reading:

Weird but true
http://www.n6hb.org/s-a/c_weird.htm

(All the stories were taken from the website above and it is the author’s responsibility only)

1. a deadly vision
in January 2000, Kamal Huq of Dhaka, Bangladesh, while still perfectly healthy, told his brother that he was having visions. He said that he could see his own corpse. Two weeks later he had the first of his seizures and died of brain cancer in march. (nov 2000)

2. indigo children
more and more of these weird children are being born. they share the following common features: extraordinary organization of dna, immunity to aids and other emerging diseases, extreme intelligence and self confidence, extra sensory perception, and paranormal abilities. somehow we are communicating to the next generation through our semen and ova that there is trouble ahead and the kids are making the appropriate adjustments. they are the next evolutionary generation of our race. the phenomenon has been documented in china and the united states. (link) (btw: these kids are hard to parent and are often "diagnosed" with a.d.d. or other invented disorders and "treated" with ridalin.) (sept 2000)

3. it's all in the mind
if you are right handed and your left-handed penmanship is gibberish it will also be gibberish if you close your eyes and simply imagine yourself writing with your left hand. Practice in your head until you get it right with your left, then write. Voila! You can. But why? (Misty Hyman, the gold medalist in the 100-meter breaststroke at Sidney, practiced for the event by lying in bed with a stop watch and swimming the race in her mind stroke for stroke until she got her time down to where wanted it. the next day she repeated her performance in water - exactly.) (october 2000).

4. fufu the cat
right after the family dog died, fufu returned to her home in sicily with a new mate and three kittens eight years after she had disappeared when the dog had first arrived.(latimes, oct 2000)

5. sleep on it
when you sleep, the electrical activity of your brain does not decrease, it increases. according to robert stickgold, we don't sleep to rest but to figure out stuff that our conscious awake-mind could not. to work smarter, take more naps. (link, october 2000)

6. neuron regeneration
did your science textbook teach you that after a certain age the brain can no longer regenerate? they've changed their minds about that. the brain not only manufactures new neurons all the time but these neurons are able to migrate to different parts of the brain and assume the needed functional form. (elizabeth gould, princeton university) (1999)

7. doggie science
in rohnert park, california, around 3:30pm on wed 9/22/99 the caller's german shepherd ran full speed from the yard into the glass panel of his sliding door - something he had never done before. when allowed in, he hid under the bed. about 2 minutes later, the earth shook, buildings shuddered and groaned, and their surprised and terrified occupants ran out to safety. scientific earthquake prediction has been a complete failure. doggie science is better than ours in that respect. (ksro radio talk show caller, 1999).

8. patient pam
in july 1991, a female aneurysm patient code-named "pam reynolds" underwent an 8-hour surgery in phoenix arizona during which she was clinically dead for an hour. during the dead hour an electric saw was brought into the operating room in a case and this saw was used to cut open her skull. after the operation she said that she saw the procedure from "above" and she accurately described the saw which she had never seen in life. she also accurately related the conversation that took place in the room at that time although her ear canals were packed with test equipment which showed no response from the brain stem to repeated audible clicks. (michael sabom, 1999)

9. faith heals
reproducible scientific experiments carried out by harold koenig of duke university show that people who have a religion, any religion, are healthier, are more disease resistant, and live longer than those who don't. (see also the book by dale matthews, 1998)

10. the human's perspective
according to human beings only they are capable of intelligence, design, choice, mirth, anger, anguish, love, compassion, and kindness and the other critters just carry out nature's programming. but what was the program that drove a hippopotamus to rescue an impala from the jaws of a crocodile and then try to resuscitate her? and what would you have made of it had it been a human instead of a hippo? (stephanie leland in "peaceful kingdom", 1998)

11. don't worry, be happy
the single strongest predicter of heart disease has nothing to do with diet, exercise, obesity, or smoking and everything to do with your attitude. when it comes to healthy hearts the don't-worry-be-happy crowd has the edge over the angry or the depressed. (hillel cohen, albert einstein college of medicine)

12. the magic of garlic
to avoid illness eat lots of garlic. it contains a chemical called allicin that kills bugs even if they are resistant to antibiotics. garlic is our last hope against the tough new resistant strains of bacteria.