INSIDE THE NEWS
by David FidelmanTHE NOSE KNOWS NEWS: A billboard in Mooresville, North Carolina emits the smell of black pepper and charcoal to promote a new line of beef. A high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard spreads the aroma by blowing air over cartridges loaded with fragrance oil. If this advertising concept proves popular, more businesses are expected to promote their products in odorama. some restrictions may apply, as with an ad for septic systems.
HOUSING MARKET NEWS: The house made famous in the 1979 film The Amityville Horror is up for sale in New York. The five-bedroom is on the market for $1.15 million. Films and books are based on the story of the Lutz family’s brief stay in the house in 1975 after six members of the DeFeo family were shot and killed by eldest son Ronald DeFeo Jr. as they slept. The home is rumored to be haunted, including visions of walls oozing slime, moving furniture and a visit from a demonic pig named Jodie. No word on whether or not ethereal possessions are extra.
SHOT IN THE ARM NEWS: A 41-year-old Michigan woman got the bizarre idea to shoot herself in the hopes that the doctors who would treat her wound would also treat a torn rotator cuff that had been causing her agonizing pain for a month. Doctors treated her bullet wound, gave anti-inflammatory medicine and sent her home. It’s what they were required to do under the law. The lesson she learned was that her aim was poor. "I guess I should have shot a little lower," she told reporters. Hopefully, she shot her bad arm.
IT'S A MAN'S WORLD NEWS: Groups that have long demanded that women be ordained Roman Catholic priests took advantage of the Vatican’s crisis over clerical sex abuse to press their cause in June, demanding the Vatican open discussions on letting women join the priesthood. Rumor is Pope Benedict XVI may consider the move. Some have said he would decide on December 21, 2012, to possibly coincide with the end of the world as we know it. Curmudgeon Corner . . .cur-mudg-eon (cur-muj?un), n. [origin unknown]
1. archaic: a crusty, ill-tempered, churlish old man.
2. modern: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner.
This month’s subject: CURIOSITY
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” Marie Curie
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
Ellen Parr
“Curiosity ... endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.”
Alistar Cooke
“Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.” Leonard Rubenstein
“Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.” Richard Whately
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.” Samuel Johnson
“Curiosity is one of those insatiable passions that grow by gratification.” Sarah Scott
“Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.” Freya Stark
“Curiosity may have killed the cat, but where human beings are concerned, the only thing a healthy curiosity can kill is ignorance.” Harry Lorayne
“I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.” Carl Sagan
“A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.” S. Blanton
“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein
“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.” Oscar Wilde | 
