A Worldwide Hunt For Oddities Summarized In One Video
Friday, April 23rd, 2010Pretty self-explanatory. Big ups to Atlas Obscura!
Pretty self-explanatory. Big ups to Atlas Obscura!
We reported a few days ago an edict laid down by an Iranian cleric claiming immodestly dressed women were a contributing factor for earthquakes. Specifically intimating that ladies hoeing it up this year has been the root cause of the high profile quakes in Haiti, Chile and Mexico.
But if he thinks it was bad before, just wait until this coming Monday. A Facebook group entitled Boobquake is looking to shake things up, cleavage-style.
The movement calls for all women to really shake what their mother gave them in an effort to tip the cleric’s Islamic espers and spur the tectonic plates somewhere on the earth. If it doesn’t cause an earthquake, then surely the “halter top=earthquake” theory has some ‘splaining to do.
Ladies, get ready to bring the mountains to Mohammed!
[CNN]
Apparently, the larger head has attacked the smaller one. Sleep with one eye open, smaller head.
[BBC via BoingBoing]
HEADLINE: Wilmington blue laws help block Satan’s progress
Wilmington Morning Star: Friday May 18th, 1984
Cryptomundo is rightly ticked off by the name dropping of Sasquatch on the new “Adventure’s of Bobby Bigfoot” website designed to teach kids about sustainability and green living. See, we leave a carbon footprint, Bigfoot has a big footprint, so you shouldn’t be a Bigfoot when it comes to carbon emissions. Blah, blah, blah.
But Sasquatch isn’t some tip-toeing green poster boy. Hell no! He’s mean mother loving devotee to the Earth.
When will Earth Day organizers look to the family bands of Sasquatch out there trying to survive in the environment for the logical icon? Actually, damn, Sasquatch are protectors of the environment, aren’t they?
The Earth needs warriors, as well as educators, but certainly not neurotic kids!!
It is time for the Sasquatch to be promoted as the ultimate Earth Day symbol.
There is a cause we can get behind!
Want to know one way to not get blown up by Improvised Explosive Devices? Fly around in a totally sweet flying car!
The Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) has cleared the Transformer (TX) program for takeoff. If it flies, by 2015 U.S. soldiers will be able to ride into battle aboard a four-person flying car that can cruise in the air like an airplane, drive on the ground like an SUV, rove 250 miles on one tank of fuel and not require a runway to get airborne.
DARPA, the Department of Defense office that is tasked with exploring futuristic technologies that may have military applications, held an industry day workshop for companies earlier this year to solicit proposals for developing a prototype vehicle. Proposals are due May 27.
The budget for the project? $54 million with a projection of four years before a prototype is expected.
When the cuddly little bugger is not actually a hybrid between the two animals but rather an (adorably) hairy version of a regular ol’ hog. That hasn’t stopped some media outlets from referring to the beast as a half-breed between the two different species.
Read up on all things Mangalitsa here on the Wikipedia.
Talk about a morning after… You roll over and realize that exhilarating night of grunting, running and grunting had led to you totally doing it with a Neanderthal. What scandal! What ever will the neighbors think?
Archaic humans such as Neanderthals may be gone but they’re not forgotten — at least not in the human genome. A genetic analysis of nearly 2,000 people from around the world indicates that such extinct species interbred with the ancestors of modern humans twice, leaving their genes within the DNA of people today.
What’s next? Proof that we french kissed those weird Hobbit people?
[Nature]
From Scientific American.
The largest trial to date of “brain-training” computer games suggests that people who use the software to boost their mental skills are likely to be disappointed.
The study, a collaboration between British researchers and the BBC Lab UK web site, recruited viewers of the BBC science program “Bang Goes the Theory” to practice a series of online tasks for a minimum of ten minutes a day, three times a week, for six weeks…
“There were absolutely no transfer effects” from the training tasks to more general tests of cognition, says Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brian Sciences Unit in Cambridge, UK, who led the study. “I think the expectation that practicing a broad range of cognitive tasks to get yourself smarter is completely unsupported.”
Take that, rest of the body!
A space plane designed to demonstrate the sustainability of a reusable, military-operated vehicle designed to orbit the earth will launch soon from Cape Canaveral, Florida. What happens after that is not of your GD business.
But whether the X-37 space plane is merely showing off nearly two decades of research and development or is actually a precursor to militarizing the final frontier, is far from clear since the vehicle’s payload is classified. An Air Force official won’t even say when it will return to California or where it will land. But it can “loiter” over the globe for more than nine months.
“In all honesty, we don’t know when it’s coming back,” said Gary Payton, deputy undersecretary for the Air Force’s space programs, in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
Is there anyone conspiracy-prone enough to craft an idea of what this launch means?.
[Yahoo]
Walk it Off – an abridged compendium of ye olde folk remedies and archaic antidotes culled from UCLA’s Archive of American Folk Medicine
Today’s ailment: WARTS
Old MacDonald had a Wart Fetish
You will need: 1 Farmer
Instructions: Have farmer rub wart with his/her rough, expert hand
Note: Creepy
Cat’s Eye (Not the Stephen King Movie) and Stump Water (Not the Southern Porn Star)
You will need: 1 Cat’s Eye; Stump Water
Instructions: Rub cat’s eye in stump water; Place cat’s eye against wart; Repeat until wart drops off
Tony Roma’s Black Magic Special
You will need: 1 Freshly Cut Steak
Instructions: Hold steak on wart; Spin entire body three times; Tell the wart to leave
Note: I would recommend using a Porterhouse. They contain more tenderloin than your standard T-Bone, and go great with a 2005 Taupenot-Merme Gevrey-Chambertin.
The Savvy Entrepreneur
You will need: A Quicksilver Tongue; Probably Some Sort of Printed Warranty
Instructions: Sell wart to someone
Note: Try farmers. They like warts. You know… like “like” like them…
I Think Kitt Complained About This On “Knight Rider”
You will need: 1 Can; 24 Pebbles; 1 Road
Instructions: Place pebbles in can; Put can in middle of road; Wart will heal five days after first car runs over can
Note: I might be thinking of Air Wolf complaining about the UTI cure where you throw potatoes at helicopters
This’ll Piss Off Vampires AND Loraxes
You will need: 1 Knife; Non-essential Pine Tree
Instructions: Cut the shape of cross into wart; Cut the shape of cross into pine tree; Never return to tree.
Satan
You will need: 1 Cemetery; Unfaltering Allegiance to Dark Lord
Instructions: Visit fresh grave; Call on Satan to remove wart
Note: If he’s unsuccessful in removing your wart, you get a free Satan t-shirt. Last year’s featured a picture of Satan.
If You Know What This Means, You’re Probably Already Doing It
You will need: The Yellow Stuff that Comes Out of a Crushed Fly’s Stomach
Instructions: Rub yellow stuff on wart
Covert Cheese Funeral
You will need: 1 Piece of Cheese; 1 Accomplice
Instructions: Rub wart with cheese; Have accomplice secretly bury cheese
Note: SHHHHH!
…At Least People Will Forget About Your Horrible Wart
You will need: A Powerful Voice
Instructions: Howl at moon; Politely answer all nice policeman’s questions
[Pravda]
Even good old fashioned crop circles are getting totally pwned in the digital age. Corn-stopping shapes are totally old and busted, mysterious digital radar patterns are the new hotness in Australia.
THEY are the digital-age equivalent of crop circles – mysterious patterns appearing on the Bureau of Meteorology’s national radar system without any explanation.
And the random images described as red stars, rings of fire and white doughnuts are sending online conspiracy websites into meltdown.
The anomalies first began on January 15 when an “iced doughnut” appeared over Kalgoorlie in WA.
Satellite imagery showed there was no cloud over the area at the time to explain the unusual phenomenon but farmers’ online comments claimed it was “unusually hot” all day.
It was followed by a bizarre red star over Broome on January 22 and a sinister spiral burst over Melbourne described by amateur radar buffs as the Ring Of Fire Fault.
The Bureau, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, has acknowledged the anomalies on its popular website.
Could this be communications with an alien force or just a desperate attempt by regular weather patterns to rustle up a few headlines since Iceland’s drama queen volcano is hogging all the ink? YOU DECIDE!
Bob Saget is shooting a new show for A&E entitled Strange Days where he hunts down the strangest elements of our society, including Bigfoot, which was the episode he was shooting last week.
“Bob Saget’s Strange Days” delves into weird, wild stuff: biker gangs, partying Amish teenagers, mail-order brides, a survivalist cult — and, of course, Bigfoot.
So out Saget came to the North Olympic Peninsula to peek at the West End woods and interview John Bindernagel, author of two books about the hairy creature supposedly living in the deep forest.
And since Saget wanted a nice spot to meet Bindernagel — who came down from Courtenay, British Columbia — he and his entourage found the George Washington Inn, a replica of the first U.S. president’s estate in Mount Vernon, Va.
New controversial new research suggests that a separate “hobbit” hominid evolved on an Indonesian island after migrating from Africa more than one million years ago. Apparently they had the “There” part down. “And Back Again”? Not so much.
That explains a lot.
“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.
Women in the Islamic Republic are required by law to cover from head to toe, but many, especially the young, ignore some of the more strict codes and wear tight coats and scarves pulled back that show much of the hair.
“What can we do to avoid being buried under the rubble?” Sedighi asked during a prayer sermon Friday. “There is no other solution but to take refuge in religion and to adapt our lives to Islam’s moral codes.”
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made headlines recently that Tehran will suffer an earthquake soon and many of it’s 12 million inhabitants should flee and presumably lose their jorts and halter tops in the process. That being said, if immodest dress does cause earthquakes there is no doubt as to why George Clooney has been so active on the subject.
[Yahoo via Pharyngula]