Quick Takes: Counting on calories

With a military physical approaching, one South Korean man went on a special diet to make the cut. But the 26-year-old wasn’t trying to get in shape. According to a November ruling in a South Korean courtroom, the young man actually gorged on food and water in an attempt to make himself unfit for front-line service. At his initial physical exam in 2017, the accused man’s physical fitness placed him in the second-highest tier of the South Korean military’s physical fitness examination—good enough for combat duty. But as his 2023 military draft date approached, the man doubled his caloric intake and began packing on the pounds. At the time of his 2023 physical exam, the 5-foot-6 man weighed 225 pounds, qualifying him only for a desk assignment far away from potential combat. The court sentenced the draft dodger to a one-year suspended prison sentence and tacked on a six-month suspended sentence for the man’s friend who helped devise the meal plan. In 2018, a dozen young South Korean men faced accusations of binge eating to avoid the nation’s mandatory military service, with one man reportedly gaining 66 pounds in the six months before his physical.

Emergency exit

Slowly and ominously ascending the lift hill of a double-loop roller coaster at Castles N’ Coasters in Phoenix on Nov. 24, an unnamed man grew concerned when he said his lap bar suddenly unlocked. Unwilling to entrust his safety to his own strength and centrifugal force, the man bailed out of the Desert Storm coaster car at the top of the ride’s initial hill. “It was just adrenaline, and I didn’t want to die that day,” he told KPHO. “As soon as the lap bar went up, I just didn’t really think about it, I just jumped out.” The man used an emergency staircase to descend back to the start and report the incident to an employee.

Extreme team spirit

Just hours before the renewal of a college football rivalry Nov. 30, police in College Station, Texas, were conducting their own kickoff. Texas A&M University police confronted two men riding animals through campus prior to the kickoff of the Aggies’ home finale versus their rival University of Texas. According to police, one man was riding a horse through campus while another—and his dog—were mounted atop a longhorn steer that bore some resemblance to the Texas Longhorns’ mascot. Officers ejected both men and their animals from campus.

Six million dollar banana

Feeling peckish after spending so much money, cryptocurrency investor and novelty art fan Justin Sun announced he planned to eat his investment. Sun, a Chinese-born crypto billionaire, spent $6.2 million Nov. 20 to buy the famed banana-and-duct-tape art piece at a Sotheby’s auction. The fruit-based creation of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan features a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall. Sun celebrated his winning auction bid on social media, announcing he would turn his new purchase into an expensive snack: “In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”

Trendy toppers

Some killer whales might have killer fashions. That’s one explanation for a phenomenon observed off the coast of Washington state, where orcas seem to be doing peculiar things with dead salmon. “We saw one [orca] with a fish on its head,” researcher Deborah Giles told the New Scientist in an interview published Nov. 26. But why are orcas wearing salmon hats? No one knows for certain, but some scientists theorize the highly social killer whales have rediscovered a fad from nearly four decades ago. Back in 1987, an entire orca pod in the same area spent the summer swimming around balancing salmon on their heads. Researchers say the odd behavior may be linked to the abundant supply of salmon currently in South Puget Sound.

AI goes to church

An artificial intelligence Jesus isn’t officially taking confessions at a Catholic church in Switzerland, but even so, the new display at St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne has caused a stir. Church officials describe the modified confessional, which has a television screen and a moving image purported to look like Jesus, as an art exhibit titled “Deus in Machina.” A Nov. 21 fact check from the Catholic News Agency said the AI Jesus wasn’t actually hearing confession, a sacrament in the Catholic Church, but is using AI to answer questions about the Bible in many languages. The church created the program in collaboration with a local university to ­ponder “the limits of technology in the context of religion.”

Just dropping in

The turkey bomber of Alaska took to the skies this year in her third annual Thanksgiving bombing campaign. Esther Keim dropped about 30 frozen turkeys from her single-engine airplane to cabin dwellers who are so distant from civilization that getting to a store is difficult. Since 2022, the Anchorage-area resident has been buying birds in bulk, wrapping them in plastic garbage bags, and dropping them near the homes of people who can’t get out. Keim said her aim isn’t the best, “but I have never hit a house, a building, person, or dog.”