yanked off newsoftheweird.com
Bangkok economics student Panupol Sujjayakorn interrupted his studies in November to defend his World Scrabble Championship in London, one of many non-English-speaking competitors who achieved top-of-the-line ranking by memorizing up to 100,000 words in English without ever knowing their meanings. Like the others, reported the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mr. Panupol learned first those premium words that overuse the prominent Scrabble letter tiles (such as "aureolae"). (Alas, this time around, a native English speaker, Dr. Adam Logan, a number theory researcher, won the title, building actual words like "qanat" and "euripi.") [Chronicle of Higher Education, 11-18-05; Daily Princetonian, 11-23-05]
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Guilty Despite Deformity: In November, engineering student Mischa Beutling, 22, became the most recent rape defendant to profess innocence by impossibility, arguing that his penis is simply too large to have committed the crime. Beutling, who stands 6-7 and weighs 240 pounds, called a urologist to the stand in Newmarket, Ontario, to testify that Beutling's is 8 1/2 inches long "semi-relaxed" and 6 1/2 inches in circumference and that a woman who has not given birth could not accommodate it without serious injury. (In December, a judge named Margaret Eberhard found Beutling guilty.) [Toronto Sun, 10-29-05, 12-3-05]
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Guilty Despite Deformity: In November, engineering student Mischa Beutling, 22, became the most recent rape defendant to profess innocence by impossibility, arguing that his penis is simply too large to have committed the crime. Beutling, who stands 6-7 and weighs 240 pounds, called a urologist to the stand in Newmarket, Ontario, to testify that Beutling's is 8 1/2 inches long "semi-relaxed" and 6 1/2 inches in circumference and that a woman who has not given birth could not accommodate it without serious injury. (In December, a judge named Margaret Eberhard found Beutling guilty.) [Toronto Sun, 10-29-05, 12-3-05]