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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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recantation
A former CIA agent who was among the original group to promote Roswell, New Mexico, as the site of an alien spacecraft crash with its associated government cover-up, has withdrawn his support for the notion amid heckles of “traitor.” Conspiracy theorist Karl T Pflock now says that belief in UFOs is something of a substitute for rational religion.
queue-doze
In the US alone, computer software helplines
are keeping people on hold for some
three billion minutes a year. Work it out.
growing up fast
A Toronto, Canada, private school teacher is setting up a franchise business called “Success for Kids,” offering weekly group meetings (at $20 a pop) that ape business motivational seminars for adults in an effort to prepare children for the competitive world. Tutoring centres now offer birthday-party packages that include stimulating computer games and maths puzzles.
arch enemy
The Slow-food Movement, a group attempting to defend endangered local food outlets against the undernourishing, fattening and tasteless fare of the franchised fast-food monoculture, now has some 65,000 members in 42 countries. According to the movement’s founder, Carlos Petrini of Bra, Italy: “A hundred years ago people ate between 100 and 120 different species of food. Now our diet is made up of at most 10 or 12.” Petrini says the movement “deals with the problems of the environment and world hunger without renouncing the right to pleasure.”
In Japan, eating contests have been elevated to the status of a sport, almost. Some current records include: 38 hard-boiled eggs (10 mins); 6.75 litres ice-cream (12); 168 oysters (10); and 15 buritos (8).
I don’t like arrogant.
I don’t like loud.
—Ian Thorpe,
in Sport Monthly
One furnace melts the heart—love;
One balm soothers all pain—patience;
One medicine cures all ills—time;
One light illuminates all darkness—hope.
—Ivan Panin, in Bits & Pieces
a fit punishment
Jessica Lange and Brian Patrick, both 19, were sentenced to make a “procession” through the snow along a country road, leading a donkey, for defacing a statue of the baby Jesus stolen from a Nativity scene at a Catholic church last Christmas Eve. The statue was “stabbed” and had the numerals “666” painted on it. “This is a kind of conscience-flogging,” said Painesville Municipal Judge Michael Cicconetti, who is known for his unusual sentences meant to shame criminals. “It’s intended to bring them some public humiliation. When the journey ended, Lange apologised for the prank. “It shouldn’t have been done,” she said.—www.religiontoday.com
Extract from Signs of the Times, April 2003.
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