The Siberian Wooly Mammoth Video
Hard to believe, but this video has been taking YouTube and the gossip rags by storm. Supposedly there is a living Wooly Mammoth gallivanting about Siberia…
British Woman Predicts The Future Via Throwing Asparagus
South West England’s This Is Somerset profiles a local celebrity who hurls pieces of asparagus and gleans the future by interpreting how they land. Think of it as a terrible alternative to reading tea leaves:
A fortune teller who predicts the future using ASPARAGUS unveiled her top tips for 2012 – including two Royal pregnancies, the collapse of the Euro, and British glory at the Olympics. Mystic Jemima Packington, 56, claims to be the world’s only Asparamancer. She has made dozens of accurate predictions in recent years, including the demise of Gordon Brown, the credit crunch, and Oscar glory for British film The King’s Speech.
Luxury-Sea Boat Allegedly Generates Electricity from Ocean Water
Fake? Hank Mills with Sterling D. Allan report for Pure Energy Systems News:
A company named Luxury-Sea is building a boat with a special device that is claimed to generate electricity from ocean water, to both produce hydrogen to fuel its engine as well as power its on-board electronics.
A boat that requires no fossil fuel and that has an infinite range would be a true breakthrough. The French company Luxury-Sea claims to be building such a boat, named the MIG 675. Allegedly, it utilizes a patent pending technology that generates up to 50,000 volts of electricity from ocean water. The electricity generated is used both to power on board electronics, and to generate hydrogen to fuel a powerful 500 horse power engine…
Of course the most amazing aspect of the boat is that it runs off salt water. No details are given about how it works, and no evidence is provided. Here is a video of the boat in action, but there is no way to determine if it is really powering itself using ocean water.
The inventor of the technology, Angi Le Floch, is asserted to be self taught…
The Spirit Photography Of William Hope
Why do people believe that photographs have the power to capture what we cannot see with our eyes? The Public Domain Review presents a ghastly, ghostly collection from William Hope:
These photographs of ‘spirits’ are taken from an album of photographs unearthed in a Lancashire antiquarian bookshop. They were taken by a controversial medium called William Hope (1863-1933). In about 1905 he became interested in spirit photography after capturing the supposed image of a ghost while photographing a friend. He went on to found the Crewe Circle – a group of six spirit photographers.
By 1922 Hope had moved to London where he became a professional medium. The work of the Crew Circle was investigated on various occasions, exposing Hope as a fraudster. However, many of Hope’s most ardent supporters spoke out on his behalf, the most famous being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Before War of the Worlds, the Great Moon Hoax of 1835
Lunar man-bats, unicorns, bipedal beavers and a triad of mysterious solar temples featured in a sensational hoax perpetuated by the New York Sun in 1835. This from Victorian Gothic:
Imagine that you wake up one morning, sit at your computer, and you are bombarded with links to a developing story from a major news outlet: Stephen Hawking, by making novel use of Cambridge University’s new quantum supercomputer to analyze data from SETI’s telescope array, has discerned that the universe is awash with signals from intelligent life. It reads like a regular science story, at first, but soon it is revealed that Hawking and his colleagues have tapped into an extra-terrestrial television transmission, and are even now watching, breathless, as the first, dream-like images of alien civilizations display themselves on the Q-computer’s tiny monitor.
You and your friends refresh your browsers compulsively, talking over each new description that emerges of strange alien races and the exotic…
The Rapture To Arrive (Again) October 21
Remember five months ago when the world almost came to an end, but then God granted us a last-minute reprieve? Tomorrow, we’re going to do it all over again. Get out the signs, air horns, and foam fingers! From Beliefnet:
This time the end of the world will be real, says 90-year-old California radio mogul Harold Camping — October 21, so be ready.
But he doesn’t sound quite so confident this time. He suffered a stroke shortly after his most recent false alarm — May 21. He’s been in a nursing home. But now, he’s proclaiming new warning.Absent this time are his trusting disciples who traveled across America last spring proclaiming his urgent warning — the Rapture would occur May 21, so be ready when Gabriel’s horn sounds, the sky rolls away and Jesus arrives to judge the living and the dead.
Of course, May 21 came and went — despite millions of…
Saddam Lookalike Nearly Kidnapped And Forced To Do Porn
Ever feel as though you’re trapped in a waking nightmare? An ordinary Egyptian man’s terrible saga, via Huffington Post:
An Egyptian man who looks like Saddam Hussein says a gang of Iraqi kidnappers tried to force him to act in a pornographic film.
After refusing a $330,000 offer to play Hussein in a sex tape — which was purportedly planned to be sold to the media as an authentic recording of the deceased Iraqi dictator — Mohamed Bishr told al-Ahram that three men in black suits attempted to abduct him as he walked to a cafe in Alexandria on Sunday.
“The three men, who had guns hanging from their belts, forced me out of my car and shoved me into a van, hitting my head,” Bishr told the publication. For some reason, the abductors began arguing with each other and tossed him out of the vehicle, Bishr claims.
While plotting ways to destabilize Hussein before…
Fear Of “Killer Phone Number” Spreads In Nigeria
No biggie, just let it go to voicemail. Via the BBC:
Nigeria’s authorities have been forced to reassure the public that a mobile phone number cannot kill, after rumors were spread…that several people had died when they answered calls with the ID 09141.
The regulatory body, the Nigerian Communications Commission, said this was “unimaginable” and “unscrupulous persons” were spreading fear.
A BBC reporter was unable to get through to the number.
Text messages gave conflicting accounts of the number of people killed when they answered the call – some put the death toll at seven while others put it at 10.
The Semi-Genius Of Illusion Illusions
Is the center circle at left larger than the center circle at right? How about this: are there gray spots between the corners of black squares?
Illusions are tricks that play off of the ways our brains typically process sensory information. The problem is that many of them have become clichéd. Hence illusion illusions — illusions that play off of the illusions we’re used to seeing. See the angry-comment-provoking Flickr set.
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‘Non-Visible’ Art Sells For $10,000
Genius or madness? Surly acting hunk James Franco sold an intangible, undetectable work of conceptual art, created in collaboration with the design duo Praxis, to a Montreal collector for $10,000. Paste reports that the masterpiece is titled “Fresh Air” and is described as thus:
A unique piece, only this one is for sale. The air you are purchasing is like buying an endless tank of oxygen. No matter where you are, you always have the ability to take a breath of the most delicious, clean-smelling air that the earth can produce. Every breath you take gives you endless peace and health. This artwork is something to carry with you if you own it.
Because wherever you are, you can imagine yourself getting the most beautiful taste of air that is from the mountain tops or fields or from the ocean side; it is an endless supply.
China’s Fake Apple Stores
Fascinatingly, in is now common in China to find counterfeit branches of the Apple store.
Then again, what makes any Apple store “real” when the point is to use psychology to sell an intangible “brand”? And how can you tell a real Apple store from a fraudulent one? Paradoxically, real Apple stores never say “Apple store”. The Consumerist reports:
An American blogger living in the middle of China was amazed to stumble across a fake Apple store in her town. It was a complete counterfeit of a real Apple store, designed to look like the real thing. It had signage, and employees walking around in the iconic blue shirts with those lanyard nametags. It had the big long wooden tables with Apple products on them and the typical Apple store winding staircase. But certain details were off.
None of the employee nametags had their names on it. They just said “staff.” And Apple never writes…
Japanese Pop Star Outed As Computer-Generated Creation
Has CGI technology become super realistic? Or is it more that actual famous people now resemble virtual creations to the extent that the difference is hardly noticeable? Kotaku reveals:
AKB48 is Japan’s most popular female pop group. With give-or-take 48 members, its latest member is Aimi Eguchi, who has rocketed from obscurity to become the poster girl for a Japanese ice candy, Ice no Mi. Now revealed as a computer composite of other girls in the group, she appears 4 seconds in below.
The Artist Who Forged Himself
René Magritte may have been one of the twentieth century’s great Surrealist painters, but for income, he created and trafficked forgeries of famous works by artists such as Picasso, Ernst…and Magritte. Further confusing matters, his forging could in itself be a grand Surrealist statement. The Independent attempts to explain:
One is an original. The other, evidently, a copy. But René Magritte was a Surrealist, and the truth behind The Flavour of Tears suggests he was enjoying a huge – and probably lucrative – joke.
The Flavour of Tears was produced around the time Magritte’s close friend Marcel Mariën claimed Magritte was creating forgeries. In his 1983 autobiography, Le Radeau de la Mémoire, Mariën said Magritte was making money by selling and producing forgeries of works by Picasso, Titian, Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico and Meindert Hobbema.
Two collectors saw The Flavour of Tears independently in Magritte’s studio. “We can only assume Magritte painted two…
Harold Camping Suffers A Stroke
I knew that he was going to use age-related health issues to weasel out of responsibility for his updated October 21st rapture prediction — blast you, Harold Camping, for being so clever! Via the San Francisco Chronicle:
Harold Camping, 89, was at his Alameda home with his wife Thursday evening when he suffered the stroke, said Family Radio host Craig Hulsebos. The Oakland minister who incorrectly predicted the world would end May 21 was scheduled to be released from a local hospital after being treated, a talk show host at his radio station said Monday.
Employees at the office declined to talk about Camping’s condition in detail, instead referring to a release from his family. “Doctors are pleased with his progress,” the statement read. “Mr. Camping’s family appreciates your thoughts and prayers.”
Psychic Fiasco: Texas Mass Murder Raid a Hoax
Benjamin Radford writes in Discovery News:
A psychic called police on Monday night, describing a horrific scene of mass murder: 25 to 30 dismembered bodies near an unassuming ranch house about an hour outside of Houston, Texas. There were rotting limbs, headless corpses, and, chillingly, many were children.
Deputies from the Liberty County Sheriff’s office went to investigate but didn’t see anything amiss.
The psychic called a second time the next day, insisting that her visions were true. She provided more detailed information about the home and urged the police to return to a different part of the property. This time detectives called for backup and soon dozens of officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety, the FBI, and the Texas Rangers were on the scene — not to mention cadaver dogs, news helicopters, and gawkers.
Police investigated, and it all turned out to be a false alarm. There were no dead bodies; the…
Rapture Moved To October 21st
At this point, doesn’t it seem as if he is trying to run out the clock by repeatedly pushing back the doomsday date in the hopes of dying before he has to face responsibility for being a crappy predictor? The New York Times reports:
Here we go again. A California religious radio impresario who predicted — wrongly — that the end of the world would begin on May 21 revised his prophesy on Monday, saying now that the end is due in October.
In a rambling, 90-minute speech, broadcast both online and on his stations, Harold Camping, whose Family Radio network paid millions of dollars to promote his prediction, said that he was stunned when the rapture did not happen on Saturday.
What he decided, apparently, was that May 21 had been “an invisible judgment day,” of the spiritual variety, rather than his original vision of earthquakes and other disasters leading to five months…
Woman Selling Million-Dollar ‘Moon Rock’ Arrested
The wackiest part of this chain of events? That NASA has undercover agents who orchestrate stings to crack down on space crimes. Via the Guardian:
A woman who tried to sell what she said was a rare piece of moon rock for $1.7 million was detained when her would-be buyer turned out to be an undercover NASA agent, officials said Friday.
The gray rocks, which are considered national treasures and are illegal to sell, were given to each U.S. state and 136 countries by then-President Richard Nixon after U.S. moon missions and can sell for millions of dollars on the black market.
NASA investigators and Riverside County sheriff’s deputies detained the woman after she met Thursday with an undercover NASA investigator at a restaurant in Lake Elsinore, about 70 miles southeast of Los Angeles, the sheriff’s office said. The investigation was conducted over several months.
NASA planned to conduct tests to determine whether the…
Harold Camping ‘Flabbergasted’ That Rapture Did Not Occur
The most amazing part? The response from his followers, many of whom drained their life savings in anticipation: “I don’t think I am going to stop listening to him…I gotta listen to him on Monday, see what he says on the radio.” Via the Atlantic Wire:
Harold Camping emerged from his Alameda, California home yesterday to face reporters for the first time since the Rapture that never happened. Wearing a light jacket and speaking over chirping birds, Camping told the San Francisco Chronicle he was “flabbergasted” that the world did not end on Saturday. “I’m looking for answers,” he told the reporter. “But now I have nothing else to say. I’ll be back to work Monday and will say more then.” Camping followers are similarly perplexed. “I don’t think I am going to stop listening to him,” one man added, heaving a deep sigh before continuing: “I don’t know, I gotta…
The Russian Dead Alien Video
Just what the bleep are those Russians saying?!? This video has stormed the Internet, whatever it is, but it’s almost certainly a fake. Isn’t it?
Russia Today says:
A video of what was claimed to be a mutilated alien corpse is said to be fake. The tiny “dead alien” is just skin from chicken filled with bread, reports the website 7d.org.ua. Police questioned the men who claimed to have found the “body” and they allegedly confessed to creating it themselves…
