Social networking sites in Nigeria have been ablaze with the rumor that a woman turned into a snake at the Hotel Excel in Warri. The proprietor of the hotel, Chief Moses Odeh, has been doing everything he can to put out the rumor, but once these stories get started, they acquire a life of their own. (informationnigeria.org)

African rumors still have true strangeness to them. Here in America, the majority of twitter and facebook rumors are fake reports of celebrity deaths... which get boring after a while. It'd be kind of refreshing to see a rumor claim that Madonna or Lady Gaga didn't die, but instead turned into a snake.

As far as niche dating sites go, you can't get much more niche than SeaCaptainDate.com. It describes itself as "the only place for Sea Captains to connect with men and women who share a love of the ocean."



Now I'm willing to believe that there are niche dating sites out there, but SeaCaptainDate.com seems a little too weird to be real. Is it really just an elaborate joke?

I'm not the first to ponder this question. The site first attracted attention back in Jan 2011, when articles about it appeared on nerve.com, time.com, and howaboutwe.com (among others). These sites expressed some doubts, but overall leaned toward the site being real.

Most recently, jezebel.com weighed in on the matter -- and they too decided the site seemed to be real, since they managed to contact a spokesperson for the site who, in turn, connected them with a woman who claimed she had actually been on a date with a sea captain through the site.

Jezebel.com conceded that both the site rep and the woman could have been in on the gag, but noted, "if that's true, someone out there is trying really, really hard to make us believe that you can sign up to date sea captains on the internet. And that's a labor of love in itself."

However, I still have my doubts. Here are the things that have my hoax-sense buzzing:

1) The site is registered anonymously. This, in itself, doesn't mean anything, except that anonymity is the preferred method-of-operation of hoaxers.

2) The site was registered in 2010, but it claims that its business has existed since 2007. It explains that it used to be called AtlantisDate.com. However, I can't find any evidence that AtlantisDate.com ever existed before 2011. According to the info in the WHOIS database, atlantisdate.com was only created in Jan 2011, which is a bit odd if the site supposedly existed since 2007.

3) The gallery of sea captains who are members of the site doesn't seem to have changed at all since Jan 2011. So if the site is real, its member base is pretty static. Doesn't appear to be getting much new business.

4) Finally, check out the Sea Captain Date Song -- and listen to the lyrics:




I'm sorry, but no real dating business would be making jokes about its members murdering women on the high seas.

The site credits the Sea Captain Date Song to "acclaimed songwriter and musician" Cole Gladis. Coincidentally, Gladis lives in Philadelphia, where Sea Captain Date also says that it has its offices. I'm guessing the entire site is a joke dreamed up by Gladis.

An old mermaid was recently found, stored in the archives of the Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, and a research team from the University of Lincoln decided to examine it. So far they've discovered that its hair is human, its upper body is constructed of wood and wire, its teeth are carved bone, and its eyes are mollusc shell. Future tests will determine what fish its tail came from. (link: BBC News)


At first I thought it looked like the Bloomsbury Mermaid (pictured below). But no, they're definitely different mermaids. Though similar in design. (Thanks, Hudson!)

Rep. Katie Hobbs has introduced a bill into the Arizona state legislature that would require advertisers to put the following disclaimer on advertisements if the image in the ad was "photoshopped" (link: zacentral.com):


Similar legislation has been introduced in the UK and France, its purpose being to try to counteract the social pressure on people, particularly young girls, to feel the need to look perfect -- to remind them that the way models look in ads isn't reality.

The problem, of course, is that every ad nowadays uses digital enhancements of some kind to improve pictures. So every ad would have to carry the disclaimer, muting its effect.

Also, why focus on post-production techniques, when pre-production techniques (lighting, focus, makeup) can be just as deceptive?

But having said that, I do sympathize with the spirit of the legislation. If a company says that their product can remove wrinkles or blemishes, and they show a picture of a model with perfect skin, it does seem deceptive if that model's face was made perfectly smooth by photoshop, not by use of the product.

It's the old problem that was raised in the Sandpaper Test case back in the early 1960s. When does the use of photographic tricks by advertisers cross the line from enhancement of a product to outright deception?

The Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the year 1873 includes an article about the mathematician/inventor Charles Babbage. In this article, there's a page-long footnote discussing some hoaxes, and at the end of this footnote, there's a brief reference to the existence of a curious group that called itself the "Society for Insulting Women and Frightening Children":


What is this Society? I haven't been able to find it mentioned anywhere except in this Smithsonian Report. But it sounds like a clandestine group of 19th-century pranksters.

The footnote is signed "J.H.", which I assume stands for Joseph Henry, the Secretary of the Smithsonian at the time. He's a pretty credible source, so I assume he wasn't simply making up this Society.

If anyone has any information about this Society, let me know.

In 1941, Tommy Graham employed a clever, but slightly duplicitous, technique to get rides as he hitchhiked from Maryland to California. He used an oil can as a suitcase, so that drivers thought his car had broken down and stopped to help him out. I wonder if this technique would work today. Do people even pick up hitchhikers anymore?

On Jan. 11, TMZ posted a photo of the sign outside the Beulah Hill Baptist Church, which apparently bore a nice message inspired by the recent birth of Beyonce's baby: "BEYONCE HAD HER BABY. SATAN IS ON EARTH."



According to TMZ, the pastor at that church told them that vandals had placed the message there, and that it had been taken down promptly.

However, the pastor, Rev. Curtis Barbery, is denying he ever told TMZ this. He gave an interview to the Fayetteville Observer in which he insisted the sign hadn't been vandalized and that the photo was a fake. He said, “It’s never been on our sign because our sign stays locked and the same phrase has been on it since Thanksgiving. Only one man has the key to it.”

But TMZ continues to insist the photo is real (though they won't say how they got it), and that the pastor DID tell them the sign was vandalized.

Most people seem to be inclined to believe the pastor, not TMZ. Mainly because it's so easy to photoshop fake messages onto signs. To illustrate the point, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution posted this photo on their blog:

Back in 2009, bird watchers in New Zealand began reporting sightings of a red harrier hawk. There was speculation it was a new species. But in 2010 a hawk was found dead (hit by a car) that had been spray-painted red. So bird watchers realized there was no new species. There was just someone going around spray-painting birds.

Suspicion eventually focused on dairy farmer Grant Michael Teahan after a video was uploaded to youtube showing Teahan beside a bird trap covered in red spray paint.

Teahan denied the allegation, but last week a judge decided Teahan was lying. He'll be sentenced later this month.
Links: stuff.co.nz, Hawkes Bay Today.

MadCarlotta sent me an interesting video:



The premise of the video (which has over 1 million views) is that people around the world are hearing eerie groaning sounds that seem to rise up from the ground and echo through the sky. My first thought was that it sounds like the noise my tankless water heater makes on cold days. So if anyone in La Mesa is hearing eerie noises echoing through the neighborhood, I'm the culprit.

Is the 'strange sounds' video a hoax? Seems to be. Some of the youtube comments point out that you can hear the exact same bird noises at three separate moments (in segments supposedly shot in different parts of the world): at 0:47, 10:35 and 13:38. Which suggests the audio has been dubbed over the video.

A whole slew of similar videos can be found on youtube. So whoever is behind this has put some work into making it seem as if there's all kinds of people hearing these sounds. But the entire 'strange sounds' movement seems to trace back to a single site: strangesoundsinthesky.com, which launched in Sept. 2011. The guy posting on strangesoundsinthesky.com identifies himself only as "Jay Man," and the site itself was registered anonymously through Domains By Proxy. Hoaxers always love anonymity.

I don't know why someone is trying to make people believe that the "sounds of the apocalypse" are being heard around the world. The obvious suspect would be that it's a marketing campaign of some kind. I'm sure we'll find out in time.