Morgan Spurlock did this in Super Size Me, for about a year. But Karen Hanrahan has kept a McDonald’s hamburger since 1996.

Yup, she’s had this burger for 12 years!

And it still looks ready to eat. That’s frightening!

McDonald’s (and other factory fast food joints) use a lot of preservatives to keep their food fresh-looking (note: ‘fresh-looking,’ not ‘fresh’) during it’s production, transportation, and storage. This keeps their food looking good a lot longer than is natural. (See the end of this post for the current ingredients in a McDonald’s Hamburger bun.)

Under regular circumstances, if you grilled a burger and put it on a bun and put it in a container for a month, you’d have to scrape the mold off just to see it.

As Karen says, “Ladies, Gentleman, and children alike – this is a chemical food. There is absolutely no nutrition here.”

Karen is a wellness consultant and uses the 12 year old burger as a prop in her talks. See all the photos and read Karen’s description on her blog, “Best of Mother Earth ~ Creating Healthier Lives”.

NOTE: Regarding the hamburger wrapper in the photo that is clearly a more current wrapper with the “I’m lovin’ it” slogan, Karen explains this in her post: “The paper and bag in the backround is circa 2008 – to add decor to the photo. My friend Robyn’s idea.”

———

McDonald’s Hamburger Bun ingredients (as of 2008):

Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, soybean oil, canola oil, contains 2% or less of each of the following: salt, wheat gluten, calcium sulfate, soy flour, ammonium sulfate, calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate, monocalcium phosphate, ammonium chloride, baking soda, sorbic acid, deactivated dry yeast, dough conditioners (may contain one or more the following: distilled monoglycerides, DATEM, sodium stearoyl lactylate, calcium peroxide, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, enzymes, guar gum), calcium propionate & sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin.

Note: Calcium and Sodium Propionate are ‘mold inhibitors,’ hence the fresh looking 12 year old bun!

Fashionistas need not fear the rising tide – shoe designers have come to their rescue.

San Antonio, Texas – Jarrette Schule was cutting down trees on his rural property Tuesday in Comal County when he noticed a green metallic tube on the muddy ground.

“I had never seen it before,” said Schule, a 34-year-old Web developer. “I looked at it, and it kind of looked like a missile launcher.”

Schule took a closer look. It was a long, forest-green metal tube. A decal on it read: “Guided Missile and Launcher, Surface Attack.”

The discovery was the start of a surreal journey for Schule. Somehow, an unarmed anti-tank weapon wound up on his land at Beck Road and Kirk Lane in the Hill Country, miles away from a military installation.

The launcher was deep in the wooded property far from the road, in an area he was familiar with.

“I don’t know if it fell out of something or if somebody just dumped it,” Schule said. “There’s some crazy whitetail hunters around here. Maybe they’re going overboard?”

Schule’s property in Comal County is vacant, and he didn’t want to leave a missile launcher unattended. So he loaded it in his truck and took it to his house.

Schule spent Tuesday afternoon calling the FBI, Homeland Security, the Sheriff’s Department — every agency he could think of. He was stuck in a bureaucratic limbo.

“Everyone was handing it off to everybody else,” Schule said.

He was surprised at the amount of work it took to get the military to pick up its lost missile launcher.

Schule initially was nervous when he found the weapon. But as the hours passed, he did what most guys would do — marvel at the mind-blowing awesomeness of finding a missile launcher. He posted photos on Facebook and called his buddies, saying: “Guess what I found?”

Schule’s information was passed along to an Army criminal investigator, who visited Schule on Wednesday morning — about 19 hours after he started making phone calls.

The special agent walked into the house and saw the launcher sitting on the dining room table.

“She said this is the first time she ever encountered anything like this,” Schule said. “I got the impression it was kind of a big deal. Doesn’t happen every day, I guess.”

The decal on the launcher has a 13-digit “National Stock Number,” which is used to identify military equipment. The stock number is a match for launchers that fire Dragon surface-to-surface missiles, according to a database maintained by the U.S. Defense Logistics Information Service.

The launcher was built in December 1996. The Dragons, first manufactured in the 1960s, last were used in combat in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. They were replaced by the Javelin missile system and finally discontinued in 2006.

Military officials were unable to say Wednesday who last had the launcher and when it was lost. The launcher has a serial number that can be used to track the chain of custody. That will be part of the military’s investigation, said Phil Reidinger, spokesman for Fort Sam.

At Schule’s house, he and the Army investigator had to wait for about three more hours for an ordnance disposal team from Lackland AFB to confiscate the weapon.

The team arrived at about 1 p.m. Wednesday and retrieved the device, ending a crazy experience for Schule.

“I thought just driving down the road, someone would just know that I had a missile launcher in my truck,” Schule said, laughing. “You think that way about the government.

But really, you have to make an effort for them to come get their missile launcher.”
 

Source: San Antonio News  Link

The British Ministry of Defence is investigating the death of a young Afghan girl who died after being hit by a box of leaflets dropped by the RAF.

The information leaflets were dropped in boxes from an RAF Hercules aircraft in Helmand province on 23 June.

The box failed to break apart in mid-air and landed on top of the girl who died later in hospital.

The MoD said it deeply regretted the “tragic incident”, and a full investigation was under way.

A spokesman said the public information leaflets were dropped by the C130 Hercules in a rural area. The boxes are supposed to open in mid-air, scattering the leaflets over a wide area.

The unopened box seriously injured the girl who was treated at a local hospital in Kandahar.

“Despite the best efforts of staff, she died as a result of her injuries,” the spokesman said.

Leaflet drops have been used extensively in Afghanistan by US and British forces in the battle to win the “hearts and minds” of the local population.

The MoD would not comment on what type of leaflet was involved, but past leaflets have included information about the election campaign, mine awareness campaigns, and warnings of impending military action in an area

In May, C130 aircraft based in Afghanistan with 904 Expeditionary Air Wing dropped 200,000 leaflets in support of the Mentoring and Reconstruction Task Force.

Source: BBC News link

ARLINGTON — She said the devil made her do it.

An Arlington woman, 62, told detectives evil was at work when she allegedly forged more than $73,000 worth of checks to herself from the church where she was an administrative assistant.

The woman “guessed that Satan had a big part in the theft,” Snohomish County deputy prosecuting attorney Kathy Jo Blake wrote in charging papers filed Wednesday in Snohomish County Superior Court.

The woman worked for the Arlington Free Methodist Church from early 2000 until Feb. 2008 when she was fired, the court papers said.

On June 6, the woman left a teary message for an Arlington police detective admitting she had stolen money from her former employer. During an investigation, police learned that from Jan. 2005 until the end of Feb. 2008, the woman wrote 80 checks worth $73,575.18, the papers said. She allegedly forged the pastor’s signature.

The finance chairman of the church had noticed irregularities with the checks and alerted the pastor. Church elders had been reviewing the matter when police contacted the pastor.

The woman told detectives she used the money to cover household expenses. She said she couldn’t stand the thought of losing her home, the documents said.

Detectives said the woman seemed relieved the theft was disclosed and she appeared remorseful. She told police she was ready to face the consequences for her actions, the documents said.

The woman tried to enroll in a court program to pay restitution and avoid charges. But the amount she owed far exceeded what she would be capable of paying back in the short amount of time allowed, Blake wrote.

On Wednesday, the woman was charged with first-degree theft, a felony.

Source: Yahoo News link filed under Weird US News

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Artists in Pittsburgh got wind that the Google Street View Car was visiting their locality and decided to throw a street party with balloons, confetti and a marching band. You can navigate the street view here at 488 Sampsonia Way for as long as Google leaves it live.

A Newscaster from ABC7 in Los Angeles strikes an uncanny resemblance to the police rapist sketch he is reporting on.

filed under Weird Photos

As the economy goes South, Roxanne Usleman’s Psychic business is booming.

“It’s more types of people I have never seen before,” says Usleman. “Men in the business world, high-powered jobs, stock market, Wall Street.”

Since last fall, she says she began to see a new type of client — a “logical, [A-type] of personality.” Many of them are “just completely lost,” says Usleman.

Relationship advice, typically the bread and butter of the psychic business, has been supplanted by something new.

“Should I merge with this company? Should I bring in a partner to my company,” are the kind of questions Usleman gets from her clients.

For a typical reading, she grips a client’s photograph or set of keys and consults “the angels.”

Business is good, she says. Usleman sees five or six clients a day and charges up to $135 a pop for sessions that usually last more than an hour.

Businessman Bruce Levy was skeptical at first but one of his clients pushed him to get a reading.

“What I expected was something like Ouija boards and someone looking at my palm and seeing my lifeline,” says Levy.

Instead, he found a psychic who he says helped him find the answers.

“She helps me make better decisions,” Levy says. “She is able to make me see things that I wouldn’t otherwise see. I just think that she has this intuition that gets through to my subconscious in a way that I can’t.”

There are no national statistics on the business of psychics. But Usleman’s experience is backed up by anecdotal evidence from other psychics around the country. Liveperson.com matches psychics with customers on its Web site and says the uncertain economy has been good for business. Some psychics charge up to $20 a minute for advice.

Many people simply feel like they have to do something, according to Professor Gita Johar at Columbia Business School in New York.

“The biggest reason people are going to see psychics is probably that they want to feel in control,” says Johar, who studies consumer behavior.

“And when they see that their financials aren’t looking so good and they really can’t turn to their financial adviser — they haven’t been getting really good advice and so they have to turn to someone else.”

Source: CNN link Filed under Weird US News

Late one evening last September, Caryl Jones ordered an iced tea at the drive-through of the McDonald’s near her Northwest Baltimore home. But that’s not what she got, according to her lawsuit in Baltimore City Circuit Court.

What Jones got was another sort of “T”: Triazinetrione — Dichloro-s-Triazinetrione Dihydrate, to be exact — better known as “McD Sanitizer,” a cleaning chemical intended for use on kitchen equipment and surfaces, according to her lawyer.

“She took a sip, it burned her mouth and she spit it out,” said Patricia S. Steiger, of the Law Offices of Seymour Goldstein.

Jones, an administrative assistant, convinced the restaurant employees to open the closed interior of the restaurant in the 4200 block of Mortimer Ave., Steiger said. The workers gave her some milk — and a sample of what she unwittingly put in her mouth, the lawyer said.

“They gave her a packet like the one that had been in there — as a matter of knowing what it was — to take with her and then she went to the emergency room” at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Steiger said.

There, doctors determined Jones had “a mild or moderate chemical reaction,” Steiger said, and eventually diagnosed her with chemical pharyngitis and tonsillitis. By mid-November, she had made a full recovery, according to Steiger.

In the suit filed last week, Jones seeks $100,000 on counts of negligence and breach of warranty.

Franchise owner Cynthia Brown declined to comment on the pending litigation, instead issuing an e-mailed statement through a McDonald’s spokeswoman.

“Nothing is more important to me than the well-being of my customers,” the e-mail said. “Rest assured, we take this matter seriously.”

According to label information from the Canadian Pest Management Regulatory Agency, a packet of “McD Sanitizer,” produced by Greensboro, N.C.-based Kay Chemical International Inc. exclusively for McDonald’s, is meant to be combined with gallons of water to clean “shake/soft serve machines, kitchen utensils, kitchen equipment, counter tops and tables.”

At this point, Steiger said, she does not know “who mixed it, when they mixed it or how they mixed it.”

The chemical is a skin irritant and swallowing it could result in mucosal damage, according to the PMRA report. Jones did not swallow the solution, Steiger said.

Asked where this suit fits among others against fast-food chains for defective products — scalding hot coffee, for example — Steiger said her case is “much simpler.”

“It wasn’t iced tea; it was cleaning solution,” she said. “It’s not a matter of degrees. She was given something that was not meant to be consumed.”

Source: MDRecord  Link Filed under Weird US News

Guangzhou, CHINA – A man has died after his mobile phone exploded, severing a major artery in his neck, according to reports.

The man, thought to be a shop assistant in his twenties at a computer shop in Guangzhou, China, died after he put a new battery in his phone. It was believed that he may have just finished charging the battery and had put the phone in his breast pocket when it exploded.

According to the local Chinese daily Shin Min Daily News, the accident happened on January 30 at 7.30pm. An employee at the shop told Chinese media that she heard a loud bang and saw her colleague lying on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. The employee said the victim had recently changed the battery in his mobile phone.

Chinese authorities have yet to determine the make and model of the phone and its battery. Some reports indicated the store was a Lenovo shop, but it was thought that this might be because the shop advertised Lenovo computer products. Police were investigating whether the phone and battery were counterfeit.

Local reports said that this was the ninth recorded cellphone explosion in China since 2002. In the most high profile recent incident, in June 2007, a 22-year-old welder, Xiao Jinpeng, died from chest wounds when his mobile phone exploded while he was at work at an iron mill in Gansu province.

A local government inquiry found that the mobile phone battery had exploded due to the heat of the iron mill. Lithium batteries are widely used in mobile phones – but if they are overcharged or exposed to heat, the inflammable liquid inside can explode.

Motorola and Nokia, two of the world’s biggest mobile phone makers, denied links to the distributors of problem batteries in China, suggesting they were counterfeit.

After the latest incident, the Shin Min Daily News published advice for consumers on how to avoid mobile phone explosions. The tips included:

- Always use original batteries. Be sure that batteries by the manufacturer are meant for your mobile phone.

- Never modify your phone

- Always use original battery chargers

- Do not expose your mobile phone to high temperatures, and avoid exposing it to direct sunlight

- Avoid long phone conversations

- Do not make or answer calls when the phone is charging

- Try to keep your phone in a bag instead of in a pocket

- Do not use damaged batteries

Source: TimesOnline Link Filed under Weird World News

Photo courtesy of Cape Coral Police Dept.

Cape Coral, FLORIDA – A Cape Coral man, who was arrested after allegedly engaging in sexual acts with two blow up dolls in a shopping center parking lot, told police he was there to buy clothes for his dolls, according to a report released today.

George Bartusek Jr., was arrested on charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace after witnesses watched him engage in sexual acts inside a car with the dolls, police said.

Officer Jeffrey Karau said he was called to the Publix parking lot at Santa Barbara Boulevard, where a large crowd had gathered around a beige Lincoln Town Car. “On my arrival, numerous people at the vehicle began yelling at me and pointing inside the vehicle,” Karau said.

Karau said he spoke with Publix store manager Frederick Wiggins, who asked Bartusek, to leave the parking lot several times because of his actions.

“I then spoke to other witnesses who stated in their written sworn statements that the defendant was performing activity with two different blow up dolls in his vehicle that was consistent with masturbation and other simulated sexual activity,” Karau said in his report.

Bartusek appeared to intentionally park in the first space in front of the Publix to attract attention, the report said. “After my investigation it was determined, that Bartusek’s actions were corrupting the public’s morals and outraged the sense of public decency,” the officer wrote.

The officer said Bartusek told him he was at the shopping center to buy clothes for his dolls at the nearby Target.

Karau said Bartusek’s shorts — with a large opening in the front — were confiscated after the arrest. He was not wearing underwear, the officer said, so he was given a gown to wear while transported to the jail for booking.

Police said he could face additional charges.

Source: News-Press.com  link filed under Weird Sex News

If you are driving in upstate New York, there’s a good chance you’ll see deer crossing the road. The Google Street View car did just that and more, while recording it all on their 360 degree cameras. Google responded to the incident as follows:

“Gathering the imagery for Street View requires quite a bit of driving; as such, we take safety very seriously. Unfortunately, accidents do happen — as some people have noticed, one of our Street View cars hit a deer while driving on a rural road in upstate New York. Due to several user requests these images are no longer available in Street View. “

“The driver was understandably upset, and promptly stopped to alert the local police and the Street View team at Google. The deer was able to move and had left the area by the time the police arrived.”

The screen shots below were grabbed before Google took them down.

On the afternoon of June 12, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked into the woods in Bois de Boulogne, France, carrying two suitcases. The postgraduate student at the Sorbonne had shot and killed a female exchange student, a classmate of his, the day before. After eating portions of her body, he tried to dump the corpse in a remote lake. Witnesses saw him and he was soon arrested. According to reports, Issei uttered the following to the French police who raided his home: “I killed her to eat her flesh.”

French psychologists found Sagawa to have been legally insane at the time of the crime and, therefore, unfit to stand trial. He was subsequently exempted from prosecution. He returned to his homeland, where Japanese authorities tried to put him on trial for murder. French justice officials refused to hand over the necessary documents to carry on and he was again set free.

In his own words:

Around the time I entered junior high school I became obsessed with the Western actress Grace Kelly—an obsession that lasted right through high school. That was the beginning of my infatuation with Occidental people. Before I knew it, tall, healthy-looking Western women became the trigger for my cannibalistic fantasies. I guess my infatuation with such women stemmed from the fact that I was short, ugly, and had an inferiority complex and therefore sought people who were the exact opposite of myself. Eventually, I began feeling a strong desire to bite into them—not to kill them or eat them per se, but merely to gnaw on their flesh. It was purely a form of sexual desire. It wasn’t like I felt like eating someone every time I was hungry. But you know how you tend to feel a stronger sexual desire when you’ve eaten a full meal? That’s when I would start feeling the urge to eat a girl. It’s absurd, right? In essence, it’s different from the type of hunger that people experience for food. This cannibalistic urge, “I want to eat human meat,” is a sort of sexual appetite…

To read the full macabre and fascinating interview, head over to Vice Magazine

It has been called the Betty Ford clinic for jihadists and within minutes of arriving at the Care Rehabilitation Centre on the outskirts of Riyadh, you can see why. The small complex, where the Saudi Arabian government is exploring a new way of reforming its wayward radicals, feels more like an exclusive boarding school than a Saudi jail.

Inmates have access to swimming pools, table tennis and PlayStations. In the evenings, guards and prisoners play football. An air-conditioned tent sits adjacent to the sports field, serving as a dining hall and common room where the prisoners are served rice and lamb with fresh fruit.

In return for this privileged treatment, the prisoners – Islamic extremists, some of whom are convicted murderers – are obliged to attend lessons based around Islamic law and the jurisprudence of jihad. A team of psychologists teaches detainees how they should manage their emotions, particularly when reacting to world events.

The Saudi government insists all this is necessary to promote genuine rehabilitation and foster a meaningful relationship with the jihadists. But in the easy-going atmosphere of the “resort” – nobody calls it a prison – where inmates are referred to as “beneficiaries”, it is easy to forget the seriousness of some of their crimes.

The centre is divided into six areas, four of which hold Saudi nationals who fought (or tried to) in Iraq. The other two hold returnees from Guantanamo Bay.

The government has realized that the use of force alone will not contain Al-Qaeda. It has created an ideological security unit that coordinates the kingdom’s efforts in the war of ideas against its native jihadists. Those arrested in connection with terrorism are routinely subjected to attempts to reform their thinking. Hundreds of men have passed through the Saudi program, which has been viewed as a model for similar efforts elsewhere.

Since the program started in 2004, Nine graduates, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups .

The Saudi Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests after it emerged last week that two other graduates had joined the Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda. Both had been released from Guantanamo, in Cuba, in 2007, and one is suspected of having helped plan a deadly attack in Yemen last year.

Sources: Times Online &  Sydney Morning Herald  -  filed under Weird World News

Residents of Morris County, New Jersey were recently visited by UFOs. Five strange red lights appeared in the sky. The lights seemed to move together in groups, a trio and a duo. They were seen by dozens of people.

Paul Hurley, who is a pilot, saw the lights and immediately ruled out the possibility of airplanes, citing his 20 years experience in the aviation industry.

Here’s another video of eye-witnesses on Fox News that backs up the sighting.

CANBERRA — Two Myanmar fishermen have survived for almost a month in shark-infested waters by floating in a large ice box after their boat sank, rescue officials said.

The men, both aged in their 20s, were on a 12-meter Thai wooden fishing boat with 18 others when it sank in heavy seas off Australia’s north coast on December 23, said Australian Maritime Safety Authority spokeswoman Tracey Jiggins.

“They had no safety equipment, no beacons, no means of communication and they’d been drifting for 25 days,” Jiggins told Reuters on Tuesday, describing the ice box as “desk sized.”

“For them to have even been spotted in a huge body of water is amazing,” she said.

The men were spotted by an Australian coastal patrol aircraft on Saturday. They were winched onto a rescue helicopter and taken to hospital on Thursday Island, off Australia’s far north.

“They were desperately keen to get on. When they got up they drank 2 liters of water each, within seconds,” helicopter pilot Terry Gadenne told Australian television.

A photograph taken by Customs aircraft showed the pair standing in a high, red-sided ice box used by commercial fishing boats and desperately waving at rescuers, surrounded by open sea.

Hospital officials said the pair were hungry and dehydrated after drifting 25 days at sea during the monsoon season and recent cyclonic storms in the region, but they were recovering well and would be released later on Tuesday.

The pair would then be questioned by immigration officials and police, who had not yet determined how the pair survived and what they did for food and water.

Jiggins said the others on board the boat would certainly have perished and no search for other survivors was planned.

Source: NewsDaily Link Filed under Weird World News.

LAGOS – Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery.

Vigilantes took the black and white beast to the police saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into a goat to escape arrest after trying to steal a Mazda 323.

“The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them. However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,” Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed told Reuters by telephone.

“We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody. We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,” he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

Source: Reuters via Yahoo News Link filed under Weird World News.

SANTIAGO – A prominent fashion designer has sparked outrage in Chile by dressing up models like the Virgin Mary — in some cases with ample, near-naked breasts.

The Roman Catholic Church condemned Ricardo Oyarzun’s plans for a show featuring the models, and a conservative group tried unsuccessfully to block it in court.

Oyarzun said he had received telephone threats and had excrement smeared on his doorstep.

“There is no pornography here, there’s no sex, there are no virgins menstruating or feeling each other up,” Oyarzun said ahead of the catwalk show set to be held at a Santiago nightclub later on Thursday. “This is artistic expression.”

He said his designs — which include halos, look as though they come from a nativity scene and include religious icons — were inspired by the Virgin Mary but not intended to represent her.

“We look on with special pain and deplore those acts which seek to tarnish manifestations of sincere love toward the Virgin Mary, which end up striking at the dignity of womankind by presenting her as an object of consumption,” Chile’s Episcopal Conference, which includes Catholic bishops, said in a statement.

The show is more evidence that Chile, heavily influenced by the church for decades, is shaking off its reputation as one of the most socially conservative countries in Latin America.

Source: Reuters link filed under Weird World News

BY DREW WATERS

Every web site that I visit seems to be blitzed by Vimax Penis Enlargement ads. Women’s faces looking with shock, surprise and horror in the direction of my crotch. Facial expressions designed to make me feel insecure about the size of my penis. LOL … The ads promise me, at least, an additional 4 inches.

One assumes that Vimax, the company behind the penis pills, must be throwing bags of money at a huge advertising campaigns with Google and Yahoo, but it turns out that most of these ads are malware that have taken over your browser and are displaying their wares. (If you have the Firefox browser you can go to the Mozilla web site and download the NoScript add-on to kill these ads.)

Dr. Michael Donnenberg of the University of Maryland describes the effect of penis enlargement pills and creams as providing zero results. “There may however be a placebo effect i.e. a psychological effect making the user think he has a larger penis, and increasing his confidence, when in fact there is no actual change to his penis size.”

A review, conducted by Drs. Kevan Wylie and Ian Eardley of the Porterback Clinic and Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield and St. James’ Hospital in Leeds, United Kingdom, respectively, combines results from more than 50 international research projects into penis size and small penis syndrome (SPS) conducted since 1942. It shows similar poor results.

“The issue of attractiveness to women is complex, but most data suggest that penile size is much lower down the list of priorities for women than such issues as a man’s personality and external grooming,” the researchers write.

So the Vimax ads in the end may just provide cultural entertainment. Another company trying to profit from a widely held male cultural myth that size matters most.

Here’s a collection of some of the ads appearing in my browser window in the past few months:

Don't eat the Christmas ornaments!

Thousands of people end up in the emergency room every Christmas. Here is a list of the Ten most common Christmas accidents.

• Every year at least 3 people are reported with broken arms due to pulling Christmas crackers.
• Over 200 people are admitted to hospital after not removing all the pins from new shirts
• Over the last 10 years 27 people have died testing batteries on their tongue.
• Hundreds of people cut themselves with knives and scissors they are using to open presents.
• Last year 2 people died eating Christmas decorations they thought were chocolates.
• Since 1997 26 people have died watering Christmas trees with the the Christmas lights on.
• In 2007 12 people sustained burns when trying on a new sweater with a cigarette in their mouth.
• Last year 52 children were admitted to hospital after swallowing the contents of perfume and cologne bottles.
• 5 People suffered 3rd degree burns last year when trying to flame torch their Christmas pudding.
• Every year hundreds of people fall off ladders and break bones while hanging Christmas decorations.
  .
  Source: collected from various health news reports that seem to appear every December warning consumers about the dangers of the Christmas season. filed under Weird World News