Quick Takes: Judge me tender

Maybe the St. Charles County Circuit Court isn’t the right spot for an Elvis Presley impersonator. That was the determination of a Missouri state commission in November that said Judge Matthew Thornhill’s fake pompadour and Elvis sunglasses tended to detract from the solemnity and sobriety of the Show Me State’s judicial process. Thornhill, who was first elected as a judge in 2006, has become known for wearing Elvis paraphernalia, making references to the King of Rock ’n’ Roll during hearings, and citing Presley lyrics in court. On occasion, he would play Elvis songs from his phone as he entered the courtroom. His official biography on the court’s website summed it up this way: “He loves Elvis.” The practice eventually caught the attention of the state’s Commission on Retirement, Removal, and Discipline of Judges. In court records released in November, the body charged with handling judicial misconduct sanctioned Thornhill for his Elvis antics—and for using campaign slogans in the courtroom. According to the settlement, Thornhill will be suspended for six months but then will be allowed to serve on the bench another 18 months before finally retiring his gavel.

Swish, swish, pee-ew!

Looking for a more organic substitute for medicinal mouthwashes? An article published in the December Journal of Herbal Medicine argues that garlic works just as well as other mouthwashes for killing microbial life inside the mouth. According to researchers at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, a garlic-­based mouthwash performed well at preventing dental plaque and gum inflammation by killing oral bacteria. The study’s authors warned that garlic-based mouthwash could alter a user’s sense of taste and stain teeth, but they failed to gauge the users’ romantic partners for their reaction to the unusual mouthwash.

Three sheets to the wind

Employees at a Virginia liquor store found a presumably drunk intruder passed out near a toilet on a bathroom floor Nov. 29. And by the looks of the broken whiskey bottles and property damage, the masked perp had quite the night. “He fell through one of the ceiling tiles and went on a full-blown rampage, drinking everything,” Samantha Martin, an animal control officer who responded to the report of a passed-out raccoon on the premises, told the Daily Mail. Rather than charge the animal with a human crime, wildlife officials relocated the trashed panda to a nearby shelter where he reportedly woke up with quite a hangover. Authorities later released him back into the wild.

Not so Smart car driver

Using the right tool for the job isn’t just good advice. Sometimes it’s the law. Provincial police ticketed an Ontario, Canada, motorist Nov. 24 for hauling a long aluminum ladder with a tiny Smart car. The ladder, which had been pushed all the way up against the diminutive car’s dashboard, protruded more than a car length out the back of the open hatchback. Officers wrote the driver a ticket for an improperly loaded vehicle, arguing there would be no way to secure such a long ladder within such a small car.

Bearing the brunt

A Japanese chef resorted to martial arts when a bear wandered into his kitchen in November. The unnamed middle-aged employee was preparing broth at a ramen restaurant when a black bear entered the kitchen. The chef said the young but dangerous bear attacked, leaving him with a serious laceration near his eye. At first, the chef tried fighting back with his fists. “No matter how many times I hit it, it wouldn’t budge. My hands were really hurting,” he told the Japanese press. So the chef hooked his leg around one of the bear’s legs and executed a judo takedown move, sending the bear tumbling to the ground. The animal fled the shop, but the chef remained at his post until his boss sent him to the hospital to have his wound treated.

Glitch in the system

A group of cryptology experts just ran the world’s most secure election—so secure, no one can decode the results. A spokesman for the International Association of Cryptologic Research announced Nov. 21 that the group’s recent internal election would have to be rerun after officials lost a cryptographic key. Without the code, they couldn’t read the results. The voting system, known as Helios, allows voters to cast digital ballots they can track and verify. The proceedings and results are password protected by a complicated cryptographic key. “It turns out that managing keys and managing secret keys is the hardest part of this—even among the world’s best cryptographers,” Helios creator Ben Adida told The New York Times.

The great snail heist

Police in France are looking for some snooty thieves responsible for taking nearly 1,000 pounds of snails from an escargot producer in eastern France. According to authorities, the haul from the Nov. 24 raid on the French farm was valued at over $100,000 and comes just as the holiday demand for escargot at French restaurants begins. Farmer Jean-Mathieu Dauvergne said the stolen snails would have provided 10,000 meals and that some of the escargot had been bound for Michelin-starred restaurants.