Car Wrapped Around Flag Pole — Students at Fruita Monument High School in Colorado welded an Eagle hatchback around the school's flag pole as a senior prank. It took them an hour and 15 minutes of welding to do it. Now this is more like what a prank should be... not like that garden-planting prank from a few weeks ago. [KITV]

Lots of Fake Whisky — Last July I posted about how radioactive fallout can be used to authenticate art. Isotopes released into the environment from nuclear bombs provide a way of determining if a work of art dates from before or after 1945. Apparently a similar process can be used to authenticate whisky, and experts are discovering that the whisky market is flooded with fakes. Researchers at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit say, "So far there have probably been more fakes among the samples we've tested than real examples of old whisky." [Telegraph]

I'm back, after a two-week absence! It was two weeks spent doing the always fun job of home remodeling (sarcasm).

My wife and I are slowly remodeling our home. Since we figure we can't afford to move any time soon, we're fixing up the house we have to make it nicer to live in. But since we also can't afford to hire real contractors, I get stuck doing all the work. Last year I redid the hallway bathroom. This time, it was the master bathroom. I thought I would be able to keep blogging as I did the remodeling, but after the first day of back-breaking work I realized that wasn't going to happen and decided to focus on getting the remodeling done as soon as possible. Luckily I had my dad to help me. He traveled out from the east coast to give me a hand.

Fun discoveries made during the remodeling process included finding that the sub-flooring was completely rotten and needed to be replaced, and that the old cast-iron pipes were so clogged that they also needed to be entirely replaced.

The job isn't done yet, but I made a lot of progress in the past two weeks. Some pics are below. In the meantime, I should now be able to pay some attention to hoaxes.