
Dateline: California--A San Diego judge was publicly admonished
last Monday for asking his female clerk to sign a "sexual
harassment waiver" and then repeatedly pestering her with
inappropriate personal advances. Shortly after hiring the unidentified
woman, Judge Harvey Hiber of the San Diego County Municipal Court,
presented the clerk with a large, two-page scroll written in calligraphy
and entitled "Absolute, Unconditional and Total Waiver of
Harassment." The clerk refused to sign the document, which
would have waived any and all objections to whatever verbal and
physical advances the judge might make. Despite her refusal to
endorse the waiver, Hiber began a pattern of "insistent and
unwelcome behavior," which included telling her dirty jokes,
kissing her and passing her suggestive notes from the bench. A
San Francisco-based performance commission voted unanimously to
admonish Hiber, calling his actions "unjudicial" and
"improper."
Dateline: Georgia--Members of a Gainsville-based Ku Klux
Klan chapter thought they had found a major loophole in a Georgia
law that bans anyone from wearing a mask, hood or any type of
device that conceals a person's identity in public. The anti-Klan
law, however, exempts Halloween costumes. According to Gary Mallicoat,
a spokesman for the "American Knights," the Gainsville
group planned to march in full Klan regalia, including robes and
pointed hoods on Halloween day "because we thought we could
get away with it." Hall County Sheriff Bob Vass cut short
the Klan's plans, though, by announcing that any masked Klan member
would be arrested--Halloween or not. Vass said his officers "know
the difference between Klan hoods and Casper masks."
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