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Unusual Stuff

Alien Life Search Should Include Robots

Posted 8/24/2010 10:00 am by

Everyone has a vested interest in uncovering alien life form.  That’s why so many organizations, from your local school district to the Vatican, are looking to join the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence.  However, SETI researcher Seth Shostak (the guy who said we’ll find alien life within 25 years) says we might be looking in the […]

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Anne Frank’s Chestnut Tree Topples

Posted 8/24/2010 9:30 am by

The monumental chestnut tree had been a source of inspiration.  During Anne Frank’s captivity and attempt to hide from the invading Nazi forces, she’d often look out on the tree and be comforted and inspired by its presence.  It features prominently in her eponymous diary, which details how she and her family hid from the […]

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Philadelphia To Charge Bloggers $300

Posted 8/24/2010 9:00 am by

Are you a resident of Philadelphia who also happens to be a blogger?  That’ll be $300 dollars, please.  The city has recently been sending out threatening letters to bloggers great and small, informing them of a little-known tax law the cash-strapped City of Brotherly Love has somehow found time to enforce.  Basically, it requires all […]

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Pick The Statue Of Liberty’s Nose

Posted 8/24/2010 8:30 am by

For millions of people around the world, The Statue of Liberty is more than just a giant woman in a toga standing in New York Harbor.  She’s a symbol of freedom, of the promise of a better life in America, of the fulfillment of the American Dream.  For that reason, that old French dame is […]

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Justice Department Needs Jive-Talkers

Posted 8/24/2010 8:00 am by

Are you pretty good at picking up on street slang?  Can you watch The Wire and have no problems figuring out what the various underworld figures are saying?  Are you a linguist who has specialized in Ebonics, Black English, or African American Vernacular English?  Then there’s a job opening for you.  Actually, there are job […]

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Drinking Water Leads To Weight Loss

Posted 8/24/2010 7:30 am by

Are you looking to lose weight?  Commonly-given advice is that if you want to lose weight, you need to drink water.  Nobody could prove it, and nobody was really looking into it, but that’s been the commonly-given advice for years now.  Finally, science has decided to get around to proving it and announcing that, yes, […]

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China’s Nine-Day Traffic Jam

Posted 8/24/2010 7:00 am by

Think you have a rough morning commute?  Lots of Americans do.  However, we’ve got it easy compared to the Chinese.  If your daily travel plans in China include a trip between Huai’an and Beijing via the Beijing-Tibet Expressway, then I suggest you find an alternate route.  Unless you’re already stuck on the road as part […]

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Mexico’s Jimena Navarrete Wins Miss Universe

Posted 8/24/2010 6:30 am by

The Miss USA pageant has kind of fallen on hard times.  Viewership is down, and even when the potential Miss USA has a naughty past and Miss England is a combat veteran, it’s not really enough to drive up interest in the overblown beauty pageant that has always been seen as an inferior version of […]

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Ne-va-da Or Ne-VAH-da

Posted 8/23/2010 12:00 pm by

It’s one of the age-old issues that is guaranteed to infuriate a significant portion of people from Nevada.  All you have to do is pronounce the middle syllable with an -ah instead of an -a.  That’s right, Nevadans hate it when you call their state Ne-VAH-da, and they’re willing to let you know.  However, outgoing […]

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RFK’s Assassination Hotel Turned Most Expensive US School

Posted 8/23/2010 11:30 am by

Once upon a time, it was the Ambassador Hotel.  One of the finest examples of Art Deco architecture in Los Angeles, it later became famous as the site on which Robert F. Kennedy, brother of John and Presidential hopeful, was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.  In the years after the assassination, the building’s star faded, and […]

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Woman Suffers From Bananaphobia

Posted 8/23/2010 11:00 am by

Fran Dando, a 21-year-old children’s worker from Hastings, East Sussex, has a very odd fear.  Lots of people are afraid of spiders and snakes, but how many people can you name that are afraid of bananas?  That’s right, Fran Dando is a bananaphobic, and like a lot of phobias, her unusual fear stems back to […]

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A Vaccine To The Ebola Virus?

Posted 8/23/2010 10:30 am by

It’s one of the most feared diseases in the world.  It has periodically ravaged portions of Africa since it was discovered in the late 70’s, and this disease, the dreaded Ebola virus, has a staggering 90 percent mortality rate in humans (and a 100 percent mortality rate in monkeys).  However, researchers believe they’ve uncovered a […]

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Bedbugs Visit Empire State Building

Posted 8/23/2010 10:00 am by

The Empire State Building is one of New York’s most enduring landmarks.  The massive Art Deco-style skyscraper has been a fixture of New York City’s tourism campaigns since it was built in 1931 and is one of the best-known buildings in the world.  There’s a reason tourists want to visit it.  However, with all that […]

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Strange Starbucks Factoids

Posted 8/23/2010 9:30 am by

They’re the first, and arguably they’re still the biggest and best-known coffee chain in the land.  The not-so-jolly Green Giant itself, Starbucks, has become a fixture in America, and with good reason.  Even with the economic downturn, did you know that there are two or three new Starbucks locations opening up every single day throughout […]

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DUI Bride Busted On Wedding Day

Posted 8/23/2010 9:00 am by

There’s just something about their big day that must drive brides to behave badly.  I mean, there’s a whole show about misbehaving brides that’s become a huge hit, so this must be a common phenomenon.  In Bellevue, Washington, a 31-year-old woman was arrested by state troopers for driving erratically and speeding on Interstate 405.  As […]

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101-Year-Old Woman Gets Her Third Tattoo

Posted 8/23/2010 8:30 am by

It took Mimi Rosenthal 99 years to get the nerve up to get her first tattoo, but like any other habit, once you get started it’s tough to keep from going back to the well to get more.  When she was 99, she got a dime-sized butterfly on one leg; at 100, she got a […]

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British Woman Smashes Texting World Record

Posted 8/23/2010 8:00 am by

Most people require a lot of time and preparation to break world records.  A lot of those record-breaking feats are the result of years of practice and effort.  Not Melissa Thompson’s new ultra-fast texting world record: she just walked in off the streets and smashed the world record formerly held by Franklin Page with seemingly […]

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Trapped Miners To Be Stranded For Months

Posted 8/23/2010 7:30 am by

As someone from a state with a large mining industry, I know something of mine safety.  Granted, I’m not a miner, and I’ve got no miners in my family, but it’s kind of become something I’ve picked up an interest in.  One of the more interesting aspects of the average mine is the safety rooms:  […]

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Caster Semenya Is Back And Better Than Ever

Posted 8/23/2010 7:00 am by

At last year’s world championships, Caster Semenya ran away from the competition, literally, as she won the gold medal in the women’s 800 meters race.  Of course, in post-race testing, there was a little problem:  race officials weren’t sure what gender she was.  As it turns out, after 11 months of extensive testing revealed a […]

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Teen Girl Honored By Baseball Hall Of Fame

Posted 8/23/2010 6:30 am by

There aren’t a lot of 13-year-old girls who are interested in baseball, let alone a lot of 13-year-old girls who are good enough to make it into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, yet there’s Chelsea Baker, whose Brandon Farms Little League jersey was inducted into the Cooperstown, New York, home of baseball’s greatest as […]

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The Shrinking Moon

Posted 8/20/2010 12:00 pm by

The precious share of lunar soil you and your family were going to claim in the first great lunar land grab might have gotten a little smaller.  Not because more people want to go farming on the moon as part of the fictional program I just made up, but because the moon has been shrinking. […]

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Saudi Arabian Judge Orders Man Paralyzed

Posted 8/20/2010 11:30 am by

You’ve heard of the old-school hanging judge, who goes for harsh penalties and doesn’t cotton to a lot of leniency in his courtroom.  Well, in Saudia Arabia, a judge in Tabuk province named Saoud bin Suleiman al-Youssef might well become known as the paralyzing judge, after he sent letters to two hospitals asking that they […]

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The Incredible Inedible Egg

Posted 8/20/2010 11:00 am by

If you have eggs in your fridge and you don’t know where they came from, you should probably just throw them out.  As of yesterday evening, an estimated 380 million eggs have been recalled after a salmonella outbreak was linked to one of the largest egg-producing farms, Wright County Farms owned by controversial self-made man […]

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Cameron Diaz Unsafe For Any Browsing Speed

Posted 8/20/2010 10:30 am by

When you’re doing a lot of image searches, as I tend to do for this website during my daily update spree, you’re exposing yourself to some amount of risk.  The hotter the celebrity name you search for, the more dangers you’re risking.  Every year, McAfee puts together a list of the most dangerous celebrities to […]

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Intel Buys Up McAfee

Posted 8/20/2010 10:00 am by

Two acquired tastes that I don’t really like are coming together to form the cat poop and onions combination platter of the technology world.  Intel, the world’s largest maker of computer processors, has announced that it has purchased outright security firm McAfee for a staggering $7.68 billion dollars.  It’s the rare win-win deal for both […]

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Lake Havasu Fears Piranha

Posted 8/20/2010 9:30 am by

Long ago, Roger Corman made a cheap little movie about piranha invading a freshwater lake during the height of swim season.  Little did he know that his 1978 classic Piranha would inspire multiple remakes, including the upcoming Piranha 3-D.  Now, the filming location for Piranha 3-D is getting a case of the nerves over fear […]

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Baseball Great/Cheat Roger Clemens Indicted In Steroids Trial

Posted 8/20/2010 9:00 am by

When Roger Clemens went in front of Congress in 2008 to discuss the federal government’s investigation into the steroid abuse rampant in Major League Baseball, he said with emphasis:  “Let me be clear.  I have never taken steroids or HGH.”  Then, the Mitchell Report came out, and Brian McNamee gave federal investigators a bag full […]

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Police Advised To Wear Sensible Underwear

Posted 8/20/2010 8:30 am by

Police officers have a litany of uniform rules they have to follow.  Their nametag has to be placed just so, they have a lot of equipment they’re required to wear.  They have official police undershirts to wear beneath their uniforms.  Everything from the shine of their shoes to the crease in their slacks is monitored […]

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Smoking Decreasing In Movies

Posted 8/20/2010 8:00 am by

According to authorities on these matters, kids that see smoking are more likely to take up smoking.  No matter if the smoking is their parents, other relatives, or just smoking in films.  After peaking in 2005, smoking in the movies is down a staggering 51%, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the […]

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Harry Potter’s Condom Controversy

Posted 8/20/2010 7:30 am by

Harry Potter is big business, and as the character has grown over the series of movies bearing his name, so has his marketing potential.  The Harry Potter franchise is worth about $23 billion dollars now, according to Warner Brothers, and similarly-named knock-offs will not be tolerated.  That’s why Warner Brothers Entertainment, the company behind Harry […]

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