December 1, 2008
Who needs Iron Man or The Dark Knight, when you can watch Snap, Crackle and Pop battle their evil counterparts?
[From
Life magazine for March 5 1956. Two separate scans, picture and text.]
"And they come with matching panties, as you can plainly see!"
and the Morning Edition of Chuck's News of the Weird Daily for Monday, December 1, 2008
He played checkers for hours a day and wrote books on strategy
(Note: This is not a story from
The Onion.) Richard Fortman passed away earlier this month, leaving a legacy as one of the world's great authorities on checkers (7-volume handbook; six-time Illinois state champ). He was even a two-time world postal checkers champion, which is exactly what it suggests, which is players mailing each successive move to each other by U.S. Mail, so that one game lasts for months. Yes, there are grandmasters and "historical" openings and endgames.
New York Times
Comments 'checkers_champion'
A new U.S. record for reverse-lying
The six people convicted in connection with a 1989 murder in Beatrice, Neb., were recently exonerated by DNA evidence, even though five of them had confessed. The hapless suspects had given it up partly out of aggressive police questioning, partly out of peer pressure from their co-"conspirators," partly out of the fact that they were just slow. But it goes to show ya. Anyway, the story's been out for a coupla weeks, but this link goes to a story Saturday on how one shrink helped gain the suspects' trust and eased them into remembering how they committed such a horrible crime.
Omaha World-Herald
Comments 'false_confessions'
Warm up a cell right now for this 5-year-old because it's just a matter of time
The kid was being so bad on the school bus that they kicked him off for five days, and his dad gave him some tough love by refusing to drive him to school but, rather, making him walk the whole 2½ hours back and forth every day of the suspension. Come the following Monday, suspension lifted, back on the bus, lesson learned! Um, no. Exactly three stops after picking the kid up, the driver had to kick him off again.
Northern Territory News (Darwin, Australia)
Comments 'incorrigible_kid'
Your Daily Losers
Just during the last few days, four people accidentally shot themselves: a home invader wielding a shotgun, a fella using his waistband as a holster (yep, got himself in the "groin"), another fooling around with friends with an "unloaded" gun, and, er, a police chief giving his daughter a gun safety lesson.
Austin American-Statesman /// Bakersfield Californian /// WBBM Radio (Chicago)
/// Kentucky Post
Comments 'shot_themselves'
Your Daily Jury Duty
[no fair examining the evidence; verdict must be based on mugshot only]
From Friday's weekly collection at The Smoking Gun (meaning, you must pass judgment without knowing the, y'know, technical detail of exactly which crime or crimes he's charged with, but that shouldn't be a problem).
TheSmokingGun.com
Comments 'dailyjury_081201'
More Things to Worry About on Monday
Women (all the women) in two neighboring villages in Papua New Guinea made a pact 10 yrs ago to end the constant fighting between the villages' warriors, in the only way they knew how:
post-natal abortion of all boys (no warriors, no war).
Daily Mail (London)
Latest on super-advanced
Japanese toilet technology: scanner to detect the gender of the person approaching the throne (and thus to automatically raise, or lower, the seat); measure your body-fat ratio while you're on the pot (Bonus: Story has narrative on how cleaning commodes is respectful work in Japan).
BBC News
Sounds Like a Joke: An appeals court in France refused to block the sale of a
voodoo doll (with pins) in the likeness of President Sarkozy, but it did order the seller to attach a notice to the product warning the apparently intellectually-overrated French that the doll "constitutes an attack on the personal dignity of Mr. Sarkozy."
Associated Press via Yahoo
Comments 'worry_081201'
Comments on More Things to Worry About on Monday?
The concept behind the
Rough Luxe Hotel in London seems to be that the rooms look like crap (unfinished walls, peeling paint), but you pay a lot to stay there because they've rebranded crap as "rough luxury". How much do you pay? £250 a night during regular season, which is about $380.
Our look is a mix of old and new, furniture and art; combining colours and beautiful fabrics with cheap materials and existing distressed original walls. Cheap materials are treated as precious items and preserved for their beauty and memory of the site.
Most rooms don't have a TV because "as you are in one of the most exciting capital cities in the world, you probably wouldn't need one." Oh, and you might have to share a bathroom. My favorite touch: a sign in one of the rooms declares "This is Shit".
For that kind of money I'd be happy to let someone stay in my "rough luxury" garage. I'd even put out a sleeping bag for them.
In a paper recently submitted to
arXiv.org, researchers describe an attempt to determine the exact amount of force required to stab someone. No, they didn't stab real people. They stabbed synthetic materials such as polyurethane, foam, and ballistic soap. But oddly, no one had previously determined the exact amount of force needed for stabbing. Forensic scientists had simply used qualitative terms such as "mild force" or "severe force".
Some of their findings: 1) The best household knife to stab someone with is a utility knife:
Four different commonly available household knives (cook’s, utility, carving and kitchen knives) were tested. The utility knife required the least amount of force or energy to penetrate the skin and was associated with the smallest amount of out of plane skin displacement, while the cook’s knife required the greatest force, energy and out of plane displacement.
2) However, not all knives are created equal. Even two identical knives by the same manufacturer can vary greatly in sharpness and ability to penetrate skin:
Evidence suggests that the quality control processes used to manufacture knives fail to produce consistently uniform blade points in nominally identical knives, leading to penetration forces which can vary widely...
the penetration forces associated with nominally identical knives, even virgin knives, can vary by as much as 100%.
November 30, 2008
For those who did not get enough excitement with the "King's Path" post, here is
the Yungas Road.
November 29, 2008
Ian's Shoelace Site promises that it brings you "the fun, fashion & science of shoelaces". Wondering why your laces keep coming untied? Or maybe you're looking for some new ways to tie your shoes? Ian's is the place for you. There's even a frequently updated page of shoelaces in the news (example: "a hapless burglar was left hanging upside down against a window after trapping a shoe lace during a break-in"), as well as a Shoelace Urban Myth Warning:
It is widely mis-reported that shoelaces were invented by Harvey Kennedy on 27th March 1790. This date is centuries after shoelaces were in common use and is clearly NOT correct.
According to
Wikipedia, the
Other World Kingdom is "a large commercial BDSM facility, resort and micronation." It's located in a 16th century chateau in the Czech Republic. OWK describes itself as "the private state of supreme women":
The goal of the OWK is to get as many male creatures under the unlimited rule of Superior Women on as much territory as possible. Gradual realization of this goal in its final consequence will mean the introduction of an Absolute Matriarchy - the only righteous social order.
However, the OWK is not a sex resort. According to
wipipedia:
The forms of domination appear to be severe, with little if any sensuality or seductive qualities. Psychodrama does not seem to be a concept the ladies there understand or practice. There is reportedly NO sexuality or sexual contact at the OWK, and the behavior seen in videos seems to bear this out.
If this sounds like a place you'd like to visit, you better do so soon. The OWK has recently been
put up for sale. The asking price is eight million euros.
November 28, 2008
and the Afternoon Edition of Chuck's News of the Weird Daily for Friday
At a zoo in China, they've supposedly watched
gay penguins trick straight penguins out of their eggs (leaving stones in their place).
[Ed.: That's what it says here. I only know what I read in the papers.] Daily Telegraph (London)
An Ohio woman gets her writerness on, daily, by waxing baroque about, um,
Brian Williams's neckties.
Associated Press via Washington Post
Manabu Mizuta, 35, was arrested in Osaka prefecture, charged with releasing
hundreds of beetle larvae on a commuter train "to see women get scared and shake their legs."
Agence France-Presse
Recurring Themes galore:
(1) Another janitor accidentally trashed an underappreciated art project (Bonus: Woman climbed into the Dumpster to look for it);
(2) Another incompetent multi-tasker (texting-driving) (Bonus: He won't be doing it again.)
(3) Another cat lover with too many (Bonus: "This is the first [case] I've been to where the people were actually sleeping with dead carcasses");
(4) Another girl with a hairball in her stomach.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution /// KQRE-TV (Albuquerque)
/// Springfield (Ohio) News Sun /// The Times of India
Professor Music's Weird Link o' the Day
UnusualLife.com is a nice place to pass the day browsing some unusual things (architecture, scenery, etc.) . . . and then there's this . . little . . exhibit of mighty pixellation power put to questionable use:
Marika Takahashi's Fitness Video.
Today's Newsrangers: P.L. Bartnicki, Paul Music, Gil Nelson, Eli Christman, Jenny Beatty, Stan Rummel, Emory Kimbrough, Ginger Katz, Stephen Taylor, Bruce Townley, Sam Gaines
Comments on the Afternoon Edition of Chuck's News of the Weird Daily for Friday?
Comments 'cycle_081128'
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