oddly enough

oddly enough

Giant aerial sculpture installed over Boston park

BOSTON

A giant aerial sculpture is floating over a park in Boston’s Financial District, bringing a shimmer of spring where snowplow piles towered just weeks ago.

Early Sunday, dozens of workers closed nearby streets and set to work installing the 600-foot work by artist Janet Echelman, using a battery of cranes and scissor lifts.

The orange and magenta netting made of polyethylene rope weighs a ton and is designed to respond fluidly to wind and weather. It will remain suspended in the Rose Kennedy Greenway between two high-rise buildings across the Greenway through October.

Echelman is based in suburban Brookline. Her sculpture — which includes more than 100 miles of twine — is inspired by ancient fishing nets. She has installed similar works in Seattle; Madrid, Spain; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Sydney, Australia; and other cities.

Ohio college brings academic analysis of zombies to life

FAIRBORN, Ohio

Many young people have an undying interest in zombies, so a southwest Ohio college professor focuses a class on them.

Andrea Harris of Wright State University teaches “Zombies & Gender in Pop Culture.” Her spring class filled up rapidly, and she’s been asked to teach it again.

The huge popularity of “The Walking Dead” series and movies such as “Night of the Living Dead” are involved. But Harris is quick to point out that the class involves serious academic analysis.

Students examine social order in the context of a zombie apocalypse and what the popularity of zombies says about humanity’s future.

A number of other colleges around the country have fed student brains with zombie-related courses in not only pop culture, but biology, anthropology and literature.

Seattle police: No charges for man stuck in basketball hoop

SEATTLE

Seattle police say they aren’t pursuing charges against a shirtless man with a hammer who managed to get himself stuck in a basketball hoop.

Officer Drew Fowler said Monday the man was not booked into jail but sent to a hospital for a mental-health evaluation.

The man climbed onto the hoop at Cal Anderson Park during May Day demonstrations Friday, though Fowler says it’s not clear if his actions were related to the protests.

News helicopter video showed him hanging upside down from the rim, sometimes by just one foot, as he waved the hammer around. It took several officers to get him down, helped by a firefighter who climbed a ladder to cut the net.

The police department wrote on its Twitter feed that it was considering citing the man for destruction of property — “or at least goal-tending.”

Associated Press