May 2012 – Page 3 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Guest Blogger

MYSTERIOUS MARINE CREATURE CAUGHT ON FILM

What is this underwater creature that's been caught on film?

This oddly shaped thing is said to be a new, undiscovered creature filmed in the depths of an as of yet, unamed ocean and has been dubbed the “Cascade Creature”.

It resembles a silk sheet, floating on the currents flowing underwater but, doesn’t look like much other creatures that are known to science. Some say it’s a jellyfish, while others say it’s just a whales embryonic sack floating around.

Luckily for us there’s a video for us to take a look ourselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E-8_wDgN7c

Discovery News writes:

A strange creature allegedly filmed by underwater drillers in the deep ocean on April 25 has sparked intrigue and controversy on the Internet. Theories about the mysterious animal range from a jellyfish to an unknown marine version of the Loch Ness monster to a whale placenta.

Neither the source of the video nor the location where it was filmed have been revealed, leading some people to suspect a hoax.

Others note that the video seems authentic, and that a hoaxed video would likely be much more dramatic. Scale in the video is unclear, and without more information about the drill site (for example the diameter of the pipe the animal moves in front of), it’s impossible to know exactly how big it is.

…There are a few clues to this creature’s identity. First, it should be noted that (contrary to some sensational news headlines) the object isn’t really a “blob” at all, but instead composed of what appears to be a fairly thin membrane. It more closely resembles a satin bedsheet than a blobby monster.

This suggests that the animal has no skeleton and little or no musculature; whatever it is, it’s not a big, strong monster but likely something fairly fragile.

MAYAN CALENDAR EXTENDS WELL BEYOND 2012

The Mayan Calendar doesn't end in 2012 after all.

Have no fear, for the end is not-so-near!

Scientists and researchers have made another fascinating discovery recently. It seems the Mayan Calendar that predicts the end of the world in 2012 doesn’t, in-fact, predict anything another than over another 7,000 years of exactly the same thing that’s been going on; boring ,old, everyday life.

BBC News writes:

… Perhaps most intriguing among the finds were several finds related to astronomical tables, including four long numbers on the east wall that represent a cycle lasting up to 2.5 million days.

The east wall is mostly covered by tabulations of black symbols or “glyphs” that map out various astronomical cycles: that of Mars and Venus and the lunar eclipses.

The wall also features red marks that appear to be notes and corrections to the calculations; Dr Saturno said that the scribes “seem to be using it like a blackboard”. The Xultun find is the first place that all of the cycles have been found tied mathematically together in one place, representing a calendar that stretches more than 7,000 years into the future. The Mayan numbering system for dates is a complex one in base-18 and base-20 numbers that, in modern-day terms, would “turn over” at the end of 2012.

But Dr Saturno points out that the new finds serve to further undermine the fallacy that this is tantamount to a prediction of the end of the world. “The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue, that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this,” he said. “We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It’s an entirely different mindset.”

MAN JUGGLES HIS WAY THROUGH TRIATHALON

Joe Salter juggles while jogging and has called this weird fusion of things, simply, "joggling".

We here at the Museum of the Weird are fans of all things circus and sideshow and I’m even working on my very own juggling act. Joe Salter of Pensacola, Florida has taken that very same act you’d normally find under the big-top, and took it to the streets, sidewalks, and oceans while he competed in a triathlon recently!

Have a look for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1QoqenZytO8

Huffington Post writes:

If you ever tried to do a marathon or triathlon and failed, you have a good reason to hate Joe Salter, because he not only completed a triathlon, but did so while juggling the entire time — even swimming.

This 31-year-old public school counselor from Pensacola, Fla., pulled off the incredible achievement on April 21 when he swam a quarter-mile while juggling three balls, then biked 16.2 miles while juggling two balls in one hand and ran four miles, also juggling.

Even more amazing: He did this all in 1 hour and 57 minutes

Salter, who has been juggling since he was 8, got into “joggling,” the act of juggling while running, back in 2008 and soon became obsessed with that sport’s Holy Grail: Completing a complete triathlon while juggling.

TIRED OF BORING BIRTHDAYS? SEND IN THE EVIL CLOWN!

Dominic Deville, an aspiring and inventive actor, rents himself out as an "evil birthday clown"

Times are tough all over so, now is the time for us all to let our creative side and invent new ways to generate income for ourselves, and that’s exactly what Dominic Deville of Sweden has done.

The creative and entrepreneurial actor has earned his new business quite the bit of press recently for being, well… weird!

The Huffington Post writes:

Attention parents: Just in case your children don’t have anything to talk about in therapy, here’s something you might want to consider:

Dominic Deville rents himself out as an “evil birthday clown” who leaves scary notes for your children, warning them that they’re being watched and that they’ll soon be attacked.

At the end of a terrifying week, your child will indeed be attacked. Deville, wearing a freaky clown mask, will smash a cake into your child’s face, Metro reported.

Deville is capitalizing on what has become a mainstay for all circus-going kids: the fear of clowns. You may think Stephen King’s “It” was scary, but Deville will keep you shaking in your big, red floppy shoes.

MAN SURVIVES BEING SHOT THROUGH NECK WITH AN ARROW

Konstantine Myakush with a 20-inch arrow through his neck.

This is definitely not something you see everyday, or most likely, any day.

A man in Russia has managed to get a 20-inch long arrow shot straight through his neck while walking in the park near an archery practice.

Luckily for him, it went straight through his neck and bypassed all major arteries and organs!

Daily Mail writes:

A father-of-two is lucky to be alive after he was shot through the neck with an arrow as he went for a walk in a park in Russia.

Konstantine Myakush, 38, was on a family outing with his two daughters near a sports centre in Moscow when he was struck by the stray 20-inch-long arrow.

The arrow, believed to have been misfired by a member of an archery club, would have killed Mr Myakush if it had hit him just one inch to either the right or left by piercing a major artery. Incredibly, Mr Myakush remained conscious and even called his wife immediately after he was hit to tell her what happened.

She then called an ambulance who rushed Mr Myakush to hospital where he underwent numerous scans to check whether it would be safe to remove the arrow.

After making sure the arrow hadn’t hit any major organs, surgeons operated on Mr Myaksuh and successfully removed the arrow.

CREEPY INSECT CARRIES VANQUISHED FOES ON ITS BACK

The Assassin Bug carries dead ants on it's back to ward of predators.

Evolution has a funny way of coming through in certain situations, take the Assassin Bug for example. Although it may be called assassin, it isn’t actually that deadly. It feeds on ants and very small insects by injecting them with an enzyme from it’s needle-like snout, then sucks out the juicy innards. Only this bug doesn’t have much else to defend itself with, so what does it do? It carries around it’s dead food on it’s back to confuse and scare off any would-be predators! How fascinating!?

Daily Mail writes:

This bug looks like it’s made a killing carrying a remarkable number of dead bodies on its back to stop it becoming lunch. As this gruesome picture shows this insect has at least 20 ants on its back which according to scientists confuse potential predators like jumping spiders.

The aptly named assassin bug uses the dead bodies, as a defence mechanism to fend off enemies.

Photographer Hock Ping Guek, from Malaysia, decided to document the amazing camouflage strategy using macro photography. He said: ‘These assassin bugs are quite small, less than 1 cm, so the camera I used really comes in handy here as it allows me to go beyond the 1:1 maximum limit of the usual macro lenses without the need for any add-on tubes.

‘The behaviour is indeed absolutely fascinating. They prey on ants, inject enzyme into the ant preys and suck the ants dry, then put the dead bodies on their back for camouflage, most likely as a form of defence against other predator like jumping spiders.

‘I spent about 30 minutes photographing these assassin bugs every time I find one. I try to shoot as many shots as I could from many different angles, and pick only a few that I like best in terms of angle, moment, composition etc.’

Assassin bugs kill in a rather gruesome way by injecting them with an enzyme and then sucking out their insides. Despite their fearsome reputation the insects are actually quite small measuring just 1cm in length.

MAN PULLS CAR WITH ONLY HIS EYE SOCKETS!

Yang Guanghe pulls a 1.6-ton car with his eye sockets.

Now, we’re no strangers to weird human activities and stunts here at the Museum of the Weird but, this man takes things to a whole new level.

Yang Guanghe, of China, has pulled a 1.6 ton Mercedes Benz using only his eye-sockets!

Huffington Post writes:

With enough hours in the gym, anyone can get strong arms or legs, but it’s a little harder to get strong eye sockets.

Which makes the recent feat of Chinese strong man Yang Guanghe even more impressive.

On April 28, Guanghe managed to pull a 1.6-ton Mercedes Benz with his eye sockets — despite barely weighing 100 pounds himself.

Guanghe, who performed the feat in his home town of Anshun, in the Guizhou province of China, has been training his eyes for 10 years and started working on the feat in order to demonstrate that all body parts can be powerful.

“Anyone can use the tough parts of the body to perform feats of strength –- my speciality is to turn my softer parts into something formidable,” he told the Daily Star.“I think that the pulling the car routine is my most visually impressive –- it takes years of training to toughen the eyelids up to get to this sort of level where you can perform feats like this.”

PYRAMID-LIKE UFO PHOTOGRAPHED OVER ONTARIO

A couple from Cambridge, Ontario were just casually taking photos of some storm clouds rolling in the other day, but that’s not all they ended up photographing.

After going back inside and uploading all the shots to their computer, they find something a little strange. It seems a very pyramid-like ufo was zooming it’s way around some clouds over the skies of Canada, and was captured purely by accident!

Digital Journal writes:

UFOs are “Unidentified Flying Objects”. What was photographed by a southern Ontario couple recently? What do you think?

A Cambridge, Ontario couple reports photographing an apparent Pyramid-like UFO moving rapidly over the city around a cloud cover on 3 May 2012 according to testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) witness reporting database. Cambridge is a Canadian city that is west of Toronto.The witness reports being called by her husband to look at apparent storm clouds.“My husband called me outside to look at the pending storm clouds coming in. (I’m a weather enthusiast–I love storms) I decided to shoot some photos with an Olympus C-60.”The witness only noticed the apparent Pyramid UFO after looking at their photos.

We didn’t see or hear anything strange until I uploaded the photos to my PC. Neither my husband nor I saw or heard anything unusual at the time of the photo.”

FROM MUGGING TO MATH GENIUS!

Now, this isn’t the story of a man who was a serial mugger that left his horrible ways behind to delve into the wild world of math. This is the story of a nice young man who couldn’t have cared less about solving equations, and was way more interested in working out, that is, until he was mugged for his fancy leather jacket and left with a concussion that changed his life, and brain, forever.

Yahoo News writes:

Jason Padgett doesn’t have a PhD, or a Masters degree. In fact, he dropped out of college and works at a futon store, but he is a mathematical genius and has been since being brutally attacked and kicked in the head by muggers a decade ago.

The 41-year-old from Tacoma, Washington used to mostly be interested in working out and partying when muggers beat him outside a karaoke club for his $99 leather jacket. Now he sees complex formulas everywhere and turns them into diagrams.

“All I saw was a bright flash of light and the next thing I knew I was on my knees on the ground and I thought, ‘I’m going to get killed,” he told ABC.

Doctors initially thought it was a concussion, but then Padgett started becoming obsessed with drawing intricate diagrams. He couldn’t draw before and at first had no idea what the diagrams were of.

The diagrams turned out to be fractals, small portions of a visual representation for Pi that are similar to the whole image. Everywhere he looks, he sees formulas such as the Pythagorean Theorem.

Because of the damage, his brain is forced to overcompensate in areas most people can’t access.

“Savant syndrome is the development of a particular skill, that can be mathematical, spatial, or autistic, that develop to an extreme degree that sort of makes a person super human,” said Berit Brogaard, a neuroscientist and philosophy professor at the Center of Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, to ABC.

GIANT CRAB IS GIGANTIC, AND STILL GROWING!

"Claude the Crab" here, weighs in at an astounding 15lbs!

Three very lucky Tasmanian King Crabs were plucked from the pot this weekend in Australia, for when a worker of the Sealife aquariums spotted the ginormous beauties at a market, she had to save them!

Claude, shown above, and 2 other of his friends will get to live the rest of their days out in a nice relaxing, and what could even be called luxurious, environment that the Sealife crew take great lengths to ensure, for all their aquatic creatures.

The Sun writes:

The Tasmanian King Crab was snapped up alongside two others for £3,000 by a SeaLife worker during a trip to Australia.

The one pictured was named Claude and is 15in wide while weighing 15lbs.

He will grow to 30lbs and could produce up to 20lbs worth of meat — or 325 crabsticks.

He and the other crustaceans — a delicacy Down Under — are being quarantined before going on display.

One will go to Weymouth, another to Birmingham, while a third will be sent to Berlin, Germany.

Rob Hicks, SeaLife’s head marine biologist, said: “They are such impressive creatures we thought that it was worth the cost and effort of flying them half-way round the world to so they can flourish in an aquarium display.

“They had a stopover in Hong Kong and arrived with us a week ago.

“It took them a few days to get over the jet-lag but now they’re feeding happily and don’t seem any the worse for their trip.”