Robber held up
CLARENDON, Vt. (AP)—When a man tried to hold up a restaurant in what would have been Rutland County’s seventh armed robbery this month, a female employee wrestled the gun from him and sent him fleeing into the woods.
Workers were closing the Whistle Stop Restaurant on Route 103 Saturday when the unidentified man came through a back door with a gun shortly after 7 pm, Vermont State Police at Rutland reported.
The man confronted one of the female employees, police said, only to have her struggle and take the gun from him. The man then fled on foot into nearby woods, according to police.
Police and a search dog failed to find the man, who was described as about five feet seven inches tall and wearing a dark ski mask and dark ski jacket.
The incident is the seventh to be reported in the region this month.
On October 14, a five-foot-seven-inch man wielding a crowbar took several hundred dollars from a Macs Convenience Store on South Main Street in Rutland.
The same store reported another robbery four days later, when a masked man holding a handgun took money after fighting with a clerk.
State Police at Rutland asked anyone with information about the latest robbery attempt to call 802-773-9101.
Elephants electrocuted
CHITTAGONG, Bangladesh (AP)—Two wild elephants died after hitting high-voltage electric wires they snapped while rampaging through a rice field, police said Monday.
Six other elephants from the rampaging herd retreated into a forest after the incident Saturday in Kachua village in Chittagong district, 135 miles southeast of Dhaka, the capital.
The two elephants were struck by the snapped wires from an electric pole they uprooted in the rice field outside the forest, said a local police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Wild elephants have killed at least five people and destroyed crops and thatched huts in the past two months in the region of forests and rugged hills.
Man hunts faux seals
SOUTH THOMASTON, Maine (AP)—Steve Waterman makes his living trapping lobsters. But his passion is trapping phony SEALs.
As many as 300 times a week, Waterman receives an e-mail message: Someone—a co-worker or an employee, a boyfriend or ex-husband, a guy in a bar—has bragged that he was a Navy SEAL, generally during the Vietnam war.
Was he lying?
Waterman goes to the computer at his home on Maine’s coast. With a few mouse clicks and key strokes, he checks to see if the alleged SEAL can be found in a database listing all 9,600 graduates of the underwater demolition course that SEALs must complete to wear the trident of the elite Sea-Air-Land force.
In some cases the names match; the individual was a SEAL. But far more often it turns out that he is a wannabe who is posing as a SEAL to try to enhance his reputation.
"These guys are slime," Waterman says.
On average, the 55-year-old Waterman—a lobsterman, photographer, commercial diver, and computer consultant—devotes an hour a day to unmasking bogus SEALs. The U.S. government does not do similar work.
"Other folks out there feel very passionately about this issue," says Lt. Cmdr. Darryn James, a spokesman for the Special Warfare Command in San Diego, Calif. "We don’t have any position one way or the other on what they are doing."
Waterman acknowledges that many wonder why he does it. "Some say, ‘Why don’t you guys get a life and leave these people alone. Who cares?’ That’s one attitude," he said.
But there are others, he says, who feel that it’s "about time somebody exposed these people for what they are." And there are veterans who view these counterfeits as an affront to the memory of fellow SEALs who were killed and wounded during the war.
Two years ago, Waterman and some of his SEAL buddies traveled to Massachusetts with a BBC crew in tow and knocked on the door of a man who claimed to be a Vietnam-era SEAL who had won the Navy Cross and received three Purple Hearts. After being dressed down, the man vowed never again to lie about his military record.
But mostly, Waterman just posts the names of "outed" fake SEALs on the Internet on a "Wall of Shame" that spells out their transgressions. A one-star rating goes to "keyboard commandos" who make anonymous claims online. The worst offenders, who are given five stars, are those who lie for personal gain, in some cases to burnish a campaign for public office.
Some entries offer comments: "Incorrigible." "Apologized." "Makes claims to all who will listen." "Still at it, now has shaved his head. Guess he was too well known from his photos here."
There is also a section that attempts to answer the question of whether Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura was in fact a SEAL. (Yes, the website says.)
Waterman is not a former SEAL, but he served in Vietnam as a photographer with Underwater Demolition Team 13, and underwent much the same training as the SEALs. He is the only non-SEAL among the small group of Navy veterans who has access to the SEAL database.
Although there were only 200 SEALs in Vietnam while he was there, Waterman said the number of pretenders runs into the thousands.
"Most of these people were the innocuous beer hall Rambos, who were just blowing hot air," he said. But he said they also include three college professors, four or five doctors, and a surprisingly large number of ministers.
The number of inquiries Waterman has received has grown from a trickle to a flood after a handful of high-profile cases focused attention on false claims about combat duty in Vietnam.
The most widely publicized was that of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis, who claimed to have been a platoon leader with the Army’s 101st Airborne when he actually was an instructor at West Point.
Waterman said those kinds of lies have become commonplace. Some fakes claim to have been Medal of Honor recipients or to have been prisoners of war; lies about wartime resumes often revolve around elite units like Army Special Forces, reconnaissance teams, and SEALs.
James, the Navy lieutenant commander, could not estimate the number of fake SEALs. The high esteem in which the SEALs are held, he said, might prompt some people to inflate a lesser or nonexistent military resume.
"They’re considered the best of the best. So, perhaps, that is why some people would want to identify with them," he says.
Fabricated accounts of wartime exploits are nothing new, he says, but until now it was difficult to detect the phonies.
"Ever since the Romans this has been going on," he says. "But they didn’t have the Internet."
Incense smoking
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)—Police say some young Iowans are yielding to a new trend by smoking an incense that looks similar to charcoal because it’s being marketed as opium.
The incense is sold as "synthetic opium" and can be bought over the Internet. Users put the substance on the ends of cigarettes before lighting up.
Des Moines police Sgt. Mark Buzynski said investigators initially confiscated the incense when they found it. Samples sent to the state crime lab showed no sign of an illegal substance.
Investigators say it is not known what effect, if any, the incense has on people who smoke it.
Ooh, the colors
COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP)—"This may sound strange to you, because I know it does to me, but everything I say or do, there is color in what I see"—Shirley Schmidt.
Shirley was drug-free when she wrote those words, the first stanza of a poem about how she sees the world. At the time, she saw a bright splatter of red, green, yellow, and black when she signed her name at the end. She always sees her name that way.
"My name’s bright and doesn’t match myself," she said. "But I like my age. Thirty-eight is red and blue."
Shirley, a Timberlake High custodian, is a synestheste, a person whose senses consistently jumble. Smells accompany some of the letters she sees. Her numbers and most letters come in colors.
She knew she saw life differently from most people the first time she played pool and the balls didn’t match her view of reality.
"The numbers on the balls were all wrong," she said. "Only two were right: six was green and two was blue."
She laughs now, but it startled her to learn she was different. She kept it to herself until 1986 when she met Gail Somers, a Coeur d’Alene tattoo artist.
The two women struck up a conversation and dropped in subtle hints of the colors they see with certain numbers, as they often did, hoping someone would understand.
Gail understood Shirley and Shirley understood Gail as no one ever had.
"It was like a great big wall came tumbling down," Gail said, still excited about finding a kindred spirit. "Except I thought whatever color I saw, she saw."
Each synestheste’s senses react the same throughout life. But one synestheste rarely senses the same as another.
Shirley’s five is always blue and she always smells cooked cabbage with the letter Q. But Gail’s five is always red and her Q has no scent.
Neurologists say the jumble happens before the senses naturally separate themselves. So combined senses, such as colored hearing, are as real to a synestheste as any single sense is to everyone else.
Gail has asked for No. 7 nail polish when she wants green because her brain unites seven and green.
Gail and Shirley share a few colors and numbers. Mostly, they share a phenomenon that happens to about 1 out of 25,000 people. And that makes them feel pretty special.
"I won a trophy playing pool, and I think this helped," Shirley said, showing Gail the squirrel tattoo on her ankle.
"I saw the balls as people I associated with that color, and it was easy to knock over people I didn’t like."
