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Curious Times No. 197
June 19, 2003"WE'RE JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS":
Alien abductee researcher Preston Dennet has compiled a list of things that aliens sometimes say to their abductees. Dennett admits that face-to-face encounters with aliens are by far the rarest type of UFO experience, and extraterrestrials are very reluctant to talk to their abductees. However, in 20 years of research he has found a handful of cases where aliens have actually spoken. Generally, he says, aliens don't speak, and when they do speak, they often repeat themselves, saying the same few phrases to all of their abductees. Here then, are some of the top alien phrases: "do not be afraid, we won't hurt you"; "you won't remember this"; "we need babies"; "our emotions are different than yours"; "we are from a place you don't know about yet"; "we've been here a long, long time"; and "it is very important we do this." (Llewellyn Journal)WHEN DID BAD TV SHOWS BECOME NEWS?
Our friends over at Project Censored have released their list of the year's Junk Food News - stories which, they say, are the most frivolous and over-reported news items of the year, news which fills the airwaves and newsstands "with celebrity gossip and meaningless coverage of the unimportant." This year's Junk Food News leaders are Joe Millionaire, Michael Jackson, Winona Ryder, American Idol, Jennifer Lopez, Martha Stewart, and The Osbournes. "Apparently times have changed ande ther is less news to inform the citizens of our democracy about," says the Junk Food News report, "or at the ver least there is apparently more time available in the mainstrem media for the discussion of frivolous TV hype." You can read the entire report at www.projectcensored.org.OF COURSE, THERE'S A 50 PER CENT CHANCE THAT HE'S WRONG
British scientist Martin Rees claims that there is now a 50 per cent chance that some kind of apocalyptic disaster will be hitting planet Earth in the near future. His new book is a real lifte-upper, titled Our Final Hour: How terror, error, and environmental disaster threaten humankind’s future in this century—on Earth and beyond. The biggest threats to humans, he says, are nuclear terrorism, deadly engineered viruses, rogue machines and bioterror (which he predicts will kill about a million people by 2020. Other "natural" disaster might also strike, such as a "supervolcano" blocking light from the sun or a giant asteroid smashing into the Earth, but Rees says his biggest fears are our inability to keeppace with scientific advances, and he fears an innocent error could lead to widespread destruction. (Reuters)IT'S HARD FINDING GOOD HELP THESE DAYS
A lawyer in Australia is suing his marriage counsellor for having sex with his wife during the time that he was supposed to be helping the couple save their marriage. (Ananova)MEN ARE ALL ALIKE, EVEN IF THEY'RE FISH
From the extremely strange scientific experiments department, researchers at a Swiss University have concluded that fish can be turned on by fish pornography. The scientists (if you can call them scientists and still keep a straight face) showed 17 male stickleback fish two different films, one showing a flirtatious courtship between a male and female stickleback, the other simply showing a male caring for his brood. After the foreplay, the researchers found that the fish who had seen the "soft porn" ejaculated much more sperm than the fish who watched the boring film. Unfortunately, they didn't explain how they managed to get a fish to watch a film, nor how they actually measured the volume of fish sperm. (New Scientist)FINISH YOUR LUNCH BEFORE YOU READ THIS
North Korean refugees have shocked international aid agencies with news that cannibalism is increasing due to food shortages, and claims that children have been murdered and their flesh sold in markets. Reports from the North Korean World Food Programme, which recently interviewed 200 refugees, found that starvation is again on the increase due to another poor harvest, big cuts in international food aid, floods, deforestation and a lack of farm fertilisers and equipment. According to the latest reports, things have gotten so extreme that children have been killed for food, and people who die naturally are dug up shortly after a funeral and their corpses are cut up and sold as meat. (Telegraph)INSTEAD OF BUYING COTTON CANDY, YOU CAN DIG THROUGH THAT LANDFILL FOR YOUR LUNCH
Habitat For Humanity - anon-profit group which builds homes for the world's poor - has opened America's newest theme park. Unlike other theme parks, however, this one has no rides or amusements. Instead, the park is a 6.5 acre recreation of a shanty town, designed to show rich tourists how some of the poorest people in the world are forced to live. The "Global Village and Discovery Centre" is a newly designed slum, based on some of the world's worst slums in Africa, Asia and Central America. "Essentially, it's a theme park for poverty housing," said Millard Fuller, founder of Habitat for Humanity,"you'll see the kind of pitiful living conditions so many people in the world have." As well as educating tourists, they also hope to recruit new volunteers for their projects. (The Independent)I KNOW YOU LOVE USELESS INFORMATION, OR YOU WOULDN'T BE READING THIS COLUMN
In case your brain isn't quite full yet, here's some more pointless facts to cram in there: A "jiffy" is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second; there are more chickens than people in the world; two-thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in New Jersey; women blink nearly twice as much as men.
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