Watching the World
Dynamite Blast Disaster
◆ On November 11, 1977, at 9:30 p.m., the city of Iri, Korea, was rocked by a blast of some 30 tons of dynamite. The explosives were in a freight car at the railroad station in the downtown area of this city of 120,000. According to The Korea Herald, 9,530 houses were damaged (675 of them being destroyed entirely), 58 persons died, one was missing, and 1,341 were injured.
The local Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses had its windows blown out, and three Witness homes were demolished, others being at least half destroyed. One Witness reported that a large piece of metal crashed through his home just a foot (.30 meter) away from him. Among Jehovah’s Witnesses, 12 families were affected, but none lost their lives. For the Witness families that lost homes in the disaster, temporary quarters were made available in the homes of fellow believers, and the branch office of the Watch Tower Society provided money and emergency supplies.
Lure of TV
◆ John Ryor, president of the National Education Association, recently cited a study by that organization indicating that U.S. children spend more time watching television than they do with their parents and teachers. Referring to Ryor’s remarks, an Associated Press dispatch stated: “By the time a U.S. student finishes high school he will have watched between 14,000 and 15,000 hours of television, but will have spent less than 14,000 hours undistracted with his parents or studying with his teachers.”
Newfound Body in Space
◆ Charles Kowal, an astronomer at Hale Observatories in Pasadena, California, recently uncovered photographic evidence that a formerly unnoted heavenly body is orbiting the sun in a path between Saturn and Uranus. Other astronomers have confirmed his findings. The object may be some 300 miles (480 kilometers) in diameter, but further study will be necessary to ascertain its actual size. However, it is not thought to be a comet, an asteroid or a moon. Kowal favors calling the newly discovered body a planetoid.
Hypnotism Under Suspicion
◆ A subcommittee of the Israeli parliament (the Knesset) recently was commissioned to look into “the possibility that deputies were being put under the spell of hypnotists,” reported the New York Daily News. Reportedly, the question arose after a deputy who did not know Hebrew addressed the Knesset in that language, mastered through a learning method employed by a hypnotist. Moshe Shahal of the Alignment Bloc had “warned that hypnotized deputies faced the danger of not expressing their own opinions but, instead, views planted in their minds” by their hypnotists, the newspaper said. At any rate, that possibility launched an investigation.
Best Sellers
◆ In a list of “10 All-Time Best-selling or Distributed Books” (excerpted from the Book of Lists), Good Housekeeping magazine places the Bible first, with a distribution of 2,458,000,000 copies from 1816 to 1975. In second place were the 800,000,000 copies of Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-tung. Listed third was the American Spelling Book, by Noah Webster, with 50,000,000 to 100,000,000 copies. Fourth place was occupied by The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life, with a listed distribution of 74,000,000 copies. (However, 89,000,000 copies have been printed to date in 101 languages.) This Bible study aid, bearing a 1968 copyright by the Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, is distributed by Jehovah’s Witnesses.
“An Intoxicated Society”?
◆ A six-man Australian Senate committee recently issued a 255-page report entitled “Drug Problems in Australia—An Intoxicated Society.” The report gave an estimate of 250,000 alcoholics among that nation’s population of approximately 14 million. It also indicated that at least once a month about 10 percent of the country’s schoolchildren aged 12 to 17 get “very drunk.” According to the Associated Press, the committee report said that, on the average, Australians smoke 2.8 billion cigarettes per month. Also, it was noted that Australia has the highest rate of kidney disease in the world because of its abuse in using analgesics. So the committee recommended the enacting of new laws against alcohol and cigarette advertising, and the imposing of rigid controls on selling analgesics.
Hungry Mouths to Feed
◆ It is estimated that in the United States there are now some 70 million family pets—25 million cats, compared with 45 million dogs. And, according to one maker of pet food, that number is rising by 3 percent a year. During 1976, family-owned dogs and cats consumed $2.6 billion worth of pet food, and 1977 was expected to top that figure.
If You Shovel Snow
◆ The strain of shoveling snow can lead to a heart attack, particularly if you are 40 years of age or older. According to the American Heart Association, therefore, it is advisable to let your physician decide whether you should engage in this activity. If you do shovel snow, do it either before eating, or no sooner than two hours after having eaten. Wear lightweight, though warm, clothing, and rest often. Also, use not just your arms but the strength of your legs and back while doing the job.
Selective Songsters
◆ Recent experiments indicate that infant sparrows are selective when learning to sing. Peter Marler and Susan Peters of Rockefeller University reared baby male swamp sparrows in chambers where the young birds were exposed to recordings that mixed the song patterns of song sparrows and swamp sparrows. The result? These swamp sparrows learned only songs consisting of syllables peculiar to the swamp sparrow.
Energy Conservation
◆ Since 1974, the French have saved some 12 million tons of oil, or the equivalent thereof in other sources of energy. This has been the result of a firm energy conservation plan. Violators of France’s energy laws on lighting business places and advertising signs can be jailed. Besides heating some buildings with geothermal energy, during the past year the French have been operating the world’s biggest commercial solar energy plant.
School Vandalism
◆ The National Education Association recently reported that during 1976 U.S. schools spent more money repairing vandalized property than they did in obtaining supplies and books. Their ‘vandalism repair bill’ reached $600 million.
Catholics and Birth Control
◆ “More than 90% of American Catholic married couples use birth control methods forbidden by their church,” states Medical World News, citing the recently reported outcome of the 1975 National Fertility Study. Now, for the first time, their contraceptive measures, basically, are the same as those of U.S. non-Catholics. Two decades ago, however, just 20 percent of the Catholic couples who had been married for five years or less used types of birth control other than the rhythm method.
Woe to the Rodents!
◆ Five years ago electric guitar maker Bob Brown discovered dozens of mice and rats dead in his San Diego, California, workshop. What had done away with the rodents? Vibrations from a guitar that Brown had miswired and neglected to turn off. This sparked an idea, and Brown developed a device (called AMIGO, for ants, mice and gophers) to rid large areas of small pests. His device gives off electromagnetic waves that are said to affect only small pests, upsetting their neurological systems. Unless they flee, he claims that the pests become dazed, stop eating and soon die. His device sells for $350 to $1,000. Two of them recently cleared out the gophers from 10 acres (4 hectares) of parade field at a U.S. Marine base.
Helmets and Cycle Safety
◆ In the U.S. a number of states have repealed laws requiring that motorcyclists wear protective helmets. But a four-state check by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicates that absence of this requirement has a bearing on fatalities in motorcycle accidents. These have risen 20 percent in the four states monitored.
Tibet’s Sea Creatures
◆ Chinese scientists are exploring the highest country in the world, Tibet, whose average elevation is about 16,000 feet (4,900 meters). Yet even at such altitudes, “the researchers discovered fossils of sea creatures in the rocks,” reports Parade magazine, “indicating the area was once covered by water.”
Making Monks
◆ In its efforts to recruit new monks, a Greek monastery may be using questionable means, according to the Athens Daily Post. “Monk Alexios of the Xenophon Monastery in Mount Athos has sent a very emotional letter to many children in the city of Salonika urging them to abandon the common life and become monks,” reports the paper. In one case, it says that after intervention by “the judiciary, five young boys from the city of Trikala returned home after spending a week” in Xenophon Monastery. And the Minister of Public Order ordered city officials to “question the five boys and find out whether they have been conscripted in the monastery life willingly or not.”
“Blood-doping” Athletes
◆ A procedure that first drew major attention during the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal has become a controversy in sports. It is known as “blood doping,” the withdrawing of blood from an athlete and reinfusing it at a later date in an effort to increase performance. A German athlete said that blood doping was common in soccer, running, swimming, skiing and other sports. One researcher experimented with a group of long-distance runners, using blood infusion with half of them. He concluded that it had no significant effect on the performances of the runners. Yet, others claim that the same data did show some increase in performance levels.
Osaka “in the Red”
◆ Many cities throughout the world are deeply in debt, as their expenses continually exceed their incomes. Japan’s cities are no exception. In most cases they too are “in the red,” for all practical purposes, “bankrupt.” To make matters worse for Japan’s second-largest city, Osaka, its income was cut by greater refunds to companies than anticipated. Corporation taxes in the city are imposed in advance, being based on the previous year’s earnings. Thus, if a firm’s profits slip below the preceding year, then the firm is entitled to refunds. Due to the recession and collapse of some large companies, city officials were obliged to add large sums of money to the tax refunds, worsening the debt problem.
Ancient Pollution
◆ Back in 1972 three Eskimo brothers found the body of an Eskimo woman frozen in the Alaskan permafrost. Since then scientists have been studying the woman, who they claim lived 1,600 years ago. “She definitely had severe black lung,” says a National Park Service anthropologist. This condition, common among coal miners today, comes from inhaling coal dust. In the Eskimo’s case, though, it apparently was acquired by inhaling accumulated fumes from seal-oil or whale-blubber lamps in her cramped living space.