Quick Takes

Sand shots

Using panoramic Trekker cameras mounted on top of cars, Google has photographed much of the developed world by driving up and down streets taking pictures. The images are part of Google’s map application, but when the tech giant turned its attention to the desert, it couldn’t depend on cars—so to get breathtaking photos of Abu Dhabi’s Liwa Oasis, Google employed a camera-bearing camel.

Water fight

A few nature-hating residents of Bellano, Italy, filed a complaint with a regional environmental authority protesting the noise pollution emanating from a natural waterfall in the middle of the town. The environmental regulators judged the town responsible for the waterfall and fined Bellano $830. The mayor of the city said he will refuse to pay the fine.

Painting Putin

Young men who operate a Facebook fan group created an art show entitled “12 Labors of Putin” to celebrate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 62nd birthday on Oct. 7. The 12 paintings portray Putin as Heracles, the divine hero of Greek mythology, and mirror the mythical “12 Labors of Hercules.” Putin himself fastidiously cultivates his rugged, outdoorsy image. Embattled abroad, the Russian president enjoys an approval rating above 80 percent at home.

Dangerous drape

It’s the sort of massage that most people won’t find relaxing. Still, one zoo in the Philippines hopes that customers will be lining up for its newly featured snake massages. Cebu City Zoo manager Giovanni Romarate announced earlier this year his zoo would be offering one-of-a-kind massages delivered to patrons by massive and dangerous pythons. Called “therapeutic” and “calming” by zoo officials, the service begins when a customer lies down and has zoo workers drape more than 500 pounds of pythons across his or her body. From there, the pythons are in charge, slithering and tightening their grip around the human customer as they see fit. Romarate insists the practice is safe and notes that each python is fed 10 chickens (to diminish hunger) before starting a shift as a reptile masseuse.

Bubble run

Only the United States Coast Guard would be so nice. A man endeavoring to run from Miami to Bermuda in an inflatable floating bubble needed rescue when he ran out of energy just days into his trip. The scheme was the brainchild of Reza Baluchi, an ultramarathoner who grew up in Iran but recently lived in Los Angeles. Baluchi had planned to pilot what amounted to a floating hamster wheel up the Florida coast and out to sea toward Bermuda. But on Oct. 4, just days into the journey, Baluchi radioed the Coast Guard for a rescue. Despite giving Baluchi previous warnings, the Coast Guard dutifully plucked the exhausted daredevil from the Atlantic Ocean 70 miles off the coast of St. Augustine, Fla. The most disturbing detail: Baluchi says he plans to try again soon.

Teachable moment

Dwayne Perry sure wishes Georgia drug enforcement agents had paid more attention to their botany lessons. Agents with the state’s drug suppression task force raided the Bartow County man’s home on Oct. 1 after officials in a police helicopter thought they had spotted marijuana growing in his backyard—but it was okra. When heavily armed officers arrived with a K9 unit, Perry taught the agents that okra and marijuana plants have similar but distinct leaf patterns.

Lethal coroner

Having taken advantage of a maligned Department of Defense program, Doug Wortham may be the most well-equipped coroner in the Natural State. Wortham, the official coroner for Sharp County, Ark., in the Ozarks foothills, tapped into the federal government’s 1033 program that distributes surplus military gear to local police departments and other local government entities. A recent review of the program revealed Wortham had secured a Humvee armored vehicle, a .45-caliber pistol, an M-16 rifle, and a military kayak through the program in 2010 and 2012.

Kosara lives

It only took a few keystrokes to declare Kosara Mladenovic dead. Sadly, it will take much more work on her part to prove to the federal government that she’s still alive. The New York woman’s family recently received a condolence letter in the mail from the Social Security Administration sympathizing with their loss and informing the relatives that Mladenovic’s benefits would be discontinued. When the family protested, officials with the bureaucratic agency confessed that a simple clerical error had probably caused the accident. Now, to get her benefits back, the family must prove the elderly woman is still alive by sending in a picture of Mladenovic holding a current newspaper and a signed letter from her nursing home saying she resides there. According to a CNN study, SSA erroneously marks 14,000 Americans as deceased every year.

Swing away

Children at Richland Elementary School won’t be happy: Swing sets may be going the way of merry-go-rounds. Local school officials have recently banned swing sets from school property. According to a school district spokesman for the Richland, Wash., school, the swings posed a grave risk of bodily injury to students enrolled at the school, and also left the school vulnerable to legal liability lawsuits. “It’s just really a safety issue,” spokesman Steve Aagard told local CBS affiliate KEPR. “Swings have been determined to be the most unsafe of all the playground equipment.”