Bottom Stories of the Week

I hate to keep picking on vegans—and I wouldn’t if so many didn’t make a righteous ideology out of it*—but this story (which wouldn’t be a news story if there weren’t an agenda behind it in the first place) is just too irresistible:

Woman trying to prove ‘vegans can do anything’ among four dead on Mount Everest

For Maria Strydom and her husband, Robert Gropel, climbing Everest while adhering to a strict vegan diet was their “own personal Everest.” The 34-year-old Strydom, a lecturer at Monash Business School in Melbourne, Australia, had a message she wanted to share with the world: Veganism is not a handicap.

She and her husband, a veterinarian, both stuck closely to their vegan diet — no animal products whatsoever, which extends from scrambled eggs to most chocolate chip cookies — and they experienced criticism because of it. Some thought they didn’t receive enough iron and protein in their diet for such strenuous physical activity. . .

The couple reached Camp 4, the final camp, at 3,000 feet below the summit, before both suffered from altitude sickness. It caused fluid to build up in Strydom’s brain, which killed her Saturday.

Meanwhile, move over Zika virus: there’s a bigger pest problem right now:

Bug poo is turning the Taj Mahal green

The white-marbled walls of the Taj Mahal have been tainted yellow by air pollution and worn thin from the curious hands and shuffling feet of the millions of visitors that stroll through each year.

Now, its centuries-old facade is under attack from another foe: excessively defecating flying bugs. And their hued poo is turning the mausoleum green. . .

It seems the most productive solution would be to eliminate the insects’ river breeding grounds, though officials have yet to figure out how.

I have an idea: DDT.

Finally, why is this a news story at all—isn’t this what the media does to all of us routinely?

Arizona TV reporter arrested for defecating on lawn while covering a story

Getting the story is always priority No. 1, but a Phoenix TV reporter seems to have forgotten about No. 2 until it was too late. Jonathan Lowe, a reporter for KPHO, was arrested Monday afternoon after allegedly defecating on a front lawn near the subject of his story’s home. . .

An officer tasked with the job of tracking Lowe down said the suspect admitted to using the yard as an impromptu latrine.

I’ll bet that was a coveted assignment in the police squad room that day.

*I heard this joke over in Russia last summer: “How do you know someone is a vegan? Because they’ll f—— tell you!”

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