Weird Universe Archive

March 2010

March 18, 2010

6 1/2 Magic Hours



What's weird about this film? The fact that once upon a time, air travel was sexy, easy and fun!

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 18, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category: Travel, Documentaries, 1950s

Parking Chairs

I live by the code of the parking chair. Someone (the writer didn't even know that the magnificent parking chair had a name, let alone all that it stands for) fired off a letter to my local paper today vilifying the practice, and it had me outraged. I've since submitted a rebuttal. In the course of research for the letter, I found the following recent story from The Morning Call in Allentown, PA detailing what can happen when you don't respect the parking chair. The police may have assured the man he did nothing wrong by moving the chair, but I bet he doesn't do it again. And if you believe in the chair like I do, you can always show it!

Posted By: qualityleashdog - Thu Mar 18, 2010 - Comments (18)
Category: Crime, Riots, Protests and Civil Disobedience, Urban Life, More Things To Worry About

March 17, 2010

Making Something Old New Again


Chris Dimino, a student at a visual arts school, invented the Corona Matic waffle maker as an assigned project. The students were told to take an obsolete item and remake it into something useful and different. Thus the old typewriter becomes a cool keyboard shaped waffle maker. There are other interesting inventions at the site as well, like the Uno, a single wheel motorcycle and others. First link the waffle maker, second link the list of weird and wacky inventions.
http://www.inventionreaction.com/weird-inventions/Corona-Matic-Waffle-Maker-Makes-Keyboard-Waffles
http://www.inventionreaction.com/weird-inventions/

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 17, 2010 - Comments (7)
Category:

Monkeying Around

An amateur photographer caught some great pictures of a group of Macaque monkey playing in the snow. They made some snowballs and, according to the man who took the pictures, they were throwing them at each other. The animals live in the mountains of Japan and survive the cold weather due to hot springs that are there. The pictures are too large to post here but enjoy them at the link.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1258513/Fluffy-Japanese-monkeys-ball-play-snow.html

Posted By: Alex - Wed Mar 17, 2010 - Comments (3)
Category:

March 16, 2010

Shortest Man DIes in Italy

.image


My favorite part of this clip is where PingPing talks at about 20 seconds. Here's the link:



It's also interesting to see him smoking. He blows smoke at you at the end

Posted By: gdanea - Tue Mar 16, 2010 - Comments (8)
Category: Death

BOOM!


Owners of cars parked along the street near a building site in Warsaw, Poland got a nasty surprise last Wednesday. They returned to their cars to find them covered in quick drying cement. It seems a cement mixer exploded at the building site depositing it's contents all over the street and everything on it. Now all involved insurance companies are pointing the finger at each other while the car owners fume.
http://austriantimes.at/news/Around_the_World/2010-03-10/21428/Builders_mix_up

Posted By: Alex - Tue Mar 16, 2010 - Comments (5)
Category:

Just Some Weird Crap!

A New York jeweller briefly owned the world’s most valuable pet earlier this year when his golden retriever swallowed a $20,000 diamond by mistake. Sollie, the dog, had accompanied his owner George Kaufman to the latter’s jewellery shop where Mr. Kaufman and his partner were intending to inspect some gemstones. Unfortunately a diamond weighing 3 carats fell to the floor where it was immediately snatched up by Sollie and swallowed. After a vet recommended that nature be allowed to take its course, Kaufman spent the next three days carefully collecting and dissecting everything Sollie produced before finally retrieving the gem (Telegraph).

Perhaps he should have contacted Ireland’s first official dog-waste removal company, Mr. Scoopy-Poo. The brainchild of Irish entrepreneur William O’Brian, Mr. Scoopy-Poo (motto, “Business stinks – but it’s picking up!”) will clean up after your dirty dogs into biodegradable bags and hygienically dispose of them, for a price of course. After all, where there’s muck there’s brass, and occasionally diamonds (Irish Examiner).

But O’Brian may be missing a trick here, why dispose of faeces when you could be selling it as the latest must have fashion item? What sounds like insanity may be an idea whose time has come. How else can you explain not one but two manure-based products in the same week?

First up is London based artist and designer INSA, who has produced a pair of 10” stilettos incorporating elephant dung. And this isn’t just dung from any old elephant either, this is dung from the very same elephant family that produced the infamous extra ingredient for a series of paintings made by artist Chris Ofili in the 90s. Yup, in these shoes you are literally standing on celebrity elephant dung (Huffington Post).

And hot on the precipitous heels of INSA is Geneva based watchmaker Yvan Arpa, who has crafted his latest $11,000 wrist-candy from toad skin and dinosaur doo. The watches, to be made and sold by Swiss watchmakers Artya, feature a face cut from a 100 million year-old “coprolite”, or fossil faeces, left behind by an ancient plant-eater in what is now the United States. And the quality American materials don’t just amount to a pretty face as the strap is lovingly crafted from the hide of an American cane toad. The mechanism though is pure Swiss craftsmanship (Star Tribune).

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Tue Mar 16, 2010 - Comments (4)
Category: Animals, Design and Designers, Fashion, Shoes, Pets, Dogs, Excrement

Weird 2.0 (3-16-2010)

Weird 2.0
March 16, 2010
(datelines March 6-March 13) (links correct as of March 16)
by Chuck Shepherd
© 2010 by Chuck Shepherd. All rights reserved.

"To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle"—George Orwell
"A little learning is a dangerous thing"—Alexander Pope
"Nero Fiddles While Rome Burns"—Rome Daily Inquirer, 7-18-64A.D.


Texas Public School Officials Set to Inbreed Knowledge: A solid majority of the state's Board of Education don't much believe in "evolution" or in "separation of church and state" or in the weaknesses of capitalism, and they are determined that their own kids, and all other Texans', learn the correct things. They are in the process of prescribing the content for the state's textbooks (as opposed to what other states do, which is to select among what scholars in the relevant fields write). New York Times

Possibly joining the Texas Board of Education soon is a genuine cipher candidate, Tony Cunningham, who won a district's Republican primary with 58 percent of the vote, even though the Party establishment knew nothing about him (which in one sense makes him perfectly well qualified to write school textbooks). Plus, Cunningham admits to filing for the office only because he mistakenly thought it was a paid gig–based on numbers on the back of the form, which were actually a schedule of fees.) San Antonio Express-News

Sticks and Stones and Words May Break My Bones: The county school board chairman in St. Petersburg, Fla., called the gang of disruptive kids that made life miserable for teachers and students in one middle school "hoodlums"–a word that for some reason created waves of indignation among community leaders who specialize in becoming offended. Hence, based on the whims of a few, another perfectly serviceable dictionary word nears retirement. St. Petersburg Times

The Continuing Campaign to Make Americans Perfect: New York state Assemblyman Felix Ortiz of Brooklyn introduced legislation to prohibit restaurant chefs from adding salt to their dishes. Whatever is individually virtuous must be mandatory. WNEW-TV (New York City)



More in extended >>

Posted By: Chuck - Tue Mar 16, 2010 - Comments (12)
Category:

March 15, 2010

It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane! It’s A… Hovercraft?!

With all this talk of ground-effect craft on WU recently, perhaps you feel like owning one, and not just a rusting cold-war relic either. Well now you can as self-taught New Zealand mechanic Rudy Heeman has decided to sell the pride and joy it took him 10 years to build, a flying hovercraft.

At low speeds the vehicle behaves much as any hovercraft would, covering most surfaces with the usual ease, but over 70 km/h the craft's detachable lightweight wings kick in and it takes to the air. But despite being surprisingly nimble in flight, Heeman's invention, called the "WIG", doesn't require a pilot's license to fly (in New Zealand at least) since like all hovercraft it is classed as a marine vehicle. Video in the link (Sky News).

Posted By: Dumbfounded - Mon Mar 15, 2010 - Comments (9)
Category: Flight, Inventions, Motor Vehicles

Page 5 of 10 pages ‹ First  < 3 4 5 6 7 >  Last ›




Get WU Posts by Email

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner


weird universe thumbnail
Who We Are
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
Monthly Archives
November 2024 •  October 2024 •  September 2024 •  August 2024 •  July 2024 •  June 2024 •  May 2024 •  April 2024 •  March 2024 •  February 2024 •  January 2024

December 2023 •  November 2023 •  October 2023 •  September 2023 •  August 2023 •  July 2023 •  June 2023 •  May 2023 •  April 2023 •  March 2023 •  February 2023 •  January 2023

December 2022 •  November 2022 •  October 2022 •  September 2022 •  August 2022 •  July 2022 •  June 2022 •  May 2022 •  April 2022 •  March 2022 •  February 2022 •  January 2022

December 2021 •  November 2021 •  October 2021 •  September 2021 •  August 2021 •  July 2021 •  June 2021 •  May 2021 •  April 2021 •  March 2021 •  February 2021 •  January 2021

December 2020 •  November 2020 •  October 2020 •  September 2020 •  August 2020 •  July 2020 •  June 2020 •  May 2020 •  April 2020 •  March 2020 •  February 2020 •  January 2020

December 2019 •  November 2019 •  October 2019 •  September 2019 •  August 2019 •  July 2019 •  June 2019 •  May 2019 •  April 2019 •  March 2019 •  February 2019 •  January 2019

December 2018 •  November 2018 •  October 2018 •  September 2018 •  August 2018 •  July 2018 •  June 2018 •  May 2018 •  April 2018 •  March 2018 •  February 2018 •  January 2018

December 2017 •  November 2017 •  October 2017 •  September 2017 •  August 2017 •  July 2017 •  June 2017 •  May 2017 •  April 2017 •  March 2017 •  February 2017 •  January 2017

December 2016 •  November 2016 •  October 2016 •  September 2016 •  August 2016 •  July 2016 •  June 2016 •  May 2016 •  April 2016 •  March 2016 •  February 2016 •  January 2016

December 2015 •  November 2015 •  October 2015 •  September 2015 •  August 2015 •  July 2015 •  June 2015 •  May 2015 •  April 2015 •  March 2015 •  February 2015 •  January 2015

December 2014 •  November 2014 •  October 2014 •  September 2014 •  August 2014 •  July 2014 •  June 2014 •  May 2014 •  April 2014 •  March 2014 •  February 2014 •  January 2014

December 2013 •  November 2013 •  October 2013 •  September 2013 •  August 2013 •  July 2013 •  June 2013 •  May 2013 •  April 2013 •  March 2013 •  February 2013 •  January 2013

December 2012 •  November 2012 •  October 2012 •  September 2012 •  August 2012 •  July 2012 •  June 2012 •  May 2012 •  April 2012 •  March 2012 •  February 2012 •  January 2012

December 2011 •  November 2011 •  October 2011 •  September 2011 •  August 2011 •  July 2011 •  June 2011 •  May 2011 •  April 2011 •  March 2011 •  February 2011 •  January 2011

December 2010 •  November 2010 •  October 2010 •  September 2010 •  August 2010 •  July 2010 •  June 2010 •  May 2010 •  April 2010 •  March 2010 •  February 2010 •  January 2010

December 2009 •  November 2009 •  October 2009 •  September 2009 •  August 2009 •  July 2009 •  June 2009 •  May 2009 •  April 2009 •  March 2009 •  February 2009 •  January 2009

December 2008 •  November 2008 •  October 2008 •  September 2008 •  August 2008 •  July 2008 •