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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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dying for a
good cause
Those who are eco-friendly in life need not drop their stance in death. A new range of affordable eco-coffins, made from materials as diverse as bamboo, papier-mâché and cardboard are now on the market. Even in death, you can continue to nurture Mother Nature by ensuring you’re buried in a 100-per-cent bio-degradable coffin. A new coffin, named the Ecopod and weighing 14 kg, comfortably carries a person weighing up to 90 kg. Unlike conventional coffins, which typically are made from expensive timber coated in lacquers and containing metal fittings, eco-coffins disintegrate quickly and without harm to the environment.
warming effect
A Swiss father who searched for his mountaineer son's missing body for 18 years thought his quest had paid off when a glacier, thawing in Europe's record heat, gave up a corpse. The body wasn’t that of either his young son or a companion who vanished in 1985 while scaling the Titlis peak in the central Swiss Alps. It was one of several people who had gone missing in the area over the years, which the hot summer thaw yielded, including a German woman missing since 1956.
wet mail
To celebrate its status as a marine paradise, Vanuatu has unveiled what it claims to be the world’s first underwater post office. Four dive-accredited postal workers operate in shifts under three metres of water in a fibreglass office. They sort and emboss special waterproof postcards bought on land, specially created for the task by Vanuatu Post.
marathon man
Lloyd Scott, 41, has raised the stakes in his effort to raise £1 million for leukemia awarenss. His aim was to set a new marathon record, completing the 26-mile event underwater in Loch Ness, Scotland, wearing an antique diving suit. Scott set a world record earlier this year by completing the London Marathon in the event’s slowest time while wearing the aged equipment.
liquid diet
An Indian man who claims to have survived on liquids for eight years has been invited by NASA to demonstrate his claim. Hira Manek, 64, started disliking food in 1992 and says he quit eating in 1995. The US space agency hopes to use the technique to solve food storage problems on its expeditions.
lost ’n’ found
A British homing pigeon is a star in the US after travelling 5344 kilometres across the Atlantic. After being released in France for an anticipated seven-hour flight home, Billy the pigeon was found in New York two weeks later. British Airways has offered to fly him home, making the task a little easier.
letters to God get delivered
According to Megan Goldin of Reuters news service, letters addressed to God (in Jerusalem) are delivered. Actually, the letters end up in the sorting room of the Israeli post Dead Letters Department, where they’re placed in a velvet bag and posted in the cracks of the Western or Wailing Wall. Hundreds of people jot down their prayers, wishes or problems and mail their notes to the Holy City and, according to department chief Avi Yaniv, they’re going through a peak period at the moment. The usual trickle turns to a torrent before Yom Kippur. Some writers ask God for help sticking to a diet, beg for assistance holding a troubled marriage together or fighting off the ravages of cancer.
In its cover feature of the February 19,1923 issue, Signs of the Times defended its doctrinal position of a
literal Second Coming of Christ against critics, some of whom were clerics and theologians. It was answering the Rev A D Belden, BD, who had written in Australian Christian World.
“It is becoming exceedingly common nowadays to find ministers denying one or more of the greatest verities of the Christian religion. We find their questioning and dissecting the Bible, denying the Virgin birth of Christ, denying His miracles, His atonement, His resurrection etc, so that it is not surprising to find ministers denying and endeavouring to explain away the second advent of the Saviour.”
Extract from Signs of the Times, November 2003.
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