mystery – Page 14 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on July 29, 2012 by MOTW Admin

MEET AFFETO, THE WORLD’S CREEPIEST ROBO-BABY

This little robotic infant will be used to study how human cognitive functions develop.

Great strides are being made in the scientific world of robotics everyday but, you could say the researchers at the Osaka University in Japan are making baby-steps.

Meet “Affeto”, arguably the world’s creepiest baby robot and despite being so “young”, this little guy is quite advanced for his age.

Watch the creepy little guy in action here:

And here:

Future of tech on NBCNews.com writes:

A robot baby being built as part of a neuroscience research program in Japan has just gotten a torso, including arms that flop around like an infant’s sans swaddle.

Affeto, the robo-baby, is creepy in its realism, which is what the team from Osaka University aims to accomplish as they use robotics to study “how humans’ higher cognitive functions develop,” according to a project description.

Ultimately, the robot will be used in behavioral experiments. For now, the researchers are trying to “build a realistic child robot with a muscle-skeletal system.”

The torso’s flexibility comes from 22 pneumatic actuators in its body.

In the video below you can see that Affeto’s torso is approaching the realistic stage.The robot’s face has the thousand-mile stare of a well satiated or exhausted infant, but that may be because the team has yet to pair the torso with the robotic head, which was demonstrated in Feb. 2011.

WHAT WASHED UP UNDERNEATH THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE?

This scary looking guy was found washed ashore underneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

Well, if New York wasn’t a scary enough place as it is, with having to worry about giant rats, gators in the sewers, the teenage mutant ninja turtles and not to mention the creepy “Montauk Monster“, now we have this thing, whatever it may be, to worry about as well. Awesome.

Here are some images captured the day it washed ashore:

Now, that's a face only a mother could love. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

Some cried pig, until they say its claws. *Photo credit to Denise Ginley

9 News writes:

Photos of a bloated, hairless animal washed up on by a New York river have sparked debate over what the creature could be and whether it is related to the “Montauk Monster”.

The creature was spotted under the Brooklyn Bridge by Denise Ginley, who sent photos of it to New York-based news website Gothamist on July 22.

Ms Ginley said the animal was about 60cm long from head to tail and asked: “Is this another incarnation of the Montauk Monster, or just the biggest rat in the city?”

Photos of the carcass, which Ms Ginley dubbed the “East River Monster”, quickly spread throughout US media, with people suggesting it was a washed up rat until the New York City Parks Department claimed it was a pig.

But this was quickly disputed, with people pointing out the photos showed the creature had claws and not trotters like a pig.

Ms Ginley told ninemsn she was walking to a farmers’ market with her boyfriend when she first spotted the carcass and she returned later that day with her camera to photograph it.

“Several other people were looking and taking photos, and everyone had a different opinion about what it was (suggestions included giant rat, dog, pig, monster, and seal),” Ms Ginley said.

“Obviously I thought it was gross, but it was just so strange looking I wanted to get closer … strangely enough, it did not smell, maybe because it had been in the water so long.”

The carcass has still not been identified, and Gawker jokingly reported that the New York City Parks Department was “still being cagey” about the animal.

Another unidentifiable animal, the Montauk Monster made headlines in July 2008 when it washed up on a beach in Montauk, northeast of New York.

At the time people suggested the creature was a raccoon, a small dog, a rat and even a bloated turtle without its shell.

MAN CLAIMS TO HAVE AN ALLERGIC REACTION TO TECHNOLOGY

A man in England has diagnosed himself with a rather rare allergy, technology.

Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity, apparently, is a real thing. This disorder has even plagued some rather notable people in the past but, whether or not this man, Phil Inkly, truely has the extreme reactions of nosebleeds and migraines to wifi signals and cell phone use that he claims to have, is still up for debate.

CNET News writes:

Imagine if you were a food critic and suddenly developed a wheat/dairy/corn/carb/fat allergy.

Or what if you were a car mechanic and the smell of gas brought you out in itchy purple hives and then made you have convulsions?

This is the fate of computer technician Phil Inkly. Or, rather, former computer technician.

Inkly, you see, claims to be allergic to pretty much everything to do with, well, technology.

You name it and it affects him. If it’s some kind of gadget, if it’s even a battery, it might give him nosebleeds, burning headaches, sleep problems, or even blackouts.

These symptoms have caused him to move into the woods, as far away from technology as he can be.

And yet, as the Daily Mail reports, no doctor has diagnosed his condition. Instead, Inkly himself diagnosed it as Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity.

He lives in a small caravan in rural England and says his life has been completely destroyed. He has no friends, no love, and he doesn’t even know how seriously ill he might be.

“I’m always ill and can only handle being in remote areas with little radiation so because of this, money is tight,” he told the Mail.

Inkly was not some reluctant techie.

He told the Mail: “I’ve been passionate about technology from childhood, previously working as a sound engineer and tutor of music technology. I frequently repaired computers for family and friends — all was fine until things started going wireless.”

He says he began to notice that things weren’t quite right when he was around computers and cell phones.

Then he moved near to a former Army base. Since then, the symptoms have become only controllable by fleeing to the wilderness.

“Now I suffer from extreme pain on the side of my brain that I used to hold my phone to, and when I get nosebleeds it comes from the nostril on that side of my head too so I believe it’s linked,” he told the Mail.

Even when he moved into the woods, he felt pain that he says was caused by a nearby office that used phones. So he bought them phones that turn off the radiation when they’re not being used.

It’s not as if he’s avoided doctors. The problem is that the doctors can’t use modern technology to examine him.

SMART YOUNG GORILLAS DESTROY TRAPS LEFT BY POACHERS

Wild gorillas under surveillance are seen disarming a snare.

Here’s some fascinating news from the animal kingdom, young gorillas in a remote part of Rwanda are going through the jungle and dismantling traps left behind by poachers aiming for antelope, not the gorillas that happen to get caught in them though, those are just left to die.

So, the mountain gorillas, after having one of their very own die from said traps and not wanting that to happen again, have seemed to wise-up to the dangerous snares hidden all over and are actively disarming and destroying them! Now, we know gorillas are quite smart but, that takes a bit more intelligence than I think we’ve given the gorillas up to this point, for this type of behavior has never been seen before and isn’t just a random act, they’re systematically going through and clearing these snares out!

National Geographic News writes:

Just days after a poacher’s snare had killed one of their own, two young mountain gorillas worked together Tuesday to find and destroy traps in theirRwandan forest home, according to conservationists on the scene.

“This is absolutely the first time that we’ve seen juveniles doing that … I don’t know of any other reports in the world of juveniles destroying snares,” said Veronica Vecellio, gorilla program coordinator at the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund‘s Karisoke Research Center, located in the reserve where the event took place.

“We are the largest database and observer of wild gorillas … so I would be very surprised if somebody else has seen that,” Vecellio added. Bush-meat hunters set thousands of rope-and-branch snares in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, where the mountain gorillas live. The traps are intended for antelope and other species but sometimes capture the apes. Adults are generally strong enough to free themselves. Youngsters aren’t always so lucky.

Just last week an ensnared infant named Ngwino, found too late by workers from Karisoke, died of snare-related wounds. Her shoulder had been dislocated during escape attempts, and gangrene had set in after the ropes cut deep into her leg. The hunters, Vecellio said, seem to have no interest in the gorillas. Even small apes, which would be relatively easy to carry away for sale, are left to die.

On Tuesday tracker John Ndayambaje spotted a trap very close to the Kuryama gorilla clan. He moved in to deactivate the snare, but a silverback named Vubu grunted, cautioning Ndayambaje to stay away, Vecellio said. Suddenly two juveniles—Rwema, a male; and Dukore, a female; both about four years old—ran toward the trap. As Ndayambaje and a few tourists watched, Rwema jumped on the bent tree branch and broke it, while Dukore freed the noose.

The pair then spied another snare nearby—one the tracker himself had missed—and raced for it. Joined by a third gorilla, a teenager named Tetero, Rwema and Dukore destroyed that trap as well. The speed with which everything happened makes Vecellio, the gorilla program coordinator, think this wasn’t the first time the young gorillas had outsmarted trappers. “They were very confident,” she said. “They saw what they had to do, they did it, and then they left.”

Silverbacks in the Kuryama group have occasionally been caught in the snares, so Vecellio thinks the juveniles would have known the traps are dangerous.

“That’s why they destroyed them,” Vecellio said.

Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com

Posted on July 23, 2012 by MOTW Admin

WHAT IS THIS ‘GOAT MAN’ DOING?

Why is this man dressed as a goat hanging out on the side of a mountain?

If this doesn’t qualify as weird news, then I don’t know what does.

A man was seen on the side of Ben Lomond peak in the northern mountains of Utah hanging out with a grazing heard of mountain goats, while dressed as one.

Photographer Coty Creighton thought he was just getting some great shots of the natural wildlife above Ogden, Utah, just north of Salt Lake City, until he realized one of the goats wasn’t so natural.

Yahoo News writes:

A man spotted dressed in a goat suit among a herd of wild goats in the mountains of northern Utah haswildlife officials worried he could be in danger as hunting season approaches.

Phil Douglass of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources said Friday the person is doing nothing illegal, but he worries the so-called “goat man” is unaware of the dangers.

“My very first concern is the person doesn’t understand the risks,”Douglass said. “Who’s to say what could happen.”

Douglass said a man hiking Sunday along Ben Lomond peak in the mountains above Ogden, about 40 miles north of Salt Lake City, spotted the person dressed like a goat among a herd of real goats. The person provided some blurry photographs to Douglass, who said they did not appear to have been altered.

Wildlife officials now just want to talk to the man so that he is aware of the dangers. There’s no telling what his intentions are, Douglass said, but it is believed he could just be an extreme wildlife enthusiast.

“People do some pretty out there things in the name of enjoying wildlife. But I’ve never had a report like this,” Douglass said. “There’s a saying we have among biologists — You don’t go far enough, you don’t get the data. You go too far, you don’t go home. The same is true with some wildlife enthusiasts.”

Douglass said 60 permits will be issued for goat hunting season in that area, which begins in September. He worries the goat man might be accidentally shot or could be attacked by a real goat.

“They may get agitated. They’re territorial. They are, after all, wild animals,” he said. “This person puts on a goat suit, he changes the game. But as long as he accepts responsibility, it’s not illegal.”

UNIVERSITY IN SCOTLAND OFFERS AN ONLINE DEGREE IN ALIENS!

Getting another degree never hurts, so why NOT get one in aliens?

In today’s tough job market, it always helps to have a solid education to rely upon, some people even spend quite a bit of time in school to have an extra few degrees to help them land that perfect job. The Edinburgh University of Scotland is looking to help you out with finding that great way to spend your day that you’ve always wanted by offering a few free classes online… in aliens!

The Huffington Post writes

Now you can be a professional alien hunter too.

Edinburgh University is about to make it possible for the average Joe to search for extraterrestrials.

The university, one of the most prestigious in the world and located in Scotland’s capital city of Edinburgh, is offering a series of free online courses, including “Astrobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,” reportsnews.scotsman.com.

The course will explore the possible ways to discover life on Earth-like planets and the implications if and when ultimate contact with another civilization occurs.

The whole concept of Earth-like planets in orbit around other suns — planets that may have all the important conditions to harbor life as we know it — has skyrocketed with the amazing success of NASA’s Kepler space observatory, launched in 2009 to search for them. According to the Kepler website, 1,790 host stars with a total of 2,321 planet candidates have been detected by the telescope, with 74 planets confirmed.

Starting in the fall, Edinburgh University’s five-week course that will include:

Week 1: The definitions of life and how it originated on Earth.

Week 2: Early Earth environments when life first emerged and the various evolutionary transitions of life on Earth.

Week 3: The prospects for life elsewhere in our solar system and the required conditions for a planet to be habitable.

Week 4: How to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant suns and how to detect possible life there.

Week 5: How earthlings would be impacted by the discovery of an extraterrestrial intelligence.

This very special ET course will be led by Edinburgh astrobiology professor Charles Cockell and director of the UK Centre for Astrobiology.

“This course is an introduction to astrobiology,” Cockell explains on the university’s information page. “It explores the origin and evolution of life on the Earth and its potential to exist elsewhere.

“Astrobiology addresses compelling questions of wide interest, such as: How did life originate on Earth? Is this an inevitable process and is life common across the universe?”

IS TIME TRAVEL CLOSE TO A REALITY?

Have we discovered the key to time travel?

I mention all the time how the scientists of Earth are making major breakthroughs and discoveries daily, well today is no exception!

A NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has found in the Earth’s atmosphere what can only be described as ‘portals’, and they may actually have the ability to allow humans to travel through space AND time!

NASA writes:

A favorite theme of science fiction is “the portal”–an extraordinary opening in space or time that connects travelers to distant realms. A good portal is a shortcut, a guide, a door into the unknown. If only they actually existed….

It turns out that they do, sort of, and a NASA-funded researcher at the University of Iowa has figured out how to find them.

“We call them X-points or electron diffusion regions,” explains plasma physicist Jack Scudder of the University of Iowa. “They’re places where the magnetic field of Earth connects to the magnetic field of the Sun, creating an uninterrupted path leading from our own planet to the sun’s atmosphere 93 million miles away.”

Observations by NASA’s THEMIS spacecraft and Europe’s Cluster probes suggest that these magnetic portals open and close dozens of times each day. They’re typically located a few tens of thousands of kilometers from Earth where the geomagnetic field meets the onrushing solar wind. Most portals are small and short-lived; others are yawning, vast, and sustained. Tons of energetic particles can flow through the openings, heating Earth’s upper atmosphere, sparking geomagnetic storms, and igniting bright polar auroras.

NASA is planning a mission called “MMS,” short for Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, due to launch in 2014, to study the phenomenon. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four spacecraft of MMS will spread out in Earth’s magnetosphere and surround the portals to observe how they work.

Just one problem: Finding them. Magnetic portals are invisible, unstable, and elusive. They open and close without warning “and there are no signposts to guide us in,” notes Scudder.

Actually, there are signposts, and Scudder has found them.

Read more and watch a video explanation at NASA.gov

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Guest Blogger

NEW UPDATE ON THE ‘BALTIC ANOMALY’, COULD BE NAZI SECRET WEAPON

Turns out the anomaly might not be from out-of-this world but, from the first World War.

More and more progress is being made daily on researching this ‘Baltic Anomaly’ that was discovered some months ago while treasure hunters looked for sunken ships with sonar along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The newest info from the team reports that this may, in fact, not be a crashed UFO or even the Millenium Falcon as the sonar read-out suggests, but may actually be a secret weapon from the Nazi’s during the first of Earth’s World Wars.

Daily Mail Online writes:

Sonar scans have shown that the device, raised 10ft above the seabed and measuring 200ft by 25ft, could be the base of an anti-submarine weapon.

The weapon was built with wire mesh which could have baffled submarine radar, leading enemy craft to crash – much in the same way as turning out a lighthouse could be used as a weapon against shipping.

But now former Swedish naval officer and WWII expert Anders Autellus has revealed that the structure – measuring 200ft by 25ft – could be the base of a device designed to block British and Russian submarine movements in the area.

The huge steel-and-concrete structure could be one of the most important historical finds in years.

Autellus claims it would have been built of double-skinned concrete and reinforced with wire mesh to baffle radar – which could explain why the dive team’s equipment repeatedly failed near the mystery object.

‘The area was vital to the German war machine because most of the ball bearings for its tanks and trucks came from here. Without them the German army would have ground to a halt,’ explained one expert.

‘This device dwarfs anything ever found before and is an important weapons discovery,’ they added.

Explorer Stefan Hogeborn – who is studying the images for the Ocean X diving team – agreed: ‘It is a good candidate for the answer to this mystery. The object lies directly underneath a shipping route.’

‘It would be of enormous weight in steel and concrete. Other Nazi anti-sub anchoring devices were nowhere near as large,’ he added.

While the Ocean Explorer team is understandably excited about their potentially earth-shattering find, others are slightly more sceptical and are questioning the accuracy of the sonar technology.

EX-CIA AGENT FINALLY SPEAKS ABOUT ROSWELL CRASH

The CIA are said to have covered up the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash of 1947.

The 65 year anniversary of the famous crash in Roswell, New Mexico was July 8th and one man decided it would be the perfect time to give his input on the matter. He might actually know what he’s talking about, after all, he was an agent of the CIA for 35 years and rather high-up as well.

Huffington Post writes:

Happy anniversary, Roswell, N.M. It was 65 years ago today that the Roswell Daily Record blasted an infamous headline claiming local military officials had captured a flying saucer on a nearby ranch. And now, a former CIA agent says it really happened.

“It was not a damn weather balloon — it was what it was billed when people first reported it,” said Chase Brandon, a 35-year CIA veteran. “It was a craft that clearly did not come from this planet, it crashed and I don’t doubt for a second that the use of the word ‘remains’ and ‘cadavers’ was exactly what people were talking about.”

Brandon served as an undercover, covert operations officer in the agency’s Clandestine Service for 25 years, where he was assigned missions in international terrorism, counterinsurgency, global narcotics trafficking and weapons smuggling. He spent his final 10 years of CIA service on the director’s staff as the agency’s first official liaison to the entertainment and publication industries. It was during this time, in the mid-1990s, that he walked into a special section of CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., called the Historical Intelligence Collection.

“It was a vaulted area and not everybody could get in it,” Brandon told The Huffington Post. “One day, I was looking around in there and reading some of the titles that were mostly hand-scribbled summations of what was in the boxes. And there was one box that really caught my eye. It had one word on it: Roswell.

BIGFOOT HAIR SAMPLES SOLD AT AUCTION TO MUSEUM OF THE WEIRD!

Certified Genuine BIGFOOT Hair? We sure hope so! Only time will tell but, the adventure begins now!

You’ve read that right, folks! We have gotten ourselves a hold of quite the crypto-important find here, a set certified genuine BIGFOOT hair samples all the way from Washington state!

We ran into a story posted over on one of of our favorite Bigfoot related websites, bigfootlunchclub.com, the other day that spoke of a man that had some hair samples in his possession. When we learned that they’d be up for auction this weekend, we knew immediately we had to have them!

Owner and operator of Museum of the Weird himself, Steve Busti, made sure that would most certainly be the case.

For when a possible answer to the mystery of Bigfoot comes calling, he has got to try and answer!

The folks over at GrindTV.com have written a few words about the auction:

The Nacogdoches Auction in Nacogdoches, Texas, sold a vintage bedroom set, antique dolls, a 1950s Schwinn bicycle, antique furniture and a lock of hair from … Bigfoot. Wait, what?! Hair from Bigfoot? Uh, yes, hair from Bigfoot, aka Sasquatch.

With a bid of $225, Steve Busti was the lucky winner for what actually appears to be hair from — something.

“I’m excited,” Busti said by phone soon after Saturday night’s auction. “I’m really looking forward to having the hair tested. If they come back with some unusual result, it could really change things. This could really be like the smoking gun, if you will, that will prove the existence of this animal.”

Busti owns the Museum of the Weird in Austin, Texas, and plans to add the hair to an existing Bigfoot exhibit that includes alleged Bigfoot tracks in plaster casts.

We appreciate the mention and you can read the rest of the story over at www.grindtv.com

Obviously, there’s always the chance of not actually being from a bigfoot but, that’s why we’ll be sending it in for DNA testing as soon as possible and you, our readers of the Weekly Weird News, will be the first to hear what the results are.

We couldn’t be more excited to be involved with the Bigfoot community and hope we can contribute our own research, findings, and now, quite possibly, actual evidence of the sasquatch himself, Bigfoot.