Crappy
jobs, lunar real estate, and a nation of stinkers
By
Andreas Ohrt
YOUR
STINKY McJOB ISN’T SO BAD AFTER ALL: To all you new graduates out there:
You might want to face the reality that not everyone among you is going to forge
an admirable career filled with respect and dignity. Alas, some of you are going
to end up being profiled in magazine articles with titles like “The Top 10
Worst Jobs in Science,” as seen recently in Popular Science. Yes, you too
can become a Whale Feces Researcher (a shitty job — literally), a Forensic
Entomologist (solving murders by studying the maggots that infest dead people),
an Olympic Drug Tester (watching grown men pee for a living), or an Elephant Vasectomist
(no, really). But the number-one worst career choice one can dare to make is the
Hazmat Diver, a truly foul job which involves swimming through the most toxic
filth on the planet — including sewer systems, nuclear reactors and oil spills
— and then cleaning it up.
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FOR
SALE – ACRES OF PET ROCKS: Don’t give up just yet on your hare-brained
schemes to make some easy cash. Take some inspiration from Dennis Hope, the man
who started selling acres of moon land in 1967 and has raked in over $9 million
so far. Despite the fact that nations are prohibited from owning land on the moon
by the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, Hope insists that nothing in the treaty
exempts individuals from doing so. “It was unowned land,” he says. “For
private-property claims, 197 countries at one time or another had a basis by which
private citizens could make claims on land and not make payment. There are no
standardized rules.” According to Hope, his empire includes 95 different
planetary bodies and seven trillion acres of land, with a total worth of about
$100 trillion. Despite his vast imaginary wealth, Hope’s claims aren’t
likely to be legally recognized anytime soon. “The moon is a common property
of the international community, so individuals and states cannot own it. That’s
very clear in the U.N. treaty,” says Ram Jakhu, a director of the International
Institute for Space Law. “Individuals’ rights cannot prevail over the
rights and obligations of a state... No one owns the moon. No one can own any
property in outer space.” Nevertheless, you can still buy an acre of moon
land for only $19.95 at PlanetaryInvestments.com. (Discover)
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THAT
SNOOZE BUTTON MIGHT SAVE YOUR LIFE: Running out of excuses for sleeping in every
morning? Here’s a good one. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania
have discovered that sleep deprivation stresses your heart and raises the risk
of cardiovascular disease and death caused by heart failure. (AFP)
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OUR
LIVES WOULD BE A LOT MORE FUN IF THEY WERE WRITTEN BY A TEAM OF COMEDIANS: Brace
yourself for this shocker. College kids believe that fictional fathers on TV sitcoms
are more loving and supportive than real dads. Believe it or not, the study, carried
out at Marymount Manhattan College in New York, found that students rated TV dads
better than real dads in every category, including such qualities as support,
guidance, and acceptance of other family members. The study also found that kids
blame constant work demands for their fathers’ inability to live up to the
standards set by the idealized fantasies of TV sitcoms. (USA Today)
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AMERICA’S
GOT B.O.: For the fourth time in six years, Phoenix, Arizona, has come out as
the chart-topper in the Top 100 Sweatiest Cities in America list. The annual ranking
is based on the amount of sweat a person of average height and weight would produce
while walking around for an hour in the average high temperatures during June,
July and August in each city. With an average daily high of 93.3 degrees Fahrenheit,
the study calculated that the residents of Phoenix produce about 26.3 ounces of
sweat each per hour, meaning that the entire city could fill 53,000 beer kegs
with sweat in one hour. Delicious! (Reuters)
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LYING
YOU’RE TELL CAN I: Here’s a great strategy to pull out the next time
you need to interrogate your teenager. According to researchers at the University
of Portsmouth, forcing a suspect to retell their story in reverse order makes
it much easier to tell if they’re lying. The tactic is called a “cognitive
load interview” and works on the premise that a subject who is trying to
repeat a false version of events backwards would be far more likely to make mistakes.
“Unlike truth-tellers, liars tend to tell their stories in a strict chronological
time order, and diverting from this order may well be too difficult for them to
do,” said one of the professors, who is developing this interrogation technique.
(Times Online)
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I-READ-IT-ON-THE-INTERNET-SO-IT-MUST-BE-TRUE
FACT OF THE WEEK: Ten per cent of all traffic accidents in Athens, Greece, are
caused by motorists looking at scantily-clad models on roadside billboards.
