Weird Shorts – 4

Talk about a mammoth appetite, when most of the world’s large mammals went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, the vast majority of the vanished species were herbivores. This of course meant that they were no longer around to eat the plants they otherwise would have, and - according to Christophers Doughty and Field from Oxford and Stanford Universities respectively – this freed up an extra 1.4 trillion kilos of food, roughly 2.5% of the net product of all Earth’s dry land. However, the researchers add, this excess had been ‘used up’ by burgeoning human numbers by around 1700 and today we consume six times as much as the Pleistocene critters ever did while simultaneously driving down land productivity by 10% (Nature)(PDF).

That’s not to say that our massive consumption doesn’t have it’s upside, As Vangelis Kapatos of Manhattan discovered when he attempted suicide by jumping from his ninth floor flat, only to survive when his fall was broken by a pile of uncollected garbage. Mr. Kapatos’ timing, from his perspective, couldn’t have been worse, the unusually large garbage pile was due to collections being suspended because of snow. They were due to resume the day after his impromptu dumpster dive (Today Online).

Mind you, we’re not the only animals prone to excess. After finding the bodies of dozens of starlings near the city of Constanta in Romania, locals were concerned that the cause might be bird flu, instead post-mortems of the birds have revealed that they in fact died of alcohol poisoning, having ‘drunk’ themselves to death on the discarded leftovers of the local winemaking industry. A least they died happy (BBC News).

Better than dying happy, though, is living happy, and the secret of that, says the UK’s Office for National Statistics, is having a job. But it’s not the pay but the job security that counts, say the government statisticians, which ironically are facing staff cuts themselves due to the economic downturn. Other key happiness factors, according to the preliminary report, are good personal health and a decent family life. What will we do without these people (Telegraph)?



More in extended >>

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Thu Jan 13, 2011 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Creatures, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Babies, Crime, Death, Human Marvels, Inebriation and Intoxicants, Religion, Sexuality, Weird Names, Body Fluids, Perfume and Cologne and Other Scents

Nuns Behaving Badly

This looks like a WUvian book to me!

Read an interview with the author here.

Posted By: Paul - Sun Dec 05, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Misbehavior, Rebellion, Acting-out and General Naughtiness, Religion, Nuns, Children, Books, Hermits, Sex

Big Turbans

Everyone knows that Sikhs wear turbans. But the size of the more ceremonial ones had escaped me.

Thanks to Deborah Newton.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Nov 16, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category: Religion, Reader Recommendation, Headgear

Know The Enemy

Posted By: Paul - Fri Sep 03, 2010 - Comments (13)
Category: Public Humiliation, Rants, Warnings, Jeremiads, Prophecies and Cassandra-like Figures, Religion, Self-help Schemes, Urban Life, Psychology

Christian Pirate Rap

Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 24, 2010 - Comments (10)
Category: Music, Puppets and Automatons, Religion

Grade A Exegesis

Posted By: Paul - Tue Aug 10, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Movies, Religion, Conspiracy Theories and Theorists, Cars

The Vatican, Without Sin, Casts The First Stone

The year is 1482. The Vatican has just released a statement that reads, "ordaining women into the priesthood was a sin on par with pedophilia." Nobody blinks and life goes on... oh, gosh, I'm sorry! It wasn't 1482 after all. That statement was issued this year. Just a few days ago, in fact. You can see how I might have gotten the dates wrong, though, since that kind of misogynous declaration couldn't possibly hold true today. Unfortunately, they really said it. But why? Author Tim Padgett, in Time magazine, explains it "When any institution is as convinced of its own moral infallibility as the Catholic Church is, it tends to lash out at criticism - especially charges as serious as the priestly rape of children - with Dostoyevskian paranoia. And the church then fortifies its less popular stances, like an all-male priesthood or the condemnation of gays, in the process becoming even more uncompromising." And don't start thinking that Mr. Padgett is against the Church, or Christianity, in any way. He was sitting in mass, watching his daughter serve as an altar girl, on Sunday, when he got the idea for his article.

Posted By: Nethie - Tue Jul 20, 2010 - Comments (6)
Category: Gods, Religion, Can’t Possibly Be True, Ethics and Morals

Lucifer’s Women

Also known as DOCTOR DRACULA.

Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 08, 2010 - Comments (1)
Category: Horror, Movies, Religion, 1970s

Devil’s Dance of Prizzi

The devil's dance of Prizzi from todavideo on Vimeo.

More information here.

Posted By: Paul - Thu May 06, 2010 - Comments (3)
Category: Holidays, Religion, Superstition, Foreign Customs, Europe

Best Graduation Speech Ever

Posted By: Paul - Wed May 05, 2010 - Comments (11)
Category: Disasters, Public Humiliation, Regionalism, Religion