Ghost towns are no big deal, really. There’s plenty of them out west, and most states have at least a handful of their own (my home state of Ohio has more than a dozen, including the interestingly-named

Herbalism, the traditional medicinal practice which uses plants, fungi, and extracts to treat illnesses and injury, dates back at least 5,300 years (and is no doubt much older). During the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance, herbalism was the cutting edge of medicine in Europe and elsewhere (even while the seeds of modern medicine were taking root in the Middle East). 

… And it’s thriving in South Korea, of all places. The LA Times reports that

Across South Korea, entrepreneurs are holding controversial forums aimed at teaching clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death. They use mortality as a personal motivator. 

…

[At] the Coffin Academy, South Koreans can get a glimpse into the abyss. Over four hours, groups of a dozen or more tearfully write their letters of goodbye and tombstone epitaphs. Finally, they attend their own funerals and try the coffin on for size.

Interesting stuff. The article, which you can read in its entirety here, goes on to note that this is partially in response to the fact that South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the developed world. 

“The Bloop,” according to the ever-dependable Wikipedia, is an “ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration several times during the summer of 1997.” The sound’s source, mysteriously, still remains unknown. 

The sound is believed to be coming roughly from 50oS; 100oW. After
reading that, I wondered how close that was to the coordinates given in
“The Call of Cthulhu”. Allow me to quote: “Then, driven ahead by
curiosity in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command, the men
sight a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea, and in S. Latitude
47°9′, W. Longitude l23°43′, come upon a coastline of mingled mud,
ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the
tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror – the nightmare
corpse-city of R’lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind
history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark
stars.”

 Gotta love it!

Whatever made it, you can listen to The Bloop yourself here. Personally, this whole thing gives me chills. The uncharted depths of the ocean are a scary, mysterious place. 

You can watch the video, which is very fun and well done and awareness-raising, here.Thanks to Today’s BIG Thing for pointing this out.

The nefarious Noughties are over as of 12:01 this morning – a welcome end to what most Americans consider the worst decade in 50 years, according to a recent Pew Research Poll. 

The debate is now on, of course, as to how to pronounce the year we’re living in. Some experts suggest that we used the “two-thousand-and” formulation to pronounce the years 2000-2009 mainly due to the influence of the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey” (which also used the “two-thousand-and” formulation). This issue was discussed briefly on NPR two months ago: 

Are you, like me, tired of the New York Times Best-seller lists? Are you at a loss for reading material, and perhaps looking for books that are less mainstream, maybe off the beaten path? Stephen K. Baum, PhD, of Texas A&M University, has compiled an expansive, annotated list of interesting lesser-known literature. The list itself spans more than 300 pages, and includes a helpful sub-list of other lists of lesser-known books, too (my favorite of these are the 50 Essential Alternative Horror Books, the Guide to 20th Century Experimental Literature, and The Invisible Library – a list of fictional books that appear within other books). 

Scientists searching for evidence of the existence of dark matter, the hypothetical matter theorized to account for the majority of the observable universe’s mass, have found vague but intriguing clues at the bottom of a Minnesotan mine:

An international team of physicists working in the bottom of an old
iron mine in Minnesota said Thursday that they might have registered
the first faint hints of a ghostly sea of subatomic particles known as dark matter long thought to permeate the cosmos.

The particles showed as two
tiny pulses of heat deposited over the course of two years in chunks of
germanium and silicon that had been cooled to a temperature near
absolute zero. But, the scientists said, there was more than a 20
percent chance that the pulses were caused by fluctuations in the
background radioactivity of their cavern, so the results were
tantalizing, but not definitive.

You can read the rest of the article here.

Well, not exactly. Mammalodon, who vaguely resembles a manatee and lived at least 25 million years ago, 

fed by sucking small animals out of the seafloor mud with its short snout and tongue, 

experts say.

Researchers say the 25 million-year-old fossil is related to today’s blue whales – the largest animals on Earth.

The ancient animal’s mud slurping may have been a precursor to the filter feeding seen in modern baleen whales.

These whales strain huge quantities of tiny marine animals through specialised “combs” which take the place of teeth.

The research is published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 

You can read the full article here.

Merry Christmas to all! The Courier-Post Online reports that

Image via Wikipedia

While the earliest roots of the Santa Claus mythology likely trace back to European pagan traditions co-opted and combined with the story of the Christian bishop Nicholas of Myra, as we noted on Tuesday, the modern American conception of Santa Claus has its origins in politics. Stephen Heller of AIGA writes: