Weird Universe Archive
April 2012
April 23, 2012
Chuck’s Weekly Cite-Seeing (April 23, 2012)
Chuck's Weekly Cite-Seeing TourThe Crème de la Crème, Every Monday
Hand-Picked and Lightly Seasoned by Chuck Shepherd
April 23, 2012
(datelines from April 13 or later) (links correct as of April 23)
San Diego, Calif: Prof. Vilayanur Ramachandran, who runs the Center for Brain and Cognition at UC San Diego, came up with 30-some people who claim to be periodic gender-shifters, e.g., breasts today, gone tomorrow, same with penises. It’s just a hypothesis, he said. Scientific American
Canterbury, England: University of Kent researcher Sarah Johns, who apparently couldn’t think of anything else to research, tells us definitively that men prefer pink, not red female genitalia. (Bonus: Also, kindly be aware that caterpillars of the large white butterfly prefer to vomit when they’re alone, as opposed to within their protective group. Good to know.) Live Science via Yahoo News /// Science Daily
Shizuoka, Japan: Police officer Tetsuya Ichikawa, 50, was arrested for coming up behind a 25-yr-old woman in a restaurant and licking her hair. “I wanted to lick so I did.” Agence France-Presse via Herald Sun (Melbourne)
Washington, D.C.: Our long national nightmare
Melbourne, Australia: The Federal Court ruled that a woman on a business trip, though off-duty in a motel room having wall-banging sex, still gets worker compensation if she's injured by a fixture falling off the banged wall. (Bonus: A U.S. appeals court paved the way for a New York City widow to collect on her husband's accident insurance, even though the man had intentionally applied the electric shock to his genitals for sexual excitement.) Sydney Morning Herald /// New York Post
More in extended >>
Posted By: Chuck - Mon Apr 23, 2012 -
Comments (7)
Category:
April 22, 2012
Do You Kiss Betty and/or Veronica With That Mouth?
This is not an artifact of me fooling around with Photoshop. Nor can I imagine some Google drone did this during the newspaper-scanning process. You're welcome to look at the original here.
My guess is some bored artist or letterer in 1947 seeing what he could sneak past the editor.
Posted By: Paul - Sun Apr 22, 2012 -
Comments (12)
Category: Comics
April 21, 2012
Scientists Test “Foolproof” Dynamite
I'm sure these Du Pont scientists knew exactly what they were doing. But I still think I would have backed up a bit as they were doing this. Image from eBay. Article from Chicago Tribune, Jan. 23, 1935:
Posted By: Alex - Sat Apr 21, 2012 -
Comments (14)
Category: Explosives
L.S.D.
L.S.D from TRIPPPLE NIPPPLES on Vimeo.
Via Bruce Sterling's blog.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Apr 21, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Aliens, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Drugs, Psychedelic, Music, Surrealism, Body Painting
April 20, 2012
Turpo
A salve made from turpentine? The same stuff you clean your paint brushes with? A wonder drug! And apparently, it cured colds, burns, and so much more!
You say you wish you could get your hands on some of this miraculous stuff? The Russians still make it! Follow the Amazon links below.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Apr 20, 2012 -
Comments (15)
Category: Health, Hygiene, Medicine, Cures for the common cold, 1920s, Russia, Diseases
Rubber Chicken At The Edge of Space
Sent there recently by California high school students to measure the radiation from a solar storm. Details here. I wish my high school science projects had been that cool. Instead, they were all intensely boring. The only one I even remember was a water electrolysis experiment that I had to work on for weeks, and which involved the edge-of-your-seat thrill of watching a battery split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Posted By: Alex - Fri Apr 20, 2012 -
Comments (6)
Category: Science, Experiments
April 19, 2012
What Is It?
Take a guess at the above item, what do you think it is?
More in extended >>
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 19, 2012 -
Comments (9)
Category:
The Land Eaters
Posted By: Paul - Thu Apr 19, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Animals, Death, Destruction, Dreams and Nightmares, Surrealism, Fantasy, Stop-motion Animation
Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or Braingasms
The Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) Research & Support site defines the phenomenon as, "a physical sensation characterized by a pleasurable tingling that typically begins in the head and scalp, and often moves down the spine and through the limbs." Various stimuli can trigger the sensation -- certain kinds of sights, sounds, and situations. It's sometimes referred to as a "braingasm".I'm not sure whether ASMR is considered to be a scientifically verified phenomenon. Nevertheless, there's a sizable community of people who actively seek the sensation, and they post videos on youtube designed to trigger it. That's why, if you wade deep enough into the depths of youtube, you'll eventually come across a whole slew of odd ASMR-trigger videos, such as this one of the sounds of gift wrapping
I believe that the whisper videos I posted about yesterday are related to this ASMR phenomenon -- because whispering can be an ASMR trigger. That is, most people simply find it annoying to have to strain to hear someone whispering, but there are a few who are getting a tingly, braingasm feeling from it.
Posted By: Alex - Thu Apr 19, 2012 -
Comments (16)
Category: Emotions, Subcultures, Psychology, Brain
April 18, 2012
Cremo and Spit-tipped Cigars
We all know that ad campaigns have often created the disease or deficiency they wish to sell remedies for. "Halitosis" and "BO" were Madison Avenue inventions.But perhaps no campaign dared quite as much as that for Cremo cigars, with its charge that all its competitors spit on their product.
Original text here.
Original ad here. (Scroll down.)
But although Cremo increased its market share, their scheme ultimately backfired.
As this history says:
During the 1920s, the cigar industry began to suffer from image problems. The rise of organized crime during Prohibition, and the image of the stogie-chomping gangster--developed in part by Hollywood, and personified by such actors as Edward G. Robinson--gave the cigar an aura of disrespect among the public. Later that decade, the cigar industry faced a second crisis, when American Tobacco began promoting new, machine-rolled cigars. Its advertising asked: "Why run the risk of cigars made by dirty yellowed fingers and tipped in spit?" The image proved disastrous for the cigar industry as a whole. Cigar makers rushed to convert their manufacturing from hand-rolled to machine-rolled products, but cigar sales plunged through the 1930s. During this same time period, the cigar industry was hit hard by the rise in cigarette use across the United States. Cigar consumption never recovered to its early 1920s peak.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Apr 18, 2012 -
Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Lies, Dishonesty and Cheating, Smoking and Tobacco, 1920s, 1930s
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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 |
