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A February article in the Columbia Missourian reported on Specialist Adam Ballard, a 22-year-old stationed at Fort Leonard Wood in central Missouri, and his plan to to eat his way out of the army. Last year 3,285 soldiers were discharged for failing to meet the army’s strict body-fat requirements; a Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged that recent increases in such discharges might be related to the ongoing war. Ballard, six-foot-one and 223 pounds as of February 9, said he needs to get out of the service, adding that the recruiters who promised him a desk job when he enlisted two years ago didn’t warn him that clerical workers could wind up driving trucks in Iraq. Though he’s been ordered to improve his nutrition and exercise regimen, he told the reporter, “I basically eat what I can to get full and then just go to sleep.”
Science on the Cutting Edge
People who were asleep at home recently when a car plowed through a wall and into their bed: a husband and wife in Altamonte Springs, Florida, December (no serious injuries); Juan Diaz, Fairdale, Kentucky, February (no serious injuries); Jose and Zenaida Castorena, Missouri City, Texas, March (both killed).
Leroy Johnson, a deputy fire chief in Mesa, Arizona, announced his retirement in March; earlier in the month he’d been arrested following an incident in which he was seen allegedly trying to have sex with a neighbor’s lamb. The 52-year-old Johnson denied it later, but according to the Arizona Republic the neighbor and another witness told police that when they found Johnson in a barn with the animal, he said, “You caught me. . . . I tried to (expletive) your sheep.” And in February 36-year-old Kimberly Du was charged with forgery in Polk County, Iowa, after allegedly sending a judge a letter saying she had been killed in a December car accident (accompanied by a homemade obituary supposedly from the Des Moines Register). Authorities concluded that Du had tried to fake her own death in order to get out of paying several parking tickets.
