Guest Blogger – Page 20 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Guest Blogger

VIETNAMESE RHINO LOST FOREVER…

A White Rhino calf with it's mother. Javan Rhino's are very similar in apperance but have smaller, more rounded horns.

Sadly, these beautiful creatures are never again to be seen in the country of Vietnam.

The Javan Rhino has been hunted to extinction by illegal poaching.

You hear about species being added to the Endangered Species list all the time, but when a particular animal is crossed off that list and it’s NOT because they’ve grown in number and are now safe, it’s a sad day for all of mankind.

The BBC News writes:

A critically endangered species of rhino is now extinct in Vietnam, according to a report by conservation groups.

The WWF and the International Rhino Foundation said the country’s last Javan rhino was probably killed by poachers, as its horn had been cut off.

Experts said the news was not a surprise, as only one sighting had been recorded in Vietnam since 2008.

Fewer than 50 individuals are now estimated to remain in the wild.

“It is painful that despite significant investment in Vietnamese rhino conservation, efforts failed to save this unique animal, ” said WWF’s Vietnam director Tran Thi Minh Hien.

“Vietnam has lost part of its natural heritage.”

One of the few pictures of a Javan Rhino caught on a trap cam.

These animals are amazing, intelligent, and this should never be allowed to happen to anything else, ever again.

This is just so sad. I know that the only reason we’re hearing about this particular animal is because the rhino is one of the larger mammals on Earth, and I know there are tons more creatures that disappear from that list every year that we never hear of…

….and that’s NOT ok.

WORLDS LARGEST PUMPKIN HAS BEEN CARVED…INTO ZOMBIES!!!

Sorry, but zombies never get old.

No seriously, they don’t. Look it up.

Being “dead” and all pretty much guarantees a stop to that troublesome aging process.

Any-who, these zombies carved by sculptor Ray Villafane that are popping out of these pumpkins look absolutely amazing!

Being a master food sculptor, Ray has quite a portfolio of 3D carvings, a few of which can be seen here.

This carving of the world’s largest pumpkin is definitely the most impressive of his work that I’ve seen to date.

The details are amazing!

The Laughing Squid writes:

Last weekend, The New York Botanical Garden brought on master food sculptor Ray Villafane to carve zombies out of two giant pumpkins, one of which was the world’s heaviest pumpkin. He used the “pale flesh Brant and Eleanor Bordsen’s 1,693 pound pumpkin for the zombies” and the world record-holding 1818.5 pound pumpkin from Kelsey and Jim Bryson was used as the base.

We recently posted about Ray’s amazing 3D pumpkin carvings.

Ray’s entire pumpking carving process at The New York Botanical Garden event was captured in a beautiful time-lapse video.

WOMAN HAS AGED 50 YEARS IN ONLY 5!

Not sure why they couldn’t dress her up a bit. Maybe, put her in a nice dress or something for the newer photo.

Either way, Nguyen Thi Phuong of Vietnam has an unfortunately severe allergic reaction to seafood that has caused her to skin to make her look dramtically older than she actually is.

Thankfully, she has this man that truly loves her for her and has stuck be her side ever since they were married years ago.

The Daily Mail writes:

These pictures may look like an attractive woman in her 20s and her grandmother. But they are said to be the same person – apparently taken just days apart.

The young Vietnamese woman at the centre of the improbable medical case, Nguyen Thi Phuong, claims the transformation may have come about because of an extreme allergy to seafood.

Nguyen, 26, says she developed this puffy face and sagging skin in 2008 but was too poor to seek treatment. Earlier this month, doctors said they would examine her free of charge.

Nguyen’s husband, carpenter Thanh Tuyen, insists the story is true and his love has not faded for his once-beautiful wife.

She has always worn wear a mask in public to hide her appearance from prying eyes, but she has now sought help from doctors to see if they can reverse the ‘ageing’ effect.

Displaying photos of a beautiful 21-year-old woman on her wedding day in 2006, Mrs Nguyen said: ‘Five years ago, I was rather pretty and not so ugly like this, right?’

Mrs Nguyen believes her condition was caused by a life-long allergy to seafood.

She said she had suffered a particularly bad reaction in 2008. ‘I was really itchy all over my body. I had to scratch even while sleeping.’

MAN SENT GIANT SLIPPER BY MISTAKE

I don’t think this guy’s left foot is quite this size…

The Daily Mail writes:

Sometimes when you buy a pair of shoes, one of them can feel snug while the other one does not quite fit.

Tom Boddingham certainly knows the feeling.

When the 27-year-old ordered a special monster-design slipper to fit his oversized left foot, he was sent this size 1,450 one – because manufacturers failed to spot a decimal point.

He had requested a 14.5, as well as a smaller size 13 for his right foot. The pair cost £15.50.

However, manufacturers in China misread the measurement and accidentally made the whopping seven foot-long slipper, which was shipped to him along with the correct smaller size.

Now 6ft 7in Mr Boddingham, who wears custom-made shoes because of the different sizes of his feet, will sell it on eBay.

‘It was sent directly from Hong Kong and measures 210 x 130 x 65cm – the same length as a grizzly bear or a family car,’ said Mr Boddingham, from Ilford, Essex. ‘I must be the owner of the biggest slipper in the world.

‘I’m going to sell it online, and if I can make a few quid out of it then all the better.’

Online slipper company Monster Slippers – which is based in Dunmow, Essex, and has the motto ‘for the animal in you’ – apologised to Mr Boddingham and has not charged him any extra. A spokesman explained the mistake occurred because of a ‘translation error’.

‘We are making him a replacement slipper of the right dimensions,’ he added.

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Guest Blogger

SHARK SURFING! THE NEXT BIG THING!

Now THIS guy has some guts! Or, just some decent photoshop skills.

Ok ok, maybe that’s not exactly true, but read about how this guy below ended up trying it out!

The Telegraph writes:

Doug Niblack was trying to catch another wave before going to work, when his longboard hit something hard as rock off the Oregon Coast and he suddenly found himself standing on the back of a thrashing great white shark.

Looking down, he could see a dorsal fin in front of his feet as he stood on what he described as 10 feet of back as wide as his surfboard and as black as his own Neoprene wetsuit. A tail thrashed back and forth and the water churned around him like a depth charge went off.

“It was pretty terrifying just seeing the shape emerge out of nothing and just being under me,” he said. “And the fin coming out of the water. It was just like the movies.”

The several seconds Mr Niblack spent on the back of the great white Monday off Seaside, Oregon, was a rare encounter, though not unprecedented, according to Ralph Collier, president of the Shark Research Committee in Canoga Park, Calif., and director of the Global Shark Attack File in Princeton, New Jersey.

SPOKE LIKE YODA OUR ANCESTORS DID

According to a new study of the history of human language, it turns out our ancestors of long ago actually spoke the way Master Yoda does in a movie series you might be familiar with, Star Wars.

Does George Lucas know something we don’t?

…probably not.

New Scientist writes:

What form did the first human language take? According to some linguists, all known languages descend from a proto-language, perhaps dating back to the first behaviourally modern humans 50,000 years ago. But little else is known about how our ancestors spoke.

Now two maverick linguists say they have clues. Merritt Ruhlen of Stanford University in California, and Murray Gell-Mann, at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico created a family tree for 2200 languages, living and dead, based on how they use similar sounds for the same meanings. Most modern languages use subject-verb-object sentences: “I see the dog”, while most dead ones, such as Latin, go subject-object-verb – “I the dog see”.

On Ruhlen and Gell-Mann’s tree, subject-verb-object languages always descend from subject-object-verb languages, but never the other way around. “This tells us that the putative ancestral language had subject-object-verb word order,” says Ruhlen. However, mainstream linguists are dubious about the tree’s validity.

Read similar stories at newscientist.com

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Guest Blogger

PHOENIX JONES, REAL-LIFE SUPERHERO, UNMASKED!!!

Right on the heels of his unfortunate arrest and his secret identity being revealed due to said arrest, Phoenix Jones has publicly released his face and identity.

Phoenix Jones, or Benjamin Fodor, rocking a haircut worthy of a superhero. This is a man who looks and acts the part of true crime-fighter. Good on ‘ya my friend! We here at The Museum Of The Weird salute you!

Here’s video from CNN of the famed unmasking.

Hopefully this will not prevent Phoenix from performing his regular duties as protector of the night for Seattle.

If so, we invite Phoenix Jones to Austin, Tx!

C’mon down partner!

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Guest Blogger

PHOENIX JONES, SEATTLE’S GREATEST CRIME FIGHTER ARRESTED AFTER HELPING!

Here is Phoenix Jones, one of Seattle’s toughest, smartest and prolific real-life super heroes…

Yet, he can’t catch a break. First, he had his nose broken earlier in the year defending the city’s residents and now Seattle PD arrests him for trying, succesfully, to stop a fight.

Phoenix Jones has gained notoriety from being a comic book-style super hero badass and making friends with one, Rainn Wilson, who himself has donned a crime-fighting costume to defend the streets of his own defenseless city in 2011’s “Super”. Despite legitimately helping citizens of Seattle, Phoenix, who’s real name has been released due to this arrest, but you will not see it here for we believe in keeping his secret-identity, secret, faces many challenges outside of the criminals he battles relentlessly, like particular officer’s of Seattle PD who do not approve of Phoenix Jones’ vigilante ways.

Does this seem like the people of Seattle have an issue with this guy?

MSNBC writes:

SEATTLE — Instead of the bad guys, it was Seattle’s most prolific self-styled superhero that ended up in handcuffs.

Police officers arrested the 23-year-old man who calls himself Phoenix Jones early Sunday after he was accused of assaulting several people with pepper spray. He was booked in county jail on four counts of assault, with arraignment set for Thursday, police said Monday.

Jones, who wears a black mask with yellow stripes and a bulging muscle bodysuit, said he was only trying to stop a street brawl.

“Just because he’s dressed up in costume, it doesn’t mean he’s in special consideration or above the law. You can’t go around pepper spraying people because you think they are fighting,” said Seattle police spokesman Det. Mark Jamieson.

In capital letters, Jones wrote on his Facebook page that said he wouldn’t “ever assault or hurt another person if they were not causing harm to another human being.”

He also released a video shot during the alleged assault on his Facebook page which he said shows that he used the spray after being attacked. It could also be found at www.vimeo.com/30307440.

PROOF OF THE RUSSIAN BIGFOOT? NOT YETI!

Pictured above is an animatronic Yeti, built and used for a commerical. Sadly, it's the closest thing to a real one there is.

Ouch, that was a sad attempt at a joke, but guess what…

…that happened and I’m leaving it.

So, apparently there is some big news waiting to come out of Russia about the existence of the fabled “Snow Men”, or Yeti. The Russian bigfoot has been in dispute for many, many years and doesn’t seem likely to be settled anytime soon. Unless we’re about to get a huge smack in the face with some evidence, which would be a nice change from the annoying prodding of maybe, maybe nots we know all to well, but where is this evidence? The same question we all ask of anyone claiming to have “proof” of anything.

Until we see something that blows our minds and the cap off cryptozoology, we’ll wait by the screen, repeatedly hitting refresh until that day comes.

The Telegraph writes:

The Russian coal-mining region of Kemerovo said in a statement on its website that footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on the research trip to its remote mountains.

“During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the ‘Snow Man’,” the Kemerovo region administration said.

The expedition was organised after Kemerovo’s governor invited researchers from the United States, Canada, and several other countries to share their research and stories of encounters with the creature at a conference.

“They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory,” the statement said. The collected “artifacts” will be analysed in a special laboratory, it said.

SPOOKY SPIRIT OR SPIRIT SPOOF?

This is one where we want our reader’s to give some input and see what you think about this kind of thing. Do you think it’s real? Can you explain this? Do you have the ability and know-how to make something like this of your own? Give us some feedback and let us here at The Museum Of The Weird know what you think!