Quick Takes: Prized pooch

He’s got backward hind legs, a sparse quiff of white hair, and a permanently droopy tongue. And there’s one more thing Scooter the dog has: the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. Scooter picked up the designation at the Sonoma-Marin Fair in Petaluma, Calif., on June 23. According to one of the judges, “In the cutest way possible, he kind of reminds me of a hairy hippopotamus.” Owner Linda Elmquist, who rescued the 7-year-old Chinese crested dog from euthanasia at an Arizona shelter, said Scooter’s leg deformities require him to use a special doggy wheelchair. That may slow Scooter down, but it doesn’t stop him, Elmquist wrote in her pet’s competition bio: “He has no idea that he is any different from any other dog.”

No takin’ my bacon

A group of health activists are urging a Georgia minor league baseball team to change its name to promote better eating habits. In the June 1 letter, Anna Herby of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine argued that the Macon Bacon’s name promotes unhealthy food: “Macon Bacon’s glorification of bacon, a processed meat that raises the risk of colorectal cancer and other diseases, sends the wrong message to fans.” In response, Macon Bacon president Brandon Raphael told WMAZ “the Macon Bacon will be sizzling forever and will not consider a name change. Ever.”

Bad pennies

This time, auto repair shop owner Miles Walker may want to pay his employees by check. Amid a feud, Walker dumped 91,500 oil-covered pennies on former employee Andreas Flaten’s driveway to pay off a final $915 paycheck in 2021. Flaten filed a complaint, which spurred the U.S. Department of Labor to investigate. The probe uncovered multiple payroll ­violations and in June, a judge ordered Walker to repay Flaten and other employees unpaid wages totaling nearly $40,000.

All-you-can-eat buffet

One ravenous group got a head start at a pick-your-own-cherries event in Cornwall, U.K., but then spoiled the experience for everyone else. Organizers for Britain’s National Trust called off a cherry-picking event at Cotehele, a medieval home, because “very cheeky blackbirds” picked 80 trees clean of fruit days ahead of the June 28 event. Despite the setback, organizer Laura Jarman said they weren’t too upset: “They’re so cute. We don’t mind too much.”

Message in a bottle

After 34 years, Gilbert Hamlyn’s message finally got through. A Quebec woman walking the beaches near her island home on Pagouatchiou found a glass ­bottle washed up on the rocks. Inside the bottle, Trudy Shattler discovered a message written on an old cigarette package and dated May 29, 1989. Water damage had rendered the name and some of the message indecipherable. After Shattler posted pictures of the message in a bottle in June, Hamlyn’s family saw the viral post and recognized the handwriting. Hamlyn died in 2021, but Shattler said she plans to return the note to the family as a memento.

Scientist, study thyself

A Harvard Business School behavioral scientist researching honesty could be her own test subject. A June 16 report in the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed a paper about honesty and tax forms published in 2012 by Francesca Gino was retracted after Harvard officials became convinced data in the study had been falsified. For the study, Gino created experiments to determine whether asking for signatures at the beginning or end of a form influenced the truthfulness of responses. Study co-author Max Bazerman said Harvard officials told him they’d found compelling evidence Gino likely manipulated the study’s data set.

Make it stop!

Relentless beeping at a New York research facility proved too much for the cleaning staff, so a janitor flipped a breaker to silence the alarm. The beeping stopped, but so did power running to a refrigerator keeping decades-old experiments at a frosty minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit. The incident occurred in 2020 at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Officials at the school filed a lawsuit in June against Daigle Cleaning Systems for the mishap, seeking more than $1 million in damages. “People’s behavior and negligence caused all this,” the school’s lawyer told the Times Union of Albany, N.Y. “Unfortunately, they wiped out 25 years of research.”