CURIOUS TIMES: Trippy News from a Dysfunctional Planet

Curious Times No. 406
June 21, 2007

STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE TREATMENTS
Okay, so it’s entirely possible that modern anti-depressant drugs will make you want to kill yourself or a whole bunch of your schoolmates. But they’re probably still better than some of the wacked out cures compiled in a Mental Floss magazine article called “10 Mind-Boggling Psychiatric Treatments.” Among the cures you probably don’t want to try are Insulin-Coma Therapy (which puts drug addicts into a coma in order to cure them of their addictions); Trepanation (drilling a hole in a person’s skull in order to release the demons in side the brain); and Malaria Therapy (which infects a patient with malaria in order to cure them of syphilis). This list also includes two sure-miss methods of making you happy -- Chemically Induced Seizures and the good old fashioned Frontal Lobotomy. Another fascinating bit of information from this article claims that an American doctor named Walter Freeman used to drive around the U.S. in a “lobotomobile,” performing his speciality on “everyone from catatonic schizophrenics to disaffected housewives.”

WHO SAYS YOU NEVER GO ANYWHERE?
A couple of British scientists have calculated that the Earth moves over 89 million miles every time you have sex. Based on an average sexual escapade lasting seven minutes and 54 seconds, they calculated that the Earth spins 86 miles on its axis and 8,818 around the sun while the solar system moves 4,937 through our local star cluster which itself moves 74,062 miles around the centre of the Milky Way. Meanwhile, while you’re quickly approaching the point of no return, our galaxy moves 39,500 miles towards the Andromeda Galaxy while our galaxy cluster moves 177,750 towards the constellation Hydra. And, of course, the universe itself expands another 88,875,000 miles for a total of 89,180,153 miles of travel time while you get your rocks off. (The Sun)

CSI: HEAVEN
It took three years and a little help from Jesus Christ to solve a murder in New York City’s East Village after Michael Mohr, 51, turned himself into the authorities because Jesus had asked him to confess to the crime. "We wish Jesus would solve more of these," deadpaned one officer. (NY Post)

I WONDER IF THE WITCH DOCTOR STILL RECEIVED HIS FEE
Unfortunately Jesus was of no help in the remote Indian village where a family dug up their dead son and hired a witch doctor to bring him back to life after the mother had a dream in which her son told her the plan would work. For two days they sat with the exhumed body of the son, waiting for him to come back to life. And then reality caught up with them and they reburied him. Oh well, that’s life... I mean, death. (Stuff.co.nz)

WALNUTS FOR WOODIES
If you’d like to stay away from pharmaceutical drugs but need all the benefits of a dose of viagra, eating 3.3 kilograms of walnuts may just do the trick. At least according to Dr.Kim Kah Hwi of the Universiti Malaya who won the gold medal at the International Invention, Innovation, Industrial Design and Technology Exhibition 2007 with an all-natural pill which will give you a stiffy for about four hours. The nutty professor claims he got the idea after reading history books which mentioned that the Romans and French used to eat walnuts as an aphrodesiac. Two years of research later and his team finally perfected the “N-Hanz,” a pill made up mostly of the main active ingredient arginine extracted from 3.3kg of walnuts. (TheStar.com.my)

DON’T EAT TO MANY OF THESE BEFORE DINNER OR YOU’LL RUIN YOUR APPETITE
Scientists in Italy have started clinical trials on a diet pill which expands into a gelatinous blob about the size of a tennis ball inside your stomach. The pill starts out as a capsule full of dry powder but absorbs up to 1,000 times its weight when it gets wet. "The effect is like eating a nice plate of pasta," said Luigi Ambrosio, lead researcher on the project. "If you sit down for a meal with a stomach that already feels full, you'll end up eating less." (Wired.com)

YOU’RE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO BEING ONE IN A MILLION
Now that there are over 93 million Wangs in China, the government has finally proposed a change to a law which allows children to have the surname of only one of their parents. This has led to a situation where over a billion Chinese now share less than 100 surnames, causing endless confusion in the many government bureaucracies. The new law will allow parents to combine their surnames for their children, and will also allow a few special letters and characters from China’s ethnic minorities, opening up a potential 1.28 million new possibilities. As it stands now, China is home to 92 million people with the surname Li and 88 million with the surname Zhang. China’s most popular name -- Wang Tao -- is shared by 100,000 people. (AFP)

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE WEEK
Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.