Good News

So, before yesterday the best news story I'd ever heard on NPR was on late at night (around midnight) when they play BBC selections from all over the world. There was this story from Germany. Here was the story: It seems a man had a life long desire to kill and eat a person. Just any person would do. He made it into his forties or fifties as a normal work-a-day German. At that point, he started to advertise this desire on various web services. He got a series of applicants. He corresponded with them. More than one of them came out to his house (he lived outside of the city) for a meal and an "interview," leaving completely unharmed when they turned out not to be completely sure of their decisions. Don't worry though, the story has a happy ending. Eventually, he found a man who passed all his test. They eat dinner together. Had wine. Then, our hero calmly killed the man with a knife. He stabbed him in the chest. I like to picture this part something like that scene near the end of Saving Private Ryan with the hand to hand combat. He then, proceeded to eat part of his guest, saving him for later. How do I know all this? How did it end up on the BBC? He was being tried for murder and his defense was that it was a mercy killing, on a level with assisted suicide -- a punishment, in Germany, which, apparently, only carries a small monetary fine, as opposed to the life jail sentence associated with murder -- and the defense submitted a video tape of the whole endeavor. I don't remember what the verdict turned out to be (you can read about it here if you want to know, but I'll warn you that the print version strips away the folksy charm that the BBC radio version had and that I've been trying to impart here), but it wasn't the full sentence for murder. At the time, I just thought that this was so great because it's such a moral quandry. Was what this man did wrong? If so, how wrong? Is it akin to not helping a suicidal person who comes across your path, or of hunting down a victim to murder? Should it even be illegal?

Anyway, yesterday, I heard a totally unrelated story (except for the fact that I think it also took place in Germany) that might surpass the German cannibal for pure weirdness. Apparently, scientists in Germany have discovered a gene that controls the point when muscle growth stops. Or, more acurately, they discovered a gene that (if you have both copies, it's recessive), makes it so that you don't generate the hormone that tells your muscles to stop growing. They discovered this because of. . .an incredibly strong baby. A super baby. This baby has the gene from both parents and so no hormone inhibits the growth of its muscles. It (he?) is four years old and can lift eight pounds with each arm. Picture a baby, or a little kid, with lots of muscles.

Anyway, in school I think part of the reason we listened to NPR 23 hours a day was because if you listen enough, eventually you hear it wander out past the edge of sensible reality into areas like these. You can always tell its happening because of the audible delight in the voices of the program hosts. I remember lying in bed late at night and laughing listening to an hour long program about "caravans" (campers) on the BBC. It just went on and on into all of this rediculous detail about caravan culture and sales and trends.

I guess hearing the story about the super baby with lots of muscles made me nostalgic for those moments. Half of the fun of them is sharing.