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• Amanda Schweickert, 28, was charged with a felony and three driving offenses in March in Springville, New York, when deputies noticed that her rear license plate was just a piece of cardboard painted to sort of resemble a New York plate (but more likely suggesting the work of an elementary school art class). (New York also requires a front plate, but Schweickert had not gotten around to that yet.) [WIVB-TV (Buffalo), 3-3-2016]
• Britain's annual Boring Conference (this year, July 5 at Conway Hall in London) brings together those who celebrate the mundane (previous topics include sneezing, toast, vending machine sounds, yellow lines, barcodes), and in anticipation, a BBC News commentator interviewed Peter Willis of the Letter Box Study Group. Willis, 68, was excited at having recently acquired access to a database of all 115,000 mailboxes served by U.K.'s Royal Mail and hopes, with the help of "splendid" mapping software, to visit and photograph each one, to examine the different styles. No doubt speaking for all members, Willis said the lay version of "boring" implies inactivity, but the obsessives in his study group (and in attendance at the Boring Conference) lead active lives, with a wide range of interests. (The conference, by the way, is sold out.) [BBC News, 4-1-2016]
