September 23, 1999

SOLD! TO THE CYBER-GEEK WITH MOM'S CREDIT CARD

Two weeks ago, an item advertised as a "fully functioning kidney" pulled in bids of up to $5.7 million on the internet auction site eBay. Last week it was human babies on the block. Officials have pulled all babies and human organs from the site, including a $100,000 liver. Earlier this year, eBay banned the sale of guns and ammunition after someone tried to sell a bazooka and rocket launcher. Other outlawed items are skulls, human remains, live animals, false identification, counterfeit items, explosives and police badges. (AP)

HE PROBABLY SLEPT THROUGH GRAD SCHOOL

It took a specialist in sleep disorders, Dr. James Wyatt of Harvard Medical School, to determine that sleep itself is "without a doubt, hands down, the best countermeasure to sleep deprivation." (Quoted in the Journal of the AMA)

DEADLY HYPOCRICY

In this Autumn's Adbusters, Joel Tannenbaum writes about the glaring inconsistencies in media coverage of the Rwandan Liberation Army. He compares the negligible press the RLA received while it slaughtered over 500,000 Tutsis and Hutus during the early '90s, then garnering front page treatment in the New York Times and Washington Post, and an "official condemnation" from the UN, for murdering eight(!) foreign tourists, including two executives of Intel, last March.

WELL DONE

The Discovery Channel reports that on Sept. 6, 24 cattle were killed during a thunderstorm in Chappelle-Baton, France, when the tree they tried to take shelter under was struck by lightning.

WHO KNEW BIRDS HAD SUCH DISCRIMINATING TASTE?

Gloucestershire airport in England has turned to Tina Turner's voice to scare birds off its landing strips. Airport chief fire officer Ron Johnson told the London Times, "we used to broadcast tapes with birds' distress sounds, but we found they don't work very well‹and what the birds really hate is Tina Turner."

CHOP CHOP CHOPSTICKS

China is considering banning the use of disposable chopsticks in an effort to conserve its forests. Each year, 25 million trees are felled to manufacture the 45 billion pairs of chopsticks the Chinese use and export. (New Internationalist)

TREE-HUGGIN' ECO-FREAK SCIENTISTS

In a lengthy report entitled GEO-2000, the United Nations Environment Programme has given a grim evaluation of the state of the earth's environment, stating that our planet now faces "full-scale emergencies" on several fronts, including global warming (which it deems probably too late to avoid), crisis levels of air pollution in the developing world's mega-cities, "grossly over-exploited" oceans, degraded water resources and degraded land due to the overuse of pesticides, herbicides and intensive farming. And, for some fragile eco-systems and vulnerable species it is already too late, warns the report. "Tropical forest destruction has gone too far to prevent irreversible damage...many of the planet's species have already been lost or condemned to extinction."

THE RICH GET RICHER

New estimates show that the world's 225 richest people have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion, equal to the annual income of the poorest 47% of the world's people (2.5 billion). The three richest people have assets that exceed the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries. The assets of the 84 richest exceed the GDP of China, a country with 1.2 billion people. And, of course, Bill Gates alone could buy Canada.

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Copyright 2000 by Andreas Ohrt (604) 803-7485
Email:aohrt@hotmail.com
Website:www.curioustimes.com