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Curious
Times No. 278
January 6, 2005
LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND BORED
Despite last week’s “Worst of 2004” column, the year had
one more curious surprise up it’s sleeve when the world’s first
cloned pet cat was sold to a woman in Texas for $50,000. Nine-week-old
“Little Nicky” was the creation of a Californian company called
Genetic Savings and Clone which hopes to seriously cash in on the extremely
lucrative business of re-creating the dead pets of people with far too
much money on their hands. Despite the moral questions of ethicists and
warnings from scientists that that the technology of cloning has not been
perfected, the company has a long waiting list of people who have donated
DNA from their pets in order to have them brought back from the dead in
the future. At least one scientist pointed out that this entire racket
is basically a scam. “The thing that many people do not realize is
that the cloned cat is not the same as the original,” said Bonnie
Beaver, head of the American Veterinary Medical Association. “It
has a different personality. It has different life experiences. They want
Fluffy, but it’s not Fluffy.” Genetics Savings and Clones plans
to provide dog cloning within a few months, which is expected to sell
to a much more gullible, I mean, lucrative, market. (AP)
SMARTER THAN THE AVERAGE HUMAN
Let’s forget the insane death and destruction of the past couple
of weeks and focus on a bit of bizarre news resulting from the tragedy.
Wildlife officials in India and Sri Lanka have been shocked by an unusual
lack of animal deaths from the recent tsunami, reinforcing the belief
that animals may have a sixth sense which alerts them to danger in their
environment. For example, at the Yala National Park, Sri Lanka’s
largest wildlife reserve, officials were shocked to find not a single
animal corpse despite two miles of flooding on the reserve. “No elephants
are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit. I think animals can sense disaster.
They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening,” said
H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department.
An Associated Press photographer who flew over the park in the days after
the disaster reported the same news, that despite seeing hundreds of elephants,
buffalo, deer and leopards, he could not spot a single large mammal corpse
from the helicopter. (Yahoo
News / AP)
END OF THE WORLD UPDATE
As usual, this year Curious Times will continue to keep you up to date
with the ever-shifting date of the end of the world. The latest news comes
from an article in the India Daily which claims that Buddhist monks in
Tibet have mastered the art of remote viewing (using psychic powers to
see distant events in time and space) and have seen an incredible series
of planetary events culminating in the year 2012. The monks have made
the not-surprising prediction that regional wars and terrorism will escalate
for the rest of the decade, with the world powers threatening to destroy
each other around the date 2010. By 2012, the monks claim we will plunged
into a massive nuclear war, but then, they promise, extra terrestrial
powers will intervene to stop the destruction of our planet. The monks
also claim that we are being watched and taken care of by an alien race
who will not allow us to bring doomsday to Earth. (India
Daily)
END OF THE WORLD UPDATE, PART 2
So maybe you’re not superstitious, but a Friday the 13th may just
be the day a flippin’ huge asteroid takes out your neighbourhood.
Luckily we have 23 years to prepare thanks to the astronomy nerds at NASA
who discovered that a 1,300-foot-long asteroid has a pretty good shot
at striking Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. For now the odds against
this bit of destruction sit at about 300 to 1, and the scientists believe
the asteroid will glide past our planet without much hub-bub. “We
can’t yet rule out an Earth impact,” said a NASA spokesperson.
“But the impact probability, as we call it, is 300 to 1 against an
impact.” (Tuscon
Citizen)
GIVING US A COSMIC INFERIORITY COMPLEX
Astronomer Charles Lineweaver of the University of New South Wales speculates
that the reason aliens haven't contacted us is that Earthlings are just
too boring. He estimates that Earth-like planets around other stars would
be an average 1.8 billion years older than Earth, so any intelligent beings
on those planets would be so advanced that they would think of us as nothing
more than bacteria. (New Scientist)
SURVEY SAYS!
According to surveys compiled by The Oregonian, 21 per cent of Americans
report being "regularly bored out of my mind"; 8 per cent of
Americans would let a reality-based TV show film them having sex; 19 per
cent of men wouldn't mind being stupid if they had a perfect body; and,
according to the Weekly World News, 33 per cent of prayers are "intercepted
or jammed" by Satan.
JUSTICE IS BLIND LUCK
The separated parents of a five-year-old boy in Italy who couldn’t
agree on who should have custody of the child on Christmas day decided
to take their dispute to family court. To their surprise, justice was
a bit lazier than expected, as Judge Carlo Alberto Agnoli decided that
there wasn’t enough time to make a proper decision so he flipped
a coin in order to make the call. “I did it in the interest of the
child,” said the judge, “I certainly couldn’t do like Solomon
and divide the child. So I trusted to luck.” And luck decided that
the boy would spend Christmas with his mom. (Yahoo
News)
FROM THE “OVERCOMPENSATING FOR THE SIZE OF HIS PENIS” FILES
To celebrate the publication of his new book, “Adult Origami,”
Nick Robinson has created the world’s largest origami penis. The
throbbing phallus stands a full 10 feet, 7 inches. (Ananova)
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