My Strange Week In Review

One of the side affects of this modern age is the deluge of information that confronts us every day. We are virtually swimming in it. And with so many sources dispensing so many facts, theories, opinions, and myths, it’s not unusual for us to hear all sorts of strange and wonderful things. That’s another big difference between this current time and the not too distant past. For most of my life, we were quite content not know everything. If it wasn’t worth the effort of searching through the dictionary or encyclopedia or (gasp) a trip to the library, well, we were okay with not knowing it. Furthermore, when something strange came across our radar, it was a big deal. I was absolutely amazed by the radio transmissions from the Apollo missions. Never mind I had no idea what they were talking about, the fact that they were voices from men on the moon was incredible. Nowadays, we hear some of the most bizarre things and we are hardly notice them at all. By way of example, these are some of the stories I heard this week:

* I heard from two unrelated sources that Sammy Hagar was abducted by aliens in 1967.

* I saw a video of Koko, a gorilla who uses sign language, cuddling with Mr. Rogers and telling him she loves him. Then she took off his shoes.

* There was a really cool solar eclipse, visible in Australia, but I saw it on the Internet.

* I learned that there could be as many as 4 billion earth-like planets in our galaxy, able to sustain life.

* I heard and read that our federal government spent $402,721 on the development of underwear that can detect when you are smoking.

These are just a few of the strange things I heard this week, and I wasn’t even looking for them. Who knows what other tales of the bizarre I could have found had I been looking? Now this is the really strange part – as I shared some of these oddities with my friends, they weren’t all that impressed. They were just drops in the ocean of information. What will it take to fascinate us again?