Yellow and brown values

A Swedish TV show, “Biss och Kajs,” found itself in the spotlight in November in Russia, where government-run television apparently used it to send a political message to Ukraine by highlighting the program’s theme of teaching children about bodily functions. The episode Russia chose featured three bulkily-costumed actors sitting around talking, one dressed in yellow, one in brown and the other unmistakably as a large, nude human posterior. (“Biss och Kajs” is highly regarded in Sweden; “biss” and “kajs” refer, respectively, to the yellow and brown functions.) Ukraine (against Russia’s wishes) is considering a trade agreement with the European Union, and, the Russian station director said, pointedly, “There you have European values in all their glory.”

Compelling Explanations

The Bank of England, arguing before the U.K.’s Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards in October, warned against limiting the bonuses that bankers have come to expect from their lucrative deals, because that might encroach on their “human rights.” The Bank suggested it is a human rights violation even to ask senior executives to demonstrate that they tried hard to comply with banking laws (because it is the government’s job to prove violations).

Slick Talkers

 (1) A young woman, accosted by a robber on Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill in October, told the man she was a low-paid intern for the National Security Agency and that, within minutes of robbing her, the man would be tracked down by ubiquitous NSA surveillance. She said later (reported the Washington Examiner) the man just “looked at me and ran away (empty-handed).” (2) A 29-year-old cafeteria worker at Sullivan East High School in Blountville, Tenn., swore to police on the scene in October that she was not the one who took money from a co-worker’s purse, and she voluntarily stripped to near-nakedness to demonstrate her innocence. “See? I don’t have it,” she said. Moments later, an officer found the missing $27 stuffed in the woman’s shoe. …

Katarzyna Dryden-Chouen and her husband Clive, busted in a London police raid last year with a marijuana grow operation that had netted an estimated (equivalent) of $450,000, insisted to a jury in October that their massive haul was not for sale but for “personal” use in that they worship the Hindu god Shiva and truly believed that the world would end soon and that they needed a sizable offering to burn. (Actually, the jury bought it. “Distribution” charges were dismissed, but the couple still faces jail for their cultivation activity.)

Ironies

The Seattle City Council voted in October to seize a waterfront parking lot by eminent domain from the 103-year-old owner after negotiations to buy the property on the open market broke down. The state is funding a six-year tunnel-digging project in the area, and the city has decided it needs the property for not-yet-specified uses — except that in one part of the property the city said it plans to operate a parking lot.

Karma

(1) Larry Poulos was stopped on a street in Arlington, Texas, in September, bleeding from a head wound and complaining that he had just been robbed by two men. A friend of Poulos later corroborated that, but police also learned that the money Poulos had been carrying was the proceeds of his having robbed a credit union earlier that evening. He was treated for his wounds and then arrested. (2) At least 44 health workers were struck with a suspected norovirus in September at a Creative Health Care Management convention in Huron, Ohio. (Noroviruses are sometimes called the “Norwalk” virus, named after one notable outbreak in 1968 in Norwalk, Ohio, about 12 miles from Huron.) …

“Masculine” Values: Breakaway former officials of the Boy Scouts of America met in Nashville, Tenn., in September to establish a Scouts-type organization that can freely discourage homosexuality, with one leader promising Fox News that the result would be “a more masculine” program. Another prominent attendee, also quoted in the Fox News dispatch, described his sorrow at the BSA’s embrace of gay boys. Since this issue broke, he said, “I’ve cried a river.” …

In November, Sweden’s National Housing Board, in charge of building codes, ordered the country’s famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjarvi (built anew annually out of fresh ice blocks) to install fire alarms. “We were a little surprised when we found out,” said a spokeswoman (who acknowledged that the hotel’s mattresses and pillows could catch fire). CV