Quick Takes

One man, no vote

Randy Richardson of Riceville, Iowa, may wish to rethink his future in politics. In a one-man race for a seat on the Riceville Board of Education, lone candidate Richardson received zero votes. According to official tallies, 36 people voted in the Howard County elections on Sept. 8, but no one—not even Richardson himself—voted in District 3. The 42-year-old candidate explained to the Mason City Globe Gazette that he was too busy on Election Day to stop by the polls. With no clear winner in the one-person race, the school board must choose between risking another election or simply appointing a new board member.

Code breaker

Officials at the prestigious Imperia Chess Festival in Italy say they caught chess master Arcangelo Ricciardi cheating. What made them suspicious? He wouldn’t take his hand from his armpit. Officials say Ricciardi, 37, used a spy camera attached to a pendant draped around his neck to transmit a live feed of the chessboard to a partner in another location. They say Ricciardi’s partner likely entered the game situation into a computer and delivered to Ricciardi instructions via Morse code through a pulsating box hidden in the chess player’s armpit. A referee at the tournament, which began Sept. 4, ordered a search when the player refused to take his thumb from his armpit and appeared to be batting his eyelids unnaturally.

Glass trap?

A Colorado driver said he was only moments away from fixing his vandalized windshield when an Adams County sheriff’s deputy pulled him over and ticketed him for driving an unsafe vehicle. According to Nick Berlin, a vandal busted his windshield with a rock on Aug. 18. The next day, Berlin attempted to drive the vehicle to Absolute Auto Glass in Denver. Berlin was stopped and given a $46 ticket so close to the repair shop, owner David Sprague said he would cover the cost if a traffic judge doesn’t dismiss the citation.

Great escape

A pair of ambitious kindergartners used tiny toy trowels to dig a tunnel under a fence and escape their Magnitogorsk, Russia, school. A regional government minister confirmed the escape on Sept. 10, saying the two 5-year-old boys had apparently been digging out the hole under the fence undetected for days using spades from the kindergarten’s sandbox. Once free, the boys walked more than a mile to a Jaguar car dealership and declared their intention to purchase a car, according to Russian media reports. Finding the boys without money—or apparent parental supervision—a dealership employee drove the missing children to the police station.

Surprising use

Consumer reviews for Apple’s new high-tech watch may be mixed, but at least one feature has a lot of users raving. According to a survey conducted by Wristly, 48 percent of Apple Watch owners polled say they are using the gadget to tell time more than expected. According to the same survey, users seem disappointed in the Watch’s music and podcast features, with 60 percent of respondents saying they use those applications less than they originally expected to do so.

Conference chaos

A homeopathic medicine conference descended into chaos when attendees sampled some of their own wares. According to German broadcaster NDR, 29 attendees at the Sept. 4 conference held south of Hamburg, Germany, took what ended up being a hallucinogenic drug with effects described as somewhere between the effects of well-known drugs “ecstasy” and “LSD.” More than 100 emergency personnel responded to the scene only to find a mass of practitioners of homeopathic medicine rolling around in a nearby meadow and speaking nonsense. Police initially said it was unlikely that the multiple overdoses happened on purpose, but none of those affected by the drugs were sufficiently sober for police interviews until Sept. 7.

Quite a tangle

The trouble began for Washington, Pa., barbershop owner John Interval on March 11 when Diamond Pecjak, a woman, entered his Barbiere Gentleman’s Barber Shop and demanded a haircut. Interval’s employee, Kerri Wonsettler, explained the shop only cut men’s hair, then offered recommendations for nearby salons. Interval says he even offered to pay for Pecjak’s haircut elsewhere. Unsatisfied, Pecjak filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs and in September the enforcement agency delivered a $750 fine to Interval for gender discrimination. “You know, I’m not opposed to doing women’s hair,” he explained to KDKA. “Just not in this shop. I don’t even have [the equipment] to do women’s hair.”

Red Planet alert

Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk (see “Notable Books” in this issue) says he wants to colonize Mars and knows a way to make the Red Planet hospitable to human life: nuke it. According to the tech billionaire, Mars is a “fixer-upper of a planet” that only needs to be a few degrees warmer in order to be livable. The quickest way to accomplish that feat, Musk told CBS’ Stephen Colbert on Sept. 9, is to “drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles.” Mars researcher Brian Toon told the LA Times that there are plausible ways to warm up Mars, but that “blowing up bombs is not a good one.”

Feeling the heat

An elementary school in Keyport, N.J., burned through an official snow day when district officials canceled classes due to a malfunctioning power system and a 90-degree day on Sept. 8. According to Keyport Superintendent Lisa Savoia, the malfunctioning power meant the school couldn’t operate air conditioning, phones, the internet, or fire alarms. In response, the elementary students received a very early and balmy snow day—one of two on the school’s calendar.