THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE FUGLY 2006

Here's the roundup of the freakiest news of 2006. Check back in a few days for the rest, or join the newsletter for free updates by filling out the form at right...

MOST USELESS PLAN FOR WORLD PEACE: In August we learned that yogic flyers would bring peace to the middle east by building a “shield of invincibility” around Israel. This scheme is based upon the mathematics of Trancendental Meditation, which claims that if a number of people equal to the square root of one percent of a country’s population can all meditate together, they will affect the collective consciousness of the area enough to end all war. Based on that logic, the Israeli contingent of yogic flyers needs about 265 people to build what they call a “shield of invincibility” around their country. So far, 20 are on board... Good luck! (Yahoo News)

MOST PROFITABLE DREAM: A British man who placed a sports bet based on a dream he had won £25,000 (almost $45,000) after his dream about a football match came true in February. Back in 2005 Adrian Hayward had a dream in which Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso scored a goal from his own half of the field. After the dream he checked out the odds against such a freaky goal being scored and decided to place a £200 bet with odds of 125-1 that Alonso would score a goal from his own half of the field before the season ended. “I’ve never placed such a large bet before but I had a feeling about it,” said Mr Hayward, while his bookie told reporters that “when he placed the bet we thought it was the easiest £200 we had ever made.” Not so... Hayward ended up walking away with the £25,000 after Alonso scored the magical goal during an FA Cup football match. (BBC)

BEST ARGUMENT FOR ANARCHY: Seven years ago engineers in the Dutch town of Drachten removed almost all of the traffic lights from 12 of the 15 intersections in their town of 50,000. The experiment was proposed to test the belief that if driving is perceived to be more dangerous then drivers will naturally be more careful and cause less accidents. And the results were released a few months ago: so far the town has had not a single fatality and only a few small accidents since the traffic lights were replaced with roundabouts. As Monderman explains, “We want small accidents in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt... It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want.“ (The Telegraph)

WORST NAME CHANGE: From the “You’ll Never Get Laid Again” files came news earlier this year that 19-year-old Chris Garnett, a youth outreach coordinator for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com. Not surprisingly, his parents still insist on calling him “Chris.”

MOST SPOILED CITIZENS: Usually you associate the negatives of living in a big city with things like noise pollution, extreme smells, killer traffic and high rates of criminal activity. But not for the spoiled-rotten citizens of Shanghai. A survey carried out in November revealed that the most irritating aspect of living in that massive city is people wearing pajamas in public. Other top irritants for the hard-done-by citizens of Shanghai include aggressive pets and unhelpful neighbors. (Reuters)

MOST POINTLESS DOOMSDAY PREDICTION: In Novermber astronomers from Russia’s Academy of Sciences have released an absolutely pointless doomsday warning about an asteroid which may or may not hit the Earth in the year 2035. Apparently we won’t know for sure for another 20-something years. “We cannot exclude the possibility that the asteroid which is now orbiting the Sun will collide with the Earth in 2035,” said the observatory’s spokesman. “But it will be only in 2028 that we will be able to determine the danger level.” (Mosnews.com)

BOOK TITLE OF THE YEAR: 2006 saw the publication of a book called “0.1361015212836455566789110512013615...” That title is curious enough, but even better is this short description I found in a book review: “A martial arts instructor by day, not even a science fiction fan, Tyrone Vadas has been receiving strange visits lately from a gargantuan alien with numerous undulating appendages. The alien returns every night attempting to give Tyrone a special gift. But he doesn't want it. Then the numbers begin. They go on and on and never seem to end. Will Tyrone ever accept the alien's gift? And could the multitude of numbers be signaling the end of the f u c k i n g world?”

BEST NEWS FOR JAILBIRDS: Great news! You can now scratch “getting raped in prison” off your “things to fear” list. Despite what you’ve seen in the movies, a government-sponsored study released last January concluded that rape and sexual assault behind bars is rare in real life. When inmates have sex, says the author of the study, “it is usually by choice, and often engaged in as a way to win protection or privileges.” After interviewing 564 randomly chosen inmates across the U.S., cultural anthropologist Mark Fleisher says that he never met a single prisoner who claimed to be a victim of sexual violence. Fleisher says that inmates who claim to have been raped are usually lying in order to receive a prison transfer or money and publicity. (Associated Press)

MOST OBVIOUS NEWSFLASH: People who research these kinds of things claim that the more time you spend surfing the web the shorter your attentions span gets. They claim that the attention span of heavy internet users has dropped to about nine seconds -- the same attention span as that of a goldfish. (BBC)

BEST BRIBE FOR SMOKERS: According to the updated "indulgences" of the Catholic Church (the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum), giving up smoking will increase your chances of getting into heaven.

I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE FACT OF THE YEAR: A woman burns 27 calories while having an orgasm, compared to 160 calories while faking an orgasm.