November 1, 2001

MAY I TAKE YOUR NEW WORLD ORDER?

This handy map shows Afghanistan after the U.S. is through with it. The golden arches, obviously, represent new McDonald¹s franchises, and the white lines are parking spaces. Only a couple of things missing, of course: Starbucks and 7-11.

MAYBE YODA WAS RIGHT

Researchers with the Global Consciousness Project claim that the events of Sept. 11 created some kind of huge "spike" in the consciousness of humans worldwide. The project, which for almost three years has been monitoring 38 random number generators in various locations on our planet, has found that when significant global events occur, the data of these machines somehow becomes less random. For example, in the past few years they have found that the machines have produced patterns in response to the verdict of the O.J. Simpson trial and the death of Princess Diana. In most cases, a pattern emerges for several hours and then reverts to pure randomness. On Sept. 11, they claim, the random number generators produced "stark patterns" beginning at 10:12 a.m. EDT, and continued for three days. You can check out all the details and graphs which plot the data at http://noosphere.princeton.edu/

NAH, THEY WOULD NEVER DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT

A book about America's National Security Agency, written by a former investigative journalist for ABC News, claims that in 1962, U.S. military leaders created a plan to commit terrorist acts against Americans and blame Cuba in order to create a reason to invade that nation and remove Fidel Castro from power. Body of Secrets, by James Bamford, is based on documents received through the Freedoms Of Information Act, including the documents regarding what was called Operation Northwoods. "We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area...we cold blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," states one such document, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of indignation." Bamford claims that Operation Northwoods was approved by the five Joint Chiefs, but was vetoed by then-president John F. Kennedy. (Baltimore Sun)

SELL YOUR SPERM NOW WHILE IT'S STILL WORTH SOMETHING

Fertility specialists at the Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Genetics in Los Angeles are working on groundbreaking technology that could allow women to have babies without men. The technique would involve using a cocktail of chemicals that would act as artificial sperm to trick a human egg into creating an embryo. The research has just barely begun on mice, but if it is ever perfected with human eggs, the resulting babies would be female and genetically identical to their mother. (www.femail.co.uk)

BONEHEAD QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"It's incredibly positive for the internet." So says Raymond Oglethorpe, president of AOL, discussing the effect of bioterrorism on the postal service and how his company stands to profit from the Anthrax scare. (www.washtech.com)

THAT SUCKS

Wolfgang Seifarth, a 65-year-old German tourist in Zambia, has been sentenced to six years in jail with hard labour for getting a blow job from a Zambian woman. The judge ruled that oral sex is "a gross abomination against Zambian laws," and stated that he was giving Seifarth a lenient sentence because this was his first offense. The Zambian morality law provides a maximum jail term of 14 years for "unnatural" sex acts. (Reuters)

WELCOME TO 1984

I would highly recommend reading a brilliant essay titled Happy New Year: It's 1984, in which Jacob Levich points dramatically to the similarities between Bush's speech to congress and the state of the world in George Orwell's 1984. Check it out at www.commondreams.org, where Levich reads between the lines of the rhetoric to discover that War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and Ignorance is Strength. "George Bush effectively declared permanent war," he writes, "war without temporal or geographic limits; war without clear goals; war against a vaguely defined and constantly shifting enemy...The permanent war undergirds every aspect of Big Brother's authoritarian program, excusing censorship, propaganda, secret police, and privation. In other words, it's terribly convenient."

ANGELS, GHOSTS, ALIENS, WITCHES, AND THE END OF THE WORLD

A survey carried out by Legger Marketing has found that 57.4 per cent of Canadian believe in life after death, 57.1 per cent believe in angels, and about one third of Canadians believe in aliens and ghosts. The survey also discovered that 6.3 per cent had actually seen a ghost, 5.8 per cent had seen an angel, and 4.4 per cent had seen a witch. Another survey carried out in the United States by Tyndale House Publishers found that as many as 40 per cent of Americans believe that a supernatural event will cause the end of the world, and over two-thirds of those people believe that Jesus Christ will be involved. (Canadian Press / Washington Times)

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