Ha ha ha. I like the cool captain name "Password123".

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Regarding the the "myth" that hot water freezes faster than cold water. This is actually true. I have a degree in physics and was required to demonstrate this phenomena in one of my undergraduate labs. Obviously it only works under certain conditions. For example, boiling water will not freeze in less time than water one degree above freezing. In the example you stated about ice cube trays in the freezer, what most likely happens is that there is a thin layer of frost in the freezer. Frost is an insulator while ice conducts heat better. Thus as the warm water melts the frost it achieves better thermal contact with its surroundings and therefore cools at a faster rate.

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Yeah, Trudeau is definitely pushing the boundaries by finding loopholes in the injunction against him. He got held in contempt of court by a federal judge once, but the Seventh Circuit overturned that finding.

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Joel,

I still see Trudeau infomercials on my cable TV.

He came out with an "investigative" type show where the "investigator" knocked on doors and spoke to people who confirmed they had made money by following the nice Mr. Trudeau's instructions from his books!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QNjEhgeZPJA

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Slightly off topic, but not entirely:

Is the Amazing Saga of Kevin Trudeau v. Federal Trade Commission Finally Over?

http://nutrisuplaw.com/

Sleazeball Kevin Trudeau has now been fined a total of $45 million dollars in 4 separate findings by the FTC spanning 11 years that he defrauded consumers with his phony weight loss and other products. He has now also been banned from making any infomercials for 3 years. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld the latest FTC action against him including the 3-year ban and a $37.6 million fine.

Gee, and his products came with all those testimonials and endorsements, just like Lifewave. If there were testimonials, it couldn't have been a scam, could it? Gosh, he seemed so passionate and sincere about helping people, just like David Schmidt.

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I think we should restart the group! I'd love to be part of it!

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So did I LaMa...

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I swear, I read "Buxom Mermaid" first....

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Phi Harmonics.com

"Ethical Junction is a vibrant community of responsible organisations who care about doing better for people and the planet."

That has to be one of the funniest descriptions of a scam.

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Joel,

I'm not surprised to see yet another scam surfacing. It appears that because the general public is so gullible and the authorities take so long to even look at a scam as a worthwhile money making prosecution, they proliferate with abandon.

Gotta love it!

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The proposed disclaimer is too prolix. Might I suggest the more concise "Serving Suggestion"?

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Maybe print ads should carry the same "Dramatization" disclaimer the sandpaper test gave us, or maybe add "not actual results" to that.

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Have you seen this? I can't get onto this site at work.

http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=desert

This skeleton - of what looks like a mermaid - was discovered two weeks ago in the Egyptian desert near Fayoum...

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I wish we lived in a world where woman didn't feel the need to slap on make up thinking it is improving the way they look, when it is actually detracting from it. Or the desire to change hair colour, which further homogonizes the look, making for a bunch of indentically haired women, who all look terrible after a week, when the roots grow out.

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THE GDV IMAGING SCAM BY LIFEWAVE AND OTHER WOO-WOO GADGET SELLERS EXPOSED

There’s another scam product out there called the electroDot. The British company that hawks it says that the “electroDOT is . . . programmed to harmonise electromagnetic radiation from electronic equipment.” Apparently you stick this little gizmo on your cell phone or your personal massage wand or whatever, and it’s supposed to protect you from the “electro-pollution” that emanates from your electronic devices that could be “frazzling your day.” http://www.phiharmonics.com/electroDOT.php Perh.aps it’s the latest anti-electro-gizmo from our drooling friend Kharma Singh at http://www.harmonyunited.com because it sounds a lot like his Harmony Chip.

So what’s the connection to Lifewave patches?

Well, for one, they both use cool, psychedelic looking colored pictures that look like Grateful Dead concert t-shirts and that supposedly represent “gas discharge visualization” (GDV) imaging of the aura around your body, both before and after treatment with what they’re respectively trying to sell you. The “Before” and “After” pictures for both of these woo-woo products supposedly prove their magical properties that those stupid engineers and scientists couldn’t possibly understand.

But what’s absolutely amazing about the two of them is that the “After” electroDot GDR images are the exact same pictures as the “Before” Lifewave patch GDR images that Lifewave proudly displays in its latest “research” paper.

Compare:
(a) the three “After using electroDot for 2 days” images on the right at http://www.phiharmonics.com/bio-imaging.php with ,
(b) the three “Before” Icewave Patch images on page 7 of the “special issue” of the all-Lifewave journal from the Indian “Holistic Health Care and Research Organization” posted on Lifewave’s website http://lifewave.com/pdf/Research/pub-HolisticHealthCareJrnl.pdf

They are exactly the same images in all their psychedelic glory, including the crude stylized drawings of humans inside the auras. Imagine that.

Oops.

I was pretty confident that if I poked around a bit, I would find the Lifewave images somewhere else on an unrelated New Age website. Sure, enough, it only took me about 15 minutes to find the exact same images being used to sell some other woo-woo crapola scam product as supposedly representing the “research” on that product.

But the true believers (the Lifewave distributors) still won’t care, will they? This proof that Lifewave fabricates its “research” out of whole cloth won’t mean a thing to them.

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Well, Lifewave has a brand spanking new “research” paper published. http://lifewave.com/pdf/Research/pub-HolisticHealthCareJrnl.pdf

Special Issue on LifeWave Studies (6 Studies total)
Holistic Health Care And Research Journal (Vol I, No. 001, Oct-Dec 2011)

Note that it’s published in a “special issue” of the journal. Vol. I, No. 001. That’s right, this all-Lifewave issue is the very first edition of this journal ever published. Numero Uno. So it must be a respect journal, if it’s never been published before, right?

So what about the publisher, this “Holistic Health Care and Research Organization” with an address in India and a website of http://www.hhcro.org?

As of today, none of the links on that website seem to work. They all take you to the home page.

According to WHOIS, the domain http://www.hhcro.org is registered to an anonymous party using a P.O. box in Australia as an address. http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/hhcro.org That. domain was registered on November 22, 2011.

Domain Name:HHCRO.ORG
Created On:22-Nov-2011 05:54:32 UTC

I’m sure HHCRO is a very respected organization, with a very respected research journal.

This special edition certainly starts off in an authoritative way: “The aim of this research project was to prove the efficacy of Energy enhancer patches (Ice wave and Glutathione Patches) on energy fields and chakras.”

Of course, true research doesn’t begin with the goal of proving anything. Its goal is to test and discover.

And energy fields and chakras? They may as well have started with, “The aim of this project was to prove that Lifewave patches enhance the ability of leprechauns to find gold.”

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Those may be some of the least-convincing mermaids I've ever seen.

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Tie me to the mast. I can't resist their beauty.

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I do professional development for college students and I ask them to do something similar when they finish an activity early: twiddle their thumbs (ie, they're bored) in opposite directions. It's almost impossible, I believe for the same basic reason.

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Why can't it be a joke unto itself (ie, The Ministry of Silly Walks from Monty Python)?

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After generations of propaganda against hitchhiking, I'm not sure if young drivers would recognize what a thumbs up sign meant. The Wonder Twins on Superfriends were pretty harsh in their condemnation of hitchhikers.

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The last time I was up there hitchhiking is still common in Alaska. I decided I wanted to pick people up when I drove there, and I'm glad I did. I met some interesting people.

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There are way too many places both in the U.S. and in Canada where hitchhiking is illegal. http://www.digihitch.com/usa-region54-cat7.html Carrying a gas can might help but I seriously doubt it since it would probably be a patrolling police vehicle that would pick him up (after other vehicles have used their cellphones to report his trek) and would take him directly to a gas station AFTER asking where he left his vehicle and getting other pertinent info.

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Less effective today, I think.

For one, people just don't pick up hitchikers anymore. Insert commentary about sad state of society here.

For two, the national highway system has become more populated. Where once you would have to drive 50 miles to get to the next station, now we have gas stations with convenience marts pretty much every seven miles along every major highway, with only a handful of exceptions. You wouldn't be able to hop more than a few miles using this excuse, unless you told them it was a prop.

Three, if you actually said that you were using a prop to get people to pick you up, you'd probably get thrown out of the car.

You'd have to use a gas container instead of an oil can of course, and given that they're usually plastic, it would be difficult to modify it in such a way that someone actually stopping would not be able to tell.

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Grew up in North Long Beach during the 1950s. There are many smallish homes (cottages), but no midget-sized homes. You people have over active imaginations.

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Something I heard about in high school, which inspired a similar prank that involved the auto shop students and a VW beetle.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2210696/Cambridge-Universitys-1958-car-on-roof-prank-secrets-revealed.html

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OHHH MYY GOSHHH,

to the person who is afraid of spines, I have the exact same fear as you and everything you said!! Im glad to know I am not alone.

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Episode 341 of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast has a segment on this. Rebecca Watson shows how sloppy some of the creators of these fakes are.

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcast.aspx?mid=1

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First Viagra maker is Pfizer.
This is where there headqueaters in 277 East 42nd Street New York, NY 10017..check it out on google map. You'll be shocked at the size!!

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Just letting y'all all know, Joe Goff did shoot that gator. He shot it in his neighbors backyard. It is a world record gator. We have our own pictures of that gator. I have know Joe most of my life, and he is an amazing guy. Everyone in West Columbia Texas has no reason to lie about this gator. The photo is real. The gator is real. It was shot in a subdivision called Bar X. Look it up.

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Ok so my daughter and I did the experiment with coke and sprite, sprite only went about 22ft vs coke having 25ft both brand new 2L does anyone knw what factors that? Maybe the caffeine? Pls email me!!!! This project is due this MONDAY THE 6TH!!!

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please what ever you do dont watch it i am 14 and the same thing has happend to me the phone call if you do watch DO NOT ANSWER THE PHONE!

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Surprised that nobody mentioned the ending of the movie 'Red State'

***HERE BE SPOILERS****

(...)"The shoot-out is then suddenly interrupted when a mysterious loud trumpet blast echos across the sky. The remaining Coopers lower their weapons and run outside rejoicing, claiming that "the Rapture" has come upon them as the trumpet continues to play. Abin calmly approaches a stunned ATF team and confidently taunts them that God's wrath is upon the Earth. He raises his arms and stands in the face of a confused and worried Keenan in a moment of triumph, daring him to defy God as the trumpet blares.

Several days later, during a briefing before 2 special agents, Keenan reports that he then head-butted Cooper and took the rest of the congregation into custody. He explains that the trumpet noises were not the Rapture but came from a group of marijuana farmers who lived down the road and were irritated with Cooper. As a prank they rigged up an old fire truck siren to an iPod with loud trumpet noises (...)

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Yay, more drivel related to these noises.:D According to some goit, this musical instrument is responsible for these sounds, as well as no end of old science fiction movie soundtracks.

http://www.examiner.com/unexplained-phenomena-in-national/musical-instrument-called-a-waterphone-used-strange-ufo-sounds-hoax-video

Sounds almost as likely as the molemen to me.

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"The "top half" is a woman I've seen on some cable channel documentary regarding birth anomalies. The "bottom half" is nothing more than a slender woman flexible enough to hide her upper body under a broomstick skirt. An example of this pose is often used by the kinetic perfomers ('dancers' doesn't seem apropos) that have frequently worked with the band Tool. It could even be that really flexible dude that's been on several of those cable documentaries.

The genius of Criss is how he constantly misdirects your attention. "I pick you. . ., Oh wait, you're not tall enough"

Notice that the skirt never rises and exposes the bottom person's head. That's clever tailoring and cleverly picking a woman who will protect another woman's modesty. Also note how the upper woman knows how to "walk" on her hands without using lower extremities. As if it were learned from a lifetime of living without them.

Cool stunt though!!

- P

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Wonderful pictures!! I never visit Perth before but these pictures are giving me inspiration to visit there. Thanks very much.

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Is there anything to say that the roof of that house wasn't lower than the road that the car was driving on? There are plenty of houses here where I am in the mountains that could easily have a low-speed car land on their roof, even without convenient rocks to launch off of. It doesn't take all that much force for a car to go off of a bridge or embankment onto a house below.

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wood like to see if it works on Nokia 6610i

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What a total breadbasket! What was going through this bloke's brain? I'm perhaps being generous by assuming he has one.

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It could've been done with The Gimp. Unlike Photoshop The Gimp is a free download.

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Wow. Well, there's the mainstream media report I was waiting for. I was assuming the impressive videos were hoaxes, and the rest was over-active imaginations listening to low-flying planes. But this makes it seem like the impressive horn sounds are real. That's... um... kinda creepy.

As for the explaination in that Saskatoon video, I'd always heard the aurora sounded like very quiet static, not booming metallic grinding: http://www.damninteresting.com/the-sound-of-the-aurora/

Or, that you needed a radio to hear it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHvdZdsIZxg&feature=related

Still, didn't hear anything but airplanes in my neck of the woods.

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Hahaha, it's totally Reaper sounds in the videos!!

Well played, Bioware. Well played.

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Will, I think you are onto something there. Mass Effect 3 is due to be released on March 6th.

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Turns out it's just electromagnetic noise from an antenna. I wonder if it's anything to do with the Sun being particularly active.

http://saskatoon.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120124/sas-noisesnorth-120124/20120124/?hub=Saskatoon

Also, this guy could be completely wrong. My money's still on the molemen. Arm yourselves!

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These days, if you want to post a photo of a funny church sign, it's best to do so at a noticable angle, since it's harder for such things to do perspective and suchall.

I'm reminded of course of a few years back, the meme of the afghan/iraqi boy holding a cardboard sign that got changed a lot...

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Clay iPads? Aren't those legacy Sumerian technology?

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THere are even web apps to do it

http://www.says-it.com/churchsigns/

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Sounds like the Reapers (Old Machine Gods), come to destroy biological beings and harvest their technology. Mass Effect is coming true in 2012!

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Just speculating, Nancy.

I'm just wondering why I couldn't find local news coverage in towns where it happened. I even read a comment on YouTube claiming to have heard it where I live a couple weeks ago, but I heard nothing myself and saw nothing in the news.

Might be worth noting that a couple weeks ago, I did hear lots of roars in the sky, but not like in the video. There was a very very low ceiling that day, and all the planes and helicopters were flying extremely low. Enough that a visiting friend asked "what the hell was that?" after the house shook.

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Yeah, I'm calling photoshop...definitely on the second line, it doesn't seem to line up the same as the first line.

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