Category: Of Random Interest

The Pope is out­raged that a Russ­ian indi­vid­ual rent­ed church prop­er­ty and turned it into a broth­el, com­plete with pros­ti­tutes dressed as nuns.

For some rea­son in puts me in mind of the LSJUMB and their rela­tion­ship with Notre Dame. In case you did­n’t know it, Stan­ford’s band has been banned from many cam­pus­es: at one time includ­ing the entire state of Ore­gon, Notre Dame (in per­pe­tu­ity), and our own cam­pus. That’s right–Stanford’s band was even banned from Stan­ford in 1997! (source)

In a very biz­zarre sto­ry, some zookeep­ers have been caught eat­ing the ani­mals under their care.

When I read it, my mind flashed to Cain and Abel in the Gar­den of Eden. Cain killed his broth­er, and when asked about his broth­er said, “Am I my broth­er’s keep­er?”

I can just see these guys, “Are we the ani­mals’ keep­ers? Oh wait, yeah…”

Hmmm… The Onion has an arti­cle col­lect­ing the com­ments that many celebri­ties have made about God over the course of their inter­views.

Some were artic­u­late, some were stu­pid, most were puz­zled. A few were humor­ous, in a sad sort of way:

Chuck Palah­niuk wrote Fight Club and four oth­er nov­els, includ­ing the new Lul­la­by.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Chuck Palah­niuk: Yes.
O: Care to elab­o­rate?
CP: Boy. Let me get back to you when I’m dead.

and

Stand-up come­di­an Steven Wright is known for his dead­pan deliv­ery and absur­dist one-lin­ers.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Steven Wright: Ahhh… You’ll have to ask Jesus.

and the kick­er

Amer­i­ca’s great­est liv­ing writer, Neal Pol­lack is the author of The Neal Pol­lack Anthol­o­gy Of Amer­i­can Lit­er­a­ture.
The Onion: Is there a God?
Neal Pol­lack: God does not exist, unless you are my moth­er-in-law and are read­ing this, in which case I def­i­nite­ly do believe that He exists, and will raise my chil­dren accord­ing­ly. But if you’re not my moth­er-in-law, and she’s not read­ing this, then He does not exist.

Read them all.

Three Lego pages have caught my eye with their out­landish dis­play of inge­nu­ity.

The achiev­ing the impos­si­ble award goes to the Andrew Lip­son’s Lego Page, which fea­tures clever engines and repro­duc­tions of M. C. Esch­er works. That’s right–he’s recre­at­ed those impos­si­ble draw­ings in 3D.

The we could make beau­ti­ful music togeth­er award goes to Hen­ry Lim’s Lego sculp­tures for his func­tion­al Lego harp­si­chord. Wow!

Final­ly, the ser­vice to human­i­ty award goes to the Cool Lego Site Of The Week. Get your need for geeky Lego ideas met here!

Masatoshi Koshi­ba, who just won 25% of this year’s Nobel Prize in physics (I did­n’t even know you could be a 25% win­ner), grad­u­at­ed last in his class at Tokyo Uni­ver­si­ty over 50 years ago.

He only made two A’s in his last two years of col­lege, both of which were in lab class­es where the grade was based on atten­dance.

Hmmm.… makes you think, does­n’t it?

Evi­dent­ly he took the Teacher’s words to heart: “Of mak­ing many books there is no end, and much study wea­ries the body.” (Ecc 12.12b, NIV)

The LA Times has the most inter­est­ing arti­cle I’ve seen in quite a while. It’s about a secre­tive group called The Fel­low­ship, a Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tion that has had mas­sive influ­ence in the pub­lic sphere.

For the last two decades, a Vir­ginia man­sion has been a pri­vate hide­away for world lead­ers, mem­bers of Con­gress, and even pop star Michael Jack­son…

The Fel­low­ship was a behind-the-scenes play­er at the Camp David Mid­dle East accords in 1978, work­ing with Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter to issue a world­wide call to prayer with Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Men­achem Begin and Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat. Dur­ing the Cold War, it helped finance an anti-com­mu­nism pro­pa­gan­da film endorsed by the CIA and used by the Pen­ta­gon over­seas.

Last year, the Fel­low­ship helped arrange a secret meet­ing at Cedars between two war­ring lead­ers, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go Pres­i­dent Joseph Kabi­la and Rwan­dan Pres­i­dent Paul Kagame–one of the first of a series of dis­creet meet­ings between the two African lead­ers that even­tu­al­ly led to the sign­ing of a peace accord in July.

Inci­den­tal­ly, they’re also the ones who spon­sor the Nation­al Prayer Break­fast. There’s much more, and I encour­age you to read all about it. (Thanks to Chris­tian­i­ty Today for the link!)

A man in New Orleans was shot 25 times and lived. Here’s an excerpt from the arti­cle:

The vic­tim was walk­ing just before 3 a.m. when the attack­er walked up to him and began fir­ing a hand­gun, police said. “Once that weapon emp­tied, he pro­duced a sec­ond weapon and con­tin­ued to fire,” police said. “When the sec­ond weapon emp­tied, he pro­duced yet a third and con­tin­ued to fire.”

Read all about it!

And remember–never go walk­ing in New Orleans at 3 a.m.

The Door (a reli­gious humor mag­a­zine) deems Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er to be the The­olo­gian of the Year. Our nation’s sea­son of tri­al influ­enced The Door’s selec­tion of Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er as The­olo­gian of the Year. Let’s face it. In per­ilous times, we need some­one who can not only decon­struct the prob­lem of evil, but kick its hiney. And that means Buffy and her Scoo­by Gang. Read all about it!

In an inter­est­ing coin­ci­dence, Annals of Improb­a­ble Research (a sci­ence humor mag­a­zine) has just issued the 2002 Ig Nobel prizes ami­tyville hor­ror the divx movie online to hon­or peo­ple whose achieve­ments “can­not or should not be repro­duced.” [update: the offi­cial 2002 list is online with ref­er­ences]

Among this year’s win­ners are Karl Kruszel­nic­ki, a Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty researcher who wrote the paper on bel­ly-but­ton lint. Dr Kruszel­nic­ki, at his own expense, stud­ied 5000 bel­ly-but­ton lint sam­ples. He con­clud­ed the lint was a com­bi­na­tion of cloth­ing fibres and skin cells that were led to the navel, via body hair, “as all roads lead to Rome”. “Your typ­i­cal gen­er­a­tor of bel­ly-but­ton lint or fluff is a slight­ly over­weight, mid­dle-aged male with a hairy abdomen,” he said. (source)

It’s been a few days since I post­ed any off­beat news items: here are some stu­pid human tricks.

Man Suf­fers Severe Burns Try­ing To Kill Lice: The 26-year-old doused a tow­el with rub­bing alco­hol, put it on his head and then lit a cig­a­rette, police said. The tow­el caught fire and engulfed the man. He suf­fered burns on about 50 per­cent of his body, police said. Ouch–that had to hurt!

Cana­di­an Man Tries To Bungee Jump Onto Ship–But His Cord Is Too Long: William Dean Sul­li­van mis­cal­cu­lat­ed the ship’s speed and suf­fered minor head injuries on Sun­day when he bounced off its ten­nis court, vol­ley­ball net and a deck rail­ing, before being left dan­gling in mid-air as the ship sailed away, Van­cou­ver Police said. Police said Sul­li­van has planned to bungee jump from the Lions Gate Bridge, which spans the entrance to Van­cou­ver har­bor, stop­ping just above the pass­ing ship so he could then low­er him­self a short dis­tance to the deck. That could­n’t have felt much bet­ter…

Final­ly, Man Clips 153 Clothes­pins To His Face For World Record: Gar­ry said that attach­ing the pegs to his cheeks hurt the most and after­wards you could see he was in a lot of pain. There were marks on his skin that he said would last an hour and he had to keep rub­bing his face. Aagh–what is it with peo­ple hurt­ing them­selves? I feel pain just read­ing these sto­ries!

I just ran across two web pages that jux­ta­pose too per­fect­ly to pass up.

On a sad note, a stray cat was shot in the eye with a horse tran­quil­iz­er dart. The dart was 7″ long and the cat wan­dered around with the dart stick­ing out of its head for a week before being picked up by author­i­ties. The Kansas City com­mu­ni­ty is out­raged.

On a fun­ny note, that ani­mal offi­cer sure is lucky he did­n’t pull that on these viking kit­tens!

Q: What does this have to do with Chi Alpha?
A: Noth­ing except that we have a good sense of humor!