I use Google news alerts to find out whenever various keywords I'm interested in appear in news stories or on websites. One of these keywords is "Cardiff Giant". This particular keyword search doesn't usually generate many results. Perhaps one or two a week. But on friday night my patience was rewarded when I got a google news alert about the creation of a new site: cardiff1869.com.

The site is the creation of a Pasadena-based artist who chooses to remain anonymous, using the alias "Cardiff1869". Inspired by the Cardiff Giant of 1869 (which I posted about just a few days ago), he (or perhaps she) is creating a limited series of small-scale replicas of the Cardiff Giant. And he's leaving these miniature giants at various public locations around Pasadena. He explains:


In the past, I've actually searched quite extensively to find out if anyone had ever created small replicas of the Cardiff Giant, because while it would be impractical for me to keep a full-scale, ten-foot stone giant in my house, I very much wanted to have a smaller version of the giant to call my own. So to find out that little Cardiff Giants were being placed around Pasadena, which is only 2 hours away from where I live, seemed too good to be true.

I briefly wondered whether it was all a hoax. I also wondered whether it would be cheating to purposefully look for the statues. So I emailed Cardiff1869 who assured me that, "Purposefully looking for an installation is common in Street Art. No worries. There is a large sub-culture of Street Art fans who are always on the lookout for new works by their favorite artists - especially the 3D/Sculpture type 'Street Installations' they can actually take and keep."

So early the next morning I dragged my wife out of bed (she was quite willing to humor me and go along, which is one of the reasons I'm so lucky she married me), and we headed up to Pasadena to search for Cardiff Giants.

According to the Cardiff1869 site, six giants had been placed, and four of them had already been found. That left only 2. We quickly confirmed that one of these was also gone, and then spent a fruitless hour-and-a-half searching for the other one, which was supposed to be somewhere on Magnolia St.

I was feeling pretty downbeat, thinking I wasn't going to find a giant. But then my wife and I checked the Cardiff1869 site again and discovered that, just that morning, two more giants had been placed. We must have looked like contestants from the show Amazing Race as we sped toward the new locations. I jumped out of the car at an intersection and sprinted across the road to the WWI Veterans Memorial where one of them was placed. It was still there, placed on a piece of slate surrounded by a circle of stones!



Within half an hour we had located the second one, which was placed on the Colorado St. Bridge. Here I am, moments after finding it. Note that I wore my Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum t-shirt for the hunt, since Marvin's Museum has a Cardiff Giant replica on display. (Kind of nerdy, I know, but I was having fun.)



So I'm now the proud guardian of two little Cardiff Giants. Here's a photo of one of them meeting some of the other residents of the Museum of Hoaxes.



Cardiff1869 tells me that one of the giants — the one on Magnolia St. that I searched for but couldn't find — is still there waiting to be found! Plus, he'll soon be placing more giants. So if you live in the LA area and you're interested in a treasure hunt to find a Cardiff Giant, now's your chance. Keep watching his site to find out the new locations. I had great fun searching for the giants, and I want to thank Cardiff1869 for taking the time to put together such a great project!

So what am I going to do with my giants? One of them I'd like to send on a round-the-world tour — like a traveling gnome adventure. A while back Nettie tried to organize a MoH traveling gnome project, but I completely botched the project. She sent me the gnome, Bumpkin, which I then passed on to a friend of mine here in San Diego who was doing a driving tour of the midwest. Unfortunately my friend lost Bumpkin's legs somewhere in the midwest. So that ended Bumpkin's adventures. I've felt responsible for killing Bumpkin ever since.

So anyway, to partially make up for that previous disaster, I'm happy to send you the Cardiff Giant first, Nettie, if you're interested. And anyone else who wants to participate in the Cardiff Giant's world tour, let me know. We'll put together an itinerary for him.

As for the second cardiff giant — I plan eventually to relocate him somewhere. When I find him a new home, I'll post the details.

Serbian media reported Thursday that one of their own countrymen, writer Dobrica Cosic, had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. However, he hadn't. Soon after, the Swedish Academy announced the real winner: Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer.

The Serbian media reported Cosic as the winner because they had all received an email, seeming to come from the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, announcing Cosic as the winner. The email linked to a website, nobelprizeliterature.org, that seemed to confirm Cosic as the winner. However, both the email and the site were fakes. (link)

Apparently Cosic is a strong Serbian nationalist. The Economist describes him as, "the intellectual godfather of the Serbian nationalism which played such a decisive role, not just in the destruction of Yugoslavia but in the military drive to create a greater Serbia from its ashes." According to the Montreal Gazette, Cosic writes, "lengthy tomes about the suffering of the Serbs through the ages." The hoax was perpetrated by some people who don't like him. Its basic purpose was to annoy him. The group, describing themselves as a "non-profit, self-organized group of web activists," have now posted this explanation on the site:

The Huffington Post reports that FakeGirlfriend.co is a texting service that has joined the ranks of fake-girlfriend providers:



In a similar vein, Cloud Girlfriend is a service that allows you to create a fake Facebook girlfriend.

I wrote a bit about the history of imaginary online girlfriends in Hippo Eats Dwarf. The idea started on eBay back in 2003, when a 22-year-old Texas college student, Judy, posted an auction offering to become the highest bidder's imaginary girlfriend. The idea proved so popular that soon imaginary girlfriend companies were popping up, such as ImaginaryGirlfriend.com, which debuted in early 2004 (but which no longer exists).

However, I don't know anything about the history of imaginary girlfriends in the pre-internet days before the 21st Century. Were there companies that, for a fee, would send you love letters? Or are imaginary girlfriends a creation of the internet era? Perhaps I'll have to waste a few hours researching that.

The legend of Out-Of-Control Government Expenditures is alive and well. Back in the 1980s, reports of the US government paying $400 for a hammer and $600 for a toilet sparked outrage. And now, late last month, came the news that the Justice Department had paid $16 a piece for muffins at a 2009 conference. But just as the hammer and toilet weren't really as expensive as they seemed, it turns out that the price of the muffins was an artifact of accounting. The $16 included the entire continental breakfast, service, and taxes. Of course, while the government may not be paying premium price for muffins, those bailouts to the bankers did seem a little steep.

Time magazine offers a list of the Top 5 Disney World Urban Legends:

1. Walt Disney built a special suite for himself in Cinderella's castle at the Magic Kingdom. (Apparently this wasn't true while Disney was alive, though there is a suite there now in which special visitors can stay.)
2. Cinderella's castle can be disassembled or made to sink into the ground to protect it from natural disasters such as hurricanes.
3. In the case of a death at a Disney park, no one can be declared dead until their body leaves the park itself.
4. There's a whole other park beneath the Magic Kingdom. (No, but there are utility corridors beneath it.)
5. Disney's body was cryogenically frozen and is kept beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney Land.

The list focuses specifically on legends pertaining to the amusement parks, which I guess is why it doesn't include the most persistent Disney urban legend, about the satanic messages hidden in their movies.

But about the last legend — Disney's body being kept frozen beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. While this isn't true, apparently some people have been suspected of dumping cremated human remains at the ride, as posted by Tah in the hoax forum back in 2007.

Live Forever Juice is a fake product that was created for educational purposes by FDAImports, a consulting company that specializes in advising companies how to comply with FDA regulations. The idea was to make a food product whose packaging was full of illegal claims, then walk people through why the claims are illegal. (via: The Food Watchdog).

The company handed out samples of Live Forever Juice at a recent trade fair in Baltimore. They also have an accompanying website, liveforeverjuice.com, on which they have some videos that explain what kind of claims companies are legally allowed to make on the packaging of their food products, and what claims they can't make. Of course, all claims have to be "true, adequately substantiated, and not misleading." It's the latter category, misleading claims, that are the most interesting, since companies come up with all kinds of ways to make claims that are technically true, but nevertheless misleading. And the FDA has regulations to try to prevent this.

For instance, labels often declare that the product is a "great source" of a nutrient, such as Vitamin C. But if the label says this, then the food must contain at least 20% of that nutrient's recommended daily intake (RDI). Sometimes labels will use more ambiguous language, such as boasting that the food "contains" a nutrient, which could be technically true even if the food only has a tiny amount of it. But the FDA feels that even this more ambiguous claim implies the food is a good source of the nutrient. So the food still must offer at least 10% of that nutrient's RDI in order to make that claim legally.

FDAImports also created a Live Forever Juice party video that offers a "High-Octane Motivational Video Loop with Unicorns." They caution that you shouldn't watch it if you're prone to seizures.

Syracuse-based artist Ty Marshal has created a replica of the Cardiff Giant, according to its original size specifications (ten-feet tall). His replica is going to be buried in Syracuse's Lipe Art Park and then unearthed on October 16, the anniversary of the date on which the Giant was first "found" on William Newell's farm back in 1869.

After being unearthed, Marshal's giant will remain on display in the park, under a tent, for one week. Visitors will be allowed to view it for 25 cents. Then, using a horse and cart, the Giant will be transported to the Atrium in Syracuse's City Hall Commons where it will be displayed until the end of October. Visitors will also be able to buy Cardiff Giant-themed merchandise: soap, chocolate, wine, and coffee. (As a long-time collector of hoax-themed merchandise, I HAVE to get all of that stuff!)

You can find more details about Marshal's project on his website: syracusecardiffgiant.com.

There's actually a long history of recreating the Cardiff Giant. Back in the 1870s quite a few showmen paid artists to recreate the Giant, which they then displayed, as a way to cash in on the popular interest in the phenomenon. The most famous of these replicas was displayed by P.T. Barnum in New York City, and (much to the annoyance of the owners of the real giant) attracted more visitors than the actual giant, which was simultaneously on display a few blocks away.

In 1976, a service club in Cardiff, New York created a "Mrs. Cardiff Giant", which they buried and then unearthed. You can see it (note the breasts) in the slightly blurry picture below.


Currently there are four Cardiff Giants on display (not counting Marshal's new one): at the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown (this is the real giant), the Fort Museum in Fort Dodge, Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum in Detroit, and the Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Usually when politicians become the victims of photo retouchers it's because they've become undesirable to someone in power, and so they're summarily removed from the photo. It's far less common for their images to be retouched in order to desexualize them. This is usually the fate of actresses and models. But this is what happened recently to Rathika Sitsabaiesan, a young Canadian MP. Her cleavage was erased from the image of her that appears on the House of Commons website. The National Post reports:


Sitsabaiesan has not commented on the disappearance of her cleavage. It's quite possible she was the one who ordered its removal.

On Monday (Sep 26) an "independent stock trader" named Alessio Rastani appeared on an interview with the BBC to discuss the Eurozone debt crisis. As the interview progressed, it became apparent that Rastani was far more blunt and cynical than most people from the financial community are when talking in public. For instance, in response to the question, "What would make investors more confident?" he came out with this:


Later in the interview he declared:


Watch the interview yourself:



His remarks and demeanor seemed so over the top, that people began to wonder whether he was hoaxing everyone by parodying the cutthroat morality of financial traders. Some people suspected that he was one of the Yes Men — pointing out that he bore a slight resemblance to Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men who had perpetrated the Dow Chemical Hoax during an interview with the BBC in 2004.

Rastani, when challenged, insisted he was real, and the Yes Men said he wasn't one of them. So it appears that Rastani wasn't trying to pull anyone's leg. He was voicing his genuine opinions.

Personally, when I watch the video I don't sense that he's being satirical. Traders tend to be slightly megalomaniacal, attracted to high-risk situations, and convinced that they're smarter than everyone else. He fits the personality type perfectly.

I think Rastani's interview demonstrates Poe's Law — as applied to the world of stock market trading. Poe's Law states: "it's difficult to distinguish between parodies of religious fundamentalism (or, more generally, parodies of any crackpot or extremist belief) and its genuine proponents." In other words, the financial community nowadays is full of crazies. When you listen to them you think, they've got to be joking! But no, they're totally for real.

Recently I read Jan Bondeson's new book, Amazing Dogs: A Cabinet of Canine Curiosities. Bondeson is one of my favorite writers because he's a master at finding incredibly obscure but truly bizarre oddities from history, and he doesn't disappoint in this book. I plan to discuss the book more in a future post, because he's collected a lot of urban legends and hoaxes concerning dogs. For instance, he reveals the story of Greyfriar's Bobby to be a hoax (LaMa has posted about this in the forum). But for now what I want to share is a story he mentions in his first chapter (page 11) about a dog that could supposedly lay eggs. He writes:


Most normal people would probably think that was an awful story and move on, but I was quite intrigued by it. It reminded me of the story of Mary Toft and the Rabbit Babies, but instead of a woman stuffing herself with dead rabbits, you had a guy stuffing eggs into his dog. Plus, it offered a curious variation on the ancient tradition of "bosom serpent" legends, which feature various animals crawling inside women, growing to full size, and then emerging in unsettling ways. The most famous modern version of these legends is the tale of the girl who gets impregnated by frog (or octopus) eggs while swimming in a pool. In the case of the egg-laying dog, we're dealing with a different species, but the theme of unnatural births is similar.

Unfortunately Bondeson didn't offer any more details about the case of the egg-laying dog, so I embarked on a fact-finding mission of my own to learn more.

First, I was able to find the book he mentioned, Cynographia Curiosa, on Google books. (I love Google Books -- a few years ago it would have been close to impossible to track down such an obscure book, but I found it after less than a minute of searching.) The book is in latin, and doesn't seem to have ever been translated, but dusting off my high-school latin, I found the story of the egg-laying dog in it. I've reproduced the latin text below, and then I've attempted a very rough translation. Actually, I've probably mistranslated parts of it, but it's close enough to tell that Paullini's text offers a few more details than what Bondeson provided, but it omits the detail about the owner of the dog eating one of the eggs:




Paullini, in turn, attributed the story to Jungius. Some more searching revealed that Jungius was the German scholar Georg (or Joachim) Sebastian Jungius, who was apparently a member of a German scientific society known as the Academia Naturae Curiosorum (The Academy of the Curious as to Nature), which published the world's very first scientific journal, Miscellanea curiosa sive ephemeridum medicophysicarum germanicarum Academiae, in which the story of the egg-laying dog appeared (Series 1, Volume 2, page 348). I find it fascinating that early scientists were sitting around seriously considering topics such as egg-laying dogs.

Unfortunately, Google Books doesn't have a copy of the Miscellanea curiosa (at least, not a copy of the relevant volume), nor does any library in San Diego have it, so my investigation ended there.

And at about this stage in my research, I was starting to wonder why I was spending so much time investigating a seventeenth century egg-laying dog. But for what it's worth, I did find out that Bondeson also mentioned the story in an earlier book, The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels. But he gave essentially the same details.

Plus, I found online the second reference given by Paullini -- Besold's Thesaurus Practicus. On page 389 it has some kind of reference (again in Latin) to a dog laying eggs, but I can't figure out what it's saying.