Lead Stories
The Entrepreneurial Spirit
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The New York Times reported in August that more than a third of all bottled water sold in the United States is merely filtered tap water and that several cities will soon begin selling their municipal water. “What comes out of the tap is truly excellent water,” said the public works director of Houston. The Times reporter pronounced Houston’s water “bold, full-bodied, provocative.”
An April article in The Economist, focusing on how Cuba’s economy has driven professionals into the retail market, included as an example Norberto, a Moscow-trained engineer who illegally shows smuggled bootleg porno tapes to farmers on his VCR, which is powered by a car battery. According to The Economist, “He charges five pesos a head. When, at the end, they all clamor to see it again, he charges another five.”
In Topeka, Kansas, in August, state officials permitted a “common-law jury” to convene in a room in the capitol building, where they impeached U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten of Wichita. Among his crimes: by jailing a couple for nonpayment of taxes, he was guilty of kidnapping; he enforced land-regulation laws, whereas the jury called landowning a God-given right; he defended the IRS, which the jury claimed is an “offshore entity” and a racketeering conspiracy; he issued court documents that did not have a seal; he issued some orders as “Thomas Marten,” without the “J.”; he did not have a flag in his courtroom; and he allowed a clerk to have people sign documents in the middle of the signature line rather than flush left.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.
