Advertisement

Watercooler Stories

Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter

College night -- bring the little ones

NEW YORK, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- When New York's Uniondale High School held its annual college night recently, it even allowed kindergarteners to take part.

Advertisement

Stacie Reid, guidance director for the local school district, said that by opening college night up to all ages, education officials hoped to get an early start at promoting college in the area, New York Newsday reported.

"Many times ... we start talking to the children about college by 10th grade if we're lucky," she said. "I believe college prep starts long before high school."

The school district is made up primarily of black and Latino families, two minorities Reid feels are underrepresented on U.S. college campuses.

While older students attending the event last Wednesday spoke with college recruiters, the younger ones focused on age-appropriate activities -- such as collecting stickers and coloring pictures of universities' trademark pennants.

Advertisement


Better pull your pants up in this Ga. town

MACON, Ga., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Officials in Hawkinsville, Ga., have banned the fashion trend of wearing sagging pants, becoming the first local government in Georgia to do so.

While most adults in Hawkinsville have voiced their support for the ban on baggy pants, the local teenage population had less supportive things to say about losing of one of their more popular fashion statements, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

"The law is retarded," 19-year-old Preston Mobley said. "No one should be able to tell me to keep my pants up."

Darlene Davis, 50, said politicians in the South have the right idea in treating the trend as a representation in indecent exposure.

"It used to be you could just see a crack," she said. "Now you see both cheeks."

Officials in Atlanta are considering similar restrictions on saggy pants, the newspaper said.


For some, science confirms shroud faith

FOUNTAIN VALLEY, Calif., Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Fountain Valley, Calif., surgeon August Accetta has not given up on proving the Shroud of Turin is authentic, despite evidence to the contrary.

Believers in the shroud, which appears to be bloodstained with the image of a crucified body, say it was Jesus’ burial shroud. However, a series of scientific tests -- including radiocarbon testing that dates the cloth to 13 or 14 centuries after Jesus’ death -- have cast doubt on the shroud’s origins, The Orange County (Calif.) Register reported Sunday.

Advertisement

Accetta, a 48-year-old urogynecological surgeon, is not dissuaded, the newspaper said. He has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on his quest, and has even founded a local museum about the shroud.

The self-made researcher has visited Turin, Italy, several times to examine the shroud, and even zapped himself with gamma rays in an attempt to prove his theory that the image was created when Jesus turned into light during his resurrection.

Acetta is not alone, the Register said. Some researchers support such theories about the shroud, and he is also part of a larger trend of researchers seeking to settle religious questions through scientific methods.


Pair became successful meteorite hunters

SAN ANTONIO, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Two men who met at a gem show years ago have parlayed their shared interests to become a successful team of U.S. meteorite hunters.

Phil Mani said that before he met professional meteorite hunter Steve Arnold at the 2000 gem show, he never imagined making a living tracking down space debris, The San Antonio (Texas) Express-News reported Sunday.

"This is a much easier and much simpler way to sample the solar system," Mani said. "These rocks come to us."

Mani and Arnold have found a 1,410-pound meteorite that likely crashed-landed more than 10,000 years ago and could fetch $700,000 at an upcoming auction.

Advertisement

While the two are anxious to sell the meteorite and continue their meteor-hunting ways, Mani said seeing it on display during a recent U.S. tour changed his thinking about where the meteorite belongs.

"Knowing you made someone stop and contemplate this wonderful object is just a wonderful feeling," he told the Express-News. "It doesn't belong in a private collection."

Latest Headlines