Strange But True (at The Cheese Log)

Unfortunately, due to union and budgeting restrictions, the column will no longer be heard.

Skewed minds are still at work.
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Excerpts from the “Strange but true” column

Late news regarding last Wednesday’s tremor that was centered near the Ontario-Québec border – The Geological Survey of Canada now reports that it was NOT an earthquake after all. Apparently the LCBO was having a sale.

Internet authorities have approved a new domain suffix for web sites that contain sexually explicit material. Dot-xxx domains will begin appearing next year. I assume you’ll be quite busy changing your bookmarks.

A Toronto woman is suing Rogers Wireless for ending her marriage. An extramarital affair the woman was engaged in was revealed when Rogers combined all services for her household on one bill (without advising her). The woman’s husband began making inquiries about certain calls and that was the end of that. Rogers calls the lawsuit frivolous but the woman is insisting. Strangely enough, she has hired a publicist. I predict the wireless carriers will see money in them thar hills and introduce a new calling plan. “Want to stay out of the dog house? Choose Fido’s nudge-nudge-wink-wink plan. Only 39.95! (Some conditions apply, cancellation fee is $10,000 or we call your spouse).

The Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario has issued a warning after several bears were sighted in urban areas. Residents of northeast Oxford County and part of the Waterloo region are being warned to keep an eye out for bears. They’re especially dangerous these days because in preparation for the G20, the Harper government gave them all SUVs.

Physicians have been seeking to confirm the existence of what is called “The Higgs boson” since it was first theorized in the mid 1960s. (I always thought “boson” was misspelled – As a teenager I was greatly disappointed to discover it wasn’t spelled “bosom”). In any event, the Higgs boson is the sub-atomic particle which would theoretically explain why all other particles have mass – it’s known as the “God particle”. Recent experiments at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider (where I believe you have been hired to torture-test equipment) now suggest that physicians may not find just one God particle, but as many as five. Computer simulations suggest that these particles are the building blocks for everything in our known universe with one exception: Cheez Whiz.

Relief this past week when two camels and a tiger were recovered safe and sound after the tractor trailer they were travelling in was stolen. They were on their way to The Bowmanville Zoo. The one thing that distressed me more than the thought of these animals suffering needlessly is the fact that Bowmanville has a zoo. Montreal couldn’t operate a petting zoo. Then again, The United States appointed a supreme commander of our forces in Afghanistan who likes to get drunk with reporters from Rolling Stone Magazine.

The brain naturally distorts body image. Scientists at University College London have discovered that people tend to think that their hands (for example) are wider and their fingers are shorter than they truly are. This is a finding which could explain eating disorders like anorexia. It might also explain why many Britons who are whining about their pension investments in BP think the Gulf oil spill is but a trickle of treacle.

France’s retirement age will be raised from 60 to 62 over the next 8 years as part of sweeping pension reforms. The French are extremely upset. We’ve seen demonstrations, riots. President Sarkozy was asked why his countrymen refuse to see the writing on the wall (as it were) and he said “It’s all Greek to me…”

Male menopause does exist but researchers now say it affects perhaps 2 percent of middle-aged men. They say that symptoms that have been popularly linked with male menopause have nothing to do with hormonal changes that might be akin to what women experience. I guess I’ll have to find another excuse for crying during the opening credits of “Love Actually”.

General Motors has sent a memo to its employees and dealers asking them to stop using the word “Chevy” as an abbreviation for “Chevrolet”. Marketing people at GM say this is an effort to keep brand recognition on the straight and narrow. If you Google the word “Chevy” it shows up on the GM web site – top of page. If you Google the words “misguided priorities” you end up at the same place.

A recent study suggests that the state of daily stress and worry plummets after the age of 50. Then again, so does the rest of you.

Excerpts from the “Strange but true” column

Comedy Central (which is the American cable channel where The Daily Show and The Colbert Report originate) is considering a sitcom pilot script about Jesus Christ. “JC” as it’s called, depicts Jesus as a “regular guy” who moves to New York to escape his father’s shadow. Peter, his best friend, is said to be a stocky balding fellow – Pontius Pilate is a weird lanky guy who lives across the hall and Mary Magdalene is a somewhat loose woman who used to date “JC” and drops in all the time…wait a minute…

Lebanon has claimed the latest victory in the continuing battle with Israel over which country can make the largest serving of hummus. Some 300 chefs set the new record, creating a 10-tonne vat of hummus in the city of Fanar in Lebanon. Apparently the pita they made to go with it will be used to cover the Olympic Stadium next winter. The next competition will feature sculpted chopped liver. Apparently one of the pieces in the running is a life-sized rendition of Benjamin Netanyahu strangling Noam Chomsky.

A British astronaut took a piece of Sir Isaac Newton’s famous apple tree into space recently to let it float in zero gravity as a tribute to Newton’s discovery of gravity in 1666 (when an apple fell from the tree). I found out recently that a Canadian astronaut took a piece of the Turcot Interchange into space late last year. Even in zero gravity, it fell down.

A recent study suggests that daily stress and worry plummet after the age of 50. Then again, so does the rest of you.

The Methodist Church (in the UK) has launched an app for the iPhone designed to assist the faithful with their study of scriptures. Methodists don’t believe in a vengeful God who would send people to hell (jut for the hell of it) but if you search for the word “hell” in the app, it brings up a screen that says “an error has occurred, all your work will be lost, press enter to continue”.

Men are more likely to tell lies than women and feel less guilty about it, says a recent survey. “I didn’t have that much to drink” is men’s most popular fib. Whereas women use the line, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine” most often to hide their true feelings. Apparently the people who paid for that survey (to tell us what we already knew) also paid 16 million dollars for the Oliphant inquiry.

Scientists have revealed the smallest man-made pump ever built. It’s the size of a human red blood cell. Developers say the pump could be used to inject tiny amounts of a drug into single cells or to take samples from cells that may be diseased or infected. Even at this tiny scale, it’s several hundred times more efficient than anything BP has done so far.

Sir Tom Jones is to receive this year’s British Music Industry Trust award for his outstanding contribution to music. Sir Tom will be 70 this year. Apparently the golden statue is shaped like a hotel key.

The inventor of the ATM has died. John Shepherd-Barron was 84. He was a Briton. The first ATM was installed in a bank in London in 1967. Exactly 30 minutes after it began operating, the bank raised its service fees.

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA. The cover on The Economist read: “And Man Made Life”. The first thing the cell began to do once it was removed from its growth medium? It began Tweeting.

France’s National Centre for Scientific Research has found that data CDs and DVDs that were purported to last for centuries, actually rarely last longer than 5 to 10 years. Photos or other data you may have stored on writeable disks may not be retrievable in the long run. My “Three’s Company” collection alone will take me hours to re-dub.

In Russia, 6 would-be cosmonauts have entered a sealed facility where they will spend 18 months with no windows and only e-mail contact with the outside world. The men are taking part in the Mars500 project, which aims to simulate a mission to Mars. The participants trained in Montreal for this. They spent several months crossing the Champlain Bridge during morning rush hour.

The hula-hoop is making a comeback. Isn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?

Excerpts from the “Strange but true” column

News from space – NASA has issued a correction with respect to photos of the earth that were taken from the space station a few months back. What was described as “ancient Mayan ruins” is actually The Turcot Interchange.

Voyager 2, which has been traveling through the solar system since the late ’70s, has suffered a technical setback. Data are coming in garbled and NASA is trying to rectify the situation. It takes nearly 13 hours for transmissions from Earth to catch up with the probe and technicians have apparently called in Quebec’s health minister to coach them.

What are believed to be the world’s deepest undersea volcanic vents have been discovered in the Caribbean. The vents, known as black smokers, were located 5,000 metres (about 3 miles) down in what is called “The Cayman Trough”. In one of the vents they found a white Reebok gym sock that disappeared in my dryer in 1989.

Ally – have you seen the TV commercials or the internet banner ads for “Ally”? It’s a trust company that is a division of what used to be GMAC. Since the economic meltdown, GM’s former financial arm is now owned by a venture capital company AND the American government (to the tune of about 36%). Considering how Republicans have been accusing Obama of being a liar (even in the middle of speeches) you’d figure the trust company would have picked a better name.

Barack Obama has played golf more than 30 times since he took office. This is more than his predecessor George W Bush played during his entire presidency. Obama is quite good apparently. He can sink a putt and pronounce the word nuclear at the same time.

Records from an inquest into the notorious 1881 shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone Arizona have been discovered in a courthouse document room. Apparently the fight revolved around a condo timeshare dispute.

This is National Hamburger Month in the US. The White Castle fast food chain had a hamburger-scented candle developed for the occasion. It sold out in a matter of hours. The Quebec government has been inspired by this project. Every taxpayer who has filed a return this year will receive a scented candle. Apparently it smells like feta cheese.

A team of researchers at University of Toronto has come up with a program that decodes messages from the human genome – messages that do things like tell cells how to develop. At the same time, researchers at The Max Planck Institute in Germany have found that Neanderthal genes are still present in humans. And I have late word this weekend that U of T has decoded it first message. It reads as follows: “Never eat anything bigger than your head”.

According to a recent study, washing your hands is not only healthy it may put your mind at ease about past decisions. Researchers at the University of Michigan asked subjects to make choices in an experiment. When some subjects washed their hands after making the choice, they were less compelled to second-guess themselves. Subjects who did not wash their hands felt the need to justify their decisions. Judging by your wardrobe and general demeanour Don, I’d suggest you’ve been washing your hands obsessively since the late 60s.

Biologists in the Northwest Territories have confirmed that an unusual-looking bear shot in April near Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, was a rare hybrid grizzly-polar bear. In typical cautious scientific parlance, their paper is to be entitled “Apparently, bears do at least one other thing in the woods”.

BP is changing its name. Bill Patterson. Harder to find in the phone book I guess. There are 900 of them in Louisiana alone.

A recent worldwide poll conducted by the Ipsos firm indicates 1 in 5 people believe space aliens live among us. I could have saved them a lot of work. Most of them are in my building.

The Catholic Church just won’t give up. They’ve set up a page on Facebook to attract young men to the priesthood. The “Add as Friend” command for the page comes with a 12-page disclaimer.

Excerpts from the “Strange but true” column

The Vatican has forgiven John Lennon for his infamous “Jesus” remark (saying The Beatles were more popular than Jesus – circa 1966). L’Osservatore Romano referred to the Fab Four’s (quote) “dissolute” lives in a recent article while suggesting the jesting Lennon was now forgiven. The Holy See has since adopted a Beatle tune as its official song (in the midst of the growing uproar over sexual abuse) – that song is “Let it Be”. Apparently it was a toss-up between “Let it Be” and “Everyone’s got something to hide except me and my Monkey”.

Unusual laws – In Texas and Michigan persons who are legally blind (is it possible to be illegally blind?) can apply for a hunting license. This is analogous of course to the Vatican’s perceptions with respect to homosexuality versus pedophilia.

The Shroud of Turin is back on display after 8 years. Some historians suggest the cloth is a fake. They say it’s nothing more than a curio that dates back to the Middle Ages. The Vatican says it doesn’t care, as long as you don’t hold it up to the light.

Barack Obama hosted “The Nuclear Summit” in Washington. The United States and Russia agreed to take steps to potentially obliterate whatever is in their way 7 times over instead of 10, Canada announced it will send fissile material to the US so that it may be rendered innocuous (rumour has it they’ll just put it in the middle of a group of Democrats) and Apple Computer’s Steve Jobs has announced his next money-making gadget: after the iMac, the iPhone and the iPad will come the “iSotope”. The verb “tweeting” will take on a whole new meaning.

Chrysler Automotive has announced a technology sharing agreement with NASA. (Chrysler built Redstone rockets for the Mercury program and some boosters for Apollo). By this time next year the International Space Station will be equipped with more than 700 cup holders.

Kentucky Fried Chicken has launched a new item in the US. It’s known as the “Double-Down”. Bacon, cheese and some sort of sauce sandwiched between two pieces of breaded chicken. No bread. The “Double-Down” will not be sold in Canada. The company determined it would not be profitable because here it would feed a family of 5.

Harvard Medical School researchers say 11 large insurance companies in the US (that provide life and health insurance) own about $1.9 billion dollars in stock in the five largest fast-food companies. That’s what I call doubling down.

Marilyn Monroe’s chest X-rays are up for sale. They were taken in 1954. The heirs of her then-physician are selling the X-rays via an auction house. I wasn’t inspired to come up with a ribald gag here because The Vatican won’t let me hold them up to the light.

Russia is planning to remove 2 of its 11 time zones in order to make it easier to do business. In a similar move, the Harper government, in an effort to save money is going to remove Saskatchewan.

The state of Vermont is planning to spend $120,000 to install software that will prevent employees from viewing pornographic and other inappropriate Web sites from state computers. One of the sites deemed to be inappropriate is Facebook. Authorities in Montpelier won’t provide details but apparently a recent incident involved vacation photos and Bernie Sanders in a Speedo.

Excerpts from the “Strange but true” column

Does puberty make you stupid? Recent studies indicate the volume of grey matter in the prefrontal cortex (wasn’t that a compact Ford model once produced in Australia?) where higher order thinking takes place diminishes during the teenage years. I don’t know about this. I spent hours looking at the photographs in National Geographic Magazine when I was a young teen. Most of my friends were saving up to buy a bike. I was saving up to go to Gabon.

3-D is the next big thing for television sets. Sony (which has been suffering of late) is apparently sinking a lot of money into 3-D technology. Sony’s 3-D capable sets should be out this summer. One of the first television networks in North America to broadcast shows in 3-D is a US religious cable network known as “Catholic TV”. Apparently one of their new shows this fall will be entitled “Duck, here comes Father Murphy”.

Science news: Recent observations via The Hubble Telescope confirm the universe is expanding per Einstein’s predictions. Also, the NASA team has confirmed once and for all that Quebec’s public sector union leaders actually DO NOT live on this planet.

Still with science news: At The Hadron Collider (near Geneva) two proton beams were made to collide for the first time recently. What they accomplished is analogous to having two people standing on opposite sides of the Atlantic, throwing needles at one another and having two of the needles collide head-on. The design is apparently based on the Canadian parliamentary system.

Automotive news: Donald Frey, the man who designed the Ford Mustang, died in March at the age of 86. The Mustang was launched in April 1964 at The New York World’s Fair. In May of 1964, Mr. Frey announced to his wife that he was taking out the garbage. He returned in June of 1986.  Also, Volvo (the venerable Swedish automaker) is now owned by a Chinese company. The purchase is the product of a mix-up of some sort. Apparently, the female employees of the Chinese firm (who are taking English as a second language) became confused when they thought they were told they couldn’t have a baby without a Volvo.

Airline news: The FAA in the US now allows pilots to fly while they’re taking antidepressants. First of all, as far as I’m concerned, that’s redundant. Secondly, they should issue the same medication to passengers.

Mesmerized by the host...

Excerpts from the “Strange, but true” column

Cell phone use may fight Alzheimer’s disease. However, Blackberry use, especially in meetings, will cause your nostrils to fuse shut.

Dairy Queen. The ice cream and fast food franchise is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (Warren Buffett’s investment company). They’re going to rename the Peanut Buster Parfait (which was introduced in 1967). In the wake of the economic downturn and the meltdown of investments and savings it will be heretofore called: “Peanuts, busted, oy vey”.

American Airlines now charges  8 dollars for a blanket and pillow set. That’s not such a bad deal. It’s bound to taste better than the sandwich they’ll sell you.

The Vatican left one name off its list of persons to be canonized this spring: Nat Lash. We thought this might have signaled a symbolic rapprochement between the Catholic church and those of the Jewish faith. Turns out the pope just wanted one of those big wooden chairs that are carved in the shape of a hand.

The Bloom Box – a contraption that was launched a couple of weeks ago. The size of a refrigerator. It purportedly contains fuel cells that can provide electricity for an average household. We learned that the box actually contains a guy named Murray Bloom. Every time you leave a light on in the house he pops out of the box and says: “What. Am I made of money? Turn out that light!”

Suggested rewrite for the national anthem line (for those who sought to render it gender neutral, let’s neuter it entirely): “True patriot love, I think I’ll take a nap”.

Yvan (left) and Don Brinston

Excerpts from the “Strange, but true” column

(When the first “Strange, but true” column was aired), we were broadcasting on the AM band (at 940) and a series of budget cuts had just been announced. I informed listeners that the CBC would try to make up the shortfall by dispatching cabs over that frequency. 940 (and 690) passed into private hands thereafter and they have since gone silent. 600 (CFCF radio’s original frequency) has been silent for a decade. Word has it now that CJAD will step in and acquire the frequencies. In the coming months, if you tune an AM radio to each of the frequencies you’ll be able to hear Tommy Schnurmacher arguing with himself.

Kahnawake – The tribal council has decided to expel all non-Mohawks from the reserve. They will be replaced. An unusual choice: The June Taylor Dancers. Apparently, at the hand-over ceremony the dancers will perform a number where a gambling chip turns into a glowing cigarette.

Sarah Palin wrote some crib notes on her left hand before presenting a speech to some god-fearin’ global-warming-denyin’ Americans recently. They didn’t show her right hand. It read: “see other hand”.

As you may know, the Welsh are famous for having very long place names that describe a location and features adjacent. The longest town name in the world is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Now with the advent of Twitter, Welsh scholars have come up with an even longer word – exactly 140 characters in length. In Welsh it means: “get a life and keep it to yourself”.

Kraft is taking over Cadbury. Brits are very unhappy. If you receive an Easter Creme Egg this year it will come with a warning label: “Do not open if contents are ticking”.

Loto-Quebec is getting into the online gaming business. You’ll be able to log on and play for cash or a family doctor. – UPDATE – An organization in the Montreal area that is raising funds to build a palliative care home announced today (April 23, 2010) that one of the prizes donors will be eligible to win will be access to a general practitioner.