LEAD STORy

■ Almost-anything-goes “ultimate fighting,” also known as “human cockfighting,” is a major “sport,” mostly in Southern and Western states, but only in Missouri are kids as young as six permitted on the mats, according to a March Associated Press dispatch from Carthage, Mo. Members of the Garage Boys Fight Crew, ages up to 14, including one girl, regularly square off with only a few concessions in rules and protective gear from their adult counterparts. Parents seem to regard the sport as casually as they regard Little League or soccer, and sportsmanship is in evidence, as kids are still best friends, pummeling each other inside the cage but then heading off afterward to play video games.

The Entrepreneurial Spirit!

■ A highlight of this year’s Easter promotion by the Jelly Belly company (as additions to its 50 standard flavors) was its surprise BeanBoozled boxes, with odd tastes and non-standard colors. Although garlic beans, buttered-toast beans and cheese pizza beans are no longer available, connoisseurs can sample jelly beans made to taste like pencil shavings, ear wax, moldy cheese and vomit. A Jelly Belly spokeswoman told Newhouse News Service in March, “There are 20 flavors in each little box…so you don’t know what flavor you are tasting…coconut or baby wipe.”

■ Los Angeles businessman Llewellyn Werner told The Times of London in April that he plans to spend $500 million to build a Disneyland-type theme park in the heart of Baghdad, with the first phase (a skateboard facility, with 200,000 free skateboards to hand out) to open in just three months. Eventually, the park will include rides and a concert theater adjacent to the Green Zone.

■ Questionable new products: (1) The Japanese manufacturer Nihon Sofuken recently introduced a slightly peach-flavored drink called Placenta 10000, but Wired.com was not able to verify whether it contains actual human placenta (which is supposed to have miraculous regenerating powers for some parts of the body). (2) From Nickelodeon merchandising has come a Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer (which plays the Spongebob theme that (the designer apparently imagines) makes the temperature-taking process less unpleasant).

Science on the Cutting Edge

■ Prairie Orchard Farms in Manitoba told Toronto’s Globe and Mail in March that it has been successfully infusing hogs with omega-3s, the oils that get the best press among fatty acids, since it is found plentifully in healthful salmon and other seafood. A laboratory analysis of a slab of Prairie Orchard’s “enriched” ham had the omega-3s of almost one-fourth of a large salmon filet, but the best news of all was that a 100-gram side of bacon equaled that of the salmon filet.

■ While many lab mice get selected, unfortunately, for work like cancer research, one group of male rodents at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston has been hard at work, with constant erections, helping researchers develop a biochemical treatment for priapism, which plagues men with certain blood disorders. (The condition is named for the Greek god Priapus, who, to be punished for sexual misbehavior, supposedly received an enormous, but useless, wooden penis.)

■ Personality Transplants: (1) Cheryl Johnson, 37, described to London’s Daily Telegraph in March the many ways in which her personality suddenly changed following a new kidney that she received from a deceased, 59-year-old man. Some researchers believe in such a “cellular memory phenomenon,” but it is unclear whether, for example, Johnson’s recent abandonment of trashy reading in favor of Dostoevsky and Jane Austen would qualify. (2) Sonny Graham of Hilton Head, S.C., committed suicide in April after having spent 13 years with the transplanted heart of suicide victim Terry Cottle. The cellular implication is somewhat less likely, though, because Graham’s widow was the same woman who was married to Cottle at the time of his suicide.

Charity on the Cutting Edge

■ “Obviously, this is not as important as helping starving kids in Africa, but it’s the same basis,” Karla Rae Morris told Canada’s Sun newspapers in February. “They want to help us out,” she said, referring to her benefactors who had donated money (from two men, over $1,000 (Cdn) each) so that she could afford breast implants, based on arrangements commenced by the Web site MyFreeImplants.com, which facilitates e-mail exchanges and chats for prospective contributors and collects the money until the goal is reached. “It’s like donating to any charity,” said Morris, of her donors. “You feel like you’re doing good.”

Bright Ideas

■ Among the notable offerings at the International Exhibition of Inventions in Geneva, Switzerland, in April were beer-flavored jelly (non-alcoholic) to spread on biscuits, and artificial, removable nose hair (swabs of pipe cleaner for the nostrils to block pollen and dust). (“Most people do not have enough nose hair,” inventor Gensheng Sun told The Associated Press.) Italian engineer Enrico Berruti said it was his personal laziness that led him to develop a bed that makes itself, with automatic sheet-shaking and straightening. Diane Cheong Lee Mei of China swore that her novel computer software employed algorithms sophisticated enough to enable the user to detect the gender of any e-mail writer.

Least Competent Criminals

■ Not Ready for Prime Time: (1) Ahmed Jalloul, 20, was convicted in April of robbing a post office in Adelaide, Australia, based on DNA evidence. Witnesses said Jalloul seemed unsteady and unsure of himself during the crime and consequently vomited on the floor before running from the scene. (2) Eric Hardin, 20, was charged in March in St. Louis with possession of child pornography on compact discs, which his former roommates had turned over to police after cleaning his room. They had kicked Hardin out for his unbearably poor hygiene.

Recurring Themes

■ “Freestyle” dog dancing continues to thrive, at least in British Columbia (where the first organization sprang up in 1999, amassing an 8,000-person mailing list, as News of the Weird reported). A Globe and Mail dispatch in April noted that Gail Walsh’s school for dog dancing, Paws2Dance, teaches moves like dog “weaves” around its human partner’s legs and “backups,” in which the dog sets its own paces apart from its partner. Holding the dog’s paws and waltzing, as in at-home dog-dancing, is apparently tacky and non-artistic and thus never allowed.

Now, Which One Is the Brake?

(all-new)

■ Elderly drivers’ recent lapses of concentration, confusing the brake pedal with the gas (or however artfully they try to explain what happened): A Citrus Heights, Calif., woman, 81, drove into the ATM lobby of a Wells Fargo bank, injuring a customer (March). A Chicago Heights, Ind., woman in her 80s drove through a Dairy Queen (April). A Burbank, Calif., woman, 88, drove into a post office, injuring two (March). An Indianapolis woman, 90, backed into a McDonald’s restaurant, injuring two (April). A Springfield, Ill., woman described as “elderly,” drove through a delicatessen (March). A San Diego woman, 81, drove her car onto the support wires for a power pole, where it was dangling when police arrived (March). And in a variation, a Mount Pleasant, Pa., funeral home attendant, 73, mistakenly shifted into reverse and fatally struck the owner of the car, who had just turned it over to the man to park (March).

Once a Ham…

■ At a March British soccer match between Blackpool and Burnley teams, greyhound owner Jane Holland was escorting her retired dog Fool’s Mile for a presentation when the crowd noise evidently energized the champion racer, who broke away. “(W)hen she heard the crowd, she was off,” said Holland, and Fool’s Mile circled the track four times before being restrained. Said London’s Sunday Telegraph, the dog appeared to be reliving her glory days.