Man Had Sex Change To Escape Debt Collectors
“A man from the West Midlands, who was believed to have debts of up to £50,000, had a sex change in a desperate bid to avoid debt collectors.
The man, who cannot be named, had got into so much debt that he decided to switch identities completely.
Actress Sarah Thom revealed that she found out about the man after speaking to workers at the Wolverhampton Credit Union to research her role playing a debt-ridden cleaner in a touring play called Forever in Your Debt.
She said that she met up with workers at the union – which provides financial advice and loans to members – who revealed its most extreme cases of debt to her.
One was the case of man from the West Midlands area who decided to have a sex change in a bid to dodge debt collectors.
The man is believed to have gone through with the operation, but is now thought to be in the process of sorting out his debts and paying off his creditors.”
Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, SuZi)
Sceptic challenges guru to kill him live on TV
When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
Mr Edamaruku had been invited to the same talk show as head of the Indian Rationalists’ Association — the country’s self-appointed sceptic-in-chief. At first the holy man, Pandit Surender Sharma, was reluctant, but eventually he agreed to perform a series of rituals designed to kill Mr Edamaruku live on television. Millions tuned in as the channel cancelled scheduled programming to continue broadcasting the showdown, which can still be viewed on YouTube.
First, the master chanted mantras, then he sprinkled water on his intended victim. He brandished a knife, ruffled the sceptic’s hair and pressed his temples. But after several hours of similar antics, Mr Edamaruku was still very much alive — smiling for the cameras and taunting the furious holy man.
“He was over, finished, completely destroyed!” Mr Edamaruku chuckles triumphantly as he concludes the tale in the Rationalist Centre, his second-floor office in the town of Noida, just outside Delhi.
Read more at Timesonline
Professional Couch Potato Wanted: get paid to do nothing and eat more junk food
“Being a professional slob rarely pays – that is until now.
A company is advertising for a couch potato to do nothing and eat more.
It will pay almost £24,000 to a “worker” with a big appetite who is happy to eat 400 extra calories every day in high fat meals such as chips and pizzas, to test the fat binding properties of a weight loss product.
The position is open to men and women and the successful applicant will have their calorific intake and weight closely monitored by medics.
A spokesman for the firm Proactol Ltd said that while their fat binder was already clinically proven, they wanted to test it in the real world.
The job ad, which has already gone up in UK job centres, reads: ‘We know it’s incredible, but it’s true.
We are willing to pay you £23,750 a year to continue doing EXACTLY what you do every single day, and all we ask in return is that you eat 16 per cent more calories a week – or 400 more calories a day – whilst introducing Proactol into your diet.’”
Read more at The Telegraph
Bottled Air Offered To Stressed Workers
“Bottled fresh air from some of the country’s favourite beauty spots is being given out to stressed city workers by the National Trust.
The air, which was collected from seaside and rural areas around the UK, comes in several scents, including the seaside smell of Townend, and the lakeside aroma of Windermere in Cumbria.
Other aromas include the grass-filled air of Stourhead in Wiltshire, and woodland scents from Box Hill, Surrey.
Three-quarters of UK workers (74 per cent) claim that they feel stressed on a daily basis, but 70 per cent say that escaping from the city makes them feel instantly relaxed, according to a National Trust study.
The most relaxing activity was a walk with a breath of sea air, according to 72 per cent of those surveyed, with 66 per cent saying that a walk in the country air was the best stress reliever.
But 59 per cent of people said a breath of fresh air of any kind was enough to reduce their stress levels.
With this in mind, the National Trust came up with a natural solution for city workers across the country. Each 454gram recycled glass jar of air can relieve stress for 10 minutes, they claim.”
Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, Mill)
Artist travels world fixing crumbling monuments with Lego
“Jan Vormann, 26, has taken his project from its humble beginnings at an art fair in Rome and brightened up thousands of people’s days with his brightly coloured plastic version of Polyfilla. From the old quarter of Tel Aviv in Israel to the grand Bryant Park of New York, Mr Vormann has acted either independently or with the city’s permission to leave a little part of his childhood behind.
Estimating to have used upwards of 1,000 of the little Danish building blocks, Mr Vormann enlists the help of passers-by intrigued by his careful placing of the Lego bricks. “I like to think of my work as a Repair Manifesto,” said the Berlin-based installation artist. “My work draws attention to the smallest parts of our cities that are falling apart because of the brightness of the Lego. “It draws people’s attention through the coloured blocks and makes them aware that this wall or statue or construction is not complete anymore, for whatever reason. “In the case of my latest project in New York which I completed in early March, I simply wanted to help the Mayor Bloomberg brighten up the great city.”"
Read more at The Telegraph
Woman Fails To Shut Down LHC
“A German woman has failed in a bid to force her country’s government to halt experiments at the world’s largest atom smasher which she feared would lead to the Earth’s destruction.
The country’s highest court said that the woman — whom it didn’t identify — had failed to demonstrate any connection between experiments at the CERN collider outside Geneva and the apocalypse.
The Federal Constitutional Court in the western Germany city of Karlsruhe threw out the woman’s appeal because she was “unable to give a coherent account of how her fears would come about.”
“The overwhelming scientific opinion is that the experiments carried out at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) present no dangers,” the court ruled.
CERN scientists are looking to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to mimic the conditions that followed the Big Bang and help explain the origins of the universe.
Housed inside a 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) tunnel straddling the Franco-Swiss border, the collider was started with great fanfare in September 2008, only to break down after nine days for the next 14 months.
It was shut down again in December, this time to ready it for collisions at unfathomed energy levels which began last month.”
Read more at The Telegraph
Romanian street sign warns drivers of ‘drunk pedestrians’
Street signs warning Romanian drivers to be careful of drunken pedestrians lying on roads were erected by road safety chiefs worried about the “despairing” levels of accidents.
Officials in Pecica, a village town about 13 miles from the Hungarian border in the country’s west, ordered the bright red signs, complete with the phrase “Attention – Drunks”. The 10 road signs, which also show a person crawling on their knees while clutching a glass in one hand, were erected in popular nightspot areas close to the city’s bars and restaurants.
Japanese Town Baffled By ‘Kangaroo’ Sightings
“It may seem odd, but the locals swear it’s true. People in a Japanese mountain region have reported a number of kangaroo sightings, and journalists are now trying to stalk the marsupials.
The descriptions given by the apparent eyewitnesses seem close enough. For years they have spoken of a beige animal with large ears, one to 1.5 metres (three to five feet) tall, that stands by the roadside and then hops away.
The sightings were all reported in the Mayama mountain district of Osaki city in Miyagi prefecture, a community of 441 households, located about 350 kilometers (220 miles) north of Tokyo.
The city has received about 30 reports of ‘kangaroo-like animals,’ including three cases since December, when the mountain area was often covered in snow, said local official Tetsuya Sasaki.”
Read more at Yahoo
The Mystery Of The Missing Gorilla from Bristol Museum
“When the stuffed body of Alfred, a 7ft gorilla, disappeared from Bristol Museum in March 1956 it sparked one of the more unusual police investigations.
Alfred had been one of the prize attractions at Bristol Zoo during his 18 years in captivity. Such was his appeal that after his death in 1946 he was stuffed and mounted in a glass case at the museum.
Police appealed for information, scoured the local university campus and interviewed leaders of the student union in an attempt to find him, but to no avail. They suspected he may have been stolen by rival students.
For nearly three days there was no sign of Alfred, until Donald Boulton, the university caretaker, found him in a doctor’s waiting room.
But the mystery of who took Alfred and where he went has remained a mystery for more than 50 years.
Now, after the death of one of the culprits, Ron Morgan, 79, a former estate agent in Bristol, the secret behind the `escape’ from the museum has been revealed.”
Read more at The Telegraph (thanks, Tammy)
Nepalese Celebrate ‘Cursing Festival’
“KATHMANDU (AFP) – Each year, Nepalese youth in two villages in the south of the Himalayan country save up their choicest insults for a 10-day “cursing festival” that reaches its climax Sunday.
The youngsters in the neighbouring villages of Parsawa and Laxmipur hurl insults at each other, their neighbours, villagers and passers-by — and then laugh.
They gather in parks and other areas around straw heaped in the shape of a phallus to launch into the insults.
Insults like, “Monkey face, I hope your sons are as ugly as frogs,” and “I hope your buffaloes die of diarrhea,” ring out along with more obscene curses.
Village elders say the annual festival, which is just for youngsters, has been going on for as long as they can remember.”
Read more at Yahoo News
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