Category: Agriculture
Another Helping of Food Related Weirdness – 6 (and a bit)

Of course this is just another string for the bow of the world’s greatest all around superfood, bacon. And it’s not the only new talent to come to light, bacon also makes you smarter. At least it does if your mother ate it. Scientists from the University of North Carolina are claiming the micronutrient choline, which is abundant in pork products, is vital in helping foetal brain development (Telegraph).
Clearly then, the British are not eating enough bacon. Not only do they have to put up with a reputation for being lousy lovers but in a recent study for the UK’s National Farmers Union, 26% of under-16s polled said that bacon came from sheep, and 29% thought that oats grew on trees (Daily Mail).
So it is perhaps a small consolation that an English sparkling wine trounced traditional French champagnes to be crowned Champion of Worldwide Sparkling Wines in an annual competition held by Italian wine magazine Euposia. Nyetimber's Classic Cuvée 2003 beat off entries from Bollinger and Louis Roederer in a blind tasting, despite costing less than £30 per bottle (Telegraph).
Also sure to win awards is the newest attraction in Beijing, China. The “World Chocolate Wonderland” is a 20000 square metre theme park devoted to the food and boasts life-size replicas of terracotta warriors, a BMW and a basketball player caught mid-leap, all made of chocolate. The centrepiece must be an array of chocolate fountains that endlessly propel 1.5 tonnes of melted chocolate in all directions. The park is open to April, but plans to reopen next January with all new exhibits (Movie Channel).
Perhaps they’d like to bid for the chocolate and sweet reproduction of a statue of Lenin currently on display in Bucharest, Romania? The statue, which stands on the plinth that once held the real thing, is to be auctioned off to raise money for a museum of statuary from the country’s Nazi and Communist past, with “pride” of place going to a 62 foot granite bust of Lenin (Daily Express).
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Family Guy Maize

Posted By: mdb777 | Date: Sun Oct 11, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (5)
Category: Agriculture, Entertainment, Pop Culture
Category: Agriculture, Entertainment, Pop Culture
Keene Pumpkin Festival
Might I suggest that building a Great Wall O' Jack'o'lanterns is Slightly Weird...?
If you live in the Northeast, you'll surely want to check out the annual Keene, NH, Pumpkin Festival.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Tue Sep 15, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (3)
Category: Agriculture, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Horror, Regionalism, North America
Category: Agriculture, Awards, Prizes, Competitions and Contests, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Horror, Regionalism, North America
Another Helping of Food Related Weirdness - 4
But if there is one food that might possibly challenge bacon as the mightily meaty master of my heart, it would be southern fried chicken. So what could be better than a sandwich that includes both? Well, how about one that leaves out that pointless bread stuff and puts the slices of gorgeous bacon between two hot, fresh fried chicken fillets? That is the idea behind what some reports are claiming is the latest creation from KFC, the “double-down” sandwich. Bacon, cheese and the “Colonel’s special sauce” are sandwiched between the chain’s house-style fried chicken in a heart-stopping 1200 calorie mouthful. And the day this launches near me officially marks the end of my banana diet (AJC).
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Posted By: Dumbfounded | Date: Wed Aug 26, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (16)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Cops, Exercise and Fitness, Food, Candy, Guns
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Cops, Exercise and Fitness, Food, Candy, Guns
Swine Ebola - No Joke!
In this case it seems like most likely that the pigs caught the disease from the human rather than the other way round. However that pigs can catch and potentially pass on the organism to humans is an unexpected, and worrying, development. Michael McIntosh of the Department of Agriculture expressed concern not only that the Reston strain might mutate into something more deadly in its new host, but that the other disease-causing strains might also be using pigs as a reservoir. "What is the level of risk?" said McIntosh, "We really don't know" (Scientific American Article) (Paper in Science).
Posted By: Dumbfounded | Date: Sat Jul 11, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (13)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Food, Health, Disease
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Armageddon and Apocalypses, Food, Health, Disease
Weird Wildlife
It's a law of nature that when you've got to go, you've got to go. So if you happen to be a penguin out on the antarctic ice, well, that's where you've got to go. Which turns out to be an extremely useful fact for scientists, who have used piles of penguin poo identified on satellite images to locate where penguin colonies form. Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey hope to use the new technique to follow the penguins over many seasons and determine how much impact global warming is having on the species (Telegraph).Meanwhile British beekeepers must be cursing that not all animals can be tracked by satellite so easily after an outbreak of bee-rustling has swept the coutryside. The spate of thefts has been provoked by rises in the price of honey combined with a shortage of bees brought about by disease. In the largest bee-heist so far, 18 hives containing over a million bees were stolen from a strawberry field they had been pollinating. According to John Howat of the Bee Farmers Association, pulling off such an audacious crime would require "inside knowledge" (BBC News).
And it's not just beekeepers who are missing their wildlife. A UK radio station that has broadcast nothing but a repeating loop of birdsong for 18 months as "filler" has finally shut down to make way for a new commercial station, and raised howls of protest from many of its half a million regular listeners. The twenty year-old recording, made in a wiltshire garden and used by the radio station free-of-charge, became a massive hit with people from all over Britain, including author Terry Pratchett, who found it a relaxing alternative to the usual radio fare. The replacement broadcast, Amazing Radio, plays music by unsigned bands uploaded to amazingtunes.com (Pocket Lint).
Finally, here's one story that almost missed the boat (ark?), swimming with stingrays may be harmful... for the stingrays. Scientists monitoring the sealife around the Camen islands have found that tourist excursions to pet the wildlife around the islands is leading to weaker immune systems and poorer health in the animals. Christina Semeniuk, an ecologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, cited collisions with boats, overcrowding and hand-fed squid forming an greater part of their diet as the main suspects. She pointed to other studies on bears, penguins, dolphins, and apes which also showed increased stress and illness due to wildlife tourism (Guardian).
Posted By: Dumbfounded | Date: Tue Jun 02, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (13)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Crime, Science
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Crime, Science
Mysterious Worms Invade China

Posted By: Nethie | Date: Sun May 17, 2009 | Permalink |
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Category: Agriculture, Animals, Nature, Science
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Nature, Science
Sunflower Carnival
What is weirder? The fact that our ancestors dedicated a festival to the humble sunflower, or the fact that we don't?In any case, here are some shots from the 1899 Sunflower Carnival Parade, Colorado Springs, Colorado, courtesy of the Library of Congress.
As always, click to enlarge.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Tue May 12, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (5)
Category: Agriculture, Parades and Festivals, Political Correctness, Regionalism, Nineteenth Century
Category: Agriculture, Parades and Festivals, Political Correctness, Regionalism, Nineteenth Century
Co-ed Pig Wrestling
As Mr. Skip Peterson tells us: "This is an annual fund raiser held in Buffalo, Wyoming, for a local gymnastics team. Contestants have one minute to get the greased hog, butt first into the barrel. The coed team must also dip their hands into a bucket of Crisco before the game begins. The winning time this year was 7.45 seconds. Every team had a freash pig and each pig was only allowed to participate one time. Enjoy!"2008 Coed Pig Wrestling Championships from skip peterson on Vimeo.
Posted By: Paul | Date: Sun Mar 08, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (41)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Education, Exercise and Fitness, Entertainment, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Sports, Men, Women
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Education, Exercise and Fitness, Entertainment, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Sports, Men, Women
Madame 710
How I wish I could embed this video here! But it's exclusively on display at a New York City gallery, as you can learn in this review.
You'll have to be content with these two photos from the piece, and a quote:
The three-channel projection "Madame 710" sets Carlson in a gallery with a cow, who has an udder swollen with milk and a yellow ear tag reading "710." Carlson wears nothing but a hooded clear plastic jacket half-stuffed with dollar bills. She dances around the cow to the strains of a Mozart motet, "Exsultate, jubilate."
Posted By: Paul | Date: Mon Jan 26, 2009 | Permalink |
Comments (7)
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Art, Performance Art, Money, Video, Breasts
Category: Agriculture, Animals, Art, Performance Art, Money, Video, Breasts

Category: Agriculture, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, Eccentrics, Fairs, Amusement Parks, and Resorts, Family, Food, Candy, Nutrition, Government, Officials, Health, Statues, Monuments and Memorials