An issue came up the other evening over dinner. Do identical twins have different fingerprints? If it’s a genetic trait, one would think the twins would have the same fingerprints at birth; yet we are told everyone has unique prints. Please help me so I can get some sleep. –…
ZAN(Z)BAR: Out and Proud! I was angered by the article published in your July 30 issue (“Removing the Unity From the Gay Community,” Michael Freedman). While it is clear that Mr. Freedman conducted extensive research in a sincere attempt to write a fair and balanced story, he omitted pertinent facts,…
“What was growing up like for David McClain?” The questioner, a woman with a pad and pencil in her lap, seems in no hurry for an answer. Silently she waits as the 30-year-old man in the wheelchair across from her writhes mutely in his seat. There’s a long, slender ribbon…
In a visionary move, the City of Delray Beach has decided to crack down on psychics, fortunetellers, and their soothsaying ilk. That caught people like Michael Stevenson in a bind. His New-Age store, Shining Through, has also offered fortunetelling with tarot cards and numerology ever since it opened six years…
After an hour of casting various ballots and failing to figure out a foolproof formula to fill the most powerful nonelected position in the city of Fort Lauderdale, the commission decided to give up on math and hash it out with words. They would go around the table, and each…
Educational conservatives sometimes say our problems would be over if we just taught kids to diagram sentences. Yet consider this simple sentence, which is found in that most basic of books, a children’s primer: “See Spot run.” How would you diagram this sentence? See is the predicate; Spot is the…
It’s a clear, sunny summer morning in a cul-de-sac in a middle-class section of Pompano Beach. Kids are quiet. Everybody is quiet, except the hired workers who trim trees and cut grass. Shiny cars sit in driveways. Suburban perfection — nothing out of place… except that black, heavily tinted pickup…
In the summer of 1996, the considerable European jewelry collection of an elderly Italian woman vanished from a safe-deposit box at Intervault, a private vault on Galt Ocean Mile in Fort Lauderdale. The woman claims an olive-skinned man who introduced himself as a Brazilian jewelry-buyer accompanied her inside the vault…
The Wilton Manors City Council should be grateful that their meetings aren’t televised. Viewers would have been amused, or possibly outraged, by the pecuniary pettiness of newly elected council member Joanne Fanizza. It seems the prudent Fanizza was displeased with a city employee who flew out of town for a…
Brad’s Karma Knocks Life Extension’s Dogma I waited a week before commenting on the Life Extension Foundation (LEF) (“Weird Science,” Michael Freedman, July 23) because I wanted to read LEF’s rebuttal — what garbage! Truly health-conscious people know that the ability to prevent disease and cure most of what ails…
When will average people feasibly be able to afford a commercial trip into orbit? — Mike, via AOL What’s your idea of average? If it’s people who have $98,000 they can plunk down for a three-hour ride in 2001 aboard a spacecraft that isn’t even built yet, there’s a company…
Only four Roller Derby tracks remain on the North American continent. One of them squats in a 10,000-square-foot warehouse just west of I-95 and south of Cypress Creek Boulevard. A tall, talkative entrepreneur named Patrick Schaefer bought the 60-by-90-foot oval last year for $12,000 from the San Francisco Bay Bombers,…
Hamsters smothered in cream! And fed to the family dog! Food blown up with firecrackers! Artworks defaced! Jewels stolen! Terror! When 45 teenage Visigoths trashed a Weston minimansion July 10, only one South Florida journalist was fully qualified to write the story: 23-year-old Diego Bunuel, grandson of renowned surrealist filmmaker…
The gay-pride parade is long over. But any appearance of unity displayed at last month’s march through the streets of Fort Lauderdale has mutated into bitterness and invective, which in turn may lead to a lawsuit. The antagonism within the gay community caused by the parade has grown so bad,…
Woodstein Wannabes Attacked by Snide Editor Please allow me to set a few things straight about your cover story on the Life Extension Foundation (“Weird Science,” Michael Freedman, July 23). True, there are a few professions that can lend themselves to caricature and ridicule, and I suppose a vitamin company…
Cecil, I’ve got a question for you that has me stumped. How are shrunken heads made? I’m sure they have to take the skull out, but how? And why do certain cultures shrink human heads anyway? — Headhunter Joe, via AOL Another wholesome topic. But if I don’t explain this…
Stephen Ryan came home one day in February to discover that his future had been erased by certified mail. At the time he was working as a substitute teacher at Pines Middle School in Pembroke Pines and had recently been invited by the principal to apply for a permanent position…
In small-city politics, evidently, the little things are what matter most. Like easy access to elected representatives. And free parking. So when concerned West Palm Beach activist Mary Koplin discovered she had to pay for parking at the city hall lot during a 6 p.m. city commission meeting (unless she…
And Now a Word From Your Friendly Vending Professionals In Bob Norman’s article “The Miniacis and the Mafiosi” (July 2), there were allegations made toward one particular vending company that I felt were used to refer to the vending industry as a whole. While I cannot speak for that one…
My husband swears that when he took anthropology they talked about a race of blue people. How did I miss this? Don’t you dare say it was the Smurfs. — Lonijo, via AOL OK, it wasn’t the Smurfs. And my guess is you’re not going to buy the idea that…
Even though there’s nothing wrong with him, Gary Prater swallows approximately 100 pills a day. In the past ten years, he hasn’t even had a cold. And he’d like to keep it that way. He also wants to avoid contracting diseases such as cancer, hepatitis, and Lou Gehrig’s. So every…
Fred Shotz keeps a tape measure in the bag dangling from the back of his wheelchair for precisely this kind of situation. The long-haired 49-year-old reaches down and, with the tape sliding out, measures the distance from the floor to the bottom of a water fountain in the concourse at…
