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| | Description: tap-tap-tapping away
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| | | | | Another "End of the World" deadline passes | | | Quote: Russian Doomsday cult leave cave
The last nine surviving members of a Russian doomsday cult have abandoned the cave they had been living in since October, the regional prosecutor's office said.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted regional official Vladimir Provotorov as saying Friday's departure was preceded by the removal of two decomposing female corpses during the night.
Provotorov said: "The cult members themselves say that one of the women died from 'severe Lenten fasting', while the other died of an illness. This will all need to be sorted out."
The 35 members of a devout splinter group of the Russian Orthodox Church had holed themselves up in the cave in the Penza region of central Russia last year to await the end of the world.
Pavel Kuznetsov, their leader, predicted the apocalypse for April or May this year, but would not join them underground, saying God had different tasks for him.
He reportedly told followers that in the afterlife, they would be judging whether others deserved heaven or hell.
Followers were not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio or handle money, Russian media reported.
The elaborate structure included sleeping rooms, a makeshift kitchen and religious altars.
In March, 24 members left the cave after rainwater began to erode the earth in and around the gully where the sect followers had settled, forcing most of them to leave the hideout.
On hearing of their departure Kuznetsov attempted suicide and was later hospitalised.
Russian authorities had kept watch over the dugout since November, turning the nearby village of Nikolskoe into an operations centre.
Kuznetsov has been charged with setting up a religious organisation associated with violence.
| http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exer...88FBF12A64.htm
Jim Jones, Heaven's Gate and now these whackos. After a while you'd think these religious cults would get tired of being wrong...and dead. But we have to give them credit for perseverance. |
| Billions of electronic-eating 'crazy rasberry ants' invade Texas | | | Quote:
It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic.
Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled.
Having ruined pumps at a sewage facility, the ants are now marching towards Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre and William P. Hobby airport, Houston, putting state officials in a panic. “They’re itty-bitty things, and they’re just running everywhere,” said Patsy Morphew, a resident of Pearland, on the Gulf Coast.
The ants are known as “crazy rasberry ants”: crazy because they seem to move in a random scrum as opposed to marching in regimented lines, and rasberry after a pioneering exterminator, Tom Rasberry, who first identified them as a problem.
The ants – also known as paratrenicha species near pubens – have so far spread to five counties in the Houston area. Scientists are not sure from where they originate but they seem to be related to a type of ant from the Caribbean. “At this point it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the ants because they are so widely dispersed,” said Roger Gold, a Texas A&M University entomologist. He added that the only upside to the invasion was that the crazy rasberry ants ate fire ants, which sting humans during the long, hot Texas summers.
Unfortunately, the ants also like to suck the moisture from plants, feed on precious insects such as ladybirds and eat the hatchlings of a small, endangered type of grouse known as the Attwater prairie chicken. They also bite humans – although not with a sting like fire ants.
Perhaps their most remarkable characteristic, however, is that they are attracted to electrical equipment. Pest control specialists say that they are inundated with calls from homes and businesses now that the warm, humid season has begun, with literally billions of the ants wreaking havoc across the state. Worse, the ants refuse to die when sprayed with over-the-counter poison. Even killing the queen of a colony doesn’t do any good, because each colony has multiple queens.
| http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle3941545.ece
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| Marriage-1930s style | | | 
Quote:
Some of psychology's most interesting artifacts reflect not only the zeitgeist of the times but the personalities of the psychologists behind them. One such example is the "Marital Rating Scale—Wife's Chart," a test developed in the late 1930s by George W. Crane, MD, PhD, (1901–95) of Northwestern University, who ran a counseling practice, wrote a syndicated national newspaper column called "The Worry Clinic" and started his own matchmaking service.
The test was designed to give couples feedback on their marriages. Either husbands or wives could take the test, which rated wives in a variety of areas. For instance, if your wife "uses slang or profanity," she would get a score of five demerits. On the other hand, if she "reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress," she would receive 10 merits. The test taker would add up the total number of merits and demerits to receive a raw score, which would categorize the wife on a scale from "very poor" to "very superior."
Although most people who read the test today find it humorous and obviously dated, Crane did attempt to make it scientific. His method was to interview 600 husbands on their wives' positive and negative qualities. Then he listed the 50 demerits and merits that arose most frequently. Crane, did admit to using a personal bias in weighting the items that he thought were most important in marriage.
Crane's views on marriage were well-received at the time. He had 12 bulletins on the subject that could be purchased through mail order. In 1957, he started the Scientific Marriage Foundation—sort of a low-tech version of the popular matchmaking Web site eHarmony—which took a "scientific" approach to marriage. Applicants filled out forms that were sent to an IBM sorting machine that matched them in to compatible pairs. During its three years of existence, the foundation claimed to have set up more than 5,000 marriages.
| http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/05/marriage.html |
| A prescription for happiness | | | "Give more than you take. Do your best to leave every situation better than you found it. Seek beauty in all its forms. Chase dreams. Watch sunsets. Endeavor to use more than 10 percent of your brain. Don't stifle your deep-from-the-gut, cleansing laughter. Take a moment to ponder the enormity of the universe, then admit to yourself that you can't possibly be the center. Breathe deeply. Swim into the dark water. Let yourself cry when your body tells you to. Love more. Delight in silliness. Don't be bitter. Forgive. Forgive. Forgive."
Katy Rhodes |
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