A happy 47th birthday goes out to Stanley Kirk Burrell… aka MC Hammer!
Archive for March, 2009
Wierd News Wednesday – IKEA Car?
From HuffingtonPost.com-
FastCompany cautiously writes about a rumored IKEA eco-car. What I wonder is if the owner’s manual would be wordless and illustrated with happy, blobby people. Oh, and whether the car would have tires or plastic casters:
The Internet is abuzz about a mysterious yet official-looking French website that appeared today. The site touts the LEKO, an environmentally-friendly IKEA-branded concept car. A video on the LEKO site says that the car is a modular design that can act as either a coupe or convertible. The car apparently also has the full backing of the World Wildlife Fund France, though it’s not clear if that means the WWF is contributing to the LEKO’s development or just endorsing it.
There’s a distinct possibility that the LEKO video and site are the viral warning shots for someone’s April Fools’ Day hoax. The LEKO is absent from the IKEA website, and most importantly, the car will be unveiled on April Fools’ Day.
Wierd News Wednesday – 47 Years Later
From MSNBC-
HUDSON, Ohio – A woman’s postcard bearing greetings from Montana has finally arrived in northeastern Ohio — 47 years later.
Insurance agent Dave Conn opened his post office box in the community of Hudson last week and found the mailing sent from Helena, Mont., in 1962.
It was sent to Marion White, the previous renter of the box, who had died in 1988. The writer signed the postcard “Fran” and mentioned having “had a marvelous time in Montana.”
After asking around, Conn says he determined the card must have come from White’s well-traveled friend Frances Murphey, a longtime reporter at the Akron Beacon Journal. She died in 1998 at age 75.
U.S. Postal Service spokesman Victor Dubina says the postcard may have been stuck in equipment or lost behind a mail chute.
Wierd News Wednesday – Human Faced Catfish
Via the Telegraph-
The “humanoid” carp are attracting attention in the town of Chongju in the centre of the country where they live in a small pond.
They are believed to be hybrid descendants of two carp species – the carp and the leather carp, also known as a tangerine fish.
Both fish are females and more than three feet long. They appear to have distinctive human noses, eyes and lips.
The fish live in a pond behind the home of a 64-year old South Korean man and have been there since 1986 although their looks are only just starting to attract attention.
“My fish have been getting more and more human for the past couple of years,” the owner said.
He added that he knows of other fish with similar features, and as they are both females it will be impossible for them to breed and have fish-faced offspring.
This is the second time in recent months that carp have made headlines in Asia. Last November a shoal of the fish in Changsha, in China’s Hunan Province turned on a duck who landed on their lake looking for food.
The Koi carp took exception to the intruder and fought back, bunching together into a seething mass to assert their authority, forcing the duck to fly away.
Wierd News Wednesday – Car Pulling Eyelids
A Chinese man pulled a car by a rope attached only to his eyelids for more than five metres.
Yang Guanghe, 35, of Guizhou was cheered and applauded at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Guangzhou as he towed the VW car.Yang, who weighs only seven stone, said he had been practicing the stunt for more than 10 years.
“At the beginning it was a bit painful, but gradually I got used to it,” he told the Guangzhou Daily newspaper.
“I just want to know what the limit is of the weakest link in the human body.”
It’s Square Root Day!
From Yahoo News-
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Dust off the slide rules and recharge the calculators. Square Root Day is upon us.The math-buffs’ holiday, which only occurs nine times each century, falls on Tuesday — 3/3/09 (for the mathematically challenged, three is the square root of nine).
“These days are like calendar comets, you wait and wait and wait for them, then they brighten up your day — and poof — they’re gone,” said Ron Gordon, a Redwood City teacher who started a contest meant to get people excited about the event.
The winner gets, of course, $339 for having the biggest Square Root Day event.
Gordon’s daughter even set up a Facebook page — one of a half-dozen or so dedicated to the holiday — and hundreds of people had signed up with plans to celebrate in some way. Celebrations are as varied: Some cut root vegetables into squares, others make food in the shape of a square root symbol.
The last such day was five years ago, Feb. 2, 2004, which coincided with Groundhog Day. The next is seven years away, on April 4, 2016.






