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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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counter measure
Wearing a mask as protection against the SARS virus, this international traveller fronts up to the check-in at Auckland International Airport, NZ. The pneumonia-like respiratory infection was almost as deadly to the international airlines as it was to passengers flying with them.
life, or the wife?
A 40-year-old Italian prisoner, given 72 hours home leave for good behaviour, asked to go back to his cell after spending less than a day with his wife. He asked to go back following an argument with his wife, which erupted within minutes of meeting her. Prison officials said it wasn’t normal for prisoners to want to get back inside.
lovers’ paradise
Scientists at the Birla Institute and Technological Museum in Calcutta have designed a balloon-shaped “whispering” room in which lovers can exchange sweet nothings. Up to 15 people can sit and talk without being overheard by anyone else in the room. A whisper can be heard—but only by their partner.
heavy-metal waste
Songs with violent lyrics can increase aggressive thoughts and emotions, reveals a US study. This contradicts popular belief that music loaded with violent imagery, such as some rap and heavy metal, is healthy, venting aggression. The research on US college-age students showed that people listening to violent lyrics develop a more aggressive, confrontational personality.
a “cold” a day . . .
Research has discovered a cold virus with extra “gripping power” is an efficient weapon against a deadly form of brain cancer. The anti-tumour microbes successfully targeted the glioma tumour, a usually fatal form of cancer.
sounds good
A new “thermo-acoustic” refrigerator has been invented that cools by using soundwaves. The problem is, it requires 190 dB of sound pressure. (The decibels of sound pressure needed to ignite a person’s hair is 165.)
I’m cool!
A young Baghdad boy poses in the place where a vanished two-metre-high statue of “Justice” once stood. In a city already littered with the empty plinths where toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein once stood, Baghdad’s Muslim clerics have also been busy removing offensive statues, including one of a bare-breasted woman.
lifesaver
It has been found that a chemical in facial hair suppressant cream can cure sleeping sickness, a disease that afflicts thousands of Africans. The drug used to treat the sleeping disease is a product of arsenic, with just a 10 per cent chance of curing a patient. Hospitals have ordered copious amounts of the cream, which contains the active ingredient eflornithine.
a super market
A British inventor has been given $100,000 to design a new shopping trolley. It is to have a sat-nav system to help customers navigate the aisles, advising of adjacent specials, tallying purchases and giving recipe ideas. “A lot of people just don’t shop in a methodical manner,” the inventor said. (Per-haps he should begin by getting the trolley castors to track straight.)
truth will out
The controversy surrounding the James ossuary (reported in Signs, April 2003), bearing the Aramaic inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua (“James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus),” has been declared a fake by Israel’s Antiquities Department, the result of study by geologists, archaeologists and experts in ancient scripts. The box is real, but not the inscription.
Palestine is rapidly becoming a Jewish province. Four-fifths of the population of Jerusalem are now Jews. . . . There are Jewish colonies from Dan to Beer-sheba. The Jordan Valley, once the property of the deposed Turkish Sultan, is invaded by Jewish capitalists, who are seeking to buy the land. Bethlehem, Nazareth and Gaza, which a few years ago were closed to the Jews, now have Jewish quarters and synagogues. Thousands are entering the country from Persia, and every steamer from Odessa carries Jews from Russia to the ancient home of their race.
Extract from Signs of the Times, August 2003.
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