HUH??

It seems that under the new national history curriculum, high school students will not use the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) when referencing dates.  Instead the neutral terms BCE (Before Common Era), BP (Before Present) and CE (Common Era) will be used instead.

It also appears that Centrelink call centre staff are now required to enter an individual identity code into the phone each time they want to use the bathroom.  If they are longer than 5 minutes, they have to give a reason  to management.  

Apparently the Indian government has asked the makers of the latest James Bond film to remove a stunt that shows people travelling on train roofs as it reflects the country "in poor light".

One in three Australians can't bake a cake without relying on a packet mix.

More than 80% of Australians don't know how long it takes to boil an egg and only 38% could recognise a coriander.

My response... Sign of the times... and the fact that Australia is indeed a lucky country!

In the news

I was reading last Thursday's (29 Apr) papers and here are some of the articles ...

An 83 year old yogi has suvived with no food or water in 70 years.  He said that since leaving his family at the age of seven to wander through jungles in western India, he's had no desire to eat, drink or go to the toilet.  His brain also resembled that of a 25 year old person.  He will be undergoing a series of tests in the hope ofreplicating his survival abilities to benefit mankind.

Malaysia has launched a pink women-only train carriages to prevent sexual harassment and to give Muslim women the option of travelling separately from men.

An Ohio woman who thought she had found a rat in her can of pasta instead turned out to be a really big, thick, hairy chunk of mould.

Brazil's Minister of Health has suggested his country's citizens have sex five times a week as a solution to chronic diseases such as diabetes.

Scientists have found that eating chillies can make you lose weight by speeding up your metabolism and burninng fat.  Researchers claim that heat generated by the spicy food oxidises layers of fat as well as increasing metabolism.

Tadpoles from the sky???

In the news today....

TOKYO (AFP) - Meteorologists in Japan say the rainy season has just started in Tokyo, but residents in a small coastal town have reported a different phenomenon -- tadpoles dropping out of the sky.

An office clerk in Nanao said he first noticed the anomaly when he heard a dull thud in a parking lot last week, news reports said. Looking around, he saw about 100 dead amphibians splattered on car windshields and the ground.

More reports followed from bewildered residents in Nanao.
"People speculate that a waterspout picked them up and dropped them from the air," an official at a local weather observatory told AFP. "But from a meteorological point of view, I have to say it is most unlikely."

"We have checked the weather conditions of last week, thinking gusts of wind might have hit the area but confirmed no damage," he said. "To be honest, I don't think it was anything caused by a weather condition."

Similar events -- in what is sometimes called the "Fafrotskies" phenomenon, short for "fall from the sky" -- have been reported around the world, with whirlwinds passing over water bodies and picking up frogs, jellyfish or other unfortunate animals before dumping them back to earth.

Believe it or not...