Category: Uncategorized

What’s that? You’re worried about a little snow falling on your head? How adorable.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, it’s raining spiders.

Footage posted online yesterday shows thousands of spiders “falling from the sky” in the southern Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina.

“Still do not know what causes such behavior,” writes the video’s uploader. “We are researching and will post the answer to the question here.”

I know exactly what causes such behavior. A little something called the end of the world.

Ever wonder what the 43rd president of the United States is up to these days? Apparently, he’s been teaching himself to paint with oils. A hacker named Guccifer recently gained access to the Bush family email accounts and unearthed two of ol’ GW’s self portraits, among other things. 

English: President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It sounds absurd, and it is: this is the result of the authoritarian madness of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko (pictured right). Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, imposed the anti-clapping measure in 2011:   

[…] [W]hen public protests broke out in 2011 over the collapsing economy, [Lukashenko] responded by having thousands arrested for whatever reason or no reason at all. Most of them, according to the Christian Science Monitor, “were fined heavily or jailed for up to 15 days on police court testimony that they were expressing a political opinion by clapping their hands.” Activists and protesters there had adopted applause as a symbol of protest, which is brilliant because now that clapping has been associated with dissent, the regime reportedly has had to forbid it at its own events, such as traditional military parades, which must parade along silently. Authoritarian regimes rely heavily on forcing people to play along, and now forced applause is not an option.

Check dis out. Japanese researchers managed to film a live giant squid, a third of a kilometer beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. The elusive creatures have never before been caught on tape. 

Modern-day scientists on their own Moby Dick-style search used a submersible to 

descend to the dark and cold depths of the northern Pacific Ocean, where at around 630 

metres (2,066 feet) they managed to film a three-metre specimen. After around 100 missions, during which they spent 400 hours in the cramped 

submarine, the three-man crew tracked the creature from a spot some 15 kilometres (nine miles) east of Chichi island in the north Pacific.

“Researchers around the world have tried to film giant squid in their natural habitats, but all attempts were in vain before,” Kubodera said. “With this footage we hope to discover more about the life of the species,” he said, adding that he planned to publish his findings soon.

I think the photos speak for themselves:

You can see more here. 

Not recently, of course. But during World War II, such a device was tested around New Caledonia and Auckland as a back-up option for use against Japan should the Trinity test fail. The New Zealand tests showed that “the weapon was feasible and a series of 10 large offshore blasts could potentially create a 33-foot tsunami capable of inundating a small city.”

The top secret operation, code-named “Project Seal”, tested the doomsday device as a possible rival to the nuclear bomb. About 3,700 bombs were exploded during the tests, first in New Caledonia and later at Whangaparaoa Peninsula, near Auckland.

The plans came to light during research by a New Zealand author and film-maker, Ray Waru, who examined military files buried in the national archives.

“Presumably if the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people,” said Mr Waru.

You can find out more here.

… was not quite as sinister as the name suggests. “Whimsical” is Wikipedia’s term; personally, I find it hilarious. The Order of the Occult Hand is a “secret society of American journalists who have been able to slip the phrase ‘It was as if an occult hand had…’ in print as a sort of a game and inside joke.” The order originated, according to Wikipedia, when 

Joseph Flanders, then a police reporter of The Charlotte News, in the fall of 1965, […] reported on a millworker who was shot by his own family when he came back home late at night. He wrote:

It was as if an occult hand had reached down from above and moved the players like pawns upon some giant chessboard.

After the Order was discovered and its nefarious schemes made public in 2004, it was
“announced that the Order had chosen a new secret phrase at an annual editorial writers’ convention and resumed a stealth operation.”

you’ve idly daydreamed about living in a cozy Hobbit-hole in idyllic Hobbiton (don’t tell me I’m the only one!). Well, a “self-build devotee” named Simon Dale can show you how you can make that happen. For less than $5,000 (excluding labor costs, of course, since he did it all himself), he put together a charming Hobbit-style dwelling over the course of four months. Check out some more impressive pictures here!

Here’s a headline you probably never expected to read, and I certainly never expected to type out. I mean, come on, aren’t the loony birth certificate conspiracy claims enough? Apparently not. Now President Obama stands accused of being part of a “secret CIA project to explore Mars” as a young man in the early 1980s:

That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.

[…] 

According to Basiago and Stillings, Obama isn’t just lying about his identity. He’s lying about his military service record, too. While his political opponents in 2008 attacked him for never serving, in truth, he was concealing his participation in a hidden CIA intergalactic program hosted at a California community college in 1980.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the White House’s official response is that Obama never went to Mars. “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” says Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council. 

Here’s an offbeat entry: 25 of the weirdest toilets from around the world. To be fair, I take issue with some of the items on this list: the pit-toilets of developing countries don’t really belong in the same category as intentionally-zany bathrooms. But no matter – check it out for yourself. This one is my favorite:

In – where else? – Australia, the Land of Thing That Will Kill You (tip of the hat to our Aussie friends). Apparently a flood left several bull sharks stranded in a golf course pond, making it the ultimate water hazard. Bull Sharks can survive and even thrive in fresh water, and have been spotted as far inland as the Kentucky and Ohio Rivers, according to Wikipedia. They are also extremely aggressive, and accordingly are responsible for the majority of near-shore shark attacks. 

English: Frost flowers growing on young sea ice in the Arctic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When the air gets that different from the sea, the dryness pulls moisture off little bumps in the ice, bits of ice vaporize, the air gets humid — but only for a while. The cold makes water vapor heavy. The air wants to release that excess weight, so crystal by crystal, air turns back into ice, creating delicate, feathery tendrils that reach sometimes two, three inches high, like giant snowflakes. The sea, literally, blossoms. 

If I could book passage on a boat and see a frost flower meadow burst into being, magically growing out of the empty, frosty air and spreading as far as my eyes could see, would I want to see that?

You bet I would. Who wouldn’t?