Hoax Museum Blog: Miscellaneous

First Review of Hippo Eats Dwarf — The first review of Hippo Eats Dwarf is in. Actually, it's not so much a full review as a descriptive blurb, but it's what the reviewer from Booklist wrote. (Booklist, from what I understand, is read mostly by librarians and bookstore owners.)

Boese, Alex. Hippo Eats Dwarf: A Field Guide to Hoaxes and Other B.S. Apr. 2006. 288p. illus. Harcourt, paper, $14 (0-15-603083-7). 001.9. From the author of the entertaining Museum of Hoaxes (2002) comes an even more entertaining follow-up. The book is a reasonably thorough, not to mention playful, guide to fakery. Advertising posing as legitimate news stories, nonexistent movie reviewers, fraudulent sales pitches, reality television, imaginary Internet bloggers, phony celebrities—they're all here, and plenty more, too. The book also features a series of "reality rules" (#5.2: should a suitably dramatic picture of a major event not exist, one will be created) and several "case files" that use real stories to illustrate various kinds of fakery (like the professor who fell for the Nigerian bank scam). Boese, a self-described "hoaxpert," keeps us on our toes by slipping in real-but-improbable events among the fakes and challenging us to see if we can tell the difference. All too often it's impossible to know whether something he describes is bona fide or bogus, and that's Boese's point: we need to stay on our toes, if we want to avoid getting fooled. —David Pitt
YA: Is there a teenager who wouldn't be interested in a hippo eating a dwarf, even if it was fake? BO.

The comment at the end, I'm assuming, is a supplementary remark made by the young adult reviewer. My publisher tells me that Playboy has also indicated they're going to review Hippo Eats Dwarf in their May issue (on newsstands in April), which will give me an excuse to buy the magazine and tell my wife I'm only reading it for the review. Giant magazine, which I hadn't heard of before, has also indicated they'll review it. Anyway, if you have any inclination to buy the book, think about pre-ordering it. I won't pretend to understand the economics of the publishing industry, but I've heard that bookstores and publishers care a lot about pre-orders. (Probably because it makes them more confident that the book will sell well, and thus more willing to devote marketing dollars to it, in the case of publishers, or to stock it, in the case of bookstores.)

Happy New Year — Happy New Year everyone. My new year's resolution is to be more productive, procrastinate less, post more often, and resurrect that email newsletter which I've started and let lapse numerous times. I'll start implementing these resolutions as soon as I finish watching the first season of Lost, which I got for Christmas on DVD. One has to have priorities, after all.

Happy Holidays (also seeking suggestions for the top ten hoaxes of 2005) — I've been ignoring the internet for the past few days because I've been too busy eating, drinking, and opening presents. So I'll wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas now, or whatever holiday you celebrate: Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia—for all those ancient Romans out there (since I studied Latin for eight years, I consider myself an honorary ancient Roman)— or nothing at all.

Although I was trying to ignore the outside world, it did manage to briefly track me down. A reporter from the Washington Post called to talk about the case of fraudulent cloning research in South Korea that's been making headlines. Here's what I said (that made it into the article):

The stem cell case has parallels with some earlier hoaxes, according to Alex Boese, who studies and writes about such cases. In the Piltdown man claim, for example, the British researchers may have been motivated in part by national pride. "At the time, it was assumed that whatever country discovered the missing link would be the root of mankind," Boese said. "Maybe in this case South Koreans wanted to prove their scientific credentials."

I'm putting together a list of the top ten hoaxes of 2005, which I hope to have posted by Jan. 1. I think the South Korean cloning case deserves a place on the list. Another contender is the Kodee hoax (which I never posted anything about at the time because I was too busy finishing my book), in which the Southern Illinois University student paper invented an elaborate story about an 8-year-old girl, Kodee, struggling with her father being overseas in Iraq. If you have any other suggestions for hoaxes that should make the top ten list, let me know.

Who Should Win the Caption Contest? — I said that I would decide who should win the caption contest today. But I'm having a tough time making a decision because there are a number of good entries. So I've decided to make the contest more democratic and let the winner be decided by a vote. I've selected my top eight choices. Pick your favorite, and cast your vote. I'll let the voting run for a day or two.
Update: As of Dec. 23, Kieran won the vote . Congratulations!

Caption Contest — And the winner of the 'contest to pick a contest idea' was... ME!!! Yeah, apparently my proposal to have a caption contest was the overall favorite. So I'll be keeping the copy of the book (at least for now... I'll probably give it away later).

Anyway, now on to the real contest. I've selected an image. The challenge is to think up a caption or accompanying text for the image. Or, if you're so inclined, you can photoshop the image. I don't mind. Just do something creative with it using whatever tools you have at hand (either words or an image editor). But if you photoshop the image, you'll need to upload it to a web server (such as one of the free image hosting sites) so we all can see it.

The prize will be a copy of A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farquhar ("Liars, Misleaders, Hoodwinkers, and the Extraordinary True Stories of History's Greatest Hoaxes, Fakes, and Frauds"). (I promise I won't award the book to myself in this contest.)

Here's the image:



I'll decide who the winner is on Dec. 20.

A Contest To Think of Contest Ideas — I'm having a contest. The challenge is to help me think of contest ideas. I posted the full details in the Hoax Forum (but then it occurred to me that only registered members can post responses there, so I'm posting a brief announcement here too so that comments/ideas can be left in either place.)

The basic challenge is to think of contest ideas. The one condition is that the contest has to generate responses, the best of which can be used as sidebar material somewhere in my archive of famous hoaxes throughout history. Like I said, full details are in the Hoax Forum.

The winner of the contest-idea contest will get a copy of A Treasury of Deception by Michael Farquhar. I then have two more prizes to give away (once we have ideas for more contests). Another copy of A Treasury of Deception, and a copy of Bar Mitzvah Disco.

Update: I should also note that I don't want contest ideas to demand people to do elaborate things like creating a hoax website, or creating a hoax on eBay. That presents too much of a technical challenge. People should be able to submit contest responses as text in the comments section (though if someone is inspired to photoshop something or create a website, that's fine, but it shouldn't be a requirement for entering the contest).

The Situation with Tucker Carlson — I've never watched The Situation with Tucker Carlson before. It's on too late for me. All I know is that Tucker is that guy who wears a bowtie. But tomorrow (Monday) I'll be a guest on the show. Tucker will chat with me for about five minutes about the history of hoaxes. Or, at least, that's what I've been told. The interview will be done via video feed, so I'll be sitting in San Diego and he'll be in New York. Look for me to be on at around 11:40 pm (eastern time).
Update: I've been bumped from Monday night. They tell me that I'll now be on Tuesday night.

Museum of Hoaxes Mentioned in the Wall Street Journal — I've learned that the Museum of Hoaxes got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal last week. The title of the article was "Photo Firms Hunt Copyright Violators" (October 19, 2005) by Vauhini Vara. I got included because of my brief fight with the Science & Society Picture Library over my use of the Cottingley Fairy images. Unfortunately the reporter didn't fully represent my side of the argument. Here are the relevant sections from the article:

Bloggers, beware: That photo of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes on your Web site could be fodder for a lawsuit. Stock-photography companies like Getty Images Inc. and Corbis Corp. are using high-tech tools to crack down on Web site owners who try to use their photographs without paying for them...

Earlier this year, the Science & Society Picture Library in London, which manages copyrights on more than one million images, sent letters to several Web sites asking them to take down copies of the "Cottingley Fairies" -- photos that appeared to show two young girls playing with ghosts, and later turned out to be a hoax. One site, the Museum of Hoaxes, left the photos up, arguing in a message on the site that fair use should apply since it displayed the photos alongside an article critiquing them. Chris Rowlin, acquisitions executive at the Picture Library, said it didn't pursue the issue further, partly because the Museum of Hoaxes isn't trying to sell the photos for profit.

Yes, I do feel that my use of the images would qualify as "fair use" since I directly comment on them. However, I argued to the SSPL that I didn't need to make a claim of fair use, because the Cottingley Fairy images are in the public domain. The law in America is that anything published before 1923 is automatically in the public domain. As far as I'm aware, there are no exceptions to this. The Cottingley Fairy images were published in America in 1922. Therefore, they're now public domain. Anyone can use them without having to seek permission from anyone else. In fact, I noted to the SSPL that they were probably making an illegal claim of copyright by sending me a cease and desist letter in regards to the images. Apparently they never mentioned any of this to the Wall Street Journal reporter. And somehow the reporter mistook my argument about the images being in the public domain for an argument of fair use, even though I thought my statement was pretty clear.

Back From The Desert — I wasn't able to post for the past few days since I was out in the Anza Borrego desert (just outside of San Diego), where I spent a long weekend with my wife and parents at the Borrego Valley Inn. I got to see some incredible desert fauna while I was there, including coyotes, jack rabbits, tarantulas, red-tailed hawks, and roadrunners. Thankfully I didn't encounter any rattlesnakes. In the picture to the right I believe that I was looking at a Jumpin' Yuccy.
Update: Here's a picture of the tarantula that I saw. It was just wandering down the road. I'm assuming it was a tarantula, though given my limited knowledge of spiders, I could be wrong.

What I Did In Pittsburgh — So I'm back from Pittsburgh where I was attending a memorial service for my great aunt who died recently at the age of 90. Though it was a sad occasion, it did give me a chance to catch up with a lot of family members, some of whom I haven't seen in over twenty years. (Like many families, funerals seem to be the only time when we all get together as a group.) I also took the opportunity to see some of the sights around Pittsburgh, such as the Pittsburgh Incline, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Besides the Warhol Museum, the most offbeat thing I encountered was a giant pumpkin at a farmer's market I stopped at while driving out to Fallingwater. It weighed 400 lbs. That's big, but a far cry from the world's biggest which, according to this National Geographic article, clocked in at 1,385 pounds.

In Pittsburgh — I'm off to Pittsburgh to visit with family. I doubt I'll have computer access there. Be back Tuesday!

Clarifying Posts — I received an email today from the person who runs the Online Gamers Anonymous site (about which I once posted an entry):

Please remove On-Line Gamers Anonymous from you hoax website.
Please inform me when this has been done.
This is a REAL service provided for people who are addicted to computer/video games and have no where else to go.

Their concern is that when people do a google search, they see the name of the site in question followed by "Museum of Hoaxes," which could imply that the site is a hoax. This issue has come up before, and it's a legitimate concern for people with real sites, so I think I need to do something to clarify the status of things I post about. For items that aren't a hoax, I'll add "Not a Hoax" right in the title (so that people will see the status when they do a google search). And for everything else I'm thinking of adding some kind of status line, stating exactly what I think it is (i.e. "Real picture, fake caption," "crackpot conspiracy theory," etc.).

$100 Blog Contest — About a week ago I posted that my friend Dave had created a weblog to test some software that he'd developed. He's now running a contest with a $100 prize. This isn't a hoax. Basically all you have to do is register with his site and post an entry. If you post something, you get a chance to win the $100. Since no one has yet posted anything (and the contest has been running for a couple of days), your chances of winning are pretty good. The contest will end three days after the tenth post is created. (So, theoretically, your chances could be one in ten of winning.) I think Dave will accept almost anything as a valid post (a link, a random thought, a joke, etc.), but he's suggested a theme: "epiphany" (as in a sudden realization, not a religious awakening). I've known Dave for over ten years, so I can vouch for him that he will give someone the $100, and he won't do anything evil with your email address if you register on his site. (Though now that I think about it, I haven't actually seen Dave in person in almost two years, ever since he moved up to Riverside... so maybe in the meantime he's been replaced by an evil Dave-bot replicant who's hatched a diabolical plan to harvest email addresses, though I doubt it.)

Hippo Eats Dwarf Cover — Hippo Eats Dwarf now has a cover, thanks to the art department at Harcourt. This will almost definitely be the final cover unless (as my editor cautions) changes are made after the sales conference in October. Ideally one wants a cover that will make people curious enough to pick up the book and flip through it, and I think this does the trick. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to point out that the book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

Hippo Eats Dwarf Completed — On Friday I sent in the final, fully edited manuscript of Hippo Eats Dwarf to my publisher. A few small things remain for me to do. For instance, I need to write the acknowledgments page. But basically it's completed. Now the publisher needs to finish the cover art and start formatting it to look like a real book. But the book has already been listed on Amazon, which means it can now be pre-ordered. So over the next seven months I'll be bugging people to pre-order it, since the more people pre-order it, the easier it is to convince bookstores to stock it and display it prominently. And at $10, it's a bargain. Here's the catalog copy for the book (which may end up being the blurb on the inside cover):

Reality Check: Can you grow a bonsai kitten? Should you stock up on dehydrated water? Is it easy to order human-flavored tofu? Or is this all just b.s.?
In a world of lip synching, boob jobs, payola punditry, and staged reality shows, it's hard to know the real from the fake. HIPPO EATS DWARF is the essential field guide to today's Misinformation Age. Whether you're deciphering political doublespeak or trying to decide whether to forward that virus warning, hoaxpert Alex Boese provides the guidelines you need. For instance, Reality Rule 6.1: Just because you read it on the internet doesn't make it true. With case files, reality checks, definitions, and plenty of doctored photos, HIPPO EATS DWARF is an entertaining guide to life, death, and everything in between—including eBay.

For the past week, I've also been glued to my TV set (like everyone else) watching the catastrophe unfold in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. After the Asian tsunami I donated a month's worth of free ad space to a charity, but I suspect that wasn't the most efficient way to help out the disaster victims, because I assume everyone knows where to give money. So instead I'm donating a portion of the ad revenue directly to the Red Cross, and I'll continue to do that for the next few months because the people down there are going to need help for a long time.

We Rank — I haven't been able to post for the past few days. I received the edited manuscript of my book back from my publisher and have been going through it and approving/making the changes they suggested. They've given me a tight deadline, so I've been working away at that. But once this is done, I'm totally finished with the book.

Anyway, on a different topic, my friend Dave (who writes software) asked me to link to his new site, and I promised I would. His site is called we rank. It uses the same software I use to run this site (Expression Engine), but he's trying to adapt it to allow people to rank comments and posts. He's looking for feedback on this experiment. (My feedback: it's a little confusing, Dave.) I'm not sure I'd want people to rank posts and comments on this site, but he has a few other ideas for changing the software that I might try out, if he gets them worked out.

Museum Entry Tickets — Here's a curious email I just received:

Hallo! My name is Wojciech Krajewski. I come from Poland. I'm collecting museum entry tickets. I would be very happy if I have got in my collection ticket from Yours. I hope that my favour won't be a problem for You and that you won't leave it without answer. I give my regards to you and thank you very much.

I'd really like to help this guy out. But what should I send him?

My Biography For Sale on Amazon — I was procrastinating by typing my name in the search box at Amazon.com and seeing if anything would come up besides my book. To my surprise, a biography of myself popped up in the search results. It cost $1.50 and stated that it was 540 words long. I wasn't about to pay for it, but I told my mother about it, and she couldn't resist. So she bought the thing. The 'biography' seems to be a summary of the publicity info about me that the publisher of my first book sent out to the media three years ago. I'm guessing that my mother was probably the first one to ever buy it. But here's the part about it that I like. While they're describing my book they make a mistake. They state that:

In 2002, Boese compiled a book version of The Museum of Hoaxes that includes hundreds of scams, pranks, and deceptions dating as far back as the Middle Ages. In addition to the tricks and forgeries featured on his Web site, recent hoaxes are also described, including the case of nonexistent film critic David Manning, who enthusiastically promoted Sony films, and the recurring report circulated via the Internet that KFC no longer serves meat from chickens, but rather from "genetically engineered organisms."

However, I never mention the KFC Frankenchicken legend anywhere in The Museum of Hoaxes (the book). I purposefully didn't include it because it's an urban legend, not a hoax. In fact, I don't think I mention it anywhere on the site either (though I could be wrong about that... maybe it's hidden away somewhere). So I'm not sure how this piece of information got into my bio. But I like the fact that it's there because it introduces a slightly hoaxy element into the biography, which is appropriate.

Vacation Photos — So I'm finally back in San Diego. I had a great vacation, but it involved a lot of driving which got tiring after a while, so it's good to be home. Here are a few of the hoax-related highlights of my trip (which started in Washington DC and ended in Minneapolis):

Grovers Mill
This is the one thing that I got a chance to post about (see below) while I was actually on the road, because the hotel I was staying at that night in Roxbury, NY happened to offer internet connection. But that turned out to be my last chance to connect to the internet during the trip.

The Cardiff Giant
After leaving Roxbury, NY we drove up to Cooperstown, NY. Most people visit Cooperstown to check out the Baseball Hall of Fame, but I'm not a baseball fan, so I was there to check out the Farmer's Museum, home of the Cardiff Giant. The Farmer's Museum turned out to be a lot more interesting than I expected. I thought it was going to be a museum full of tractors and other farm implements, but it's actually set up as a recreation of a 19th century farming community, complete with actors dressed in period costumes who pretend to be part of the community (kind of like Williamsburg). In the middle of the museum's grounds there's a carnival tent in which the Giant lies. An actor stands outside of the tent pretending to be a carnival barker, urging people to come on in and see the Giant. Once a crowd has gathered he explains the history of the Giant, and he actually did a really good job of telling the story right. I half expected that the museum would gloss over the religious aspects of the Giant's story, but the 'interpreter' made it very clear that the Giant was created by an atheist as a spoof of Biblical literalism.


CSICOP
The next day (after spending the night in the Fingers Lake region of New York where we did some wine tasting), we drove to Buffalo and stopped off at the offices of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry (aka CSICOP, the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal). They're the publishers of Skeptical Inquirer magazine. I got a tour of their offices. Joe Nickell showed me around his office (center picture), and I posed for a shot with Ben Radford, editor of Skeptical Inquirer. Ben also had lunch with my wife and me before we took off for Niagara Falls.


Marvin's Marvelous Museum
After visiting the Falls, and spending the night in Canada, the next hoax stop was Detroit, home of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. I didn't really know what to expect before I arrived at Marvin's Museum. All I knew was that he had on exhibit P.T. Barnum's fake copy of the Cardiff Giant (a fake of a fake, so to speak). But his small museum, tucked away in a strip mall in a Detroit suburb, turned out to contain so much more. I was completely blown away by it. Marvin's collected all kinds of bizarre coin-operated oddities. There are a few of the mechanical fortune tellers often found at carnivals, but he also has other coin-operated machines that are far more ghoulish and bizarre. For instance, there's a machine that recreates a man being electrocuted in an electric chair (it ends with smoke billowing out of the machine), as well as a machine that recreates (with extreme realism) a bum vomiting into a trash can. The pictures below show the outside of his museum, me posing with Marvin in front of the fake Cardiff Giant, and the electric chair exhibit (somewhat obscured by a flash).


The Forevertron
After Detroit we drove through Michigan, crossed Lake Michigan by ferry, and spent a couple of days in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (where, by accident, we got to meet the mayor). But the next hoaxy thing we visited was the Forevertron, a piece of massive metal sculpture that doubles as an anti-gravity machine located in the middle of Wisconsin. Unfortunately we arrived on a day when the Forevertron happened to be closed, much to our disappointment. I could see the Forevertron in the distance if I peered over the fence, but I couldn't get up close to it. The lesson here was that we should have looked at the opening hours posted on the Forevertron website more closely (though we couldn't have changed our schedule anyway). However, the trip wasn't a complete waste. Down the road in the Wisconsin Dells we found a giant fake dinosaur looming above a gas station.


In terms of hoaxes, that was pretty much it for the trip. After Wisconsin we drove to Minneapolis where we spent a couple of days visiting family. I got a chance to visit the Mall of America, but unfortunately that wasn't a hoax.

Grovers Mill, New Jersey — So I managed to finish the first draft of my book the night before I flew to Virginia to spend the 4th of July weekend with my parents. And yesterday my wife and I started off on our driving tour of the east coast. Today we arrived in Grovers Mill, New Jersey (the first stop on our 'hoax tour'), where in 1938 Martians supposedly landed, thereby launching a mass panic throughout the United States. Here I am getting out of our rented car in Grovers Mill.

The first thing we went to see was the War of the Worlds Memorial, located in a park in the center of town. To call Grovers Mill a town is actually a bit of an overstatement... a small collection of houses would be a more accurate description of it. To get to the memorial you have to walk across the park. As we did this we rapidly discovered that this park was home to more animal crap than any other park in the world. There literally wasn't a square foot of grass free of animal droppings. I think they were from deer. It was like navigating a minefield. Anyway, we finally arrived at the memorial safe and sound. Just behind the memorial is the scenic Grovers Mill Pond (note: sarcasm... the pond is like a stagnant wasteland).
The next thing we wanted to see was the water tower that local residents had supposedly shot at, mistaking it for a martian. After a lot of searching, driving up and down the main road, we couldn't find it. So finally we asked the guy at the local auto parts/gardening store for directions. It turned out that the tower was right next door to the parts store, but you couldn't see it because trees had grown up all around it, totally concealing it. We had walked right past it. Apparently the man whose property it stands on doesn't like people coming to look at it, so he's allowed it to get grown over. You can only catch a small glimpse of it through the branches of the trees. The guy at the auto parts store told us that a photographer from the NY Times had been out there the week before to get a picture of the tower (because of the new War of the Worlds movie that just came out, and which I haven't seen yet), but he finally gave up, concluding that it was impossible to get a picture of it.
So that was Grovers Mill. Tonight we're in Roxbury, in upstate New York. Tomorrow we head further upstate to see the Cardiff Giant in Cooperstown.