There's a scam business that's been in operation for years that offers to sell land on the moon. But a new group is raising the ante by offering to sell you land on the sun! Thankfully, all money they collect goes to aid the American Cancer Society.

In the latest hoax to hit eBay, someone attempted to auction off the state of West Virginia. Bidding hit $100 million before the auction was yanked.

If you're looking for an interesting place to visit on your next vacation, you might want to check out Molvania. It's located over in Eastern Europe and is famous as the birthplace of the whooping cough. Also home to the Molvanian Sneezing Hound. If you want to learn even more about this little-known country then get a copy of Molvania: A Land Untouched by Modern Dentistry, by Jetlag Travel.

The Friends of Silver Lake purports to be a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life in LA's Silver Lake district. Their projects include supporting the construction of a new shopping mall in Silver Lake that will be home to stores such as Wal-Mart and The Gap, because otherwise Silver Lake residents might have to drive up to ten miles to find these retailers (the horror!). Also, they're pushing a workplace diversity initiative to get more 'middle-class youngsters' employed in the food service and retail industries since, according to them, this demographic is underrepresented in these industries. Seems a little tongue-in-cheek to me. (Thanks to Chris Kelly for the link).

Mankato: Welcome to Mankato, Minnesota, where you can enjoy whale watching on the Minnesota River.

A trilogy of sites devoted to exploring the community of New Rotterdam (or New-Rot, for short). First we have the Official Site of the Town of New Rotterdam. Next there's the New Rotterdam Vocational Union High School. And last is the St. Giles School for Male Youth.

Linguistic research has shed new light on the meaning of 'Des Moines.' Turns out it might derive from a 330-year-old practical joke. In 1673 Father Jacques Marquette met some representatives of the Peoria indian tribe near the mouth of the modern-day Des Moines River. He asked them the name of the rival tribe that lived further along the banks of the river. The Peoria told him that tribe was called the Moingoana, which became the root for the word 'Moines'. But researcher Michael McCafferty of Indiana University, while studying the now extinct Miami-Illinois language, discovered that Moingoana, translated literally, meant 's**t faces.' Evidently the Peoria were having a little fun at their rival's expense. The city of Des Moines has not yet acknowledged the true meaning of its name.

Lake Michigan Whale Watching: One of the best guarded secrets of the Great Lakes

The Moscow Subway Metrocam: It's all in Russian, but the picture you see is from a webcam located inside an underground tunnel on the Moscow subway. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll see the light of an approaching train. And yes, it is a hoax. Its creator told me so.

The small town of Excelsior, Minnesota recently launched an ad campaign declaring that big retailers such as Starbucks and Home Depot were not welcome in its community. A bold position to take, especially considering that those retailers had never expressed any interest in opening up stores there.

Can you buy land on the moon? According to this website you can. It's the home on the internet of the Lunar Embassy, which claims that it is "the only company in the world to possess a legal basis and copyright for the sale of lunar, and other extraterrestrial property within the confines of our solar system." And if you believe that, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Their basis for this claim is that the UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbid governments from owning extraterrestrial property, but it didn't mention anything about individuals or corporations! Ah Ha! Sounds like a clever loophole. Unfortunately this argument doesn't hold water, because individuals and corporations can themselves only claim ownership of land through governments. There's a good article debunking the Buy-Land-On-The-Moon Scheme over at CNN, explaining that it's the creation of con artist/entrepreneur named Dennis Hope. The British National Space Centre also denies it's possible to own land on the moon. And Space.com has a good article about this scam as well. What it all comes down to is that for the $30 bucks you'd pay to buy a plot of land on the moon, you'll gain ownership of a piece of paper, and nothing more.

Is the number 666 slowly becoming visible on the front of the Alamo? And did it first appear there after Ozzy Osbourne urinated on the building while dressed as a woman back in 1982? And when the number becomes fully visible will "something terrible happen"? Yes on all counts if you believe the urban legend that's floating around. Brenda Layland gave me a skeptical heads-up about this one, and for the past fifteen minutes I've been staring at these pictures of the Alamo trying to figure out where the sixes are. I've located one of them, but the other two are still escaping me. No, wait a minute. I think I've found them all now.