Curious
Times No. 381
December 28, 2006
THIS WEEK: The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly,
2006 (Part 1)
MOST
USELESS PLAN FOR WORLD PEACE
In August we learned that yogic flyers would bring peace to the
middle east by building a “shield of invincibility”
around Israel. This scheme is based upon the mathematics of Trancendental
Meditation, which claims that if a number of people equal to the
square root of one percent of a country’s population can
all meditate together, they will affect the collective consciousness
of the area enough to end all war. Based on that logic, the Israeli
contingent of yogic flyers needs about 265 people to build what
they call a “shield of invincibility” around their country.
So far, 20 are on board... Good luck! (Yahoo
News)
MOST PROFITABLE DREAM
A British man who placed a sports bet based on a dream he had
won £25,000 (almost $45,000) after his dream about a football
match came true in February. Back in 2005 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... Hayward ended up walking away
with the £25,000 after Alonso scored the magical goal during
an FA Cup football match. (BBC)
BEST ARGUMENT FOR ANARCHY
Seven years ago engineers in the Dutch town of Drachten removed
almost all of the traffic lights from 12 of the 15 intersections
in their town of 50,000. The experiment was proposed to test the
belief that if driving is perceived to be more dangerous then
drivers will naturally be more careful and cause less accidents.
And the results were released a few months ago: so far the town
has had not a single fatality and only a few small accidents since
the traffic lights were replaced with roundabouts. As Monderman
explains, “We want small accidents in order to prevent serious
ones in which people get hurt... It works well because it is dangerous,
which is exactly what we want.“ (The
Telegraph)
WORST NAME CHANGE
From the “You’ll Never Get Laid Again” files came
news earlier this year that 19-year-old Chris Garnett, a youth
outreach coordinator for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment
of Animals), changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.
Not surprisingly, his parents still insist on calling him “Chris.”
MOST SPOILED CITIZENS
Usually you associate the negatives of living in a big city with
things like noise pollution, extreme smells, killer traffic and
high rates of criminal activity. But not for the spoiled-rotten
citizens of Shanghai. A survey carried out in November revealed
that the most irritating aspect of living in that massive city
is people wearing pajamas in public. Other top irritants for the
hard-done-by citizens of Shanghai include aggressive pets and
unhelpful neighbors. (Reuters)
MOST POINTLESS DOOMSDAY PREDICTION
In Novermber astronomers from Russia’s Academy of Sciences
have released an absolutely pointless doomsday warning about an
asteroid which may or may not hit the Earth in the year 2035.
Apparently we won’t know for sure for another 20-something
years. “We cannot exclude the possibility that the asteroid
which is now orbiting the Sun will collide with the Earth in 2035,”
said the observatory’s spokesman. “But it will be only
in 2028 that we will be able to determine the danger level.”
(Mosnews.com)
BOOK TITLE OF THE YEAR
2006 saw the publication of a book called “0.1361015212836455566789110512013615...”
That title is curious enough, but even better is this short description
I found in a book review: “A martial arts instructor by day,
not even a science fiction fan, Tyrone Vadas has been receiving
strange visits lately from a gargantuan alien with numerous undulating
appendages. The alien returns every night attempting to give Tyrone
a special gift. But he doesn't want it. Then the numbers begin.
They go on and on and never seem to end. Will Tyrone ever accept
the alien's gift? And could the multitude of numbers be signaling
the end of the f u c k i n g world?”
BEST NEWS FOR JAILBIRDS
Great news! You can now scratch “getting raped in prison”
off your “things to fear” list. Despite what you’ve
seen in the movies, a government-sponsored study released last
January concluded that rape and sexual assault behind bars is
rare in real life. When inmates have sex, says the author of the
study, “it is usually by choice, and often engaged in as
a way to win protection or privileges.” After interviewing
564 randomly chosen inmates across the U.S., cultural anthropologist
Mark Fleisher says that he never met a single prisoner who claimed
to be a victim of sexual violence. Fleisher says that inmates
who claim to have been raped are usually lying in order to receive
a prison transfer or money and publicity. (Associated
Press)
MOST OBVIOUS NEWSFLASH
People who research these kinds of things claim that the more
time you spend surfing the web the shorter your attentions span
gets. They claim that the attention span of heavy internet users
has dropped to about nine seconds -- the same attention span as
that of a goldfish. (BBC)
BEST BRIBE FOR SMOKERS
According to the updated "indulgences" of the Catholic
Church (the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum), giving up smoking will
increase your chances of getting into heaven.
I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE YEAR
A woman burns 27 calories while having an orgasm, compared to
160 calories while faking an orgasm.
Click
here to join the Curious Times e-mail list and get all the Bizarro
News direct to your inbox each week.
