Better than a Flu Shot!

Miss Beatrice, The church organist, Was in her eighties And had never been married.

She was admired for her sweetness And kindness to all.

One afternoon the pastor Came to call on her and she showed him into her quaint sitting room.

She invited him to have a seat while she prepared tea.

As he sat facing her old Hammond organ, The young minister noticed a cute glass bowl sitting on top of it.

The bowl was filled with water, and in the water Floated, of all things, a condom!

When she returned With tea and scones, They began to chat.

The pastor tried to stifle his curiosity About the bowl of water and its strange floater, but soon it got the better of him and he could no longer resist.

‘Miss Beatrice’, he said, ‘I wonder if you would tell me about this?’ Pointing to the bowl.

‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, ‘Isn’t it wonderful?

I was walking through the park a few months ago and I found this little package on the ground.

The directions said to place it on the organ, keep it wet and that it would prevent the spread of disease. Do you know I haven’t had the flu All winter.’

..

..

THE NEWS

Odd news from around the world

Why a woman’s wiggle while she walks shows she is ready for action: “When experts set out to examine the alluring sway of a woman’s hips when she walks, a delighted and charming young male researcher was tasked with chatting up more than 100 young single women. The unnamed researcher then secretly filmed them from behind using a camera in his buttonhole. The covert footage was viewed by two other men – who were asked to judge each wiggle on an attractiveness scale of one to five. Their research revealed that women at the peak of their fertility cycles walk more slowly and seductively than those who are not. This subtle change in behaviour is subconscious but has clear evolutionary benefits – as it makes a woman appear more attractive just at the time when she is most likely to fall pregnant, the research showed. The girls were unaware of the nature of the study and were asked for a saliva sample to test for the presence of a hormone.”

Google changes a step backwards: “For years, Google Search has been the highest quality web product I’ve ever used. But with one update it wiped out all those years of loyalty and goodwill it had built up. Sure, I can opt out of social results with a click—but as with all things I don’t want to have to opt out. I don’t want to have to make that extra click. I want to enter a query, and have the most relevant results returned to me as quickly as possible. (And if Google genuinely doesn’t think it’s a big deal for people to take the extra step oft opting out, why has it focused so relentlessly on optimizing speed for so many years?) The great thing is, of course, you can just switch. Hit up your browser preferences, and swap your default to Bing. [They now seem to have backed off some of their more pesky changes]

Is there a difference between the brain of an atheist and the brain of a religious person?: “Researchers have pinpointed differences between the brains of believers and nonbelievers, but the neural picture is not yet complete. Several studies have revealed that people who practice meditation or have prayed for many years exhibit increased activity and have more brain tissue in their frontal lobes, regions associated with attention and reward, as compared with people who do not meditate or pray. A more recent study revealed that people who have had “born again” experiences have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in emotions and memory, than atheists do. These findings, however, are difficult to interpret because they do not clarify whether having larger frontal lobes or a smaller hippocampus causes a person to become more religious or whether being pious triggers changes in these brain regions.”

Why The ‘Check Engine’ Light Must Be Banned: “We need a federal mandate that bans the generic ‘check engine’ light in new cars. But better yet — the state of things now is that your car actually could do more than just throw an error code at consumers. It contains an advanced system to diagnose itself, but the actual information from that diagnosis is not available to the car’s owner; the average owner must pay a dealer or mechanic to provide him or her with the codes, and what those codes mean. This is absurd. But today’s dash displays capable of displaying text, or at a minimum numerical codes, have been commonplace in cars for at least a decade. Now, pretty much every new car has some sort of alphanumeric display that could show both OBD codes and a short English description, but no manufacturer does this.”

The eight puppies left for dead inside a bale of hay: “It’s little wonder that with such cute faces peering out over the edge of their plastic bowl, these eight abandoned puppies have found new homes. But their futures could have been a lot bleaker. The puppies and their mother, a mongrel named Amy, had been found by a farmer stuffed inside a bale of hay on his land in Newark. But now, following an appeal by local newspaper the Lincolnshire Echo, the eight six-week old puppies have found caring owners who will be able to give them the life they deserve. The Echo put out an urgent plea to animal lovers to adopt one of the puppies who were taken in by Lincolnshire Rescue Kennels on December 5. The mother was discovered with a rope tied around her neck which she had bitten through. The cute and playful nature of the puppies must have hit home as they were rehomed within hours.”

And don’t forget to catch up with all the Strange Justice before you go.