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The Hoax Museum Blog
Examining dubious claims and mischief of all kinds.
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Next time you visit Chicago, consider skipping the normal city tours and instead take the "Ghetto Bus Tour." It takes tourists on a guided tour in a yellow school bus "through vacant lots and past demolished buildings on a tour of what was once one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country." You get to see the former housing projects. The tour guide is Beauty Turner. The Chi-Town Daily News reports: This reminded me of something, but I couldn't immediately put my finger on it. And then I remembered -- Joey Skaggs's Hippie Bus Tour. Back in 1968 Skaggs rented a greyhound bus, filled it with long-haired hippies, and then took them all on a guided tour of a middle-class Queens community, allowing them to snap photos of guys mowing their lawn, washing their cars, etc.

So the Skaggs version of the ghetto bus tour would, presumably, be to take residents of the housing projects on a tour of Chicago's wealthy suburbs. That might be pretty interesting.
I know it should come as no surprise to learn that a reality TV show has been faked, but it still kind of sucks to hear this about Born Survivor (aired in America on the Discovery Channel as Man vs. Wild), since I've watched quite a few episodes of this show and enjoyed it.

The premise of the show is that Bear Grylls, a former soldier with the UK Special Forces, is dropped into various extreme situations (on top of a mountain, on a desert island, etc.) and has to survive on his own until he gets rescued. Obviously there's a camera crew with him constantly, so he's never in that much danger. Still, learning that he sometimes would surreptitiously check into hotel rooms overnight kind of ruins the effect.

From the BBC:
In a Buddhist temple in Singapore, stored inside a solid gold stupa, lies a tooth. The monks who run the temple claim that it's the Buddha's tooth. But others are not so sure. Apparently, "some experts have reportedly questioned whether the tooth is from the Buddha himself." Wow! It's hard to imagine something like this would be fake.

The problem seems to be that the tooth looks suspiciously like the tooth of a herbivore, such as a horse or a buffalo. Apparently vendors in places such as Myanmar often try to sell similar-looking teeth to tourists. Vets have confirmed that the teeth the vendors sell come from herbivores.

However, the monks in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple are not about to let scientists do any tests on their Buddha's tooth. They argue that DNA testing is an invasive procedure and is a practical challenge to conduct. Plus, once it's confirmed as a fake, they'd be out of a job.

My favorite line from the Channel NewsAsia article: Renowned artist Tan Swie Hian says, "I don't mind praying to a buffalo's tooth provided I'm told it is one. Let me get it right before my prayer."
An anonymous correspondent emailed me a link to Arr, the Kraken, where I found this picture of a very curious creature. Arr, the Kraken speculates that it might be a kangahippopossumouse. Perhaps, though it could also be a Tasmanian Dwarf Hippo. Anyone out there able to positively identify this thing?


Could it be the second coming of Chris Farley? She's certainly got his eyes. Or did Chris Farley, perhaps, have a daughter?

Eric Schucard forwarded me this photo while I was in Africa (that's the same Eric Schucard who's responsible for the pictures of the MoH on the About the Museum page). This picture has appeared on quite a few blogs within the past month, but I don't see that anyone has come up with a definitive answer to the real question: photoshopped or not? Also, I can't find any clue as to the source of the photo.

My hunch is that it's not photoshopped. But that's just a hunch.

If you don't know who Chris Farley is, you can check out the wikipedia page about him -- and you can also consider yourself lucky for never having had to suffer through Beverly Hills Ninja.

Related topic: Baby Adolf


China's food industry, already reeling from reports of toxins in pet food originating in China, took another blow when Beijing TV recently reported that snack vendors in eastern Beijing were selling "steamed dumplings stuffed with cardboard soaked in caustic soda and seasoned with pork flavoring." Yuck! In this case, however, the accusation appears to have been unwarranted. CNN reports that: So this appears to belong to the genre of the "gross things found in food" hoax. Assuming, that is, that the Beijing authorities are telling the truth, and that the cardboard buns were actually the invention of a rogue reporter. I wouldn't put it past the Beijing authorities to cry hoax to cover up a real problem.

Also, it's worth noting that even if Beijing vendors aren't supplementing their buns with cardboard, reports of Chinese manufacturers using human hair to make soy sauce continue to appear to be true. So I wouldn't put much past the Chinese food industry. (Thanks Cranky and Joe)
Could Jane Austen, one of the most celebrated and popular writers in the English language, get published today? To find out, David Lassman, director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, typed up some opening chapters of her books, added a cover letter with plot synopses, and sent them off to publishers. He changed the titles of the works, renamed the characters, and called himself "Alison Laydee," but otherwise he didn't change Austen's prose. Here's the rather predictable result of Lassman's experiment, as described by the Guardian: If Lassman's prose was not original to himself, neither was the hoax itself. This type of hoax has definitely been done before. It's periodically perpetrated by disgruntled authors hoping to reveal the superficiality of the publishing industry. Lassman, for instance, is nursing a grudge because his novel Freedom's Temple, "a modern take on the story of Theseus and the Minotaur," has failed to find a publisher. But though the hoax has been done before, the lesson it teaches is one that's worth repeating -- namely that relying on talent alone is probably not enough to guarantee getting published. A little bit of luck is also necessary (and having contacts inside the publishing industry doesn't hurt either).

Some recent examples of this genre of hoax, reported here: The Wraith Picket Experiment, in which chapters from the award-winning Australian writer Patrick White's novels were submitted to publishers and rejected; and Booker Prize Winners rejected, in which chapters from the works of V.S. Naipaul and Stanley Middleton were rejected by 20 publishers.
I'm back! The return flight from Africa took almost 30 hours (and with layovers it basically was two entire days of travel), but I made it. I got back late Monday night and then spent Tuesday decompressing, trying to shake off the jet lag.

After a quick glance around, it looks like the site survived my absence. Thanks to Cranky Media Guy for filling in as the Guest Curator while I was gone. He did a great job. I guess this means I'm pretty much expendable around here!

Africa was incredible, but I had no internet access while I was there (and often no electricity either), so my apologies to anyone who tried to contact me while I was gone.

The trip consisted of a week in Malawi and two weeks in South Africa -- two very different countries. Malawi is a very rural society. In many places the lifestyle doesn't seem to have changed much there in hundreds of years. You still see numerous villages dotting the countryside, consisting of a handful of thatch huts. Women walk around with huge bundles of sticks on their heads. South Africa, by contrast, is much more modern. Many areas of it look almost exactly like America, with malls and office buildings... but down the road from the malls you find vast, sprawling shanty towns where people live in pretty wretched conditions.

One of my favorite sights in Malawi was the guys who stand by the side of the road selling mice-on-a-stick. Apparently many Malawians quite enjoy this dish. The vendors catch the mice by starting a fire in the brush to scare the rodents out. Then they spear about four or five of the critters on a stick and cook them -- fur, bones and all -- until they're charcoal black. Although I didn't sample this delicacy, I'm told that the proper way to eat a mouse on a stick is by beginning with the tail and working your way up to the head. You simply spit out the bones, much like you would do when eating chicken wings. I wanted to get a picture of a mouse-on-a-stick vendor, but I never had a chance. My sister, who lives in Malawi, promises me that she'll take a picture of one and send it to me. (In the meantime, I found some pictures of mice on a stick on a blog called Misadventures in Malawi and Beyond.)

I also spent a couple of days at Lake Malawi, where I kept an eye out for any sign of a Lake Malawi Monster. Lake Malawi is also known as Lake Nyassa, so it's monster, if it has one, would, I suppose, be called Nyassie. Unfortunately I didn't see a monster, though I did see a couple of otters, which I thought was pretty exciting at the time.

In South Africa, I got to visit Kruger Park where I saw elephants, rhinos, giraffe, and hippos. However, I saw no elephants on acid, nor any hippos eating dwarves.

While in South Africa, I also got to take a trip down a platinum mine, an experience which made me resolve never to quit blogging in order to become a miner.

Here's a few pictures of me from the trip. From left to right: taking a nap in a hammock at Lake Malawi, very cautiously petting a cheetah at the De Wildt Cheetah Park in South Africa, and 500 meters beneath the ground in a platinum mine (you can tell from the expression on my face that I'm feeling a little claustrophobic).