truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

Judges Too Fond of "Probation": An unnamed Children's Court judge in Melbourne, Australia, sentenced eight boys to probation in November even though he had found them guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl, setting her hair on fire, spitting and urinating on her, and filming the episode. (There was no jail time, but the youths were assigned to a rehabilitation program teaching "positive sexuality"!)

The Department of Education of the Australian Capital Territory in Canberra granted permission this year for a 16-year-old student at Stromlo High School to take smoking breaks, based on a doctor's finding that she is so "clinically addicted" to nicotine that her work suffers without it.)

In Charlottesville, Va., in October, a judge found white-nationalist leader Kevin Strom not guilty of the sexual enticement of an 11-year-old girl, despite humiliating testimony from Strom's wife. According to prosecutors, she (also a white-nationalist activist) had caught him at home naked, masturbating to photographs of nude women whose faces had been replaced by face shots of two prominent but very young white-nationalist singers. Subsequently, charges were filed over Strom's obsession with a local girl (to whom he had sent presents and about whom he had described his feelings, to his psychotherapist). However, in the end, a federal judge said the obsession did not amount to a crime (though Strom remains in jail on the child pornography charge).

In August, News of the Weird wrote about 12-year-old Kyle Krichbaum's lifelong obsession with the sound and feel of vacuum cleaners and his collection of 165 machines and his five-a-day vacuuming habit. In September, two Georgia Tech researchers told a conference in Austria that many owners of the Roomba vacuuming robot seem to ascribe human qualities to it, including giving it a name and, in some cases, dressing it up. Prof Beki Grinter and her colleague said part of the Roomba obsession was because a robot qualifies as a gadget, which means that males can be expected to do more of the household vacuuming.

Just when Internet newspaper sites appear to be gaining ground as replacements for printed editions, a 70- year-old woman identified only as Maggie told the Edmonton (Alberta) Sun in September that her paper edition of the Sun is a crucial part of her daily diet, literally. She eats it, in strips, and has, she said, for the past seven years because it tastes good. "I can't explain it," she said, and it was only when she recently experienced a blockage of her esophagus, and doctors found a ball of paper, that she revealed her obsession. Doctors cited by the Sun said that except for the blockage danger, newspaper eating is not unhealthful.

Fetishes on Parade: In September, Norman Hutchins, 56, was again jailed after incidents at England's Bradford Royal Infirmary, where he faked an illness to gain entrance so that he could steal equipment for his sexual gratification. Police records showed Hutchins as obsessed, since 1970, with oxygen masks, gowns, and syringes, among other items.