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Curious Times No. 223
December 18, 2003KIDS ARE SO MUCH COOLER THESE DAYS
Keeping alive the ancient tradition of dumping on teenagers, the British Medical Association published a report last week claiming that today’s generation of youth will be "the most infertile and the most obese in the history of mankind and might also have the worst mental health." Among the findings presented by the BMA are these charming statistics: one in 10 teenage girls has chlamydia, one in four 15- and 16-year-olds smoke, one in five 13- to 16-year-olds are overweight, and 11 per cent of 11- to 15-year-olds had done drugs in the month before the report was compiled. The BMA concluded that the drinking, eating, sexual, drug-taking and smoking habits of adolescents are creating a public health timebomb, and recommended that greater resources should be allocated to increase education on sex, drugs, alcohol, diet and exercise in schools, as well as making it more difficult for teens to have access to cigarettes. (The Telegraph)BAD SEX IN FICTION AWARD RUNNER UPS
Last week we learned about the winner of this year’s distinguished Bad Sex in Fiction Award. This week it gets even better, as a bit of research has uncovered a few not-so-sexy passages from some of the novels that didn’t quite win the award. For example, the novel Too Beautiful For You, by Rod Liddle, includes this gem about the precious minutes directly following a torrid sexual fling: "They each cling to opposite sides of the mattress, well away from the vast lagoon of semen in the centre of the bed, a thick coldness which will still be damp when Paul awakes the next morning." That’s so sweet. Another beauty, from The Stranger at the Palazzo d’Oro, by Paul Theroux, includes this sensory delight: "The aroma of her lily-fragrant perfume mingled with the cat smell of her steaming c*nt making me salivate and pant like a lion, my nose tormented by damp fur and hot blood." Uggh... (The Guardian UK)JUST SAY NO TO DRUGS
Three separate stories released last week may have you wanting to get another opinion before swallowing any more prescription drugs. The first is a study from the London School fo Pharmacy, which claims that as many as 11 per cent of prescriptions by doctors contain errors. Although most of the errors are minor, some have caused life-threatening consequences. Another report quoted a senior executive from GlaxoSmithKline, Europe’s largest drug maker, admitting that over 90 per cent of drugs only work on 30 to 50 per cent of the population. "Drugs on the market work," said Allen Roses, "but they don’t work in everybody." Lastly, and most disturbingly, London’s Observer uncovered that almost half of the articles in medical journals which claim to be written by academics or doctors are actually written by ghostwriters working for drug companies. These medical journals have a huge influence on which drugs doctors prescribe, but it turns out that the only reason the articles in these journals have doctors’ names attached to them is because the doctors are paid handsomely for lending their reputations to the pharmaceutical companies. Dr. David Healy of the University of Wales says "I believe 50 per cent of articles on drugs in the major medical journals are not written in a way that the average person would expect them to be...They are no more than infomercials paid for by drug firms." (BBC)THE LIQUID COURAGE YOU NEED TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD
When will the whiners ever learn that the more you try to suppress something, the more publicity and popularity you will generate for the very thing that’s got you so upset. A wine maker in Europe has cashed in on the concept that there’s no such thing as bad publicity after a number of outraged groups tried to stop the sale of his "Adolf Hitler Wine" in Germany. "Getting sued was the best thing that could have happened," said the wine’s creator, Alessandro Lunardelli, who has already survived similar attempts to put him out of business when he created a "Mussolini Wine" in Italy. Just as in Germany, the attempt to stop the production of the wine helped sales go through the roof, making Lunardelli a rich man. His line of wines also includes bottles featuring pictures of Stalin, Lenin and Che Guevara.SEX SELLS
Surprise, surprise, there’s money to be made from porn on the net. Now an enterprising young webmaster who was laid off during the the dot bomb has started an online school where you can learn to profit from this always popular industry. Michael Hayes, 27, is vice-president of a company called AdultWebmasterSchool.com , which is currently the world’s only online school to help you become what they call a "pornmaster." Hayes claims they can teach someone with no experience to build a website which earns at least a few hundred bucks a week. But, he warns, "there’s nothing sexy about making the porn sites. It’s all about dollar signs."GUILTY OF SEVERE STUPIDITY
A man in Miami, Florida has been arrested after using his stint on jury duty as a way to scam his employer out of more than $17,000. Investigators say that Todd Lorin Nelson, 33, was called to jury duty in April, but the court decided not to use him and he didn’t spend a single day on the jury. But that’s not the story he told his boss. Nelson continued to collect his pay check and managed to squeeze out six months of "paid vacation" while occasionally dropping by at his workplace to tell his co-workers tall stories about jury duty and to pick up his checks. As his boss continued to put pressure on him to provide proof of his jury duty, Nelson kept stalling until finally quitting his job on Oct. 8. (Miami Herald)DON’T DRINK THE WATER
An entrepreneur in China ended up poisoning 64 people after trying to boost sales of his water purifiers by dumping toxic pesticides in a local reservoir. Cao Qianjin, 27, confessed to the nasty plan after sales of his products began to slow down. He believed that mass sickness caused by water-borne toxins would drum up some business, so he dumped 20 bottles of a pesticide into his town’s reservoir, which served up drinking water to 9,000 families. Health authorities assured the victims that the poisoning would do no permanent damage. (Reuters)
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