Curious
Times No. 313
September
8, 2005
TAKE
TWO LEECHES AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING
After centuries of neglect, flesh-eating maggots and blood-sucking
leeches have made a comeback in modern medicine, and are now being
used so frequently by high-tech surgeons that the Food and Drug
Administration has compiled a federal board of medical advisors
to discuss how to regulate them. It turns out that microsurgeons
resurrected the use of maggots and leeches in the late 1970’s
due to their very unique skills which medical technology cannot
match. Leeches, for example, are excellent at draining excess
blood from surgically reattached or transplanted appendages, and
maggots are unparalleled in their ability to clean festering,
gangrenous wounds which is indispensible for patients (such as
diabetics) whose wounds fail to heal. The two-day conference will
submit guidelines to the FDA which will regulate how to safely
grow, transport and sell leeches and maggots to surgeons throughout
the U.S. (New
York Times)
ANOTHER MAN IS LIVING OUT YOUR WET DREAM
While the excitement meter on your crumby life continues to hover
between “lame” and “blah,” the King of Swaziland
spent most of last week trying to choose a new wife out of 20,000
bare-breasted teenage girls who danced before him in that country's
annual Reed Dance Festival. Poor guy... Despite attempts to modernize
that country’s archaic attitudes towards women, the King
continues to wield absolute power and the tradition of picking
a new wife each year from Swaziland’s thousands of virgin
girls continues. King Mswati III has taken 14 wives since he came
to power in 1986, following in the footsteps of the previous monarch
who ended his reign with 70 wives and 400 children. In 2002, the
mother of the king’s new wife began a lawsuit alleging that
the king had kidnapped her daughter, but the court ruled that
the king has the right to select wives in the traditional way.
Last week the king even took back the one small step toward his
culture’s enlightenment by abolishing the law against having
sex with teenage girls. The king himself initiated the rule in
2001, but has since repeatedly broken his own law and been forced
to pay the fine of several cows. (The
Guardian UK)
THE PERFECT END TO A ROMANTIC NIGHT OF WINE, CANDLES, AND BUTT-SNIFFING
Despite the fact that dogs and cats enjoy the luxury of screwing
wherever the hell they want, a pet motel has been opened in San
Paulo, Brazil. “Pets have needs and they also want some excitement,”
said the motel’s operator, who says he opened the establishment
for pet owners who are “concerned for their animal’s
needs.” The motel rooms are decorated in the same way as
love hotels for humans, with satin sheets, ceiling mirrors and
lots of cushions. (Ananova)
GARFIELD
LIVES
A big fat Russian cat which is probably the fattest cat in the
world will miss her chance to enter the Guinness book of World
Records due to the closure of that category in the record books.
Katy, a five-year-old Siamese which weighs 50 pounds (more than
the average six-year-old boy) is widely recognized as the fattest
living cat in the world. However, Guinness refused to recognize
the achievement as they are no longer accepting applicants in
that category. A spokesperson from Guinness explained that they
do not want to encourage people to overfeed their pets and created
big fat beasts just for the sake of the record book. According
to her owners, Katy doesn’t actually eat that much, but ballooned
to her current size after they fed her hormones to stop her from
mating. Now, they say, Katy has absolutely no interest in sex
and only cares about food. (BBC)
WHO’S YOUR DADDY?
Science has finally caught up with the Jerry Springer show with
new research which suggests that up to one in 25 fathers are actually
raising another man’s child. The study, published in the
latest issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health,
suggests that the growing reliance on paternity tests will reveal
huge numbers of what is technically called “paternal discrepancy.”
The researchers based their one in 25 figure on statistics which
suggest that around a third of pregnancies are unplanned and one
in five women in long-term relationships have affairs. (world-science.net)
COME SEE THE UGLIEST ANIMALS ON EARTH
The London Zoo has opened up a new exhibit called “Homo sapiens”
-- an enclosure containing eight humans dressed only in fig leaves.
According to the press release, the four-day “Human Zoo”
exhibit is meant to “highlight the spread of man as a plague
species and to communicate the importance of man’s place
in the planet’s ecosystem.” How this is supposed to
be accomplished is anyone’s guess. A more accurate press
release might state that the exhibit was opened “to create
media attention and bring more paying customers to the zoo.”
(Ananova)
AND IT’LL BITE YOUR FAT ASS IF YOU TRY TO OPEN THE FRIDGE
Robotics engineers at MIT are creating a robot guard dog to help
you stay on your diet. The robot dog will be wirelessly connected
to your scale, pedometer, and an electronic diary of your eating
habits and exercise routine. The dog will then crunch the numbers
and let you know when its time to say no to that next slice of
cheesecake or get back on that stairmaster. (New
Scientist)
“I READ IT ON THE INTERNET SO IT MUST BE TRUE” FACT
OF THE WEEK
You would need to fart continuously for six years and nine months
in order to generate an amount of energy equal to that in an atomic
bomb.
Copyright 2005 by Andreas Ohrt
