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Copyright 2006
by Andreas Ohrt

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Curious Times No. 332
January 19, 2006

PANDERING TO DRUNKS WORKS AFTER ALL
A study published by the Canadian Medical Association claims that giving free booze to homeless alcoholics improves their health and behaviour. The pilot project followed 17 homeless adults with long histories of chronic alcohol abuse and gave them each up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day -- one drink per hour between the hours of 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. After tracking the group for 16 months, the study found that the number of times they got into trouble with the law had fallen 51 percent and hospital emergency visits were down 36 percent. "The alcohol gets them in, builds the trust and then we have the opportunity to treat other medical diseases,” claimed one of the authors of the report. The study also found that the alcoholics actually drank less than they did before signing up, and had improved sleep, nutrition, hygiene and health. (CNN)

DREAMS CAN COME TRUE
A British man who placed a sports bet based on a dream he had has won £25,000 (almost $45,000) after his dream about a football match came true last week. Last July, Adrian Hayward had a dream in which Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso scored a goal from his own half of the field. After the dream he checked out the odds against such a freaky goal being scored and decided to place a £200 bet with odds of 125-1 that Alonso would score a goal from his own half of the field before the season ended. “I’ve never placed such a large bet before but I had a feeling about it,” said Mr Hayward, while his bookie told reporters that “when he placed the bet we thought it was the easiest £200 we had ever made.” Not so... last Saturday Hayward walked away with the £25,000 after Alonso scored the magical goal during an FA Cup football match. (BBC)

HOW MANY GIGS DOES THIS SUSHI HOLD?
If you haven’t spent all your Christmas money on booze yet, check out the collection of the world’s 10 weirdest USB drives at www.gadgets.fosfor.se for pictures of USB drives shaped like sushi, shrimp, and thumbs. The number one spot goes to a Barbie doll whose head you rip off to reveal the USB connection.

SNIFFING OUT CANCER
The next breakthrough in cancer research is coming from the weird world of strange animal senses thanks to the discovery that dogs can sniff out developing cancers in humans. The latest research builds upon the discovery that dogs have been known to alert their owners to skin cancers due to their compulsive sniffing of the affected areas. Researchers found that dogs are so sensitive to the minute amounts of toxic chemicals released by cancerous cells that their sniffing actually predicts skin, bladder, lung and breast cancer. The latest rounds of experiments involved training dogs to detect the same chemicals in the exhaled breath of cancer patients, making them able to predict the early stages of cancer simply by smelling the breath of humans. Early test results showed that the dogs successfully detected lung and breast cancers between 88 and 97 percent of the time. (World-Science.net)




THE MOST BORING MUSIC ON EARTH
Four-and-a-half years after it began, the world’s slowest and longest concert has now begun playing its second chord. The performance, based upon composer John Cage’s “organ2/ASLSP” (“As SLow aS Possible”) is scheduled to run from Sept. 5, 2001 until well into the year 2639. The piece was originally written as a 20-minute work for the piano, but organizers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to carry out the performance which John Cage originally envisioned, a 639-year long piece played on a church organ in Halberstadt, Germany. The piece began with a year and a half of silence, played its first chord on Feb. 2, 2003, and finally progressed to its second chord last week. The show is being performed by weights set down upon a specially built organ. John Cage is also famous for a piece of music called “4’33”, which consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence. (AFP)

DON’T LEAVE EARTH WITHOUT IT
In case one of your fears is being whisked off the planet by nasty little ETs and not being able to find your way home, the website earthbounddog.com is offering Earth Dog Tags engraved with schematic instructions which will allow an alien pilot to bring you back to Earth. The dog tags come with a handy guarantee: “Should you ever be abducted by aliens while wearing Location Earth Dog Tags and not returned safely to Earth you will be entitled to a full refund of the purchase price.”

TO DO: WASH MY BALLS
I was in the shower the other day and I had a great idea for a new product: a plastic notepad with waterproof crayons which you can use to write down the great ideas you have in the shower. No wait, I didn’t have that idea in the shower, and even if I did, I would never have remembered it because I don’t have anywhere to write down my ideas when I’m in the shower...until now. The truth is that the idea is actually pretty lame, and besides, I stole it from a website which sells this exact product. Get yours at www.store.yahoo.com/rwg/ershownottab.html

“I READ IT ON THE INTERNET SO IT MUST BE TRUE” FACT OF THE WEEK
Devout Orthodox Jews are three times as likely to jaywalk as other people.

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Copyright 2006 by Andreas Ohrt