Archive for April, 2013

Giant Snails Invade Florida!

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

It wasn’t too long ago that North America’s Hellmouth of a state was calling for people to go out into the wild and bag/kill as many giant pythons as they possibly could.
Now that that’s yesterday’s Nature versus Humankind battle is over, everyone’s favorite birthing place of weird EVERYTHING is taking us back to the good old days of that era of 1970s horror films when piranha, worms, snakes, rats, bears and even tadpoles decided they were tired of sharing the planet with us.

Just what the hell is this new scourge that’s coming to wreak havoc upon us now?

Brace yourselves, people…

Snails.

SNAILS!

And they’re exactly the kind of snails some of you are imagining right now…
Giant African Snails that can grow to 8 inches long, devour 500 different species of plants and (you’re going to slap your face like Maculay Culkin in Home Alone right about now) they are tearing through stucco and peoples’ homes! Not only that but the snails’ shells are big enough to puncture car tires because they’re Frogger-like skills are nonexistent!

Good luck, Florida.

[Huffington Post]

Podcast: My Own Private Vigilante Botnet

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

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Brian and Justin are brought to the gates of a mysterious cavern. Is it the literal gate to hell? How far would Andrew go for science? We discover the horrifying outer limits. What would you do with your own vigilante botnet?

It’s all part of a new Weird Things podcast.

Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s BRAND NEW BOOK Knight School just click on the image below.

skitched-20130307-012000.jpg

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Picks:

Justin:

The Great Gatsby audiobook with Tim Robbins

Brian:

Inside Scientology

Andrew:

War of the Worlds

Your Monitor Smells – Because Science Is Creating Monitors that Produce Scents!

Sunday, April 7th, 2013

Recently a group of Japanese scientists at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference in Orlando, Florida have unveiled
the latest incarnation of…
(sad, loungy drumroll please)
Smell-O-Vision!

That’s right. Scientists have been working hard at making your television smell.

Do we really need to smell the elephants of Africa while watching a beautiful documentary about the animals?

No. Not really.

But advertisers sure would like us to get a whiff of things like the latest addition to the IHOP menu, the latest
colognes and Pilsbury would take the obesity problems in America to a whole new level when that little chubby, animated
chef shows up shoving a tray full of warm, delicious chocolate chip cookies in our faces.

Using gel pellets placed at the four corners of the monitor and small air-streams, scientists are able to get fairly
specific across the face of the monitor where the smell will seem to emanate from. Think of it like 5.1 surround sound but
your nose is the one in the recliner experiencing it.

Modern day theme parks like Universal and Disney often use gel packs or cartridges to send the smell of candy, food or, in the case of Universal’s
Halloween Horror Nights, the smell of rotting meat to add a subtle something to guests’ in-park experience.

What was unveiled at the conference is still fairly primitive but technological developments will continue to improve and
pretty soon you could be smelling the oil and smoking metal of Call of Duty…

Or the sweet, acrid smell of a Well Zombie from the Walking Dead.

[DAILY MAIL UK]

Lo! The Ancient One Cthulhu Walks Among Us!

Friday, April 5th, 2013

Researchers have found the tentacled god Cthulhu at last he shall walk the earth and consume us all. By earth we mean the gut of termites and by consume we mean engage in a symbiotic relationship. Oh, and this Cthulhu as described in the PLOS ONE paper is actually a microorganism. But he does have tentacles and is as scary as the deep dark hell from which he most certainly came from.

Researchers Invoke Cthulhu In Naming Two New Microorganisms : World : Latinos Post.

Double Complete Yeti Sighting

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

What’s better than Yeti tracks in the snow? Video of a Yeti. What’s better than a Yeti? Two Yetis! What’s better than that???? A mama yeti and her child filmed by some 12 year old Russian kid. To top it all off, a Russian scientist has even declared the footage is legit, because it’s not like you could fake something like this. Next you’ll have us believing it really was a meteor that slammed into Russia a few months back. Seriously. Science. Yetis.

Siberian Times
HuffingtonPost.co.uk