November 15, 2001
NINE MINUTES TO DOOMSDAY
Scientists from the International Atomic
Energy Agency, who are the minds behind the invention of the "Doomsday
Clock," have decided not to reset the hands of the clock in response to
the events of Sept. 11. The Doomsday Clock symbolizes how close we are,
as a race, to nuclear annihilation, which would occur when the "clock"
hit midnight. For now the clock remains set at 11:51 p.m. Stephen
Schwartz, publisher of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said "we
believe it is prudent to wait at least a little while to absorb and
reflect on the implications and to gauge the international response to
them, before determining whether, when and by how much to change the
clock." Learn more about the Doomsday Clock at
www.thebulletin.org.
SPEAKING OF DOOMSDAY
Police in the Netherlands are investigating
members of the Efraim cult after members of the group kept their
children home from school in anticipation of the end of the world. The
group's leader, who calls himself Elia, claims that God has warned him
of the destruction of the western world, and is presently searching for
a bride for Jesus Christ in preparation of the apocalypse. Dutch
authorities are monitoring the group, fearing the cult may be headed for
mass suicide, as Elia has supposedly said "if God doesn't come for us,
we will go ourselves." (The Scotsman)
CASH IN ON DEATH
Four lawyers from Sidney, Australia have issued a
challenge to skeptics to disprove the evidence for life after death, and
have offered a $1 million reward to anyone who can "rebut and refute
beyond absolute all the evidence for the existence of the afterlife.
Victor Zammit, writing on his website, victorzammit.com, lists a number
of paranormal experiences which the skeptics might tackle, and lists a
number of books which document the evidence, including his own work A
Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife.
SUDDENLY THE LEAST ATTRACTIVE BREASTS ON THE PLANET
Britain's Daily
Star reports that 26-year-old Sandi Canesco has had her late husband's
ashes injected into her breast implants after he died in a car accident.
"It dawned on me that if I carried Dustin's cremated remains in my
breast implants, I'd never really have to part with him at all," she
explained.
DO IT FOR THE ADRENALINE RUSH AS A KNIFE PLUNGES INTO YOUR SPLEEN
If
the economy turns sour and you're suddenly out of work, you may want to
consider a job you thought you'd never apply for. The Austern Electric
Circus in England is searching for an assistant for knife-thrower Jayde
Hanson. Hanson's most recent assistant has walked off the job after two
serious wounds and one near miss. (Daily Telegraph)
SHOW ME THE ALIENS
Britain's spies from the intelligence branch of the
Ministry of Defense have stopped accepting reports of unidentified
flying objects and abandoned the quest for extraterrestrials. Over fifty
years of monitoring of UFO reports have "not proven valuable," says the
Ministry, and they will no longer have intelligence experts
investigating UFO reports. (The Observer)
WEIRDOS REWARDED
Lyndon York, who sails an Edwardian tricycle which has
been rigged into a catamaran down the River Thames, has won the title of
Best British Eccentric 2001. He beat out some tough competition from the
world toe-wrestling champion, a man who dresses like a baked bean, and a
woman who owns the world's biggest garden gnome sanctuary. (Reuters)
TRADING DEPRESSION FOR PSYCHOSIS
The first lawsuit against the
manufacturers of the anti-depressant drug Luvox has been filed in
Columbine, Colorado. Families of five Columbine High School shooting
victims in 1999 have filed the suit claiming that the company failed to
warn the doctor of Eric Harris (one of the gunmen who was on Luvox at
the time of the shooting), about potential side effects of the drug,
which are implicated in making some users manic and psychotic. (Nando
Times)
LIKE A BROKEN RECORD
The United Nations has released its annual world
population report and it sounds exactly like the one they released last
year, and the year before that, and so on and so forth. "More people are
using more resources with more intensity than at any point in human
history," concludes the report, "the population, which has doubled to
6.1 billion in the past 40 years, is projected to surge 50 per cent to
9.3 billion within another half century - with all the growth in
developing countries whose resources are already overstretched."
(Reuters)
FOR THOSE COLD WINTER NIGHTS STUCK INDOORS
Offkilter.org reports on the
newest craze in gaming: Scientist Scrabble. The object of this version
of Scrabble is to find scientific journal reports whose authors have
family names worth dozens of points if spelled out on a triple word
score. The current champ is an article written by five scientists
including the tag-team of Zygmunt and Ignacy Gryczynski.
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Copyright 2001 by Andreas Ohrt
(604) 603-4699
Email:aohrt@hotmail.com
Website:www.curioustimes.com