OFFBEAT
What Is It with Dragons?
What is it with Dragon’s? From hit television shows, books to video games, cartoons and Chinese Astrological signs, it seems dragons are popular and have been for a long time. Known to many cultures they were described by Ancient Greeks as Draconta, meaning “to watch”...
Acquired Savant Syndrome | All It Takes is a Hit in the Head
Did you ever want to be super smart in Math, history, or science or how about have an incredible memory or even be the next Picasso or Rembrandt? What if all you had to do was get hit in the head and that was that? There have been documented cases of such a phenomenon...
Why Boys Have Cooties and Other Myths of Xenophobia
In a Calvin and Hobbes comic, six-year-old Calvin finds himself the only boy on a playground full of girls and declares: “Oh no! I’m in cootie central! I haven’t had my shots!” Thousands of kids on playgrounds all over the world continue to be infected with—that most...
10 Grossest Things Humans Do Without Realizing It
Human beings are disgusting. That is an absolute given. Whether it is denied or embraced depends on the person and where their standards lie or how little shame they have. Yet, despite our compulsions or bad habits that make us such uniquely gross creatures, we...
Outlawing Christmas and other Christmas Fun Facts
In the early 17th century, a wave of religious reform changed the way Christmas was celebrated in Europe. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas.
Zombie Chickens | Lazarus and beyond
Who would believe such a farfetched tale? A chicken gets its head chopped off, then comes back to life and walks around crowing for three weeks as if nothing is wrong. Stranger things have happened.
Bagel Heading | Is beauty Skin Deep?
It seems that a lot of the new and unusual trends come from Japan; “Bagel Heading” first appeared around 2000 but has really picked up steam this year. The procedure was featured in a new National Geographic show called “Taboo.” Which, not surprisingly, encouraged people to try it.
Scarification | The Ultimate Body Modification
Body modification is the rage with people from all walks of life. The old stigmas are being replaced…
New Religions Part Five | Two Sides of the Same Coin
Creativity, a religion that sounds like something I could get behind, after all who doesn’t want a little creativity, that is until I found out what it was really about and who was behind it. Founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen (inventor of the wall mounted can opener), Creativity is a nontheistic, ethnocentric “religion” that aims for a revolution in values, and a rejection of societies principles as they stand. To put it another way, it is anti-semitic, racists and anti-Christian.
New Religions Part Four | I AM Activity
In the 1930’s Guy and Edna Ballard founded the original Ascended Master Teachings religious movement, the “I AM activity.” This activity was an offshoot of Theosophy (we’ll get to that in another post) and a predecessor of several New Age religions.
