Multiple readers wrote in to suggest a story out of Farmington, Utah. The story’s headline?

• Horse herpes outbreak forces rodeo queens to ride stick ponies

So first off, yes, apparently there’s a horse herpes (though it’s not an STD). As well, there’s a “rodeo queen” contest. And when they don’t have real horses to ride, they just use freaking stick horses.

<Feel free to write your own caption>

If you were trying to ridicule this contest was, could you come up with a more hilarious change? Don’t they realize this? Ah well. Check out the full photo gallery from KSL for more amazing photos, including a stick horse color-coordinated to an outfit.

Around the country, new digital projectors are being used to screen both 2-D and 3-D movies. This should be just fine, but all too often when viewing a 2-D movie, customers are being subjected to an overly-dark image. Ty Burr has written an excellent article on the issue. A big part of the problem is the use of 3-D polarizing lenses which wind up filtering out a huge chunk of the light, even for 2-D movies.

James Bond, a Chicago-based projection guru who serves as technical expert for Roger Ebert’s Ebertfest, said issues with the Sonys are more than mechanical. Opening the projector alone involves security clearances and Internet passwords, “and if you don’t do it right, the machine will shut down on you.” The result, in his view, is that often the lens change isn’t made and “audiences are getting shortchanged.”

Why in the world would Nathan Bootz, the superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools in Michigan, request that the governor turn his school into a prison?

The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student.

Suddenly, it all makes sense. Depressing, depressing sense.

The new Yankee Stadium is smaller than the old one. But when the team insisted in 2006 that it needed 2,000 extra parking spots, the New York City Industrial Development Agency issued 237 million dollars in tax exempt bonds for an expanded parking system–paving over the neighborhood’s only regulation baseball diamonds to do it.

The Yankees insisted from the beginning that they needed 9,000 parking spots, 2,000 more than before. They even made it a legal condition for not moving out of the Bronx.

To get the aforementioned spots, baseball diamonds in the neighborhood were paved over. Replacement fields were promised, but the city has yet to deliver. Worse, the new garages are sitting two-thirds empty, and they owe the city millions in back rent they’re now struggling to collect.

To be sure, this type of greed (where a team makes incredible demands of a city as a condition for staying) isn’t unique to the Yankees; it’s endemic to the business of sports. That doesn’t make it any less deplorable, however.

As a good follow-up to Brian Christian’s article on Turing tests, have a read of Clive Thompson’s “conversation” with a chatbot. I’ve recently been contacted by several of these bots, and while I’ve also found it amusing to indulge them briefly, my own one-sided conversations never turned so philosophical.

In India, rhesus monkeys have been invading various government buildings at night. Because the monkeys are revered by some Hindus, a different type of monkey called a langur is now being used to combat the pests. How could you not want to read this brief Christian Science Monitor report?

Mocking the “Rapture” nuts has been done to death, especially on Sunday, May 22nd. That said, this is an interesting look at how the mass stupidity has affected families. I’d love to read a follow-up to this piece.

Also, am I wrong, or is that caption incorrect?

GatorCountry.com did an interview with incoming Florida Gators wide receiver Ja’Juan Story. In it, Story was honest to a fault.

Q: What’s the most played song on your iPod?

A: Most played…I don’t know, I want to say Katy Perry, “Fireworks.” It’s intense.

Q: What’s your favorite pre-game ritual?

A: Well, I take a doodoo. Before every game I doodoo.

Q: That’s your FAVORITE pregame ritual?

A: Well, that’s the only thing I do. That’s one thing I have to do before every game, or I won’t feel energy, and I’ll just feel slow. When I do I just feel light on my feet and everything, and I feel faster, so that’s what I do.

Q: You know I’m going to write this in a story right?

A: Well, I mean, that’s what it is. I doodoo and then listen to Katy Perry.

By the time you reach college, you should really not be referring to a bowel movement as “a doodoo”.