Curious
Times No. 302
June 23, 2005
LOW BUDGET HINT: PLATFORM SHOES AND A MOHAWK WILL ADD 10 INCHES
TO YOUR HEIGHT
A
belief that being taller will help you get jobs and lovers has
sparked a national craze in China where thousands are lining up
to be surgically stretched or to buy torture rack-like “stretching
machines” in order to increase their height. Safety concerns
have China’s Ministry of Health trying to figure out how
to regulate surgeons who offer painful and lengthy surgical procedures
which claim to add 15 percent to bone length. The surgery involves
breaking the patient’s legs and attaching metal pins to the
separated bones. The patient then spends six months gradually
encouraging the bones to heal together at a greater length by
separating the bones with a daily twist of a knob attached to
the metal pegs in his or her legs. A slightly less radical method
has also become hugely popular in the form of stretching machines
which resemble medieval torture racks. With this gadget, users
simply strap themselves in by the head and feet and turn a crank
to stretch out their bodies. According to a Chinese television
commercial, the “body stretch and exercise machine can stretch
human cartilage and boost young people’s height.” (local6.com)
I DREAM OF GENIUS
Great news for those of us who don’t want to haul our asses
out of bed in the morning (that’s everyone, isn’t it?).
Researchers now suggest that sleeping in late and having long
afternoon naps does wonders for our ability to come up with new
ideas and creative solutions to problems. Research carried out
by psychology professor Dr. Richard Wiseman found that most of
the great ideas people have come to them either while lazing around
in bed or in their dreams. “In our dreams we produce unusual
combinations of ideas that can seem surreal, but every once in
a while result in an amazingly creative solution to an important
problem,” concluded Wiseman. By the way, you’ll need
that extra creativity to find a new job when you start showing
up for work three hours late. (BBC)
THOSE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS
A Russian man has survived after nailing a five-inch-long (12.2
cm) nail into his own forehead. Yuri Dedov, 37, was rushed to
the hospital after being found by his mother and a successful
operation managed to remove the nail with no permanent damage.
“If its trajectory had been 15 degrees different, he would
have died immediately,” said neurosurgeon Yuri Tanvel. “As
it is, no vital function was violated. The main thing is the nail
did not reach the brain.” After his recovery, Dedov said
that he had been hearing voices in his head urging him to “take
a hammer and do it.” (Moscow
News)
PYRAMID
POWER
Sometimes you think you've stumbled upon a really funny website,
which then turns out to be annoyingly serious. This time, it's
www.n-ncompany.com,
where you can become the geekiest new-age flake in town by ordering
their Atlantean One Meditation Helmet. No, really...
PLAYING
WITH BALLS
Germany is expecting an influx of over 40,000 foreign prostitutes
next summer to service the needs of hundreds of thousands of soccer
fans ready to descend on the nation for next year’s World
Cup. In preparation, German politicians are developing a plan
to erect “love shacks” near soccer stadiums in order
to keep the business at least a little bit private. “The
boxes would certainly be a better alternative to prostitutes offering
their services on the streets, in parks or in local zoos,”
said the member of parliament who proposed the idea (hmmm... sex
with a hooker in a zoo... try not to picture it). The city of
Dortmund, where six world cup matches will be played has already
approved the idea. “If hundreds of foreign women join the
380 prostitutes already on Dortmund’s strips near the stadium
we’ll be bursting at the seams,” said the city’s
Public Affairs Office. “We have to prepare now, or it will
turn into Sodom and Gomorrah.” (Ananova)
YOUR SOUL-SUCKING JOB IS ALSO DESTROYING YOUR HEART
If you ever felt that your boring job is slowly killing you, you
might be right. British researchers have discovered that dull
and monotonous work makes a person’s heart beat faster and
more unevenly, which may explain why workers at lower-level jobs
have consistently higher levels of heard disease. The team from
University College London Medical School studied 2,197 men aged
from 45 to 68, finding that the men in boring jobs where they
had less control over their daily tasks had heart beats an average
of 3.2 beats per minute faster then the men with higher-level
positions. (MSNBC)
WE’VE GOT THE BALLS, BUT WE CAN’T FIND OUR STEROIDS
A baseball coach for a prestigious private school in Florida was
forced to resign after his team lost a game, after which he dropped
his pants, pointed to his dick and balls, and asked his team if
they “had a set of these or were they equipped with a vagina?”
(local10.com)
STILL LIVING IN THE DARK AGES
A zoo in the southern German city of Augsburg is facing heavy
criticism after unveiling its plan to put African “tribesmen”
inside their exotic animal exhibition in order to display elephants
and rhinos in their “natural environment” with “genuine
exotic ambience.” The display will be called “Discover
the Dark Continent” and plans to include grass-skirted black
men in mud huts carrying out traditional tribal activities such
as basket-weaving, woodwork, and tribal dancing. (The
Scotsman)
“I READ IT ON THE INTERNET SO IT MUST BE TRUE” FACT
OF THE WEEK
A four-year-old asks an average of 437 questions per day.
Copyright
2005 by Andreas Ohrt
