Curious
Times No. 372
October 26, 2006
A
TINY LITTLE SPEEDBUMP ON THE ROAD TO APOCALYPSE
Hey! Maybe humanity isn’t entirely insane! Last week the
company which had been offering to clone your cat for a cool 50
grand closed its doors due to lack of interest. The biotech firm
Genetic Savings and Clone announced the end of business in a press
release which explained that they are “unable to develop
the technology to the point that cloning pets is commercially
viable.” What they meant to say is that they couldn’t
find enough suckers to spring for a cloned cat even after they
dropped their price to $32,000 per cat. Since opening for business
in 2000 the company has created five cloned cats and sold only
two. Animal rights activists were elated to hear the news. “We’re
very pleased that Genetics Savings and Clone’s attempt to
run a cloning pet store was a spectacular flop,” said Wayne
Pacelle, head of the Humane Society of the United States. “It’s
not just a bad business venture, but also an operation grounded
on the misuse of animals.” (AP)
ALL THIS FOOD TASTES EXACTLY THE SAME
The bad news is that if nobody wants a cloned animal as a pet
then we’ll be forced to have to eat all the clones they’re
breeding. The Food and Drug Administration announced last week
that they are very close to approving meat and milk from cloned
animals and are currently reviewing plans on how to regulate the
products once they are approved. The FDA press release claimed
that their studies “show that the meat and milk from cattle
clones and their offspring are as safe as that from conventionally
bred animals.” Despite protests from consumer groups, surveys
carried out by the biotech industry has discovered that most people
won’t give a crap as long as the price is right. “We
feel like the average consumer is going to accept this technology
as we move forward,” said a spokesperson for the Biotechnology
Industry Organization. “There will not be a label that will
indicate this is anything other than healthy meat and milk.”
(AP)
MEN ARE ALL ALIKE, EVEN IF THEY’RE FISH
From the extremely strange scientific experiments department comes
news that researchers at a Swiss University have concluded that
fish can be turned on by fish pornography. The scientists (if
you can call them scientists and still keep a straight face) showed
17 male stickleback fish two different films, one showing a flirtatious
courtship between a male and female stickleback, the other simply
showing a male caring for his brood. After the foreplay, the researchers
found that the fish who had seen the "soft porn" ejaculated
much more sperm than the fish who watched the boring film. Unfortunately,
they didn't explain how they managed to get a fish to watch the
film, nor where they got a hold of that hot fish porn.
WOMEN ARE ALL ALIKE, EVEN IF THEY’RE FISH
But wait, there’s more from the “Scientific Research
That Smells Fishy” department. According to a book about
strange animal behavior, brown trout sometimes fake orgasms in
order to force their male partners to ejaculate prematurely. They
do this, supposedly, in order to fool the male into thinking he
has successfully mated so that the female fish can ditch him and
go find a sexier male for some real action. No word on how (or
why) researchers figure this shit out...
FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU -- FOOL ME FOUR TIMES, GO TO JAIL
A Spanish woman who managed to successfully cheat her ex-husband
out of over a million Euros in ransom money for three faked kidnappings
of their son was finally arrested after letting her greed get
the better of her. According to Spain’s El
Mundo newspaper it was during the fourth faked kidnapping
that the father got suspicious and hired a private detective to
unravel the scheme. The woman was arrested last week along with
five accomplices including her 15-year-old son who had played
along by calling his father and begging him to pay the ransom
money.
GRANDPA DOESN’T HAVE ALZHEIMER’S, HE’S JUST
STONED
Good news for aging potheads. Research published in the science
journal “Molecular Pharmeceutics” has found that smoking
marijuana may help stop the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
The study found that marijuana’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydocannabinol
(THC), was able to preserve the levels of a neurotransmitter which
is vital for brain function as we age. Researchers also found
that THC blocks clumps of protein which inhibit memory and cognition
in Alzheimer’s patients. The strangest thing about this news
is that Alzheimer’s patients suffer from memory loss, impaired
decision-making, and diminished language skills, which are exactly
the same side-effects of getting baked. (CNN)
JUST TOSS YOUR DIRTY GINCH ANYWHERE
The
good folks over at UrbanJunkie.co.uk
now sell the ultra-convenient Laundry Rug. “Since you’re
going to throw dirty clothing on the floor anyway, throw it in
the general direction of the Laundry Rug!” explains the web.
“When you’ve accumulated a decent pile of dirty laundry,
just pick it up by the side handles. A drawstring around the edge
converts the rug into a bag, as you head to mom’s house…
or the laundromat.”
I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
Nine out of 10 parents admit to stealing their children's Halloween
candy.
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