A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
Time Travel stories generally suck. There are some noteworthy exceptions – specifically stories that deal with the problems of time travel and not just time travel as a plot device (Primer, Back to the Future, to name a few).
Star Trek has done some great and some very bad time travel stories. Story merits aside, there’s one big problem with most time travel stories; Transmitting people back in time (information) has no theoretical basis: It’s impossible. For every worm hole propped open with exotic matter or giant Tippler tube, someone always finds an equation to show how the universe corrects itself with quantum screams, bubbles or other annoyances that get in the way of us correcting that horrible thing that happened in 6th grade or saving the whales.
Assuming for a moment that the killjoys at MIT and Princeton who relish in pointing out that time travel as we understand it is impossible, then what? How can we tell scientifically literate time travel stories? Read the rest of this entry »
We were perusing Weird Asia News when we stumbled across this freaky video of two female carp that look all too human.
The eerily humanoid eyes are made up of dots on the front of the fish’s heads. The two carps are female hybrids of the carp and the leather carp that have lived in relative obscurity since 1986 in Cheongju, a small South Korean town.
Only in recent years have they attracted national media attention from South Korean news outlets. Unfortunately, since they are both females, we won’t have any tiny humanoid carp swimming around, but it’s nice to know they got their 15 minutes of fishy fame. The carp will live out their days in a pond behind a 64 year old, Cheongju man’s home. Wait a minute! They say carp and leather carp hybrid, we ask what that 64 year old man was up to a little over 23 years ago.
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
An important part of the Star Trek mythos is the idea of mind-to-mind contact. Spock uses this to probe other people’s minds and even transplant his entire consciousness. Counselor Troi used it to read the feelings of other species. It’s a wonderful concept that has fascinated people since at least the 1800’s. Unfortunately, we’re no closer to it being real now then we were back then.
We can imagine all sorts of technology assisted ways to make this real, but there’s nothing sexy about your Vulcan girlfriend asking you to step into an fMRI so she can read your voxels (okay, maybe a little sexy). What we need are some organic solutions or explanations for brain to brain transmission that make the concept a little more plausible. Read the rest of this entry »
Acclaimed paranormal investigator Alison Smith, has agreed to join our merry band of ‘Weird Thugs’ as we take on Coral Castle this Saturday, May 9. That’s right, a real, live woman at a paranormal investigation, who would have thunk it?
Read on about Alison and the investigation after THE JUMP…
Salma Hayek believes her 16-month old daughter Valentina sees ghosts. This according to Salma, who delivered the terrifyingly cute news on ‘The Rachel Ray Show’:
“Last night [Valentina] saw a ghost. I’m convinced. She woke up and her eyes were open. And she’s looking at one specific point and she’s going, ‘No no no no, au revoir,’ which means goodbye in French. And she’s looking at someone, but there’s no one there. I was so scared, and I’m like, ‘Yes, au revoir, whoever you are, get out!’ And then she started saying it in English, ‘Bye bye, bye bye!’…I guess she was trying in different languages to see what nationality this ghost was to go away. It was terrifying!”
Yes Salma, the only possible explanation for a baby babbling basic phrases while staring off into space is that she’s speaking to a ghost. Modern science just hasn’t figured out how to detect the phenomena that occurs daily throughout the world. And Salma thinks that Tom Cruise is ridiculous. He’d probably tell her that the trilingual toddler is attempting to communicate with her invisible body thetan for the first time.
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real…
The transporters in Star Trek are an exciting concept. Recent developments in quantum physics have made the possibility of teleporting matter a theoretical possibility while warp drive still remains a fantasy concept. However, the amount of energy required to move a person and all the other problems that go with it (engineering and ethical) leave quantum teleportation a bit to be desired for practical use. Crazy things can happen, but in the event that quantum teleportation doesn’t scale up or people are upset by the idea of their atoms being destroyed so copies can take their place, here are some slightly (we think) more practical solutions for teleportation that use way less energy and preserve your atoms:
You’ve all heard of the infamous case of the Virgin Mary Toast, but what happens when a holy image is seared into the cooking surface instead of the food? According to The Associated Press:
“The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant these days isn’t the food. It’s the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw in the griddle. Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez said more than a hundred people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the image since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.”
There have been no photo released as of yet, because the griddle in question has been “enshrined” in a storage closet for the time being. But if you need corroboration, a Mexican Wrestler, known as Mr. Tempest, stopped by the restaurant with a group of other Luchadors on his way to a bout, and called the griddle a miracle. So to give you an idea of what we’re talking about here, on the right is the Virgin Mary Toast that sold for $28,000 on eBay. We hope this incident gets just as many spoofs as the toast, but images on a griddle seem a little harder to replicate than images on a piece of bread.
Posted in Jesus Toast, Religion | |
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Nessie sightings have been on the decline in recent years and kilt clad investigators seeking desperately to try dinosaur haggis for the first time have turned up nothing in the placid Scottish Loch. In light of Nessie’s waning glory, a new cryptid has emerged to Champion the waterways of the North Atlantic in its stead: The Channel Creature.
Saturday, May 9, join us as the Weirdthings crew hits up Homestead, Florida to investigate Coral Castle. Coral Castle is made up of over 1,100 tons of Coral Stone. Amazingly the entire project was quarried, cut, carved and put in place by one man, a Latvian immigrant named Edward Leedskalnin. Leedskalnin apparently built the castle as a tribute to his fiance who left him the night before their wedding. The mystery of Coral Castle is how Leedskalnin pulled it off all by his lonesome. Since he was very secretive about his work and nobody ever saw him in the middle of actually building the thing, speculation that he used paranormal means, such as levitation, to build the site abounds. It took Leedskalnin from 1923-1951 to build the thing.
The tribal village of Siadimal, India has emptied out in recent days. No, it’s not Diwali yet, the villagers of Siadimal have fled because of a witch’s curse. A witch’s curse that they claim has caused a mysterious disease to infect several people. The Times of India reports:
“More than 10 villagers have been suffering from an unknown fever for the past two months. There is no sign of improvement despite medical treatment,” said a villager on condition of anonymity. “In the past, alleged witchcraft has claimed many lives in our locality. We suspect this may as well be the act of a witch,” he added. The villager said the women are putting up with relatives in other villages. “The men are now in search of a powerful tantrik, who can counter the evil spell and also punish the culprit,” he said.
Ten bucks says, that if they are looking to pay a tantrik to confirm their suspicions, they will find a witch real fast.
Superstition abounds in rural India, often ill-understood illnesses are attributed to witchcraft and sorcery. Those determined to find a witch are going to find a witch, and local authorities are concerned that yet another innocent person is going to be murdered in the region by superstitious villagers. In 2007, three women and a man were beheaded in the nearby village of Pratappur after they were accused of sorcery.
-For more on North India witch hunts and murders see the documentary “Indian Witch-Hunt” by author and journalist Sohaila Kapoor.
Posted in Witches | |
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Stop! Hold it, put down your mask and pick up your pork chop. There is no need to worry your weird heads about swine flu anymore. The nasty virus that originated in Mexico has already claimed many lives, and cases are being reported all over the world, with more than sixty cases in the United States alone thus far. But today you can breath a sigh of relief because swine flu is actually no big deal. So say epedimiologists? So say medical doctors? No! So says famous psychic to the stars Peggy Rometo, and she should know, she works with celebrities.
Read on to hear Ms. Rometo’s take on the current crisis…
Chillicothe, Ohio is known for many things, it has a cool name, it was the first state capital, but Chillicotheans never expected they’d be known for their wild emu population. For those of you not in the emu know, emus are a large, flightless species of bird native to Australia. That means: Not indigenous to Ohio, how they got there is a mystery. Where do these Ohio Ornthicryptids come from, and have they been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?
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Psychics are no good at finding missing people, but what about missing pets? The almost tragic tale of Tinker Bell the chihuahua begins at a flea market her owners were attending. Tinker Bell was standing on the roof of her owner’s trailer when a sudden 70 mph gust of wind blew the bite sized canine away. Lavern and Dorothy Utley, Tinker Bell’s owners, were distraught and spent two whole days searching Waterford, MI for their pooch. Finally, in desperation they hired a pet psychic, who reportedly lead them to a wooded spot about a mile from where the dog was lost. Tinker Bell was waiting there unscathed.
We thought a dog being blown off of a trailer was a little odd as well, we speculate that Tinker Bell is actually a witch.
I know, I know, we thought it was weird for the Pope to be in Australia as well. Wait a minute, that’s no Pope. That’s no Pope at all. That’s just a wily man protesting the Pope’s visit during World Youth Day. Charges were dropped earlier this week against Ian Bryce, the perpetrator of the hoax, who took to the streets of Sydney in his makeshift Pope Mobile to protest the Pontiff’s arrival. He had been formally charged with distracting motorists on the day of his protest, so we’re sure that all of you out there who were rooting for Ian will be most pleased to hear the court’s decision.
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Our beloved Michael Jackson is making his re-debut into the world of pop in London in July. Understandably, Jacko is concerned about ghosts and spirits possibly throwing his game off in the days leading up to his big comeback. So he recently pulled out of a deal to rent an 18th Century Foxbury Mansion in Kent because it is reportedly haunted. A video of the mansion and its haunted past made by Jackson’s aides prompted him to cancel his rental that he had already sunk nearly a million pounds into. But hey, when you don’t want ghosts to scare the children, what else are you going to do? Strange, Jackson looks positively thrilled with ghosts and ghouls in the above photo.
The origins of this video are confusing, apparently it has been making the rounds in Russia as a real sighting of Bigfoot somewhere in the English speaking world. Experts have determined this video to be a hoax. What do you make of it?
