News Bytes

Some interesting tidbits for the day, handpicked by YC.

A woman has been fatally bitten by a snake in a church somewhere in US. My first thought was, "Why was there a snake in the church? Is the place where it's located so rural that snakes could have easily slithered in?"

If you read further on the story, mentioned was this practice called snake handling. Call myself a church-goer when I scratched my head as I tried to figure out what on earth is this. Apparently it originated from The Gospel of Mark. Aha! How come I don't remember reading it? So out of curiosity, I decided to open up the Bible to check out if it's true. Alas! Mark is not a short book. So I gave up after scanning through the whole book and couldn't detect the word "snake" anywhere.

I googled it and found the verse in the very first results. Mark 16:18 They will be able to handle snakes with safety, ... .

I will say no more about this, because I don't think that my superficial knowledge of the divine truth equips me enough to elaborate further. Any opinions out there?

By the way, another interesting story: Sociologists in China encouraging a bolder attitude towards sex says "no" to wife-swapping. Check it out; I almost fainted when I read it. Currently I'm just ... well ... flabbergasted.