Kevin Baugh looks pretty happy, doesn’t he? Well, you would be, too — Kevin is president of the independent micronation of Molossia, an acre of Nevada desert that he claimed as an independent republic in 1999.

Molossia has a population of 3; its inhabitants speak English and observe Molossian Standard Time, which is 7 hours 29 minutes behind Greenwich. The local currency is the Valora, which equals a partial tube of Pillsbury cookie dough.

The nation’s capital, Espera, surrounds the Baugh residence near Dayton, Nevada. Tourism has reached 10 visitors a year, but you have to surrender your pocket change at the border, and you can’t bring any firearms, incandescent light bulbs, catfish, onions, walruses, or “anything from Texas except Kelly Clarkson.”

Its motto is “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained.”

Any large-scale change in human behavior will literally change the human race: Because such a change alters the conditions under which individuals are conceived, our grandchildren in one scenario will be different people from those in another. This is particularly true in sweeping policy matters such as the environment, global warming, etc.

This seems to suggest that we needn’t feel guilty about our poor stewardship. The descendants who would benefit by our reform are different from those who will suffer at our neglect–and we owe a duty only to the latter.

Each year, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, someone scatters red hearts through downtown Montpelier, Vt.

When they first appeared, in 2002, they were simple photocopies, but by 2006 large banners were gracing the State House columns. Soon the decorations spread to the high school’s chimney and a tower at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

“Currently, there are no leads and no suspects,” joked police chief Dave Janawicz in 2007, when 14 inches of snow failed to stop the bandit. “But the investigation continues.”

Vermont’s capital is not alone in this — for years, the same thing has been happening in Portland, Maine, and in Boulder, Colo. No one knows who does it or why.

A similar phantom visits the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the poet’s birthday.

According to mathematician Eugene Northrop, in England between 1907 and 1921 it was legal for a man to marry the sister of his deceased wife, but illegal for a woman to marry the brother of her deceased husband.

Suppose then that twin brothers marry twin sisters. One husband and the opposite wife die, and after a decent interval the surviving woman and man marry. For the man this marriage is legal; for the woman it’s illegal. Thus, if they have a son, he’s legitimate for one parent and illegitimate for the other.

See Proof That a Man Can Be His Own Grandfather.

Canadian cats have their own parliament. In the same precinct of Ottawa where the human legislature meets, Irène Desormeaux erected a feline equivalent in the 1970s. The cats are all spayed or neutered, they get free inoculations and medical care, and the whole thing is run by volunteers using personal donations.