CURIOUS TIMES: Trippy News from a Dysfunctional Planet

Curious Times No. 398
April 26, 2007

THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH IS THAT YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY
At last we get to cash in on death and destruction caused by climate change thanks to an online betting site called BetUS.com which is now taking wagers on various global warming related catastrophes. For example, you can get 100-to-1 odds that Manhattan will be completely submerged under water by the end of 2011. Betting that polar bears will be extinct by 2010 will also fetch you 100-to-1 odds. The gambling site’s spokesman Reed Richards claimed that this is the only area of betting where the gambler has the advantage over the house due to the many “variables that we can’t anticipate.” But climate scientists don’t agree, claiming that the bets are designed to part fools from their money. For example, a bet that will pay 150-to-1 odds that the oceans will rise an average of six inches worldwide before the end of this year was ridiculed by Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeller at NASA. “It’s more like a billion to one,” Schmidt explained “Anyone who puts money on that would be an idiot.” And for you glass-half-full people, you can even place bets that a car that runs solely on water will be produced by 2008 (150-to-1), or that Antarctica will be able to sustain crops and become livable for humans by 2015 (500-to-1). (LiveScience.com)

YOU CAN JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS TITLE

After 5,500 votes at TheBookseller.com we have a winner for the Oddest Book Title of 2006. Author Julian Montague grabs this year’s prize with the book “The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.” This book easily beat out this year’s second place entry, “Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan.” 2006’s short list also included the books “How Green Were the Nazis?” and “Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium .”

DON’T PUT YOUR PENIS WHERE IT ISN’T WELCOME
A South African inventor has created a new female condom designed to stop rape by hooking sharp barbs of wire into a man’s penis if he tries to sexually assault a woman wearing the device. The “Rapex” is worn like a tampon and will grab hold of a man’s penis and attach itself to his dick until he gets to a hospital to have the metal barbs surgically removed. While some detractors of the device have criticized it’s “vengefulness,” inventor Sonette Ehlers has no second thoughts about her contraption. “It's a medieval device for a medieval deed,” Elhers says. “If any rapist finds himself hopping with pain as a result... that seems just fine to me. Yes, it's vengeful. Yes, it hurts rapists. Oh well.” Get yours at RapeStop.net

THE WOMAN OF HIS DREAMS
A 24-year-old British man has married a woman whose phone number came to him in a dream. David Brown recalls that he woke up one morning after a night in which the phone number kept running through his head. On a whim, he decided to text message the number, and he ended up meeting and marrying Michelle Kitson, 24. "It was really weird but I was absolutely hooked," Kitson said. "My mum and dad kept saying 'But he could be an axe murderer', but I knew there was something special about it." (The Daily Mail)

AN EXERCISE ROUTINE YOU CAN ACTUALLY STICK TO
Too bad you can’t believe everything you read on the net, because I found a great story which claimed that a five-year study carried out in Germany found that 10 minutes of staring at a women’s breasts is as healthy as spending half and hour at the gym. The study reported that men who stare at boobies everyday had “lower blood pressure, less heart disease and slower pulse rates than those who did not get their daily eyeful.” While this report is actually an internet myth, I thought it would be nice to share... (News.rgj.com)

WHO SAYS COMICS ARE FOR KIDS?
Cheap laughs for comic nerds are available at YesButNoButYes.com where they’ve posted the “Top 15 Funniest Unintentionally Funny Comic Book Panels of All Time.” Not surprisingly the list is dominated by rods, boners, wanking and butt-stroking. Here are a couple of highlights, in which Archie beats off three guys in order to rescue Betty from drowning in the ocean, and Wonder Woman is so vain that she has to escape from a villain’s trap blindfolded because she doesn’t want to risk pulling out an eyelash. You go girl! (Click on the images to go the original post.)

WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? THERE’S ONLY A BILLION OF THEM
Are you suffering from spermatophobia, the fear of sperm? Well, you may not even realize there is such a thing, but the good news is that a hypnotist in Australian has the solution to your problem. Dr. Janet Hall told a sex therapists’ convention that she successfully treated spermatophobia with hypnotherapy on an Indian woman who is now fully cured and was able to become pregnant after only three sessions. (News.com.au)

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
A majority of married Australian men who have a gay love affair would rather commit suicide than admit it to their wives.