Saturday, December 30, 2006

Top stories of 2006

Visit The Wildhunt Blog for top Pagan news stories of 2006.

Meanwhile, The Georgia Straight, a Vancouver, B.C., weekly, has a huge list of tidbits from 2006 from Canada and the rest of the globe. Some samples:

Simpletons of the sea

The large brains of dolphins, whales, and porpoises are the result of being warm-blooded mammals in a cold environment and not a sign of intelligence, according to Paul Manger of South Africa’s University of the Witwatersrand. Manger’s research, published in Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, contends that although aquatic mammals’ brains have a “superabundance” of brain cells called glia for environmental protection, they have few information-processing neurons and the mammals are dumber than goldfish. “If you don’t put a lid on top of the bowl, a goldfish will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in. But a dolphin will never do that,” Manger wrote.

Bitter brew

Coca-Cola coffee subsidiary Georgia, in an attempt to market a new upscale canned coffee for vending machines in Japan, combined the words deep roasted with espresso to come up with the brand name Deepresso.

Make it your Om page

The Guangxiao Temple, which claims to be the oldest and largest in south China, began an on-line worship system through which users offer virtual incense, fruit, and flowers to a variety of electronic Buddhas. Duties of Buddhist monks now include taking foreign-language and MBA degrees so they can help run temples that are increasingly computerized. “Everything in the temple is now processed on-line. No paperwork. Those who failed to pass the computer test were laid off and reassigned to non-office jobs,” said Hui Jue of the Jade Buddha Temple. “Interacting with the outside world occupies most of our time, so many monks have to use the noon break if they want to do meditation.” (Link seems not to be working)


Go there for many screens of yucks.

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