Some criminals are dumb, some are warped geniuses and others are just plain weird. Which is lucky for us seeing as we’re all about the weird on this blog! The particular criminal in question took offence when an Iowa cop tried to arrest him for robbing a local store. The booty? One pair of sunglasses, a packet of smokes and two stuffed monkeys. As in the cuddly toy variety, not the taxidermy variety. Although that would be a truly weird crime…
I always love the odd and unusual stories that you get on news websites, and the jackpot is often found in the science section. In the same week that the Ig-Nobel awards were announced (the Nobel prizes for weird and wonderful scientific research) comes the news that researchers in the Netherlands have found a microbe that can turn human urine into rocket fuel. Pretty cool, eh? What would be even cooler is if they could find a way for us to just piss in our cars instead of having to fill them up at the petrol; imagine how much money we would save on nationwide fuels if we could bypass the pumps and simply power our own vehicles? I just haven’t quite figured out the logistics for female drivers…
Anyway, the original research may be cool and kooky, and has garnered the researchers and their paper lots of headlines, but when you read into it further, the discovery isn’t quite as impressive or as useful as it might first appear. For a start, they have only theoretically “proven” that the microbe has the power to turn the ammonia in urine into the hydrazine molecules that make up rocket fuel. They are planning a practical demonstration of their discovery once they have the funding, but even then the number of hydrazine molecules that can be produced from the ammonia in one person’s urine is so small that it would take something like the whole world’s annual supply in order to power one trip to the moon!
Unsurprisingly, NASA had been monitoring the work of the Dutch scientists when they first got wind of the idea, but have since lost interest as the application seems to have no practical uses. Like a lot of scientific research, it is only of interest to those taking part in and those of us who find their results mildly amusing.
Wind the clock back, technologically speaking, 50 years. Now then, what do you see? If you’re anything like me you’ll see a world which is very curious about technology. A world which would consider technology being at the centre of everything well…just a little bit weird. I said, curious, not obsessed. But look at our modern civilisation in the present day – from London to Egypt and everywhere in-between – and you see a very different picture. Mobile phones have taken over our lives. To the extent where many people feel the need to be connected to the internet at virtually all times.
Where as, back in the day, breakfast was the first thing which was on peoples’minds, nowadays it’s not survival, it’s email. But surely we shouldn’t be concerned about this widespread fascination with technology, right? Wrong. According to a recent article in the Huffington Post, this fascination is quietly turning into an addiction right beneath our noses. The result is dangerous, say some psychologists. And it could be that the next generation has no choice but to be dangerously addicted.
Ask yourself: can you not be online for just one day? Are your internet-related activities anything to do with work?
From gaming consoles like the amazing R4 3DS , to mobile phones by Samsung and Apple, technology has made everything possible. And we do mean everything, from the boring and formal — transferring money — to the weird and downright wacky — all kinds of apps which are a bit too strange to be mentioned here! If you want to do it, chances are that somewhere there will be an app designed for it. An app which will mean zero human interaction and light-speed effect.
So really, how concerned should we be about this? Well, that would depend. Ask yourself: can you not be online for just one day? Are your internet-related activities anything to do with work? Are they essential to your being? If the answer to all three of those questions is %u201CNo%u201D then you may have to consider you have an internet addiction which requires some help.
Another thing which will tell you, somewhat more quickly, that you have a problem, is this: do you sleep next to your mobile phone? If so then you won’t be the only one, not by a long-shot. According to the aforementioned article, up to – and possibly more – a third of US citizens sleep next to their mobile phone, purely out of the fear of missing an email or text message. While many of these people, it is fair to say, rely on their phones for communication with work, it’s also fair to say that this is probably going too far and could be classified as more than a bit bizarre. We advise you head on over to the article now and give it a read. Then ask yourself: do I have a problem?
World War Z is a truly weird novel, written as a collection of memoirs by people who have survived the war against the undead, against zombies who rise from the grave with the sole instinct of tearing apart and eating the living. The characters range from veteran soldiers who describe the first, disastrous attempts to contain the zombie plague, to ordinary people who stepped up and became heroes. As an additional point of interest, the author images different scenarios in More
Picture the scene: you’re camped out in the middle of nowhere. Well, not nowhere, you’re in Hampshire, England. There’s not a soul around as you unzip your tent and inspect your shimmering rod in the daylight. It’s a fine rod, you think, as you roll it around in your hands. That’s when you grab your box of trusty white bread – which you will use as bait – and open it and someone nearby says “I don’t think so.”
In one of the more bizarre things I read about today was the news that a man staggered into a police station in Germany asking the officers to be placed in protective custody. The reason? Well it seems his wife simply won’t let him get any sleep because she’s sex mad and demands that he fulfil his marital duties whenever she desires…which is every ten minutes.
The ‘unfortunate'husband (originally from Turkey) allegedly broke down in tears as he explained his More
What is with this obsessions with zombies? I was searching through lofts east london for a new and lovely place to live, when a group of five walked past me looking literally like the living dead. Its all over the news, the organizers of the zombie wedding protest being busted the the Metropolitan Police before they had any chance to make it to the streets dressed like the living dead. This particular group of people were off to some sort More
WARNING: this does contain shocking content that might easily offend some viewers. This writer does not condone buying it!
How about you ask yourself a question: do I enjoy looking and using things which are, frankly, absolutely car-crash horrific? If you answered a firm “No!” then you know where the door is. I suggest you go to the x in the top right corner of this screen and get out before I mention…
Dear Weirdo, thanks for coming to see me, It’s been much too long already, so promise me: don’t leave it so long the next time? It gets boring just existing as a load of perfectly still characters on a page. HTML isn’t too much of a riot either, just so you know…
So, I suppose you’re expecting something even weirder than last time, aren’t you now? Well, I can’t 100% promise you that – and let’s face it, you’ve already More
After taking some red diesel after work recently I overheard some co-workers of mine talking about a penis museum. Yes you heard right, a penis museum so I had to find out about it.
This unique museum, the only one in the world, is known as the Iceland’s Phallological Museum. It is located in Husavic, 298 miles northeast of Reykjavik in Iceland. What makes this museum so unique is that it is devoted in the collection and study of mammalian More
