By A.J. Jacobs

For my book, The Year of Living Biblically, I spent 12 months trying to follow every rule in the Old Testament. Even the obscure one-like stoning adulterers (I used pebbles) and never shaving your beard (I did a lot of itching). My challenge: to reconcile the Bible's easy-to-grasp wisdom with some of its seemingly baffling laws. The following are a few of the more arcane rules I found along the way, with possible reasons behind them.

1. THE RULE: "...she shall put the rainment of her capitivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in unto her and be her husband..." (from Deuteronomy 21:10-14)

THE TRANSLATION: If you capture a beautiful woman during war, and you want to marry her, you must first have her shave her head and trim her nails. Then you must live with her for a month without touching her. After that, she's all yours.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: Think of it like gun control-it's a mandatory waiting period. If you still want to marry a bald, short-nailed woman after a month of no sex, then maybe it truly is love.

(Image credit: Flickr user Willam Cho)

2. THE RULE: "Even these of them ye may eat: the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind. / But all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you." (Leviticus 11:22-23)

THE TRANSLATION: You can't eat bugs. Well, except for locusts, beetles, and grasshoppers-those you can eat all you want.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: A ban on eating bugs isn't all that hard to argue with, but why the loophole for locusts et al.? It's believed that this is actually an example of the Bible's pragmatism. If locusts swarmed and devoured all the crops, the Israelites would have nothing left to eat-except the locusts themselves.



3. THE RULE: "...thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed; neither shall a garment of mingled linen and woolen come upon thee." (Leviticus 19:19)

THE TRANSLATION: Don't wear clothes made of mixed fibers. Wool-and-linen blends are particularly bad. Polycotton is probably OK.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: The Old Testament was obsessed with separating things. (Don't wear mixed fibers; don't mix milk and meat.) According to many biblical scholars, the idea was to drill the notion of separation into the ancient Israelite mind. This way, they would remain separate from the pagans and not intermarry-a sin even worse than mixing wool and linen.

4. THE RULE: "And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days; and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even." (Leviticus 15: 19)

THE TRANSLATION: Stay away from a woman if she's menstruating. She's impure, and if you touch her, you'll become impure, too.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: While many people say this rule is misogynistic (kind of like the theological equivalent of cooties), some scholars and devout Jews defend the practice. They say it has to do with reverence for life. When a woman has her period, it's like a small death. A potential life has vanished, and this is a way of paying your respects.



5. THE RULE: "A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes..." (Proverbs 6: 12-13)

THE TRANSLATION: No winking. This is just one example, but the Bible contains no less than four anti-winking passages.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATION: Many believe that the Bible's "wink" referred to a tacit approval of evil. As in "I saw what you did, but I won't tell." But let's face it; the wink is a creepy gesture, no matter how you cut it.

[Editor's note:] All Old testament verses are taken from the King James translation of the Bible. They are presented here solely for the purpose of historic investigation and in no way reflect the religious views of the magazine.

__________________________

The above article was written by A.J. Jacobs. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2007 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

You can spice up your Twitter feed by following characters from movies, TV, and literature! Twitter is full of people who don't exist, but have plenty to say anyway. Buzzfeed searched for the most entertaining of those feeds and listed them for your convenience. Link

One tree + four mirrors = an entire forest! Step into a small booth and experience an infinite number of trees. This installation by DUS Architects was shown to folks in Oosterdokskade, Amsterdam last month. http://www.dusarchitects.com/nieuws.php?taal=english&nieuwsid=118 -via Metafilter

(Image credits: Pieter Kers)

Robert Sosebee of Austell, Georgia came home to find he had been ticketed for keeping livestock in the city. But he doesn't own any chickens, except for a couple of ceramic hens decorating his lawn.

Sosebee believes that one of his neighbors might have seen his ceramic chickens on the front lawn and called the county, thinking that the chickens were real.

“The code enforcement officers brought me a paper violation saying I had some chickens, but I didn’t," said Sosebee.

The enforcement officer apparently relied on a complaint and had not looked for the chickens himself. Code enforcers later tore up the ticket. Link

(Image credit: WSB-TV)

Charles Jenkins of Indianapolis, Indiana was awakened from sleep Tuesday morning by a loud crash. He found an intruder climbing through the living room window.

Jenkins said he grabbed his cane and hit the intruder in the head. That seemed to stun the would-be burglar, who quickly jumped back outside through the window.

Jenkins said the suspect ran to a truck out back behind the house, where he believes another suspect was waiting to drive them away.

Jenkins is 70 years old. Police are looking through recordings on his security cameras for evidence against the burglar. Link (with video)

Gary Detro lost his high school class ring at a football game in Sherman, Texas during his senior year. That was in 1969, and he never found it. Until now.

Fast forward to July, 2010. Crews working on Bearcat Stadium's drainage problems are putting in a new field. They removed about seven inches of dirt. That's when the rains came and flattened out the soil.

"I just saw something shiny down there. I picked it up and I didn't think a whole bunch about it. It was a ring," said Jeff Hinton, a Sherman ISD employee.

Hinton and Matt Mitchusson found a 1969 yearbook and matched the initials engraved on the ring to Detro. They found a "Detro" in Sherman, Gary's sister-in-law, who led them to Gary in Celina.

Detro had looked through the field for days after losing the ring, and then bought a replacement. Link

The 1984 film Ghostbusters starred Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, and Dan Akroyd as paranormal exterminators in New York City (later joined by Ernie Hudson). The script was written by Ramis and Akroyd. The movie was #1 for five weeks straight that summer, and became the most successful comedy of the 1980s. But you already knew all that, didn't you? Here are ten things you might not know about Ghostbusters.



1. The story as Dan Akroyd originally envisioned it involved time travel and many more ghostbusters. He wrote the principle roles for John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, and John Candy. Belushi died before the movie was made, and Candy and Murphy weren't interested. Harold Ramis changed most of the original plot to make the production affordable.

2. The film had no name through most of its development. One name that was considered was Ghoststoppers. After the producers settled on Ghostbusters, plans went ahead. Some time later, it was brought to their attention that a live action children's show named The Ghost Busters had aired during the 1975-76 TV season. Columbia quickly pursued negotiations with Filmation, the owners of the series, to secure rights to the title they were already using. After the movie became a hit, Filmation went back and produced an animated series called Filmation's Ghostbbusters, using the same characters from the earlier live-action series. A separate animated series from Columbia Pictures called The Real Ghostbusters based on the movie began in 1986.



3. The voice of the gatekeeper Zuul, the minion of Gozer, was that of Ivan Reitman, the film's director, but he didn't take a credit for it. Just another trick at a producer's disposal for saving money -one more voiceover artist they didn't have to pay!

4. The Proton Pack is the weapon of choice for the Ghostbusters. It is sort of a particle-beam weapon. We have some of those in real-life now, such as the Large Hadron Collider and other particle-acceleration laboratories, but you can't carry something like that on your back. Columbia Pictures had the Proton Packs made by the prop department out of fiberglass with various gizmos added like pneumatic fittings, resistors, and anything else lying around that might look appropriate.



5. Adult film star Ron Jeremy appeared in a the crowd as the containment unit explodes. The scene is about an hour into the movie, and Jeremy is to the left, sporting his iconic mustache.

6. Harold Ramis, who played Dr. Egon Spengler, is better known as a director. Before writing and acting in Ghostbusters, he directed Caddyshack and National Lampoon's Vacation. After Ghostbusters, he directed Bill Murray again in Groundhog Day.



7. The spirit/diety Gozer takes the form of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man because Dr. Raymond Stantz (Akroyd) thought of him as someone who would never hurt him. Stay Puft is a fictional company. The Marshmallow Man was only one of many oversized monsters in the original script -the rest were cut due to budget concerns.

8. The voracious green ghost that passes through walls and leaves slime behind is known as Slimer, although he was never referred to by name in the first Ghostbusters movie. Instead, the cast and crew called him "Onion Head"! Oh yes, the voice of the-ghost-to-be-later-known-as Slimer was also director Ivan Reitman.

9. "Who you gonna call?" The theme song "Ghostbusters" by Ray Parker, Jr. went to #1 on the Billboard singles chart and stayed there for three weeks. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the best original song category, and won a Grammy. But you won't find the music video on the home video version of the movie Ghostbusters, due to a plagiarism suit brought by Huey Lewis in 1984. Lewis charged that the tune to "Ghostbusters" was essentially the same as "I Want a New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News, which came out six months earlier. The suit was settled out of court in 1985, with one of the stipulations being that neither party would ever discuss the suit in public. Believe it or not, Huey Lewis was asked to come up with a theme song for Ghostbusters, but turned down the project, after which the producers approached Ray Parker, Jr.



10. Ghostbusters III has been in discussion for years. Dan Akroyd had a script ready long ago. Producer Ivan Reitman says the movie will begin filming this fall for a 2012 release. The principle characters will be played by younger actors, although the original cast may appear as well. Bill Murray is not interested in participating.

Ghostbusters Stuff From the NeatoShop:

Ghostbusters Slimed Energy Drink

Ghostbusters Sours

Ghostbusters Ectoplasm Energy Drink

More: Video Game & Cartoons Inspired Energy
Drinks and Candies

(Break.com link)

A leisure firm in Golubitskaya on the Azov Sea launched a donkey into the air on a parasail as a promotional stunt. After the video was released, Russian police began investigating the matter and may file charges of animal cruelty. If convicted, those responsible could be sentenced to up to two years. Link

Authorities at the international airport in Mexico city detained a man because of a strange bulge under his t-shirt. A search revealed that he had 18 tiny monkeys hidden in a girdle underneath!

The Public Safety Department said in a statement Monday that 38-year-old Roberto Cabrera arrived on a commercial flight Friday from Lima, Peru, when authorities noticed the bulge and conducted a body search.

The department says Cabrera was carrying the 6-inch titi monkeys in pouches attached to the girdle.

Two of the monkeys were dead.

Cabrera was arrested on charges of trafficking an endangered species.

Cabrera told authorities he was carrying the monkeys in a suitcase but decided to put them in his girdle "so the X-rays wouldn't hurt them."

http://www.latimes.com/features/odd-news/ktla-titi-money-smuggling,0,4421366.story

(Image credit: Flickr user Lea Maimone)

See also: 10 Weird Items People Tried to Smuggle

The cargo ship M.V. Altavia began to offload cargo in the U.S. territory of Guam when thousands of spiders of different species emerged from the cargo! Stevedores immediately refused to bring anything else off the ship. The offloaded cargo was returned to the ship, which was ordered out of dock.

Agriculture officials said they didn't know what type of spiders were on the ship. But they said it's a type that is not normally found on Guam and there was concern the spiders could damage the island's environment.

"It's not on Guam," Torres said. "We don't want it here."

The ship was carrying housing units and accessories that were to be used at a work force village expected to house up to 18,000 temporary workers.

The M.V. Altavia had most recently ported in South Korea. The ship was told not to return to Guam. Link

(Image credit: Flickr user Jason A. Samfield)

The new caption contest is up at NeatoGeek! The best caption for this week's sci-fi picture will win a t-shirt of your choice from the NeatoShop. Firefly fans might have a bit of an edge in this competition, but even if you have no idea what's going on, I bet you can think of something funny to say! Link

How many humans does it take to pull a platypus from a sewer pipe? About 27 were there when the creature was pulled from a pipe at the Penrith Sewage Treatment Plant in Sydney, Australia.

After Sydney Water staff gently flushed the pipe, it took four National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers to corral the juvenile male in a net before he was whisked away to a vet for a check-up.

Sightings of platypus in Western Sydney are rare, said the NPWS area manager, Jonathan Sanders.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service said there were no records of a platypus rescue in Sydney in the past four years.

But cleaner waterways might be helping the animals to make a comeback, Mr Sanders said.

"It could be that we're getting a re-colonisation of old habitats."

Link -via Arbroath, where you can see a video report.

(Image credit: Kate Geraghty)

(YouTube link)

Trains go where other vehicles can't, but only if there are tracks in those places. So it only makes sense to lay train tracks with a train! The P811-S Track Renewal Train does just that. This train finished the line to Overpelt, Belgium on May 5 of this year. -via the Presurfer

(YouTube link)

Every time we blog about an octopus, or rather, more than one octopus, we can count on a debate in the comments about the proper plural form for the animal. Here's the real scoop from Kory Stamper, who is an Associate Editor at Merriam-Webster, the dictionary company. -via Holy Kaw!

The Horton Plains slender loris has never been photographed before, and was thought to have been extinct before a rare sighting in 2002. Now a team of researchers led by Saman Gamage have captured the tiny primate on camera in Sri Lanka.

The pictures show a 20-centimeter long male adult sitting on a forest branch forest. Conservationists have discovered it appears to have shorter and sturdier limbs than other loris; a possible adaptation for the cooler, high-altitude montane -- or cloud -- forest in which it lives.

That could mean the Horton Plains slender loris is a distinct species in its own right, said Gamage. Results of the study are published in the latest edition of the journal Primate Conservation.

Link -via reddit

(Image credit: The Zoological Society of London)