Special guest Dr. Karen Stollznow helps the gang plan a heist for a sacred Yeti paw. Brian and Justin get enormous glee from watching Andrew get corrected. The ethics of eating canned whale meat is debated. We also find out how ready and willing we are to be corrupted by the dark side.

Then a super secret plan (shhhh!) is hatched to get prominent skeptics tripped out on psychoactives so we can see what happens when they have their own double rainbow experience.

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[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings072110.mp3[/podcast]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Disasters ever to strike down man or beast.

Here’s a little lesson in the history of Brett. I grew up in a little valley in the mountains surrounded by several lakes. Naturally we spent quite a bit of time out in the water during the summers and as such I had water safety drilled into me just about every weekend. How does that affect a kid?

Well…actually, for most kids it probably makes them safer around water. Unfortunately, for me, it mostly meant I had recurring nightmares about drowning at least once a week.

Dreaming about drowning in a lake is one thing, but the second I finished reading about today’s “Weirdest Disaster” all I could think about was how glad I was that I hadn’t heard this story when I was eight.

Those white dots are lake-murdered cattle...

How the hell is an eight year old supposed to cope with nightmares about a lake ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL HIM?!

To the point (finally): In 1986, 1.6 MILLION metric tons of carbon dioxide that had, up to then, been sitting safely beneath the weight of Lake Nyos in Cameroon got churned up by a volcanic eruption.

The result? An enormous cloud of deadly gas swept through valley villages at 30 miles per hour killing 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock up to 14 miles from the lake before finally dissipating to not-going-to-kill-you-instantly levels!

From a survivor (…and wikipedia):

I managed to go over to my neighbors’ houses. They were all dead . . . I decided to leave . . . . (because) most of my family was in Wum . . . I got my motorcycle . . . A friend whose father had died left with me (for) Wum . . . As I rode . . . through Nyos I didn’t see any sign of any living thing . . .

Crazy, right?!

Got a weirder disaster story you want to share? No? How about a recurring childhood nightmare?

A ceremonial ground designed by a long-gone culture to mark and celebrate the lunar cycles… just over the river from modern-day Kentucky.

This year archaeologists began using computer models to analyze Moorehead Circle’s layout and found that Ohio’s Woodhenge may have even more in common with the United Kingdom’s Stonehenge than thought—specifically, an apparently intentional astronomical alignment.

The software “allows us to stitch together various kinds of geographical data, including aerial photographs and excavation plans and even digital photographs,” explained excavation leader Robert Riordan, an archaeologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

If this isn’t somehow referenced in a Chad Ochocinco touchdown celebration this season, we will be very disappointed. Child please.

[Nat Geo]

Check out this UFO spotted in the skies over Fresno, CA over the 4th of July weekend. The news station covering the story got several confirmations  of the lights in the sky, and even some amateur video. So, what do you think? UFO, airplanes flying in formation, or sparklers tied to balloons? Let us know in the comments!

Maybe it’s the summer time, but weird beach stories are just dominating the news lately. Yesterday we had a couple of Russian jackasses strapping a mule to a parachute for publicity and today we get news that 500 penguins washed ashore in Brazil, dead as Dillinger.

About 500 of the black-and-white birds have been found just in the last 10 days on Peruibe, Praia Grande and Itanhaem beaches in Sao Paulo state, said Thiago do Nascimento, a biologist at the Peruibe Aquarium.

Most were Magellan penguins migrating north from Argentina, Chile and the Falkland Islands in search of food in warmer waters.

Many are not finding it: Autopsies done on several birds revealed their stomachs were entirely empty — indicating they likely starved to death, Nascimento said.

Don’t you hate it when you leave the house to get something to eat and nothing you like is open? Thanks to Mike Beam for sending this in.

[MSNBC]

Real picture. Thanks to Weird Things reader Mike Beam.

[Telegraph]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Disasters ever to strike down man or beast.

Monday and Tuesday we talked with the Ghost of Disasters Past, today we’re going to have words with the Ghost of Disasters Future. Strap in folks, it’s going to be a dickens of a ride.

NASA says come 2013 the sun will be “waking up from a deep slumber,” resulting in crazy solar storms. How crazy? 20 times the economic damage of Hurricane Katrina crazy! (Why the sun has been such a lazy narcoleptic hydrogen ball for the past many millennia was not discussed.)

The point is this: It is entirely possible that the resulting solar flares could disable satellites, explode transformers and cause widespread EMP related power outages. (In other words, it could be the catalyst for…BUM BUM BAAAA, The Night of a Million Conceptions!)

(Anti-baby) policymakers, researchers, legislators and reporters have gathered in Washington DC to share ideas about space weather and how to mitigate the coming disaster for the last 4 years in a row. That means AT LEAST 96 hours has been dedicated to solving this crisis, so everything should be fine everyone. Just go on about buying your soon-to-be-bricked-by-solar-radiation Apple products and stop trying to ruin the economy with your money-saving antics.

Seriously though, how much would it suck to be tossed back into the dark ages by the sun. (Someone with a lesser grasp of English, like say, Alanis Morissette, might even call that ironic.) All I have to say is, NASA better figure this one out. I don’t want to have to learn how to plow a field or ride a horse…and I sure as heck don’t like the sound of the word fiefdom.

What do you think? How would you handle life without electronics? Are you a hole-up-in-a-bunker kind of person or an organic gardener/Ted Nuggent fan?

Holy moly. A Russian parasailing outfit wants to advertise their services in a grassroots manner that will naturally generate word of mouth buzz. They attach a donkey to a parachute and let him fly around a beach for 30 minutes. The haunting screams from the animal reportedly caused children on the shore to being crying.

Take THAT Old Spice guy!

[AFP]

Military had a laser. It tried to shoot down a moving drone. It worked. Lasers are awesome.

What else is awesome? This quote:

Mike Booen of Raytheon gave USA Today the money quote for the day: “The targets came in over the ocean, and it was a good day for lasers, bad day for drones.”

You hear that drones? Eat it!

As is pointed out by our esteemed publisher, the next Chinese UFO that shuts down an airport better watch its six.

[CBS]

In 1994 62 schoolchildren from England with no prior exposure to portrayals of Aliens & UFOs in the media say they had an extra-terrestrial encounter. Watch this fascinating investigation and let us know what you think in the comments!

[Part 1]

[Part 2]

Everyday this week…Brett Rounsaville brings us the Weirdest Disasters ever to strike down man or beast.

What strikes me most about today’s Weird Disaster is how closely it mirrors current events, with a couple unique twists.

It seems, in 2006 an Indonesian drilling company hit exactly what they were looking for…natural gas. Unfortunately, what actually resulted from this little Eureka moment was a four-year and counting, non-stop-mud-spewing volcano that threatens to engulf village after village despite all effort to stop it, including dropping giant concrete balls into the opening. (Seriously, what is it with people dropping balls into holes and expecting that to solve their problems?)

The mud volcano looks innocuous enough, in fact, it’s often tough to tell anything is happening at all, and yet, everyday, enough hot noxious mud comes out to fill five Olympic-sized swimming pools. (Which leads me to believe they’re missing out on a major league professional mud wrestling opportunity here…)

Despite the slow movement of the mud, thousands have lost their homes and businesses and although the mud volcano has slowed in recent years it is still pouring out ooze at an alarming rate.

Remind you of another little disaster a bit closer to home? That’s right.

If you had to lose your house to a molasses flood or a natural gas infused mud volcano, which would you choose? I think it may be a toss up…unless you can keep some of the molasses for your impromptu moonshine business.

Have any disasters you’d like to see featured in the remaining three days?

It’s way smarter than me, but a pack of MIT numberheads got together and figured out how to utilize quantum mechanics to circumvent the dreaded “grandfather paradox” of time travel a.k.a. the travel doing something stupid that causes him to never exist. Huey Lewis is down wid it.

[arxiv via Technology Review]

Awkward.

MEXICO CITY — A man with a mysterious bulge under his T-shirt was stopped, searched and detained at Mexico City’s international airport after authorities found 18 tiny endangered monkeys in a girdle he was wearing.

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.

I was going to say this could make a delightful children’s song, then the article goes on to say two of the poor little creatures had died along the way. Which now makes it a mediocre Tim Burton movie.

[LA Times]

A ship from South Korea was refused port when thousands of large spiders were discovered throughout the ship’s cargo.

The local Department of Agriculture deemed the arachnids “too numerous to destroy or contain.” Officials  are unsure of why the spiders are on board, or even what species they are.

Considering the cargo was meant to build housing for U.S. military contractors it’s safe to say that “War On Ugly-Wugly Creepy Crawlies” is imminent.

[Stars and Stripes]

Enzo Vincenzi had a poor financial outlook and worse stomach problems. He contacted a Santeria spiritual advisor to help him get his life back on track by cleansing himself of demonic spirits.

That didn’t happen.

Eventually Pacheco took Vincenzi to a lawyer, where he signed away his motel to her. Vincenzi did this in order to save himself from demonic spirits and attempts on his life, according the The Naples Daily News.

Pacheco then evicted Vincenzi.

He lost his Jaguar, pickup truck, motorboat and possessions after the eviction — but Pacheco and Torres deny taking his vehicles, according to court docments.

Now Vincenzi is suing Pacheco to get back his motel.

Don’t feel bad Enzo, we’ve all fell for the the ol’ Santeria Switcheroo at some point.

[Sun-Sentinel]