Hoax Forum

“The Big Chill”

2010-03-18T19:10:06-08:00

Interesting Documentary from the BBC:

I have no opinion on this. (In other words, I didn’t post it to cause an argument...Really) I just found it an interesting documentary.

Manly Slang

2010-03-18T04:20:12-08:00

While writing our first book, The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man, we decided to throw a few old-time 19th century slang words into the text just for fun. While scouring old dictionaries for some words that would fit in the book, we came across many others that were beyond awesome but didn’t make the cut.

Here’s a glossary of our favorite manly slang that was tossed about on the streets and saloons back in the day. These colorful words and phrases probably won’t ever come back into popular parlance, but they’re a real hoot to read through.

click

Um, Um, Wow.

2010-03-04T20:17:17-08:00

Don’t say you weren’t warned…..

http://trololololololololololo.com/

*...Goes for mind, eye, and ear bleach…*

The Oldest Trees on the Planet

2010-03-18T12:22:17-08:00

Trees are some of the longest-lived organisms on the planet. At least 50 trees have been around for more than a millenium, but there may be countless other ancient trees that haven’t been discovered yet.

Trees can live such a long time for several reasons. One secret to their longevity is their compartmentalized vascular system, which allows parts of the tree to die while other portions thrive. Many create defensive compounds to fight off deadly bacteria or parasites.

And some of the oldest trees on earth, the great bristlecone pines, don’t seem to age like we do. At 3,000-plus years, these trees continue to grow just as vigorously as their 100-year-old counterparts. Unlike animals, these pines don’t rack up genetic mutations in their cells as the years go by.

Some trees defy time by sending out clones, or genetically identical shoots, so that one trunk’s demise doesn’t spell the end for the organism. The giant colonies can have thousands of individual trunks, but share the same network of roots.

The gallery contains images of some of the oldest, most venerable and impressive trees on earth.

Revenge of the eBay seller

2010-03-17T05:14:46-08:00

Go and see this eBay ad of a disgruntled eBay seller.

New College Graduates To Be Cryogenically Frozen Until Job Market Improves

2010-03-18T04:25:41-08:00

New College Graduates To Be Cryogenically Frozen Until Job Market Improves

WASHINGTON—In a bold new measure intended to address unemployment among young professionals, lawmakers from across the political spectrum agreed on legislation Tuesday to subsidize the cryogenic freezing of recent college graduates until the job market recovers.

The bill, expected to swiftly pass in both houses, would facilitate the subzero preservation of any graduate of a two- or four-year educational institution. Sponsors of the initiative said that with the national unemployment rate at just under 10 percent, it only made sense for young job-seekers to temporarily enter a state of supercooled stasis.

“Finding employment is extremely difficult for today’s college graduate,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said. “Our current economy offers few options for the millions of young men and women desperate to join the workforce.”

“Were we to freeze these graduates at the height of vigor and ambition, however, there’s a chance we could revive them during a more prosperous time,” Hutchinson continued. “When the economy finally bounces back—10, 20, even 30 years from now—we’ll have an entire generation thawed out and ready to contribute.”

The Frozen For Their Future Act reportedly calls for the installation of thousands of cryogenic tanks at college commencement ceremonies around the country. Upon receiving their diplomas, newly minted graduates will immediately make their way to preservation stations where their hearts will be artificially stopped using electroshock or a potassium-salt solution. Once a graduate’s blood is drained and replenished with an anti-crystallizing fluid, they will be submerged in liquid nitrogen, a process that will, in effect, put them into suspended animation until key sectors of the American economy such as real estate and information technology have rebounded.

According to Walter Reardon of the Cryonics Partnership Inc., it will be essential for the freezing procedure to be conducted as quickly as possible.

“Graduates will never be more primed to enter the workplace than at the exuberant moment they toss their caps in the air,” said Reardon, who claimed that cryogenics was the only hope for an estimated two-thirds of the nation’s students. “Wait even two days, and a graduate’s brain will begin to show the effects of fretting about the dismal job market. Wait six months, and you might have a permanently cynical underachiever resigned to his position at a mall sunglasses kiosk.”

“Frankly, that person might not even be worth bringing back,” Reardon added.

Under the proposed guidelines of the legislation, frozen graduates would remain in storage at a temperature of minus 196 degrees Celsius (minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit) until the unemployment rate fell to a more manageable 4.5 percent. All graduates would also be required to sign a waiver stating that they understood the risks involved, and that there was no guarantee the economy of the future would ever grow sufficiently to warrant their revival.

While acknowledging this danger, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), who cosponsored the bill with Sen. Hutchison, said smaller subsets of graduates could be reanimated as needed if special circumstances created a demand for their skills.

“Let’s say there’s some sort of environmental crisis,” Schumer said. “Well, we could selectively thaw students who majored in ecology or climatology and provide them with jobs. The same logic would apply if, say, 300 years from now a real-world application for people with philosophy degrees somehow arose.”

Soon-to-be college graduates were divided about the pending legislation. While some expressed reluctance to induce their own clinical death, other students seemed content to postpone their job hunting for a while.

“Everyone I know is either unemployed or barely getting by,” University of Illinois senior Kim Levesque said. “If they want to put me on ice until there are more jobs out there, that’s totally fine with me. Not to mention the fact that I won’t have to think about my student loans for a while.”

When reached for comment, a spokesman for loan provider Sallie Mae said that educational loans taken out by graduates in cryogenic storage would continue to accrue interest indefinitely at 6.5 percent.

2,40m

2010-03-16T11:28:00-08:00

The blog 2M40 is about one underpass in Paris that has a clearance of only two meters and forty centimeters. Many truck drivers either do not read, do not understand, or do not believe the clearance warning. Several times a month, the underpass wins the battle against these drivers and 2m40 posts the pictures. The blog is in French, but the pictures tell the story. The tagline is “Un blog impactant,” which means “An impacting blog.”

The Serial Tunnel

Camouflaged animals playing hide-and-seek by blending into the background

2010-03-12T13:27:14-08:00

Link with an amazing gallery of pictures here.

Nature is awesome.

attack!

2010-03-17T03:59:08-08:00

These are pretty scary for sure, something befitting sci-fi movies yet they’re political attack ads so well-written and then taped (especially the first) that they should be rated PG? I put my favorite first because she seems a terrible god, and I liked the sheep/wolf with red eyes standing in the middle of herd seemingly ready to eat (one scene it looks like he is).

Hot Air: The Movie

Wolf in Sheeps Clothing
Slave Labor

Article and other attack ad links: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_ts1260

TinEye

2010-03-15T09:34:47-08:00

I’ve been wanting this sort of thing from Google for years, but their image search has always let me down in this regard. I’m sure they’ll buy out the technology soon enough, though.

TinEye: Reverse Image Search Engine.

From the site:

You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions.