Lead Stories
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The Wall Street Journal reported in April on the growing academic discipline of “whiteness studies,” whose pioneering professors and students met recently at the University of California, Berkeley. Among the aspects under study: Spam diets, gun shows, the white dominance of shopping malls, and the Internet. Rejecting the suggestion that whiteness studies lacks seriousness, a doctoral student said, “They said that about Madonna studies, too.”
The Continuing Crisis
Ireland’s first legislation permitting divorce took effect February 27, but a Dublin man was so eager to shed his wife that he petitioned a court in January for a divorce in advance on the grounds that he was seriously ill and might not live to see his freedom. In fact he married again a few days after the court granted his petition and died a few days after that.
A trial began in March in the lawsuit of Linda Jean Schneider, 49, against two physicians and the John Muir Medical Hospital near San Francisco for saving her life. Schneider, who suffers from MELAS syndrome, a terminal, degenerative neurological disorder that causes seizures, had wanted to die but the doctors continued to feed and care for her. She’s now expected to live another 15 years, though with a poor quality of life.
Send your weird news to Chuck Shepherd, Chicago Reader, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611.
