It's NOT One World | More Things to Worry About

• Weird Japan (continued): Sony manufactured a robot dog ("Aibo") from 1996 to 2006 for a legion of pet-fanciers, but now that supplies of spare parts and specialized repairers are dwindling, many of the beloved family "canines" are "dying" off. Not to worry, though, for many "surviving" owners are conducting elaborate, expensive -- and even religious -- burials with widely attended funerals for their Aibos. (A March 2015 Newsweek report offered a dazzling photographic array of Aibo funerals.) Aibo support groups proliferate online because, said one repair service director, "(W)e think that somehow, (Aibos) really have souls." [Newsweek, 3-15-2015]

• (1) Carrie Pernula, 38, was arrested in Champlin, Minnesota, in October after a perhaps too-aggressive strategy for quieting raucous neighbor kids. According to the police report, Pernula, at wit's end, apparently, wrote the kids' parents by mail: "(Your) children look delicious. May I have a taste?" (2) Robinson Pinilla-Bolivar, 24, was arrested in Midland, Texas, in November, accused of threatening a woman at knifepoint because (according to the police report) she would not "smell his arm pit." [WCCO-TV (Minneapolis, 10-21-2015] [Midland Reporter-Telegram, 11-18-2015]

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