weird – Page 11 – Museum of the Weird

Posted on September 7, 2012 by MOTW Admin

‘GENIUS APE’ STUMPS SCIENTISTS

Natasha, shown above, has a wide range of abilities her average chimp-mates do not.

The gap between man and monkey seems to be growing smaller all the time, whether the humans are getting dumber or the apes are getting smarter has still yet to be decided.

Discovery News writes:

Certain apes appear to be much smarter than others, with at least one chimpanzee now called “exceptional” when compared to other chimps.

The standout chimp, an adult female in her 20s named Natasha, scored off the charts in a battery of tests. The findings, published in the latest Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, suggest that geniuses exist among non-humans, but that no one attribute constitutes intelligence.

Instead, a perfect storm of abilities seems to come together to create the Einsteins of the animal kingdom. Natasha’s keepers at the Ngamba Island chimpanzee sanctuary in Uganda knew she was special even before the latest study.

“The caretakers named Natasha as the smartest chimpanzee, precisely the same chimpanzee that our tests had revealed to be exceptional,” study authors Esther Herrmann and Josep Call of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology wrote.

“All three of the most experienced caretakers included Natasha in their lists (of the most intelligent chimps),” they added.

Natasha has made headlines over the months for her attention-grabbing antics. For instance, she repeatedly escaped her former enclosure, surrounded by an electric fence. She did this by tossing branches at the fence until she didn’t see a spark, letting her know that the power was off.

She also learned how to tease humans, beckoning them to throw food her way, only to spray the unsuspecting person with water.

MAN SURVIVES FALLING 13,000FT AFTER PARACHUTE FAILS!

A skydiver survived falling 13,000ft without a working parachute.

Still not sure if skydiving is something you want to do? Well, you can read this story and know that even if your ‘chute doesn’t open, you can still survive the few thousand feet drop like this man did in New Zealand just the other day1

The Telegraph writes:

Liam Dunne, 35, who is a father of two, broke his back after dramatically crashing into the ground at high speed and landing in the soft, waterlogged area.

His reserve parachute opened at the last moment on the horrifying descent at a festival in Moteuko, New Zealand, but it was still too late to prevent him suffering serious injury.

Mr Dunne, originally from St Annes, Lancashire, was treated at the scene by medics and taken to a specialist spinal unit in Christchurch where doctors have advised him he should walk again.

Since the accident two weeks ago, he has astonished doctors with his recovery after undergoing surgery to insert metal pins into his shattered spine.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Dunne said: “Those last 1,000 feet it was like ‘here we go, this is it’. It wasn’t nice. But that said, it was a one in a million accident and a one in a million save.

“Skydiving is an awesome sport, and I’ve done 4,000 jumps and never had a problem.”

Mr Dunne, who now lives in Taupo, said his canopy opened normally after he jumped from 3,900m at a festival. But he went into an unrecoverable spin, had to ditch his main chute, and couldn’t find the reserve canopy’s handle.

It finally opened just 228m from the ground.

He said: “As my reserve chute was coming out I realised it was too late, so I just braced for the impact.

“Luckily I hit the softest patch of ground on the whole airfield. I bounced hard and my whole left side went numb.

“It felt like I had broken every bone in my body, and I couldn’t breathe. I was just sitting there dying. But my friend landed next to me, and she said ‘you’re all right, you can breathe’.

“She looked at my leg and said ‘look, it’s still there, it’s not deformed or anything’.

“She was with me the whole time. Then the ambulance came and filled me full of drugs.

“I probably ought to be dead the speed I hit. Twelve weeks of spinal rehab and I’ll be fine.

A ZOMBIE FOR 2012?

Seems like one of this’s years presidential candidates is full of huge ideas for those not currently being spoken for, although lacking in a few areas, mainly having a pulse, Mr A. Zombie believes he has a fighting, or should I say “biting” chance to come out on top in 2012.

The Telegraph writes:

After being helped into a NASCAR uniform the zombie candidate was lifted into a race car and taken on a few laps around Charlotte’s Speedway track.

Mr A. Zombie and his wife are part of a promotional stunt by American network AMC to get their post-apocalyptic television series The Walking Dead on the Dish Network, that dropped the show after a contract dispute.

“My husband is running for president, because he could have taken a certain issue issue lying down, well, because he was already lying down, but he decided to stand up and pledge to fight for equal viewing opportunities for all,” Ms Morgan-Zombie said.

She added her husband was working tirelessly to improve the lives of his fellow zombies and get them more jobs.

“He has vowed to increase the workforce for every zombie out there,” she said.

8 YEAR OLD FINDS VOMIT WORTH A FORTUNE

That chunk of whale vomit is worth a bit more than you'd think.

This has got to be the most valuable and disgusting thing to come OUT of something’s body, a $63,000 piece of throw-up from a whale!

Huffington Post writes:

An 8-year-old boy in Bournemouth, Great Britain, may have some gross profits after finding a piece of whale vomit that may be worth $63,000.

Charlie Naysmith was walking on the beach of Hengistbury Head when he came across a big hunk that looked like a yellowish beige rock with a waxy finish and picked it up, according to the Daily Echo newspaper.

With the help of his parents, he discovered his hunk was not a rock, but a piece of ambergris, a substance barfed or pooped up by sperm whales.

As disgusting as that sounds, the substance is actually in demand with perfume makers as it helps prolong the scent of perfume. That’s why a pound of the whale waste sells for as much as $10,000.

Naysmith’s piece of cetacean upchuck has been estimated to be worth as much as $63,000, but, according to his dad, Alex Naysmith, they are still researching the product.

“He is into nature and is really interested in it. We have discovered it is quite rare and are waiting for some more information from marine biology experts,” Naysmith, Sr., said, according to AsianTown.net.

FIRST MUSIC EVER PLAYED ON MARS

Pop music artist Will.i.am’s newest song “Reach For The Stars” is the first man-made made music to be broadcasted on another planet.

The Telegraph writes:

The extraordinary feat was among several astonishing achievements by US space agency’s £1.6 billion Curiosity rover, which landed on the surface of the Red Planet earlier this month.

The Black Eyed Peas rapper’s song, titled Reach for the Stars, was beamed more than 300 million miles back to Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

The first music broadcast from another planet came after the planetary explorer beamed back incredible high-resolution, colour portrait images from Mars.

Nasa staff clapped their hands and held their arms in the air, smiling and swaying to the rhythm during the slightly less scientific use of the rover’s hi-tech equipment and communications ability.

The achievement also gave great delight to dozens of students who gathered at the laboratory to listen.

“It seems surreal,” said will.i.am, who is also an actor.

He explained how Charles Bolden, the Nasa administrator, had called him to suggest beaming a song back from Mars as part of educational outreach efforts by the US space agency.

The song, which includes lyrics “I know that Mars might be far, but baby it ain’t really that far”, involved a 40-piece orchestra including French horns, rather than a more modern electronically-generated sound.

The 37-year-old, whose real name William James Adams, told a student audience that he didn’t “want to do a song that was done on a computer,” given that it was going to be the first piece of music broadcast back to the Earth from Mars.

“I wanted to show human collaboration and have an orchestra there and something that would be timeless, and translated in different cultures, not have like a hip hop beat or a dance beat,” he said.

THE HOVER BIKE OF THE FUTURE AVAILABLE TODAY

The Aerofex hover vehicle looks a little familiar.

If we weren’t living in enough of ‘The World of the Future” as we’ve seen in novels, movies and television for your liking, it looks like someone has taken a step in the right direction… up.

Space.com writes:

A resurrected hover vehicle won’t fly through dense forests as effortlessly as the “Star Wars” speeder bikes from “Return of the Jedi,” but its intuitive controls could someday allow anyone to fly it without pilot training.

The aerial vehicle resembles ascience fiction flying bike with two ducted rotors instead of wheels, but originates from a design abandoned in the 1960s because of stability and rollover problems. Aerofex, a California-based firm, fixed the stability issue by creating a mechanical system — controlled by two control bars at knee-level — that allows the vehicle to respond to a human pilot’s leaning movements and natural sense of balance.

“Think of it as lowering the threshold of flight, down to the domain of ATV’s (all-terrain vehicles),” said Mark De Roche, an aerospace engineer and founder of Aerofex.

Such intuitive controls could allow physicians to fly future versions of the vehicle to visit rural patients in places without roads, or enable border patrol officers to go about their duties without pilot training. All of it happens mechanically without the need for electronics, let alone complicated artificial intelligence or flight software. [See Hover ‘Bike’ Fly (Video)]

“It essentially captures the translations between the two in three axis (pitch, roll and yaw), and activates the aerodynamic controls required to counter the movement — which lines the vehicle back up with the pilot,” De Roche told InnovationNewsDaily. “Since [the pilot’s] balancing movements are instinctive and constant, it plays out quite effortlessly to him.”

FOOTAGE OF THE CURIOSITY ROVER LANDING ON MARS IN HI-DEFINITION

The original, but quite shaky and hard to view, footage has been re-done in beautiful HD.

You have got to watch this:

The LA Times writes:

You may have seen video of Curiosity’s descent before, but you haven’t seen it like this — with the craters on Mars rendered in high definition, the contrast amped up, and the whole thing set to a string score by Kevin Macleod that helps heighten the grandeur, and also the loneliness, of the rover’s descent to the red planet.

(Never underestimate the importance of a soundtrack!)

Consider it the Mars Curiosity descent post-production video. It’s like the original, but better.

The video was put together by Dominic Muller, known on Reddit as Godd2, reports iO9.

On the video’s YouTube page Muller explains that he used an editing technique called frame interpolation, which allowed him to take the original choppy video released by NASA and smooth it out. He writes that it took him four straight days to put it together.

You can find a thorough and technical explanation of how Muller made this video on Reddit.

Or you can just watch this over and over again and think about how awesome Mars looks.

As one commenter wrote, “It’s weird that we’re looking at another world.”

HAVE WE FOUND AMELIA EARHART’S PLANE WRECKAGE?

Researchers believe they've found the actual debris field from Amelia Earhart's legendary last flight.

The mystery of Amelia Earhart has intrigued the world ever since her disappearance on what would have been her record-breaking around-the-world flight in 1937.

Researchers, conspiracists, and just plain curious people from all over continue to investigate and could have possibly found her!

ABC News writes:

Forensic imaging specialists have found what looks like a wheel and other landing gear off the coast of Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean, right where analysts and archeologists think Amelia Earhart’s plane went down in 1937.

“We don’t know whether it’s her plane, but what we have is a debris field in a place where there should be a debris field if what we had put together based on the evidence that we had is correct,” said Ric Gillespie, executive director of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which led the $2.2 million expedition last month.

During the trip, Gillespie said he was “bummed” because they didn’t see much in the coral reef from their standard video camera. The high definition camera footage couldn’t be viewed in real time, so they had to process it and send it over to forensic analyst Jeff Glickman before they could get any answers.

“On Tuesday afternoon, he calls me and says, ‘You know, there’s stuff here. It looks like manmade debris,” Gillespie said.

So Gillespie compared the logs to his maps and said, “Whoa. What he’s seeing is right where we reasoned things should be.”

Based on the last thing Earhart ever said over the radio, she was on a navigational line called 157337, which has two other islands along it other than Howard Island, which was where Earhart was aiming to land. Although the Navy began looking for her along the route initially, the idea was forgotten until two retired Navy officers approached Gillespie in 1988.

MAN FINDS 10 YEAR OLD LOST FORK… IN HIS STOMACH

The fork had remained intact inside his stomach despite lying in a pool of stomach acid for a decade. - Caters News

Apparently one meal didn’t go quite the way Lee Gardner of Cudworth, England, instead of swallowing his food, he swallowed the utensil!

BBC News writes:

Doctors operating on a man who was taken to hospital with stomach pains discovered a 9in long plastic fork that he swallowed a decade ago.

Lee Gardner was taken to Barnsley Hospital when he started vomiting blood and having cramps.

He said he was told the fork, which he swallowed 10 years ago, would pass through his system naturally so he did not think to mention it to doctors.

Surgeon Hanis Shiwani said Mr Gardner was lucky there was not more damage.

Mr Gardner, from Cudworth, Barnsley, said: “I can’t believe it. I have never had any problems with my stomach except once a couple of years ago I remember thinking I felt like something had lodged when I bent over awkwardly.

“But the advice at the time was that it would just pass through my system, and as that was so many years before I really didn’t think it could be the fork.”

‘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.”