WEEKLY WEIRD NEWS – Page 49 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Chris Walden

Lone Star Spooks with Nate Riddle on The Shadow Hour

10:00 PM CST, Wednesday, 10/19/2011: It’s that time of the week… time to ease into your favorite chair, sit back and relax as we explore the sublime world of the strange, the odd, and the unusual. It’s time once again for… The Shadow Hour.

Nate Riddle joins us to talk about his book “Lone Star Spooks.” It should be another great discussion of haunts in Texas.

As always, you can listen right here with our blogtalkradio widget! You can listen to past broadcasts at any time, or tune in tonight. (Wednesday, October 19, 2011) at 10pm Central for the live broadcast. Be sure to check out the show notes, too. See you in the shadows…

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.

DO YOU DARE ATTEMPT ‘THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS PATH’?

Teetering along a crumbling walkway more than 330ft high, a group of intrepid climbers carefully inch their way across what has been dubbed the most dangerous path in the world.

And they’re not alone. Adrenaline-junkies have been flocking to southern Spain to experience the 110-year-old El Caminito Del Rey before work begins to refurbish it next year.

Companies have now begun offering unofficial tours after a video of a walker tackling the hair-raising trail went viral on YouTube.

MOTW-101111-El_Caminito_Del_Ray_1 — Don't look down! Climbers braving Spain's El Caminito Del Rey tackle a sheer a cliff face where the dilapidated walkway has completely fallen through

And you don’t need to be an experienced climber either, the only requirements are that walkers should be at least twelve years old and have a good head for heights.

MOTW-101111-El_Caminito_Del_Ray_2 — On the edge: A close-up shows the hair-raising crossing. Adrenaline junkies are flocking to take on the path after a YouTube video appeared of a walker tackling the trail wearing minimal safety equipment

The trail, also known as the King’s Pathway, was originally built in 1905 for workers to travel between two hydroelectric power plants but was closed-off in 2000 after two walkers fell to their deaths.

It snakes its way along cliff edges high up in El Chorro Gorge, thirty miles from Malaga.

Much of the one-metre-wide walkway is crumbing away with rusting supports, gaping holes, no handrails and sections that have completely fallen down.

A makeshift wire has now been attached to the rock face which walkers and climbers can clip themselves on to in order to have some degree of security – but many still prefer not to use any safety equipment at all.

Work is now due to start on an 8.3 million project to make the pathway safe again and attract more tourists to the area.

MOTW-101111-El_Caminito_Del_Ray_4 — History: El Caminito Del Rey, also known as the King's Pathway, was originally built in 1905 for workers to travel between two hydroelectric power plants but was closed-off in 2000 after two walkers fell to their deaths

MOTW-101111-El_Caminito_Del_Ray_3 — No walk in the park: The final stages of the path have fallen through so walkers must abseil down around 100 metres in order to complete the trail

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Guest Blogger

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!