Disinformation » Bizarre

Crafting With Human Hair

Haystack — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:50:14 +0000

Victorian Hair Wreath

During the 19th century it was fashionable to incorporate human hair into brooches, watch chains, wreaths, and other objects that could be worn or displayed. Victorian Gothic explores the lost art of sentimental hairwork:

Mrs. Hamlin of Omaha, Nebraska left a rather curious heirloom to her descendants—an intricately woven bouquet composed entirely of human hair. Buried deep inside, each of its flowers is numbered with a tiny label corresponding one of fifteen names written on a separate index card; those of herself and her loved ones. More than a century ago, each of these people offered up their locks of brown or gray—literally, pieces of themselves—to provide the material for what would become a lasting symbol family unity.

The weaver need not have been the eccentric that one might suppose. On the contrary, she was likely to have been a conventional middle class lady going about her fancywork. She may have included a lock of her own in the wreath, but quite possibly she did not, preferring instead to be present as the sum of its parts; the invisible weaver of family ties. As a good 19th century woman, the domestic harmony she fostered was an expression of herself; her self-portrait in sacrifice.

As Helen Sheumaker describes in Love Entwined: The Curious History of Hairwork in America, hairwork in its myriad forms had not only established itself as longstanding tradition by the later half of the 19th century, but had become an active fashion. Husbands went to work wearing watch fobs fashioned of their wives hair. Locks from the dearly departed were mounted into rings and brooches. Ladies filled their autograph books with snippets from their friends. At a time of rising commercialism, sentimental hairwork became a way both to signal one’s sincerity and, paradoxically, to stay in style.

[Full Article and More Pictures at Victorian Gothic]

New Crowdfunded Graphic Novel Depicts the 1967 Herbert Schirmer Abduction

dp1974 — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:38:51 +0000

I got an early Christmas present last year: a package from Los Angeles cartoonist Mike Jasorka. Inside was the fruit of his efforts and my $20 Kickstarter pledge: December 3rd 1967: An Alien Encounter, a graphic novelisation of the strange case of Herbert Schirmer, a Nebraska state patrolman who claims to have been taken aboard an alien spacecraft.

I commend it to all wrong-thinking disinfonauts everywhere, for several reasons, but mostly aesthetic. The black and white panels occasionally splashed with dramatic colour ensures that the 50+ page book is a visually compelling artefact:

It also arrives with a CD, a word for word adaptation from the found audio of Schirmer at a 1970’s UFO conference in Florida, making it simultaneously an aural event (surely a first for a graphic novel, but fanboys will no doubt correct me). Finally, there’s the story: of Schirmer’s childhood upbringing that leads him to become a police officer, what happened that very night on duty and why even after countless ridicule, he stuck next to the unbelievable truth.

Herbert’s heart-felt story speaks of his childhood upbringing that leads him to become

a police officer, what happened that very night on duty and why even after countless

ridicule, he stuck next to the unbelievable truth.

You can get a foretaste of the audio-visual effect at Jasorka’s website, www.bombshell-comics.com – where you can now buy the Kickstarter-funded comic for $13US.

There are two other reasons for the commendation: for acknowledging the ‘forgotten humanoids’ of UFO lore, and for revealing the future of funding for all things Fortean.

Today, popular culture is permeated and UFOlogy dominated by the archetypal ‘Greys’ from Zeta Reticulli. But before this, between the ‘Greys’ first brush with humanity in the Betty and Barney Hill abduction of 1961 and 1973, the infamous ‘Year of the Humanoids’, lies the high strangeness of the forgotten humanoid encounters. The global preponderance of non-Grey encounters prior to the 1980s could almost call it the dirty secret of ‘nuts and bolts’ UFOlogy. The beings in the Schirmer case serves as a reminder that groupthink can skew even the most Fortean of researchers.

A project like this is one of the reasons I signed up eBay, Amazon-powered Kickstarter and donate to PayPal-enabled sites like The Daily Grail: like all disinfonauts I am passionate about giving repressed knowledge a voice amidst the cacophony that is the Internet (among other things). And lo! the internet did come to our aid to fix the problem it helped to create by providing a voice box in the first place. In the successful crowdfunded wake of the projects like this and others like Daniel Johnston’s Infinite Comic Book of Musical Greatness and the films Supernature: Esalen and the Human Potential and The Spirit Molecule, I see a rich future for Fortean and outsider works in the Long Tail of the 1000 True Fans.

Life On Venus, So Claims Russian Scientist

ralph — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:22:28 +0000

Maybe Jack Nicholson was right after all. Via Yahoo News:

Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia’s Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during a 1982 during a mission to explore the heavily acid-clouded planet.

Venus is roughly the same size as Earth, but it has a thick atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide. With an atmospheric pressure 92 times Earth’s, a waterless and volcano-riddled surface and a surface temperature of 894 degrees, the planet has never been considered a serious target of research into the possibility of extraterrestrial life.

But in his article, published in the magazine Solar System Research, Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a “disk,” a “black flap” and a “scorpion.”

“What if we forget about the current theories about the non-existence of life on Venus?” he wrote. “Let’s boldly suggest that the objects’ morphological features would allow us to say that they are living.”

The Plan To Reanimate George Washington’s Corpse

JacobSloan — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:00:48 +0000

Lauren Davis on io9 discusses U.S. Capitol designer William Thornton’s half-baked plan to bring George Washington back from the dead. Thornton’s idea was not enacted, but who knows what the future holds — in the decades to come, George Washington’s cadaver and Hitler’s brain may yet sit in a cafe somewhere sharing a conversation:

George Washington may have been America’s first president, but was he nearly America’s first zombie-in-chief? If William Thornton, physician and designer of the US Capitol, had had his way, Washington’s body would have been subjected a scientific experiment designed to bring the deceased former president back to life.

Washington’s body was not buried immediately after his death. The president may not have feared death, but he did fear being buried alive. Before he died, he commanded his secretary, Tobias Lear, to make sure that he would not be entombed less than three days after he died. In accordance with Washington’s wishes, his body was put on ice until it could be moved to the family vault.

That’s where the story gets a little strange. The morning after Washington died, his step-granddaughter Elizabeth Law arrived with a family friend, William Thornton. History best remembers Thornton as the architect who created the original design for the Capitol building, but he was also a trained physician, having studied at the University of Edinburgh. Although he did not practice medicine for much of his life, Thornton always had a keen interest in the workings of the human body, and he suggested a novel method for resurrecting the fallen warrior …

America’s Ancient ‘Ten Commandments’ Rock: The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone

ralph — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 17:41:20 +0000

This is a strange bit of disputed archaeology. Check it out over the web and Wikipedia does have a good description:

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone is a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque, that bears a very regular inscription carved into a flat panel. The stone is also known as the Los Lunas Mystery Stone or Commandment Rock. The inscription is interpreted to be an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments in a form of Paleo-Hebrew. A letter group resembling the tetragrammaton YHWH, or “Yahweh,” makes four appearances. The stone is controversial in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas.

The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it. Hibben was led to the stone by an unnamed guide who claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. The 1880s date of discovery is important to those who believe that the stone was inscribed by a lost tribe of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew script is practically identical to the Phoenician script, which was known at the time, thus not precluding the possibility of fraud. One argument against the stone’s antiquity is its apparent use of modern Hebrew punctuation, though amateur epigrapher Barry Fell argued that the punctuation is consistent with antiquity. Other researchers dismiss the inscription based on the numerous stylistic and grammatical errors that appear in the inscription.

More: Wikipedia

Believe It Or Not: 7 Facts You’re Not Supposed To Know About Religion

Daniele Bolelli — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:52:31 +0000

[Site editor's note: the Huffington Post recently published some excerpts from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]

Religion is one of those big taboo topics that many people are terrified to touch: too afraid that others will question their religious loyalties and just as afraid to step on the minefield that is the overhyped sensitivity of some believers.

And this is precisely why it is so much fun to talk about it.

People, after all, live and die in the names of religious values, so the stakes of what we are playing with couldn’t be any higher. And yet, few fields can make many human beings as unwilling to face the evidence as religion. It is exactly because these ideas are so central to their lives that they don’t want anyone to plant doubts in their minds.

If this is you—if you are afraid of tackling contradictions, if you believe that without blind faith you would be prey to senselessness and desperation, if dealing with complexity sends you running for the reassuring arms of dogma—then do not read any further. What I am about to say will confuse you, anger you and ruin your digestion.

But if you feel like taking a weird, dangerous journey through world religions and running into some of the very odd characters populating them—if you have a taste for paradox and think that questioning authority should be an Olympic sport—then hop on board.

I had a hell of a lot of fun writing 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know: Religion and conveying fifty of the most bizarre and unexpected stories about religion outside of my classroom. So below you’ll find seven of them that best relate the experience of my book (in a Reader’s Digest format).

You will discover that:

1. The institutions, we as a civilization, have considered “sacred” for thousands of years often are not considered that same way in organized religion, when powerful political forces or massive carnal desire enter the picture

2. Universal rights have been a sticky point for a number of religions because of what particular groups would benefit from them

3. Established religions, throughout history, have been a magnet for would-be messiahs, and an opportunity for those clever iconoclasts and tricksters to create their own new “religion” to challenge the old ones; and finally,

4. Any group calling for “Heavenly Peace on Earth” often has ended up killing millions of people in their fervor, and even stranger, the greatest conqueror in human history actually allowed religious tolerance in an truly unprecedented manner that, even today, we have not seen over most of our planet.

Religion is not an easy topic to discuss: it’s one of those things in life that is truly more complicated than it looks, and often, is a very personal matter for a hell of a lot of people. So my goal here is, at a minimum, to try to make thinking about religion enjoyable, and something you would discuss with others, even if you expect a difference of opinion.

[Read "Believe It Or Not: 7 Facts You're Not Supposed To Know About Religion" over at the Huffington Post]

Boy’s Eyes Glow In The Dark, See In Night Vision

JacobSloan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:28:36 +0000

Is he a starchild? Part-alien DNA seems like the most rational explanation for this:

A boy has stunned medics with his ability to see in pitch black with eyes that glow in the dark. Doctors have studied Nong Youhui’s amazing eyesight since his dad took him to hospital in Dahua, southern China, concerned over his bright blue eyes.

Dad Ling said: “They told me he would grow out of it and that his eyes would stop glowing and turn black like most Chinese people but they never did.” Medical tests conducted in complete darkness show Youhui can read perfectly without any light and sees as clearly as most people do during the day.

Senator Rand Paul Detained By TSA

ralph — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 20:39:13 +0000

The TSA is denying this, here is what Tim Mak reported on the Politico below. This kind of reminds me of when the late Senator Kennedy was placed on the “no-fly” list, however, in Senator Paul’s case, given his vocal criticism of the TSA, this incident makes great political theater. (I wonder if his father will bring up in the next Republican presidential debate …)

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was blocked from boarding a flight Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed. “I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”

Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), tweeted out news of the incident, saying that there had been an “anomaly” with a body scanner. “My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming,” wrote the authenticated Twitter account of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

The TSA disputed this characterization of the incident.

The ‘Strange Sounds’ YouTube Meme: Apocalypse? HAARP? Viral Marketing?

dp1974 — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 06:43:13 +0000

Footage recording bizarre mystery sounds of seemingly immense proportions emanating from the heavens (like the ones above) are being posted from multiple points of the globe but mainly in the Northern Hemisphere:

Speculation is rife as to their cause and nature and the story has been quickly spotted by the usual suspects:

i09 asks what are these bizarre sounds coming from the sky in countries from Hungary to Canada?
via h/t from paranormal newsfeed Truth Behind the Scenes
Ghost Theory have been following this since last August, and was one of the first to notice that many occurred on the same day: 1 January 2012

A dedicated blog (strangesoundsinthesky.com) of some months standing has even sprung up to cater for the phenomenon.

More Fortean sceptical write-ups include:

Doubtful News, takes the long historical view, referencing the great unsung Fortean researcher William R. Corliss’ Earthquakes, Tides, Unidentified Sounds and Other Related Phenomena, and mass copycat behaviour
Reddit provides a technical analysis of the videos and gives us cause for suspicion

So what is it? The evolution of The Hum? The Last Trump? HAARP? Solar flares?

Or have we all been punked by J.J. Abram’s keen sense of mass hysteria and his latest world-wide PR campaign for Cloverfield 2?

Or is the truth some crazy combination of all the above and more? Post your opinions and rants below.

Our Sun Is This Small (Animation)

ralph — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 05:01:52 +0000

For those of you who hated this proposed Earth-centric view of our Solar System, check out this video below. (VY Canis Majoris RULES for now; Giordano Bruno would be proud …)

VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major. At between 1800 and 2100 solar radii (8.4–9.8 astronomical units, 3.063 billion km or 1.7 billion miles in diameter), it is currently the largest known star and also one of the most luminous known …

Dirk Diggler Could Have Stopped 9/11

imkaan — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 08:22:58 +0000

Via WashPo:

The “Contraband” actor, who was actually scheduled to be on one of the planes that crashed, said:

If I was on that plane with my kids, it wouldn’t have went down like it did. There would have been a lot of blood in that first-class cabin and then me saying, ‘OK, we’re going to land somewhere safely, don’t worry.’

Now you may be thinking, as I did, “This quote must have been taken out of context!” Nope, not really.

Mysterious White-Nose Syndrome Is Killing Bats Across The U.S.

SpaceNeedle — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:54:45 +0000

Holy Fungus, Batman! Reports David Wrights and Jonann Brady of ABC NEWS:

A mysterious fungus is killing off thousands of bats around the country. Scientists are calling it white-nose syndrome, because of the distinctive white smudges on the noses and wings of infected bats.

White-nose itself doesn’t kill bats, but it disturbs their sleep so that they end their hibernation early. During the winter there are no insects to eat, so the bats literally starve to death.

Bats may be one of Mother Nature’s least cuddly creatures, but they are ecologically important, keeping mosquitos and insects that attack crops in check.

Researchers say the syndrome has killed upward of half a million bats from New England to Virginia.

NYPD Developing Scanners To Detect Concealed Weapons

HAL9000 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:11:46 +0000

Via the Gothamist:

Presumably sick of all the bleeding heart liberals whining about civil rights, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has devised an elegant solution to sidestep the controversy over his department’s stop and frisk policy. Speaking at a State of the NYPD breakfast this morning, Kelly announced that the NYPD is developing a kind of infrared technology that will enable police officers to detect whether individuals are carrying guns under their clothing. Sure, it’s not as badass as shooting down a plane, but at least cops will finally be able to see what’s under our clothes without having to get out of their cars.

The mechanism, which the NYPD is developing with help from the U.S. Department of Defense, currently only works at a short range of three or four feet. But Kelly thinks they can improve it to scan citizens from a distance of up to 25 meters away. He announced this morning that the gadget will be mounted on NYPD vans with “the infrared rays shooting up the street at the person,” as the Post puts it.

The device detects the radiation emitting from a person’s body, and it can’t penetrate metal, so a concealed gun can be spotted from the image captured by the detector’s lens …

Seeing And Hearing In The Future

JacobSloan — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 18:08:54 +0000

In an interview with the Believer, key performance artist and electronic musician Laurie Anderson traverses a lot of ground. But one intriguing portion concerns her thoughts on sensory enhancement as the big advancement to come. If we can view, hear, and touch better and more intensely, will we be more alive?

Five thousand years from now — let’s say we didn’t find the God particle. We’re still looking. I think we probably won’t be making things of the nature that we are now. I think we’ll just be trying to appreciate things more. Maybe we’ll design better ears. I mean, our hearing’s crappy. We’ll have huge ears and we’ll be able to tune in to Mars, or we’ll have a hundred lenses through which we can look onto the surface of Mars with our so-called “bare eyes,” or look through our hands. We’ll be able to be in the present more effectively.

Did Lady Gaga Perform A Satanic Ritual in a London Hotel Room?

LordSatan — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 06:12:20 +0000

So this earlier Disinfo.com post ain’t so nuts after all? This story has been removed from the Independent’s website (cached version in link):

Lady Gaga allegedly left “large amounts of blood” in a hotel bath. The eccentric singer reportedly shocked staff when she checked out of London’s lavish Intercontinental Hotel last summer and they discovered a pool of red liquid in the tub of her suite.

One housekeeper claimed the pop superstar was “bathing in blood as part of a Satanic ritual”.

She told website Truthquake: “Lady Gaga left large amounts of blood in the suite during a stay this summer. The incident was reported to the concierge, who was told to put it out of her mind.”

Other sources believe Gaga could have been using the red liquid as part of a “weird” stage costume or prop.

Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

ralph — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:14:13 +0000

If you like soft drinks the way I do, that is, looking like my conception of nuclear waste, this is really good news. From the Smoking Gun:

Defending itself from a lawsuit claiming that an Illinois man found a dead mouse inside a can of Mountain Dew, PepsiCo contends that a rodent would have disintegrated and been transformed into a “jelly-like” substance between the time of the soft drink’s bottling and the day the plaintiff reportedly purchased the soda from a vending machine at his office.

In a court response to a motion filed by Ronald Ball–who claims to have found the dead mouse in a Mountain Dew can about three years ago–PepsiCo filed a fascinating/revolting affidavit from Lawrence McGill, a veterinarian who noted that he was “familiar with the effects an acidic fluid, such as common soda drinks including Mountain Dew, will have on mice and other animals.”

According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted.

Take Off Your Pants And Ride The Subway

majestic — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 15:19:42 +0000

Today is No Pants Subway Ride day, in New York City and around the world, wherever subway (underground) trains are to be found (all sorts of places, not just the obvious ones like London’s Tube and the Paris Metro). Started by comedy group Improv Everywhere, this is what it’s all about:

The No Pants Subway Ride is annual event staged by Improv Everywhere every January in New York City. The mission started as a small prank with seven guys and has grown into an international celebration of silliness, with dozens of cities around the world participating each year. The idea behind No Pants is simple: Random passengers board a subway car at separate stops in the middle of winter without pants. The participants do not behave as if they know each other, and they all wear winter coats, hats, scarves, and gloves. The only unusual thing is their lack of pants.

You can participate in the next edition, taking place this Sunday, January 8, 2012, around the world. [New York Details and Details for Other Cities]

A documentary about Improv Everywhere is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. Here’s the trailer showing how No Pants started:

Walter Potter’s Taxidermy Wants to Swallow Your Soul

Haystack — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:45:55 +0000

Walter Potter’s collection of anthropomorphic taxidermy included cigar-smoking squirrels, athletic toads, and a kittens’ tea party. Victorian Gothic writes:

While the preservation of hunting trophies may be the best-known use of the taxidermist’s art, fans of Walter Potter’s anthropomorphic tableaux can attest to the fact that it has its other, more silly uses. Potter (1835-1918) was a self-taught taxidermist who grew up in the rural community of Bramber, Sussex, at a time when stuffing dead animals was considered to be a suitable hobby for young boys. For technical assistance, he would have had any number of popular manuals at his disposal. For inspiration, he had his younger sister’s illustrated nursery rhyme books and the Great Exhibition of 1851, where anthropomorphic taxidermy was first displayed to the British public.

His first major contribution was an elaborate diorama depicting the death and burial of Cock Robin, which he began at age 19 and took seven years to complete. Each of the animals from the English nursery rhyme are represented, behaving in character; a rook with a book is parson, a mourning dove leads the funeral procession, an owl digs the grave.

Potter was encouraged in his hobby, which brought customers to his father’s inn. By 1880 his collection had grown into an important attraction for the tiny village of Bramber, and came to be housed in a separate museum building on land next to the inn. Here he welcomed visitors, received donations of small game from local farmers, and steadily improved his displays. The museum became so packed, and its tableaux so rich in detail, that returning patrons were never at a loss to find some new and interesting feature that they had overlooked before.

[Full Article and Images at Victorian Gothic]

Was Cuban Mafia Boss Nixon’s Gay Lover?

JacobSloan — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 05:00:39 +0000

Did Nixon make history as our second gay president (following Abraham Lincoln)? In other more minor news, he maybe was drunk during most of his presidency. Via the voice of authority on secret gay affairs, the Daily Mail:

Given everything that Richard Nixon has been accused of, it’s difficult to believe there could be any more skeletons left in his cupboard. Yet the most extraordinary claim is that the homophobic Nixon may have been gay himself.

A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th president had a serious drinking problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America’s most powerful mobster.

Fulsom argues that Nixon may have had an affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Florida wheeler-dealer named Charles ‘Bebe’ Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon. The veteran TV newsman Dan Rather recalled how Rebozo ‘transmitted the sense of great sensuality’, paying tribute to his ‘magnetic’ personality and ‘beautiful eyes’.

Fulsom uses recently revealed documents and eyewitness interviews — including with FBI agents — to shed new light on long-standing suspicions among White House insiders that Nixon may have been more than just good buddies with Rebozo.

More: Daily Mail

December 30, 2011 Will Not Exist (In Samoa)

ralph — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 20:22:53 +0000

After accepting bad advice nearly 120 years ago from an American trader, this South Pacific nation is taking a major step to improve its economy. (And in a nice slight of hand I wouldn’t mind experiencing, all Samoans who were supposed to get paid that day will still be paid for a day that didn’t exist …) Via Herald Sun:

On Thursday night, it will be December 29 when they go to bed and Saturday Dec 31 when they wake up — meaning they’ll skip Friday forever.

This neat bit of time travel is the result of a very contemporary concern: trade and economic relations with Pacific neighbors Australia and New Zealand, who are currently nearly a day ahead on the clock. Now, with the disappearance of Friday, Samoa will shift west of the international dateline and share the same date and time as its two key partners.

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi explained: “In doing business (now) with New Zealand and Australia we’re losing out on two working days a week,” the London Times reported. “While it’s Friday here, it’s Saturday in New Zealand and when we’re at church Sunday, they’re already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane.”

Real Life Superheroes: No Comment

majestic — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:09:05 +0000

Reminds me of the Ellen Page/Rainn Wilson geek comedy Super. Kirk Johnson reports for the New York Times:

Salt Lake City: Red Voltage and two of his masked crime-fighting colleagues were approaching an intersection here in Utah’s capital on a recent evening, walking night patrol on foot, when a car suddenly slowed next to them. The night was bitterly cold, laced with a wispy stew of fog that might or might not conceal a thousand dangers. The car’s window rolled down.

“Hi, superheroes!” a woman shouted from within. “I’m in love with you guys!”

Eat your heart out, Batman. In a niche of urban life that has evolved in recent years somewhere between comic-book fantasy and the Boy Scout oath, a cadre of self-cast crusaders — some with capes, some without, all with something to prove — are on the march.

They prowl the night in Boston, in San Francisco, in Milwaukee, in Minneapolis, even as far away as Australia. Whether they are making the world safer or just weirder remains an open question.

Some go out armed with gear like mace, pepper spray or police batons; others say they carry only cellphones, aiming to be eyes and ears for the police, who in most cities, including Salt Lake City, are keeping a wary distance.

“We’re not endorsing them, supporting them, condemning them or anything else — we’re staying neutral and out of it,” said Detective Joshua Ashdown, a spokesman for the Salt Lake City Police Department. “The ones we endorse are the ones we have trained.”

Red Voltage, who in mild-mannered daytime life is a 23-year-old residential leasing manager named Roman Daniels, casually waved a gloved hand to his female drive-by fan. Clad head to toe in a red-and-black leather suit, his face covered by spandex, he is, he said, a different man when the mask goes on — a better man…

[continues in the New York Times]

Mystery Metal ‘Space Ball’

majestic — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:56:23 +0000

Do any disinfonauts have theories as to just what it might be? From AFP via Yahoo News:

A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.

The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.

Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said.

With a diameter of 35 centimetres (14 inches), the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of “two halves welded together”.

It was made of a “metal alloy known to man” and weighed six kilogrammes (13 pounds), said Ludik…

[continues at AFP via Yahoo News]

Earth (Usually) Has Two Moons

HAL9000 — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:18:50 +0000

So reports MIT’s Technology Review:

Back in 2006, the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona noticed that a mysterious body had begun orbiting the Earth. This object had a spectrum that was remarkably similar to the titanium white paint used on Saturn V rocket stages and, indeed, a number of rocket stages are known to orbit the Sun close to Earth.

But this was not an object of ours. Instead, 2006 RH120, as it became known, turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few metres across–a natural satellite like the Moon. It was captured by Earth’s gravity in September 2006 and orbited us until June 2007 when it wandered off into the Solar System in search of a more interesting neighbour.

2006 RH120 was the first reliably documented example of a temporary moon …

Dutch TV-Show Hosts Appear to Dine on Each Other’s Flesh

bluemana — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:22:04 +0000

Alyssa Newcomb reports on ABC News:

Two Dutch television-show hosts said they had their flesh cooked by a top chef and then dined on each other before a studio audience.

“Nothing is really that special when you’re talking about the taste of the meat,” host Dennis Storm told ABCNews.com. “But it is weird to look into the eyes of a friend when you are chewing on his belly.”

Part of Storm’s left butt cheek was carved out by a surgeon, while his co-host, Valerio Zeno, opted to have a piece of his abdomen removed, they say.

“We went to the butcher, the surgeon and the studio, then we looked at each other and just ate it,” Storm said. “The special thing is, it was his flesh, of course.”

Mystery Craft Seen on U.S. Route 77 in Kansas

phunkychic666 — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 17:54:32 +0000

Via KSN TV:

COWLEY COUNTY, Kansas — Residents in Cowley County are still talking about a mystery craft, seen being towed down US 77 Monday.

Sitting inside Lindly’s Appliance Store, Kammi Root is used to seeing large machinery towed down US 77. But what she saw Monday afternoon is something she won’t soon forget. “There was this funny sphere that went through on this big trailer and my first thought was, ‘That looks like a UFO,’” said Root.

The Jesus Toaster Makes Food Miracles

JacobSloan — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:00:27 +0000

Every believer has seen the videos of the Virgin Mary appearing in the form of a Cheeto or a linen stain and secretly hopes for an uncanny sign that will validate their faith — that’s why the Jesus Toaster is the perfect Christmas gift. Now anyone can have the rapturous joy of witnessing the Lord appear in their morning toast:

Kim Jong-il Looking at Things

phunkychic666 — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:38:41 +0000

it does exactly what it says: pictures of Kim Jong-il. looking at things.

This blog was born in a warm autumn night, 26th October 2010, for reasons unknown. Why is it so funny? i have no idea either.

Strange Growth on Nuclear Waste Might Be “Biological in Nature”

HAL9000 — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:44:35 +0000

Rob Pavey reports in the Augusta Chronicle:

Savannah River Site scientists are working to identify a strange growth found on racks of spent nuclear fuel collected from foreign governments.

The “white, string-like” material was found among thousands of spent fuel assemblies submerged in deep pools within the site’s L Area, according to a report filed by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, a federal oversight panel.

“The growth, which resembles a spider web, has yet to be characterized, but may be biological in nature,” the report said. Savannah River National Laboratory collected a small sample in hopes of identifying the mystery lint — and determining whether it is alive …

Fecal Matter Transplants Used to Cure Intestinal Infection

phunkychic666 — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 23:15:25 +0000

C. difficile colonies on a blood agar plate.

James Gallagher reports in BBC News

Transplanting faecal matter from one person to another — the thought might turn your stomach, but it could be lifesaving.

Some doctors are using the procedure to repopulate the gut with healthy bacteria, which can become unbalanced in some diseases. Dr Alisdair MacConnachie, who thinks he is the only UK doctor to carry out the procedure for Clostridium difficle infection, describes it as a proven treatment. He says it should be used, but only as a treatment of last resort.

The logic is simple. C. difficile infection is caused by antibiotics wiping out swathes of bacteria in the gut. It gives the surviving C. difficile bacteria room to explode in numbers and produce masses of toxins which lead to diarrhoea and can be fatal.

The first-choice solution, more antibiotics, does not always work and some patients develop recurrent infection. The theory is that by adding more bacteria to the bowels, they will compete with C. difficile bacteria and control the infection …

The Georgia Guidestones

ralph — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:32:19 +0000

Available now in audio book, eBook and paperback from Disinformation Books. Read the first chapter on Scribd. More info at the official website www.guidestones.us:

The Georgia Guidestones are a collection of standing stones near Elberton, Georgia. Built in 1980, they are primarily composed of six slabs of granite: one central pillar, four “major” stones that fan out from the center, and a capstone. The capstone has engravings on all four of its sides in four different ancient languages, all of which read, “Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason,” when translated. The major stones are each engraved on both sides, and each side contains text in one of eight modern languages asserting ten guidelines.

These guidelines have proven extremely controversial, causing speculation and rumors of conspiracy that go far beyond northeast Georgia.

The Georgia Guidestones are at once a Rosetta Stone, an astronomical observatory, and a road map for rebuilding civilization. Theories of conspiracy, occultism, and apocalypse surround this monument, and it has been called a “prism of meaning” by many who have studied it. At the heart of this confusion is the missing piece of the puzzle: who was the mystery man that designed and funded the project?

Conspiracy theorists surmise a global plot on the part of shadowy group of men to reduce and subjugate the world’s population and create a “New World Order.” Others believe that the man behind the monument was a Rosicrucian, and that the stones are representative of that group’s occult manifestos. Are the stones proof of a Satanic conspiracy or a testament to a Cold War psychology of nuclear annihilation?

Local historian and Georgia native Raymond Wiley was interviewed for The History Channel’s Brad Meltzer’s Decoded about the Guidestones and is a principal expert for a feature-length documentary currently in production. With local writer K.T. Prime he has written the definitive account of America’s most famous megalithic monument.