Community ClicksGame day
A new sports center in Mexico City will be devoted to the revival of ancient Aztec- and Mayan-created games that are rarely played in Mexico because they are dangerous, including a field-hockey-like competition played with a fireball.
In another game, “pelota mixteca,” players wearing metal-knuckled leather gloves punch a 2-pound, hard-rubber ball that could knock opponents unconscious.
One thrill of the flaming-ball game, “pelota purepecha,” is that some play it at night on unlighted fields.
In Mayan culture, according to a March USA Today dispatch, the world began with the gods challenging two humans to a ball game, and beating them, at which point the two die and are resurrected as the sun and moon.
Government
On Jan. 29, more than 200 Alabama state troopers were amassed at 4 a.m. for the purpose of raiding several illegal bingo parlors.
The raids were called off, but a University of Alabama professor estimated the staging cost to the budget-shriveled state at $130,000.
Said a spokesman for Gov. Bob Riley, “No matter what it costs, the law must be enforced.”
>>> A December Seattle Times profile of Rachel Porcaro (a single mother with an $18,000-a-year hair-cutting job, raising two kids, living with her parents) centered on the IRS’s year-long, full-blown audit of her, and subsequently of her parents, because she was flagged for earning too little money on which to raise a family in Seattle.
Ultimately, Rachel and her parents prevailed on every issue except the Earned Income Tax Credit, in that Rachel’s kids receive a little too much help from her parents for her to qualify.
Police report
How much can a shoplifter stuff in his pants?
A man seen on surveillance video at a Mobil on the Run convenience store in Bloomfield, Conn., in February fled after stuffing at least 17 cans of Red Bull energy drink down his pants.
In Cairns, Australia, a 51-year-old man was caught shoplifting in March, witnessed by security staff putting three limes and a package of beef tongue in his pants.
When cornered, the man (like clowns exiting a clown car) pulled out an additional two onions, three trays of rump steaks and a packet of lamb forequarter chops.
Democracy
John White, now running for sheriff in Roundup, Mont., will be unable to carry a gun if he wins because of a long-ago bank robbery conviction.
>>> Convicted felons might be running against each other if they win their primaries in May for county judge-executive in Hindman, Ky. Democrat Donnie Newsome and Republican Randy Thompson were both convicted of election fraud (though Thompson’s case is still on appeal).
>>> Cynthia Diaz was re-elected town clerk in Coventry, Vt., in March, though still facing 10 felony personal tax-filing counts.
The town clerk is the town’s treasurer, delinquent-tax collector and trustee of public money.
>>> The U.S. Senate passed a bill in March to correct a misimpression Congress had in the 1990s when it instituted mandatory sentences for crack-cocaine possession that were about 100 times the sentences for powdered cocaine.
Scientists long ago pointed out that the two substances are chemically the same, and the new provisions set crack-cocaine sentences at only about 18 times those for powder.
>>> The Utah legislature passed a bill in March to, for the first time, legalize the personal collection of rainwater.
“Harvesting” rain has been illegal, but now would be allowed, with a state permit, in special state-approved containers.
