January 23, 2003
OUCH!
34-year-old Brent Moffatt of Winnipeg does Canada proud by smashing
the world record for body piercing by sticking 702 needles into his
body. His goal was to reach 1,000 needles, but he finished up with
a needle through each of his nipples and then stopped as the pain
became unbearable. The old world record stood at a measly 200.
(Reuters)
WASSUP? TIGHT NEW WORDS, FOR SHIZZLE
YourDictionary.com continues
to track the evolution of the English language, and has just
released several top ten lists encapsulating the most important
words of 2002. According to the top ten list of "California
Youthspeak," for shizzle replaces for sure, and tight replaces
cool, while wassup inexplicably continues to grow in popularity as
a greeting. The top ten words created by George Bush include
foreign-handed ("I have a foreign-handed foreign policy," Dubya
once said), embetter (to make better), and analyzation (to study a
subject in great detail). Dot communism is another phrase to add to
your vocabulary, defined as the conviction that everything on the
web should be free (hell yeah!) and "to nasdaq," as in "his
fortune was nasdaqued." The top word of 2002 overall was another
Bushism: misunderestimate.
WHERE ARE THE KEYS TO MY LEXUS?
When we hear a story about
surgical equipment being left inside a patient after surgery, we
like to believe that it's an isolated incident which happens
extremely rarely. Surprise! A U.S. study published in the New
England Journal of Medicine has found that over 1,500 tools are
left inside patients each year, and that's only counting the United
States. Studying the insurance records of the past 16 years,
researchers found an amazing number of clamps, sponges and
electrodes left inside patients. In two case, 11-inch retractors
were forgotten, and in one case, four sponges were left inside a
patient. The study also found that most of these incidences occured
during emergency operations, and that medical instruments are
usually left in fat patients, "simply because there is more room
inside them to lose equipment" says to the study.
(Boston Herald)
STANDARD PROCEDURE IS TO WASH UP BEFORE SURGERY
And while we're on
the subject of bad surgeons... A German doctor allegdly "forgot"
about a patient last week and went home to have a bath. 76-year-old
Margarete Schueler claims that the doctor anaesthetised her, and
when she awoke she was locked in an empty surgery room and had to
call police for help. The doctor, in his lame defense, claimed he
thought he had time for a quick bath at home before his patient
woke up. The investigation continues.
(Ananova)
WHAT A DRAG
The competition for Worst Driver of the Year has
already received its first over -qualified entrant. An unlicensed
teenager in Lithuania who thought he had gotten away from the seen
of the crime after a hit-and-run accident was horrified to discover
the body of a 64-year-old man sticking out from under his father's
Audi when he got home. According to police, the boy had already
failed his driver's test four times. (UPI)
ABDUL AND MOHAMMED'S RESUMES WERE FORWARDED TO THE FBI
And more
fodder for the growing mound of unsurprising research
conclusions...a group of professors at the University of Chicago
who sent out 5,000 resumes in response to want ads in the Boston
Globe and Chicago Tribune found that resumes with white-sounding
names received 50 per cent more responses than those with
black-sounding names. Resumes with names such as Neil, Brett, Greg,
Emily, Anne and Jill received one response for every ten resumes,
whereas the "applicants" named Tamika, Ebony, Aisha, Rasheed,
Kareem and Tyrone received only one response per 15 resumes. "Our
results so far suggest that there is a substantial amount of
discrimination in the job recruiting process," the brainiacs
concluded.
(CNN)
I SEE AN OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE ORGASM IN YOUR FUTURE
A Japanese
woman is making some pretty good cash reading the fortune of men by
performing sexual acts on them. "Kaho," who works in a brothel in
Nagoya, claims that she has foreseen future events for over 1,000
men in the past year, and has even helped one man win a huge amount
of money at the racecourse. For the women in Japan, another psychic
reads their futures by studying their breasts.
(ukpsychics.com)
BAD WITCH
A Romanian witch has agreed to give a refund to one of
her customers after the man threatened to sue her after her spells
didn't change his life. 72-year-old Vasile Birsan says the witch
promised that her spells would help his sick wife get better and
find a wife for his 40-year-old son. When neither of these things
happened, Birsan had to police find her and threatened to slap her
with a lawsuit. At that point, she returned approximately $500 to
the man. (UPI)
A FULL YEAR'S SUPPLY OF IRONY
George W. Bush declared last Sunday,
Jan. 19, 2003, "National Sanctity of Life Day."