Swiping Condoleeza

Political toilet paper will soon be launched in the Ukraine. The new paper has printed portraits of famous international political figures.

U.S. president George W. Bush, Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, and British PM Tony Blair are among those who are afforded the honor of being depicted on the paper.

The toilet paper also contains the images of the Russian disgraced businessmen Boris Berezovsky and the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

It is not reported whether the Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko will be portrayed.

The printing house is planning to produce small lots of Political toilet paper; at the moment just 2,000 for the Ukraine. Russia and England have already placed their orders.

The paper will be rather cheap: one or two hryvnias for a roll ($ 0,2-0,4).

The Political toilet paper is printed at the Zhucheng Senke Paper-Making Co.Ltd. plant in China.

Adapted from FunReports.com, October 6, 2005.

The Truth About Quicksand

Although horror films frequently depict victims disappearing in quicksand, the truth is much tamer. People cannot fully sink into this type of soil, and laboratory simulations now bear out this little-known fact.

Quicksand is simply ordinary sand that is so saturated with water that the friction between sand particles is reduced, making them unable to support any weight.

The mixture most frequently appears near the deltas of mighty rivers. It can also form after an earthquake releases water from underground reservoirs. When quicksand causes the collapse of bridges and buildings, it truly can be dangerous, experts say.

The probability that a person will be completely sucked into the sand, on the other hand, is nil.

"The Hollywood version is just incorrect," says Thomas Zimmie, an expert in soil mechanics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Reported online in Nature magazine, September 28, 2005.

World's Easiest Quiz

1. How long did the Hundred Years War last?
   
2. Which country makes Panama hats?
   
3. From which animal do we get catgut?
   
4. In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
   
5. What is a camel's hair brush made of?
   
6. The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?
   
7. What was King George VI's first name?
   
8. What color is a purple finch?
   
9. Where are Chinese gooseberries from?
   
10. What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?
    

1. 116 years.
   
2. Ecuador.
   
3. sheep and horses.
   
4. November.
   
5. squirrel fur.
   
6. dogs.
   
7. Albert.
   
8. crimson.
   
9. New Zealand.
   
10. orange.
    

He Taught Them Well

When a masked man attacked them inside their bedroom in the middle of the night Sunday, twin 10-year-old girls responded just as they had been taught in their martial arts class: they fought back.

The commotion woke their parents, who rushed in and thought they recognized the tall, pony-tailed intruder. The girls' father whacked him with the base of a table lamp and yanked off part of his mask. As the intruder ran from the Vienna townhouse, the parents were pretty sure it was "Andy," an instructor at Mountain Kim Martial Arts studio in Vienna, where their daughters take classes every week.

Hours later, Andrew Jacobs, 42, a part-time instructor at the studio who holds a black belt, was arrested at the brick house he shares with his sister, not far from the girls' home. Yesterday, he appeared in court, with a black eye and bruises on his face, on charges of assault, attempted abduction and burglary. A judge ordered him held without bond.

SOURCE: Washington Post, October 4, 2005.

1-Step Program

MOSCOW -- In the last 20 years, hundreds of thousands of people in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union have been "coded" against the desire to drink. "Coding" involves the manipulation of the alcoholic's psyche--often with the help of hypnosis--to create the belief that alcohol equals death.

Alcohol abuse, marked by binge drinking, has soared to all-time highs in Russia. More than 50,000 people die annually from alcohol poisoning, compared with about 400 annually in the United States. It is not unusual for Russians to consume one or more bottles of vodka at a single sitting.

For many Russians, the only available treatment is "coding", created by a Soviet psychiatrist, Alexander Dovzhenko, who assumed cult-like status in the treatment of alcoholism.

"The Dovzhenko method is basically a form of hypnosis: You drink, you die," said Andrei Yermoshin, a private psychotherapist who no longer uses the method, preferring long-term therapy. "It's fast and cheap, and supposedly you don't have a problem for a year or two years or five years, depending on how long you have been coded for."