xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
To conceal an enormous open-cast mining operation about 10 miles from Newcastle, England, and to reduce the cost of carting away millions of tons of debris, the mining company recently hired artist Charles Jencks to incorporate the waste into a reclining female sculpture, a half-mile long, running along the A1 highway, with breasts forming peaks 100 feet off the ground. The “Goddess of the North” is expected to take three years to finish, will have footpaths over and around it, and be slightly larger than the “Angel of the North” metal sculpture 15 miles to the south.
German artist Winfried Witt has invited about 30 people to his latest installation, which will be to observe the late-May birth of his and wife Ramune Gele’s first child, in Berlin’s DNA-Galerie. Though more than 100 million babies are born every year on Earth, Witt promised that his viewers will participate in “an exceptional experience” in that “man, because he is unique, is an existential object of art.” Witt wants to “show living people, perceived at the same time as object and subject, through a kind of magnifying glass and to expose man in the situations of his personal life.”
Animal welfare professors at Britain’s Bristol University, preparing for a June conference on Compassion in World Farming, said they will present research to show that cows experience pain, fear and happiness; can form friendships in a herd; are good problem-solvers (with encephalograph-measured brainwaves suddenly active when they searched for a path to food); and can hold grudges against other cows for months or years.
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