Morning Edition

Some time ago, a man wearing jeans, cowboy boots and a hoodie drove a dirty Ford Explorer into a carwash in Fort Worth, Texas. As soon as the car came back clean, he got it filthy again, and drove to the next carwash. He did this with every single full-service carwash in town.

The man wasn't suffering from a strange mental disorder; Patrick Kinkade was a criminologist conducting an experiment.

Czars.

It was fun to call American sports commissioners czars, but once players started to have unions, a commissioner really became more like a majority leader in a legislature, trying to keep his party — the owners — together in their financial battles against the minority opposition, the athletes.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. It's a big year for the little word gif. The Oxford Dictionary has chosen it as the word of 2012. Short for graphic interface format, which are looping Internet animations, gif began as a noun in the 80s but caught on as a verb. For example, I giffed. That is made my own looping animations of the president's speech. Runners up include nomophobia - fear of being without your mobile phone. And YOLO - you only live once. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

A police officer in Sarasota, Fla., said he was being conscientious when he arrested a homeless man in a park, who was charging a cell phone in a picnic shelter. The officer accused him of theft of city utilities. A judge threw out the case.

In Mexico City's most prominent tree-lined park, you can find statues to such international heroes as Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King and now Heydar Aliyev. He's the Soviet-era autocrat of Azerbaijan. Its government paid for the park's latest statue and restoration of a nearby plaza. The gilded gift has upset many in the capital and is causing headaches for Mexico City's outgoing mayor.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with a small reprieve for Greece.

Immediately after last week's election, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon announced the state would not be setting up its own health insurance exchange. Next door in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback announced that Kansas will have no involvement in running a state exchange either. The moves open the door for increased federal involvement in health care in staunchly Republican territory.

Toothbutter: noun. Butter spread so thickly as to reveal teeth marks upon biting.

The fact that this word exists in the Danish language should help to explain what politicians were up against when they introduced the "fat tax" just over a year ago. This is a country that loves it some butter (and meat, and all things dreadful to the arteries).