May 2012 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Guest Blogger

‘FRAKENFISH’ CAUGHT IN CAMBRIDGE

Where did this mystery fish come from? ...besides this lake.

While fishing in Magpie Lake of Cambridge, editor of the Angling Times, Mark Sawyer caught something a little unusual.

The pro angler knew something was off when he pulled the golden fish from the water, he’d never seen anything like it!

Daily Mail writes:

Most anglers’ tales revolve around the improbable size of their catch – but this specimen really does look fishy.

Mark Sawyer, 53, hooked the bizarre creature while fishing for carp in a lake.

At first he thought it was a common brown goldfish but on closer inspection he realised it appeared to have the head of a roach, the body and tail of a brown goldfish and the rear fin of a bream.

Those who fear falling hook, line and sinker for a hoax should bear in mind Mr Sawyer is the tackle editor of the Angling Times with a reputation to protect.

And experts who have seen images of the ‘Frankenfish’ agree it is the offspring of more than one species.

The fish, which weighed a little under 2lb, was caught in Cambridge earlier this month.

‘It is a proper oddity,’ said Mr Sawyer, who returned the fish to the lake.

‘The head resembles more of a roach, its lips aren’t quite right.

‘It has the body of a normal goldfish, its anal fin resembles a bream and the tail is of a fan-tailed goldfish.’

A “BABY” BIGFOOT?

The hunt for Bigfoot shall never end, not as long as curious and adventurous humans are out there, slogging through the mud and rain, climbing up the biggest hills and traversing desert plains, all in the name of science!

A few of these adventurers have found crypto-gold in the form of a set of well preserved foot and hand prints, all of a juvenile Bigfoot and an older one, possibly a parent, that left behind a few tracks as well!

Who knows if anything more comes of this or even if they ever catch the elusive ‘squatch. Either way, I’m more than happy to follow along with the rest of the world, eyes wide open, waiting for the next sign of a mysterious creature lurking in our lands.

What do you think is out there?

David Claerr at Yahoo Voices writes:

The vast ecosystem formed by the Red River watershed on the borders of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana affords a habitat comprised of many micro-climates with an incredible diversity and richness of plant and animal life. In many of the deep ravines where the creeks and waterways have cut through the the limestone cap rock, the vegetation has a nearly tropical aspect. Towering, ancient cypress trees form a canopy above the underbrush and thick hanging vines. These ravines are like a primordial oasis, seldom traversed by humans. Often in remote wildernesses, surrounded by thousands of acres of temperate woodlands and meadows. The ravines are a favored living quarters for the Sasquatch or “Bigfoot”

From one of these ravines, a very significant group of footprints of a “Baby Bigfoot” were cast in plaster, along with a hand- and footprints from a more mature Sasquatch, most likely the juvenile’s older sibling or mother. The prints, pressed into the fine clay of the creek bed are rare specimens, since not only are they from a rarely documented young juvenile, but the casts also retain detailed anatomical features that are not generally preserved in other types of soil.

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE NOW?!

Has the zombie apocalypse begun? Some think so. Photo by uncherished of deviantart

Grab the family, load up on supplies, and HEAD FOR THE HILLS!

Well, we might not need to go to those extremes just yet, but it sure doesn’t seem that far off when a story like the one below comes out!

A man in Miami, naked, and high on “bath salts” (a horrific new drug) left behind a gruesome scene just off of one of Miami’s major highways on Saturday.

The 31-year old man, Rudy Eugene of Miami, attacked another man in a very animal-like fashion while in a ‘zombie-like’ state under the influence of this terrible drug which, ended in Rudy tearing into the other man’s face with his mouth, then literally, eating the pieces of flesh he pulled off.

If this isn’t a sign of the Zombie Apocalypse, I don’t know what is. This new drug known as “bath salts” is gaining in popularity all over the world and gruesome stories like this are coming out more often than ever.

Please people, drugs are not ok, in any form at all.

You’ll never know the beauty of this world when your mind is clouded with foreign substances. Stay on the straight and narrow and enjoy the world for all it has to offer.

Life is beautiful, you are beautiful, remember that.

CNN writes:

A naked man who chewed off the face of another man in what is being called a zombie-like attack may have been under the influence of “bath salts,” a drug referred to as the new LSD, according to reports from CNN affiliates in Miami.

The horrific attack occurred Saturday and was only stopped after a police officer shot the attacker several times, killing him.

Larry Vega witnessed the attack on Miami’s MacArthur Causeway. He told CNN affiliate WSVN he saw one naked man chewing off the face of another naked man.

“The guy was like tearing him to pieces with his mouth, so I told him, ‘Get off!'” Vega told WSVN. “You know it’s like the guy just kept eating the other guy away, like ripping his skin.”

“When the officer approached him, told him to stop, pointed a gun at him, he turned around and growled like a wild animal and kept eating at the man’s face,” Fraternal Order of Police President Armando Aguilar told CNN affiliate WPLG.

‘GREY LADY’ HAUNTS NEW ZEALAND COLLEGE AND CASTLE

If going to college on your own isn’t scary enough for most people, imagine having that same school haunted by an ancient ghost!

Otage Daily Times writes:

Ghostly sightings may have left Cumberland College students spooked, but now a tourist has reported being bullied by a ghost at Larnach Castle.

Sightings of the ghost known as the “Grey Lady” at the college earlier this month have sparked a media frenzy, says the author of a soon-to-be-published book about Dunedin’s haunted spots.

HairRaiser Tours owner Andrew Smith said well-known spots included Larnach Castle, the Fortune Theatre, Stafford Gables and a specific area around Moray Pl.

The college was in “lock-down” when he visited with other media yesterday. Students and staff were spooked by the latest sightings, he said. “Whether or not the students have known the history and they have talked themselves into believing something – that could be a possibility … but they are genuinely freaked out.”

NEW FRUIT TO BE SOLD IN MARKETS SOON

A new, weird kind of fruit is set to hit the shelves of local markets in New Zealand after being developed by researchers that were combining the European and Asian pear varieties.

It looks like an apple but, tastes like a pear, how strange.

Oliver Thring over at The Guardian gave this new fruit a taste test, read below to see what he has to say.

The Guardian writes:

M&S are launching the so-called “papple” this week – a species of pear that looks a bit like an apple. Keen followers of fruit industry PR stunts might glimpse in it a memory of the “pineberry“, the polka-dotted German strawberry of a couple of years ago which supposedly tasted of pineapple.

The fruit was developed in New Zealand, where it has officially been known as PremP109 – a more clinical but rather less emetic name than “papple”, if you ask me. In fact, the papple has no immediate apple ancestry at all: it’s a hybrid of two European and Asian pear varieties. It is an almost fluorescent pinkish-red, and its skin is weirdly, plagueishly mottled. Eating it is thus a strange experience.

Since you expect the taste and texture of apple, you bite rather harder than is necessary. The flesh is much less tart than an apple; its sweetness is almost overpowering. It’s also far juicier, so you end up having to glamorously chomp and suck your way through it as though it were a particularly wet burrito. For all that, it’s a tasty, refreshing fruit.

FIRST MAN TO EVER LAND A SKYDIVE W/OUT A PARACHUTE!

This man leapt 2,400ft from a helicopter with no parachute, only a specially made "wing suit".

This man has more guts than anyone I’ve heard of in quite some time!

Shown above is Gary Connery, 42, just before he jumped from a helicopter flying well above the Earth at almost 3,000ft in the air, wearing nothing but a “wing-suit” and landed successfully in a specifically made landing strip of cardboard boxes, becoming the first man in history to land a skydive without a parachute. How crazy?!

Sky News writes:

A stuntman has entered the history books to become the first skydiver to land safely without using a parachute.

Gary Connery, 42, leapt 2,400ft from a helicopter while wearing a specially made “wing suit” and swooped towards a “runway” of 18,600 cardboard boxes in an Oxfordshire field.

Five seconds before he hit the target he flared his suit to decrease his descent and glide angle before plunging into the boxes to break his fall.

“It was so comfortable, so soft,” Mr Connery told Sky News immediately afterwards. “My calculations obviously worked out and I’m glad they did.”

His flight lasted approximately 50 seconds, during which he was cheered on by hundreds of supporters, including his son Cali, 14, and wife Vivian, who said she was “relieved it’s all over”.

The jump, which was recorded by dozens of journalists and camera crews, is expected to be watched all over the world.

A SLEEP MASK THAT LETS YOU CONTROL YOUR DREAMS

The Remee sleep mask is equipped with red LEDs to wake up your mind, not your body. Photo courtesy of Bitbanger Labs.

If you’ve ever heard of lucid dreaming, then you know it’s not exactly the easiest thing to achieve.

To explain lucid dreaming to those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s basically being able to consciously wake up inside of, then be able to control, your very own dream. You could fly through the sky, dive through the sea, and even give yourself super-powers like a person straight out of the comic books!

Lucid dreaming is difficult to achieve and, involves practice, meditation, and a good diet as well as learning to “trigger” yourself awake while dreaming, without waking up you body.

The guys over at Bitbanger Labs believe they’ve come up with the perfect way for anyone to have this amazing experience, check it out.

Daily Mail writes:

In a twist straight out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control.

While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming.

The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.

SCIENTISTS TO TEST RECENT BIGFOOT DNA EVIDENCE

A team of scientists will use DNA testing to investigate the remains claimed to be from a yeti, or bigfoot.

Hopefully, some exciting news is heading our way from a set of UK and Swiss scientists that plan on doing some serious testing of as much ‘evidence’ of the bigfoot, or yeti, as they possibly can.

They’re even asking for anyone to submit anything they think might be helpful! So, if you didn’t know what to do with all those bigfoot parts you have laying around, send ’em on in!

BBC News writes:

A UK-Swiss team will use DNA testing to investigate the origins of remains claimed to be from yeti and bigfoot.

The project will examine hair, bone and other material from a collection amassed by a Swiss biologist – and will invite submissions from elsewhere.

Many cultures relate legends of hairy, humanoid creatures that lurk in the wilds, rarely seen.

But material claimed to be from such creatures have never been subjected to modern scientific techniques.

“It’s an area that any serious academic ventures into with a deal of trepidation… It’s full of eccentric and downright misleading reports,” said Prof Bryan Sykes, from Oxford University.

The researchers will apply a systematic approach and employ the latest advances in genetic testing, aiming to publish in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

SPACEX LAUNCHES US INTO A ‘NEW FUTURE’ ON THEIR FIRST MISSION

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon capsule. Image courtesy of SpaceX.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, and one giant leap for mankind.” -Neil Armstrong

Those words spoken years ago marked a big change in the world, not only did we put man into space, we put a man on the moon. Well, here’s another giant leap in the form of the first entirely privately funded company to reach space with the intention of docking a capsule of supplies, experiments, and one day astronauts with the ISS(International Space Station). Before this, only large governments were able to pool the funds together to begin exploring space, but interests have waned, as we’ve seen with NASA ending it’s shuttle program. This marks the first of hopefully many successful ventures from private organizations to explore, study, and experiment in space.

See the video below for some beautiful footage of the rocket launch on May 22, 2012.

NASA writes:

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered into space and delivered a Dragon cargo capsule into orbit on May 22, 2012. The launch began an ambitious mission to show that the company is ready to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

“We’re now back on the brink of a new future, a future that embraces the innovation the private sector brings to the table,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “The significance of this day cannot be overstated. While there is a lot of work ahead to successfully complete this mission, we are off to a good start.”

Working with an instantaneous launch window, SpaceX, short for Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, Calif., proceeded through a flawless countdown. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida came at 3:44 a.m. EDT, just as the station was crossing 249 miles above the North Atlantic.

“Every bit of adrenaline in my body released at that moment,” said Elon Musk about the moment the rocket lifted off the pad. Musk is the founder, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX. “People were really giving it their all. For us, it was like winning the Super Bowl.”

SCIENTISTS GENERATE ELECTRICITY FROM A VIRUS

Scientists can now generate electricity from viruses!

The world of nano-technology is growing exponentially fast and with it, come a slew of amazing breakthroughs. This one for example, is pretty fascinating.

Scientists have used the principle called “piezoelectricity” or, the use of pressure and vibrations to generate energy, to create enough electricity to power a small lcd screen from a small virus similar to the one found in our bodies when we have the common cold.

Mother Nature Network writes:

When people get a cold or the flu, they tend to experience a lack of energy. But what if viruses could actually generate energy — not to power your body, but to charge your electronic devices?

That’s the idea behind a new electric generator developed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The scientists coated a postage-stamp-sized electrode with specially engineered, harmless viruses that, when tapped, generated enough electricity to power a small LCD display. Their research was published online May 13 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.