Weird Universe Archive
March 2009
March 18, 2009
Extreme Shepherding
This is pretty cool until the very end, when it's revealed that it's a corporate-produced viral video, which means the entire thing is probably fake.
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (7)
Category: Animals, Video
How to undress in two seconds
This could be useful if you're in a hurry.(via Art of the Prank)
Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 18, 2009 -
Comments (4)
Category: Fashion, Video
March 17, 2009
[News] China’s Last Eunuch
Sun Yaoting died in 1996 at age 93, but evidently his biographer Jia Yinghua is gearing up for English-language book promos (though it's not out yet, Mr. Amazon says), like yesterday's story from Reuters. "Eunuch" was a career path for centuries in imperial China, in which good executive jobs were available to down-and-out men only if they were dickless, because a regular man couldn't be trusted in the emperor's inner sanctum. So little Sun's dad was feuding with the local chief, and dad figured the only way to get back at the chief was if little Sun grew up to be a power broker so that he could crush the chief. So dad castrated him, and it was gruesome. (Bonus: When little Sun finally regained consciousness, dad discovered that the emperor had abdicated. Punk'd!) (But the new guy let the old emperor continue to live in the city, and he hired Sun, anyway, so things worked out.) There's more, especially about how legs-crossingly "gruesome" that procedure was. Reuters via Yahoo /// New York Times archiveToday's Newsrangers: Peter Hine, Mindy Cohen
Posted By: Chuck - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (3)
Category:
[News] More Things to Worry About
Mary Gorsuch, 48, on probation for armed bank robbery, knocked off Paul's Variety in Biddeford, Maine, but then walked across the street and ordered a pepperoni pizza; cops arrived before the pizza. WLBZ-TV (Bangor)Mohammad, dude, it's just a game: Late in a soccer match in Hilla, Iraq, as a player had broken away and was set to attempt a game-tying kick, a spectator shot him dead. Reuters via Yahoo
Needs to lower his profile: Carlos Hoskins III was arrested in Kentwood, La., for growing dope, like from the nine potted pot plants he kept on his front porch. Times-Picayune
Always Low Prices: Two guys tried to shoplift a bucket of chicken and a package of socks from a Wal-Mart near Austin, Tex. (total retail, $6.83). American-Statesman
Awesome: A couple (reported via different news sources as Brennan Cunningham and Tabatha Carlson) were having sex in a car on the railroad tracks near Minot, N.D., and a train nudged 'em (not very hard, apparently but enough to cause a scene), and when police arrived, they were still going at it. Gotta meet this Tabatha! KFYR-TV (Bismarck) /// KXMC-TV (Minot)
Your Daily Jury Duty
["In America, a person is presumed innocent until the mug shot is released"]
Mr. Orion Kent Mitchell Stoltman, 19, might have been the "adult" who along with two younger teens committed aggravated assault on two pet pygmy goats in an apparent demonstration of the forces of darkness last Halloween in Tooele, Utah. Tooele Transcript
Posted By: Chuck - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (6)
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Follies of the Mad Men #58
Message: your delicious new Skoda will fall apart in the first rainstorm.Skoda Car Commercial - The Cake - A funny movie is a click away
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (3)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Food, Cars
Sick Human Detector
A Belgian company has filed a patent for an invention designed to detect sick travelers in airports. They call it a device for the "RECOGNITION AND LOCALISATION OF PATHOLOGIC ANIMAL AND HUMAN SOUNDS."The idea is to place microphones around airports that will zero in on the sound of people coughing. The people hacking their lungs out can then be prevented from boarding a plane. A less controversial use of the technology is to detect sick pigs in pig pens.
Can people be stopped from traveling because they have a cold? I've never seen that done, but I'd like it (despite the inconvenience to the sick people) 'cause otherwise they infect everyone else on the plane. Though of course, if I were the one kicked off a plane I'd be seeing red. (via New Scientist)
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (10)
Category: Health, Disease, Inventions, Patents, Travel
Dog Armor
Custom-made dog armor. For the times when you plan to take your dog into combat. I wonder if I could order a suit for my parents' 200 lb great dane.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (19)
Category: Animals, Pets, Dogs, War
[News] About That Insurance Company Hiring Only Capricorns
(y'know, the one I mentioned here on February 5th): My "research" is much more thorough when I lay out the weekly News of the Weird column, because it has more readers and brings in more (i.e., some) income. That doesn't mean that I just slap any old thing up in this-here space, but my rep is on the line in the weekly column. Plus, I write up the weekly a couple of weeks after a news story appears, which gives a chance for other newspapers to follow up the original story and put more data out there by the time I get around to columnizing. Nonetheless, I now find that this story of a "Salzburg insurance company" that hires only Capricorns, Tauruses, Aquariuses, Arieses, and Leos has likely only ever been "reported" by London's Daily Mail, which wrote it up with journalistic malpractice by failing to name the company or anyone associated with the story. On the other hand, what it has going for it is a correct statement of the tricky law involved. "Discrimination" in employment in the EU is only illegal if it is based on specified categories (e.g., race, religion, gender, etc.). Discrimination based on the year of one's birth might be illegal, but not based on the month. That's merely absurd. (Standard Disclaimer: The story could be true. Who knows? Maybe the Daily Mail had a chance to write it up with good journalism, but just failed. Either way, it won't be in my weekly column.) (And by the way, a bow to Alex: He was skeptical of it from the git-go on MuseumofHoaxes.com) [UPDATE: Alex reports that one of his readers posted a link to an actual classified ad in the Salzburger Nachrichten that sought sales and management people of certain star signs. So, it's more likely journalistic malpractice than a hoax.]
Posted By: Chuck - Tue Mar 17, 2009 -
Comments (7)
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March 16, 2009
[News] More Things to Worry About
Iran's classic, traditional breakfast (soup of sheep's head, with a side of eye and tongue in bread) is getting expensive, plus the nutrition police are on the case because of the high cholesterol. Washington PostA 6-yr-old boy in Jharkland state, India, is doing fine after impaling himself on a 6-ft-long iron railing that appeared from the photo to have centered itself nicely through his abdomen. BBC News
Oops! After Oklahoma inmate Paul Duran got into a fight, they had to move him to another cell, but they forgot to check who they were moving him in with: the murderer he had testified against six yrs ago. (As a result, Mr. Duran is no longer with us.) Associated Press via KXII-TV (Sherman, Tex.)
Today's Newsrangers: Tom Barker, Paul Music, Tom Epley, Stephen Taylor, Matt McCaffrey, Michelle Jensen, Scott Langill
Posted By: Chuck - Mon Mar 16, 2009 -
Comments (9)
Category:
[News] Leading Economic Indicators
The Municipal Court in Morrow County, Ohio (two counties up from Columbus), has just decided that, due to budget cuts, no new cases (civil or criminal) can be filed unless whoever files (private citizens or the district attorney) brings in his own box of paper so the court can print up the required notices (Seriously). Columbus DispatchMexican Carlos Slim made the Forbes magazine richest-people list as numero tres (after Gates and Buffett), but a countryman ranked lower down on the list of the world's 793 billionaires got even more press: Joaquin Guzman Loera, the well-known head of the country's Sinaloa drug cartel. (Colombia's Pablo Escobar was on the list for 7 yrs!) CNN
Everybody knows there's no suing in baseball. If a spectator gets hit with a foul ball, or a splintered bat, he can't sue anybody. It's printed right on the ticket, and judges always uphold that. It's an"assumption of the risk" by the fan, judges say. Except for these five judges . . on the Iowa Supreme Court. Little spectator Tara Sweeney got hit when the bat slipped out of a player's hands, sailed 120 feet, and smacked her on the head, for which Mother Sweeney wants the big bucks. The trial judge dismissed Mom's lawsuit out of hand (because there's no suing in baseball!), but now the Supreme Court reversed and ordered the case onward. (Bonus: Mom had additionally signed an actual waiver of liability because Tara was on a sponsored field trip!) Des Moines Register
Posted By: Chuck - Mon Mar 16, 2009 -
Comments (16)
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
