BREAKING: the people of the Territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, one of the places hit by the Trump administration’s nearly universal 10% tariff announced this week, have strongly protested the U.S. action. Well, they probably would, if there were any people there. The two islands, an Australian territory about 2,200 miles southwest of Perth, and just 800 miles from Antarctica, are inhabited by penguins, elephant seals, and also some lichen, but no people. Heard Island is occasionally visited by humans for research purposes, but it appears that no one of that species has set foot on McDonald Island in over 50 years.
ALSO BREAKING: your 401(k) and any immediate retirement plans you might have had.
Speaking of remote locations, a reader in Iowa wrote to tell me that a shark attack there might not be quite as far-fetched as certain legal-humor writers might believe. See “Iowa Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Protect Iowans From Shark Bites in Iowa” (Jan. 28, 2025). According to this article, in 1937 two fishermen caught a five-foot bull shark in the Mississippi near Alton, just north of St. Louis and about 700 miles from the Gulf of Mexico. Bull sharks are euryhaline, a word I just learned that means they can live in either fresh or salt water, and they are said to be quite aggressive. That shark was still about 150 miles short of Iowa, but more importantly, the article says “dams now prevent sharks” from getting that far upriver.
A check on the shark bill’s status reveals that on January 16, it was “tabled until future meeting,” and now that it’s April I am becoming concerned that this bill’s day will never come.
On the other hand, there are exciting new developments with regard to California’s Assembly Bill 666, which would make “the creature known as Bigfoot” the official state cryptid. This was introduced in February, but just as a placeholder saying it was “the intent of the legislature” to enact such legislation. But the sponsor has since found time to amend the bill, adding 13 paragraphs’ worth of “legislative findings and declarations” to justify what would become Government Code section 425.18: “Bigfoot is the official state cryptid.” The bill was re-referred to committee on April 1, and if that turns out to be coincidential we shall revisit this at an appropriate time.
Meanwhile in Japan, the BBC reports, a woman was charged with “criminal damage” for allegedly squashing buns. A store owner told police he had been keeping an eye on the woman when she came in because he had seen her “squashing buns several times in the past.” When he noticed that a package of sesame-and-cream-cheese buns had been damaged, he “urged her to pay” for it, police said. She refused and left the store. The owner followed her for over half a mile and restrained the serial bun-squasher until police arrived.
The same article says police in Japan have been cracking down on so-called “sushi terrorists,” who reportedly plague sushi-conveyor-belt restaurants by doing things like licking communal soy sauce bottles and squashing other people’s sushi before it gets to them. Irritating, but also definitive proof that the word “terrorist” has now lost all meaning.
Also now deprived of meaning: the word “emergency.” Presidents (amongothers) have been misusing this for decades, and now Idaho is getting in on the fun. Most new laws take effect on January 1 of the following year. But when House Bill 270 was signed into law in March, it took effect immediately, on the grounds that there was “[a]n emergency existing therefor, which emergency is hereby declared to exist….” The emergency? Boobs. The bill expands the definition of “indecent exposure” to include female breasts, male breasts “altered to appear like” female breasts, and artificial breasts “intended to resemble” female breasts. I can guess what these guys are really worried about, and whatever else you may think about it, please don’t tell me it’s an “emergency.” We still need that word for real ones (emergencies, I mean).
BREAKING AGAIN: speaking of which, while you were wasting time reading about Idaho’s emergency boob legislation, your 401(k) lost another five percent of its value. Have a good weekend.
