Archives for June 2011

Like most of you, I woke up this morning. Unlike most of you, I anxiously accessed my robot to see what glorious news awaited my dissemination. There was a lot of sex today. More than you might imagine. From prostitution rings being run by septuagenarian professors to men removing their genitalia with handguns, there was a ton of stuff to choose from. While, individually, some were interesting, taken in the aggregate they were a bit too much. And since any one of them could be summed up in a sentence or two, I would have had to use them all if I wanted to fill this page. Then, just as everything was looking hopeless, I ran across a story from the Netherlands. It had everything a Nude Hippo reader could ever desire.

Cows? Check.

Flatulence? Check.

Massive fire damage? Double check.

So let’s start there.

A Dutch veterinarian was fined 600 guilders (about $240) for causing a fire that destroyed a farm in Lichten Vourde, the Netherlands. The vet had been trying to convince a farmer that his cow was passing flatulent gas; to demonstrate, the vet ignited the gas, but the cow became a “four-legged flame-thrower” and ran wild, setting fire to bales of hay. Damage to the farm was assessed at $80,000. The cow was unharmed. AP

I bet the first thing they put in the new barn is no smoking sign.

But what do you do if you want to rob a WalMart and don’t have a flame throwing cow to distract the customers and staff? According to police in Garrisonville, Virginia, you don a cow suit and raid the milk department.

Authorities in Virginia said a man in a cow suit stole 26 gallons of milk from a Walmart and handed the jugs to passersby outside.

Stafford County sheriff’s spokesman Bill Kennedy said the man stole the milk from the Walmart in Garrisonville about 10:35 p.m. Tuesday, the Manassas News and Messenger reported Thursday.

Kennedy said witnesses reported seeing the man distributing the milk to passersby outside the store.

It was unclear Thursday how the man was able to get 26 gallons of milk outside.

Deputies said they responded a short time later to a call about a disturbance at a nearby McDonald’s and spotted an 18-year-old man who matched the description of the suspect. The man, whose name was not released, was found to have a cow suit in his car.

“Your Honor, I was mooooved by my mooods to to remoooove the milky moooolah ….”

“Shut up.”

However, had this young man taken lessons from a real cow he might have gotten away with it. Police in Media, Pennsylvania report that a cow busted out of the joint and made a run for freedom.

Police in Pennsylvania said a cow headed for slaughter escaped while being moved from its cage and spent about an hour on the run.

Taj Burton, 20, an employee of Madina Live Poultry Co. in Upper Darby, said he was moving the 750-pound cow Saturday when it made a break for freedom, the Delaware County Times reported Tuesday.

“I chased it, but it outran me. The cow was on the run for about an hour,” Burton said.

Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said officers chased the cow in their cars.

“Sector 4 cars chased it,” Chitwood said. “I have not trained my officers how to use lassos. They have been trained in a lot of different ways, but not to lasso a cow. We have all kinds of strange things happen in Upper Darby. This was kind of funny.”

Chitwood said police were eventually able to corner the cow with their cars and Madina recaptured it using a lasso made from two dog leashes.

Burton said the cow ran into a car during its time on the loose, but neither the animal nor the driver was injured.

“Hello, Cut Rate Insurance Company with the Cartoon Mascot, how may I direct your call?”

“My car was just attacked by a cow ….”

Click.

Plan on a long day there. Nevertheless, I guess it’s a good thing that the cow didn’t have a cow bell. No telling how much damage it could have caused. Starksville, Mississippi police tell the tawdry tale of a man who tried to beat another man to death with one.

A Mississippi man accused of striking a fellow university student with a cowbell was sentenced to 45 days in jail and a $500 fine.

Brent Vowell, who was initially charged with felony aggravated assault, pleaded guilty Monday in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court to a reduced charge of misdemeanor simple assault, The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger reported Tuesday.

Vowell, who court documents said will serve his sentence on weekends starting May 13, was accused of striking Matthew Brasher in the head with a cowbell at the Egg Bowl Nov. 28, 2009, when they were both Mississippi State University students.

Brasher said he suffered a 4-inch laceration on his head from the cowbell.

A civil suit filed by Brasher — which names Vowell, the university and the Event Operations Group as defendants — is in the process of discovery.

You can only imagine what events had to line up perfectly for that to have happened. Starting with, “How the heck do you find a cowbell in a football stadium if you’re not in the band?”

But, not all cow related crimes involve people. Some involve KILLER COWS FROM OUTER SPACE!!!!!!

Well, actually Iowa, but that’s alien enough for our purposes.

An Iowa woman died after a being attacked by a cow on a farm in Benton County, officials said.

Killed Saturday was Jean Fee, 60, of Urbana. Her year-old grandson was uninjured.

“It’s pretty unusual for a cow to become aggressive,” Terry Engelken, an associate professor at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, told Monday’s Des Moines Register. “We have a few instances of [cow attacks] across the country every year — but it’s uncommon. For it to result in a fatality is very uncommon.”

Matt Fee, the woman’s son, said his parents and nephews often go into a pasture to feed ears of corn to the cows. Jean Fee, her husband and grandson were on such an outing when the incident occurred.

“My dad went back to the house to get my nephew a drink,” Matt Fee said. “The best we can figure is the cow became aggressive, and my mom was protecting my nephew, and the cow hit her with its head and it stopped her heart.”

It took paramedics about 20 minutes to get to the farm and the woman was flown to a Cedar Rapids hospital where she died.

Fee said there were three calves in the pasture when the accident happened.

“It’s common for them to become aggressive if they have a newborn calf,” Engelken said. “We also just see differences in temperament in cows like we see in dogs and cats and people.”

Coming soon on FOX!, “When Cows Attack!”

I guess it’s somewhat reassuring to know that being bludgeoned by a bovine isn’t common.

Yet.

To tie this whole mess together with a nice bow, I offer you a catchy little video that features a break-dancing hippo who likes to Moooove It!

Madagascar: I Like To Move It by Aiuny

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

I have received emails, from time to time, saying that many of the articles I write seem to be subtle digs at the whole “Family Values” movement. Please accept my apologies. They were never meant to be subtle. I think those people are hypocritical morons. When the shining beacons of the belief system you are trying to ram down my throat are the matrimonial machinations of Britney Spears and Zsa Zsa Gabor, it’s time for someone to take a step back and rethink their position. Or, as a friend of mine once stated, “If your moral code matches that of the Taliban, you might want to try again.”

Yes, I know, I’m going to get emails written in ALL CAPS clearly explaining which level of hell I will spend eternity in. As long as people like them aren’t there, I’m fine with that.

Before we get to the point today, I’m going to start with a counterpoint. A familial relationship that works. David Moye reports on a transgendered dad, now mom, whose family loves her.

On the surface, Donna Rose is a typical 53-year-old woman.

She enjoys going on dates in her home town of Charleston, S.C., and has a successful business as an IT consultant.

Like other women her age, Rose also has a grown son, 25, with whom she has a great relationship, despite the fact he lives in Austin.

In fact, they are very likely to talk on Sunday when the son calls her up to wish her a happy Father’s Day.

That’s not a typo: Up until 1996, Rose was known as “David,” and lived life as a man. She was married for 15 years and raised a son. For a time after her reassignment surgery, she was a single parent and had to work out the proper terminology with her son.

It wasn’t an easy process but Rose insists that, despite being a woman, she will always be a dad.

“My son refers to me in different ways depending on the situation,” Rose told AOL Weird News. “If we’re with friends of his who don’t know the whole story, he might call me his mom, but if they do know, or he’s talking with my ex, than he calls me Dad.”

As Donna, Rose is more likely to wear dresses and pearls than bow ties, but she takes fathering as seriously as any other Dad.

“I love being my son’s father,” said Rose, who wrote about the transition in a 2002 book, “Wrapped In Blue: A Journey Of Discovery” (Living Legacy). “I would be seriously bent out of shape if someone came in between us and tried to take that role away from me. I taught him how to shave and play football.”

See? You love someone and they love you back and nothing else matters. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp.

Now, compare, contrast.

Todd Wright, of MSNBC, tells of the socially acceptable hetero couple who missed their honeymoon because the wife was jailed for assault.

It’s rare for a marriage counselor to be needed at the wedding, but maybe a Broward County, Fla., couple should have started a new nuptials trend.

Bernadette Besario Catan-Keeler, 30, was arrested and accused of domestic battery just hours after she said “I do” to her newlywed husband, Mike Keeler, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

The two got into a fight Saturday night at a nightclub as they celebrated their new marital bliss, which lasted all of about 13 hours, Lighthouse Pointe police said.

The argument started when Keeler got upset that his new wife was getting too frisky on the dance floor with another man at the club, the police report stated.

Keeler left the club, but his wife soon followed and bit him on his left shoulder.

She later bit him on his right arm, the report stated. That’s when he called 911 and instead of the honeymoon suite, Catan-Keeler was in a Broward jail cell.

That fact that they’re from Florida, a leading “Family Values” state, is just a bonus.

However, had the marriage been consummated I imagine that mom would have been a lot like this NY mom who threatened her son’s little league coach and filed false abuse claims because …. I love this part …. her kid wasn’t good enough to make the team.

AOL has the complete story.

A suburban New York woman is accused of sending threatening letters to a Little League official and his son because her boy didn’t make a summer baseball travel team.

Nassau County police say 44-year-old Janet Chiauzzi of East Meadow on Long Island also falsely claimed that the official abused his children.

She was arraigned Sunday on charges of stalking, falsely reporting an incident and endangering the welfare of a child.

She didn’t respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Police say when one of her two sons didn’t make the team, she wrote “letters of a threatening nature” to the official and his young son. Police say the letters also mentioned the official’s wife and daughter.

Yep, that transgendered mom is looking better and better all the time now isn’t she?

But let’s say you’re not a bad person and even try to be a good parent.

It’s okay, we’re just talking hypothetically.

So you do all the right things, make the kids lunch, kiss their boo boos and keep them from playing with hand guns. They can still drive you nuts. Now, much to no one’s surprise, science knows why. It seems that the sound of a child whining is the most irritating noise in the universe.

Jennifer Langston from MSN probably write this while wearing ear plugs.

If you’ve ever thought that listening to your child whine was worse than having a buzz saw cut wood inside your house, it turns out you were right.

A new study has found that the power of whining to distract people while doing simple math was even greater than other noises that people typically find annoying. It didn’t matter whether someone was a parent or not.

Still, this could explain why packing a lunch while your children caterwaul over whose magic marker can touch a particular piece of paper makes your head want to explode.

“You’re basically doing less work and doing it worse when you’re listening to the whines,” said study co-author Rosemarie Sokol Chang, a professor of psychology at SUNY New Paltz. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman, everybody’s equally distracted.”

The researchers asked people to do subtraction problems while listening to an infant crying, regular speech, silence, whining, a high-pitched table saw and “motherese” — exaggerated baby talk that adults often find irritating.

To ensure that people weren’t distracted by the words themselves, they used foreign language for the speech samples in the study, which was published in the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology.

In raw numbers, people made more mistakes per math problems completed when listening to the whines than any of the other speech patterns or noises (though the only statistically significant differences were between whining, the table saw and motherese).

And people completed fewer subtraction problems when listening to the whining, crying and baby talk than when it was completely quiet.

This comes as no surprise to Eileen Wolter, who is raising a 6-year-old and nearly 3-year-old in Summit, N.J.

“My older son has this whole ‘no fair, no fair’ mantra that drives me insane, and the younger one, the minute you say ‘no’ to him over anything, he just gets crestfallen and then there are tears. There is a lot of whining,” she said.

Lately, she’s made a concerted effort to stop being so bothered by it, to simply lay out the rules and remain above the fray.

But, as a mom, she has an almost physical reaction to the noise, even if it’s just a minor argument over sharing a toy or who gets read a bedtime book first.

“It’s just really truly amazing that that’s their first instinct. It’s the first place they go. And there’s no differentiation in the scope of what’s upsetting them,” Wolter said. “My stress can’t tell the difference — it’s just the sound. I can’t tell whether this is a real emergency or a real problem. I just know that my kid is upset so I need to react.”

On some level, that seems to be the evolutionary point of the whining, Chang said. Most people would tell you ignore it, and the child will eventually stop.

While she hasn’t yet tested this theory, except with her own 2-year-old, she suspects that trying to figure out what the underlying issue is may be equally — if not more — effective.

“It’s telling you to tune in,” she said. “Nobody wants to sit around and listen to a fire engine siren either, but if you hear the siren go off, it gets your attention. It has to be annoying like that, and it’s the same with the whine.”

Yes, that is an annoying sound. I sometimes baby sit my neighbors’ two kids. They’re munchkins and cute as cute can be. When they start to whine, usually because they’re tired, I just look at them until they start laughing. Then it’s nap time. But I have heard some of their friends who I think should be the poster children for condom ads. 10 minutes with them and you’ll be thinking vasectomies sound like fun.

Speaking of condoms, Durex is getting ready to release the Viagra condom in Europe. It’s pretty much what you think it is. It enhances your staying power while preventing procreation. When I saw it (click the link to see for yourself), my first thought was “Damn, that’s so small.” Then I remembered it was for Europeans and moved on.

So I won’t leave you in a completely suicidal mood, watch the video to see a family that has fun with its foibles.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Yesterday I decided to do a little spring cleaning. I donned the traditional uniform of an old pair of shorts and a ripped up sleeveless T. I prefer to be barefoot when I can. That is important to this story.

During this annual event I managed to find a set of glass cookware hidden in a box. I thought this stuff had been donated to charity or destroyed years ago. Anyway, much to my profound joy, the box flipped over and sprayed broken glass all over me. In my attempt to escape the wreckage I managed to step on some and cut myself pretty badly. At that moment I stepped out of my back door so that I wouldn’t be on top of the broken glass tinkling down the stairs. My new neighbor spied me bleeding on everything and did the only logical thing she could think of. She turned a garden hose on me and began trying to wash away the blood.

This was not as helpful as you might imagine.

Now I’m standing outside, covered in blood AND soaked to my skin. I thanked her for her help, as non-sarcastically as possible, and walked around to the front of my building so I could let myself in, grab some cleaning supplies and bandages and see if I needed to go to the hospital. While I had numerous cuts, none were through arteries or veins and none were that deep. So I picked the glass out of my skin, bandaged myself up and then spent two hours mopping up blood and sweeping up glass.

Needless to say, I chucked the whole spring cleaning idea and went to meet up with some buddies and watch baseball.

And, yes, beer was involved.

Yet, somehow, despite all that I managed to stay clothed in public.

The Kitsap Sun, a Washington State newspaper, reports that I must have tremendous self control.

A man who allegedly went into a house and stole a laptop computer Friday night got caught with his pants down.

An Ogle Road resident called 911 to report a man entered her house, grabbed her daughter’s laptop and ran out.

Deputies arrived and heard somebody tramping through the woods away from the house. They hollered at him to come out or they would send a dog in after him. He asked if he could put his clothes on first. They said no. He walked out of the brush wearing just a baseball cap and boots.

The 38-year-old man eventually confessed that the computer was about 100 yards into the woods, with his clothes. He said he had been walking down the road when he saw a girl in a window waving for him to come in, like she wanted him sexually. When he went in the house, she was gone. He said taking the laptop was just a joke and that he was going to return it.

He blamed alcohol for his actions, claiming he had “a buzz on” and was in the middle of a relapse.

Because deputies found a large folding knife in his pants, which he said he was wearing when he was in the house, they arrested him on suspicion of first-degree burglary along with second-degree theft. He was taken to the Kitsap County jail with bail set at $110,000.

He never explained why he took his clothes off.

Why, because walking around naked in a small town won’t draw any attention at all. Of course he’s probably a Mariners fan, so that could explain it.

Anyway, not to be outdone, Houma, Louisiana police report that they arrested a naked man fleeing a murder scene. And that was the least odd thing they noticed.

A Houma man was booked on second degree murder charges Saturday, four days after deputies arrested him for running from his house to elude them, naked with a plastic bag of cocaine partially stuffed inside his body.

Jamie Coleman was arrested by Lafourche Parish sheriff’s deputies for the murder of Catina Stewart Jack, 38, of Gibson.

Jack’s body was discovered Wednesday on the side of the road in Thibodaux, according to a press release from the sheriff’s office.

Investigators went to find Coleman, an acquaintance of Jack’s, Wednesday afternoon after gathering evidence at the scene and interviewing friends and family.

When authorities approached a house inside which they were told Coleman could be found, they said he ran from the back of the home.

After apprehending him, powder cocaine was found stuffed inside his anus, deputies said. Authorities also said they found cocaine inside the home.

Coleman was arrested on charges of attempting to distribute cocaine and child support issues, and later booked with murder.

Bond was set at $49,000 for the drug charges but no bond was set on the child support and murder charges. Deputies did not release information on a possible motive for the murder.

Ah yes, the “I just committed a murder so I’d better stick a pound of cocaine in my butt and run naked down the street” method of escape. It’s amazing it’s not more popular.

In non nude news, there’s one story that’s so incredibly far fetched that it’s not amazing that the Florida police accepted it at face value. A man’s home burned down when his foot exploded in flame.

I’ll let Lewis from Bizarre News fill you in.

Greetings fellow Bizarros:

In Bizarre News I have reported on a story about a man who set his home on fire while trying to burn out a hornet’s nest. Then there was the man who burned his house down while trying to destroy a squirrel nest. But this story is a new one to me.

Officials say a Florida man set fire to his home while trying to clean an infection on his foot.

How? The man told deputies he was sitting on his bed, using rubbing alcohol to clean his foot. Of course, the best way to calm the nerves that come with an infected foot is to have a smoke.

His lit cigarette came into contact with the flammable liquid and set his sheets on fire. He removed the bedding and ran to get a fire extinguisher, but the flames grew out of control while he was gone.

Investigators have accepted the man’s story and ruled the fire accidental. I however have my doubts. I watched an episode of Myth Busters where they proved that the heat of a lit cigarette is not enough to ignite liquid gasoline, which is much more inflammable than alcohol.

So I conducted my own experiment, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get rubbing alcohol to ignite with a cigarette. So the obvious solution in my mind? Spontaneous human foot combustion.

Bizarrely,
Lewis

Or, and I’m just spitting wind here, MAYBE HE LIED!!!!

Nah, a nice man like that would never obfuscate the facts. Would he?

Not when faced with the brain trust that comprises the Florida gendarmes.

Anyway, in keeping with our theme, here’s a nice video from Russia’s very own The Henderson Shatners. They specify so that you won’t confuse them for the Star Trek Shatners.

Just FYI, you might want to wait until your kids and/or boss aren’t around before you watch it.

Cool Tattoo – The Henderson Shatners – The most popular videos are a click away

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!

Tim Weigel, the popular & talented sports anchor/reporter, covered Chicago sports for over 25 years.  Last week was the ten year anniversary of his death after a yearlong battle against brain cancer.

In 1998, Tim took 23 minutes out of his busy schedule to sit down for a 3-part interview.  It was a busy night for him, because he was still writing that night’s 10 PM broadcast and the Bear game was at the end of the 3rd quarter.  I, along with several members from NUDE HIPPO had the opportunity to sit down with Tim.  We tossed him tough questions about his favorite Red Blazer, his toughest interview with Albert Bell, his fondness of Walter Payton’s “ass-pinching” experiences, how he played piano for two different rock bands, his semi-pro football days, how he yanked his first radio station that he worked at off the air by just bumping a button, his impression of Tom Skilling, and finally Tim’s prediction about what people will say the day he gets buried: “There goes the Wiener-man!”

You’ll see none of that, as this video was our last interview of the day where we sent in our Senior Cub Reporter, Santos Rodriguez.  He did get some nuggets out with his insane questions, where we learn about Tim’s admiration for the late Mike Royko’s work, how being only 5 feet 9 inches has always bothered him – especially playing basketball or dancing with a taller girl.  Here is some of the raw footage from that day.

In 2000, while fighting brain cancer, Tim returned to work.  We here at NUDE HIPPO sent our best wishes to him.  He responded:

Hey, Guys!

Thanks for thinking of me…I’m good as new, back to work, and still love the Nude Hippo Show!

Tim
SENT: 7/11/00 3:26:33 PM Central Daylight Time

Tim Weigel’s bio:

Tim Weigel had served as the sports director for CBS 2 CHICAGO from 1995 up until his death in 2001.

In this capacity, he anchored sports for the station’s 4:00, 4:30, 5:00 and 10:00 PM weekdays newscasts, which included his trademark “Weigel Wieners” segments. In addition, Weigel hosted the weekly sports talk show FACE 2 FACE and all of the station’s Chicago Bears’ programming.

Prior to joining CBS 2 CHICAGO, Weigel was sports director at WLS-TV (1977-94) and at WMAQ-TV (1975-77), where he started his career in television. Weigel began his sports journalism career with the Chicago Daily News in 1971 and continued writing a column for the newspaper until it ended circulation in 1978.

He has earned a distinguished array of awards, which included: four local Emmy Awards; two citations by Associated Press and three by the United Press International for “Best Sports Story of the Year;” Chicago’s Media Giant of the Year (1990) by the Ed Kelly Sports Foundation; the Bill Veeck Award (1981) for Chicago’s most popular sportscaster; and, the Schick Award given by the Pro Football Writers’ Association for “Best Sports Story of the Year.” In addition, Weigel has been named Chicago’s most popular sportscaster in just about every reader’s poll conducted by the Chicago Sun-Times (1979, 1986, 1989, 1994, and 1996).

Weigel’s newspaper career was reborn in 1995 with the Chicago Sun-Times as a twice-weekly columnist.  He has also had several freelance articles appear in Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and The Reader. Radio had also been an ongoing component in Weigel’s media career. He has filed sports reports for WMAQ-AM (1975-81), was heard as “Whiteshoes” on WJPC-AM with Fly Jock Tom Joyner (1981-82), and enjoyed stints with WRXR-FM (1985-86).

Weigel served on the board of several organizations, which included the Off The Street Club, Chicago Chamber of Commerce Youth Motivation Board, Evanston Shelter for Battered Women, Evanston Homeless Shelter, and was an active member of the Salvation Army. He was named Father of the year by the Chicago Father’s Day Council (1988), B’nai Brith Man of the Year (1984), and the City of Hope’s Man of the Year (1980).

In his spare time, Weigel pursued a lifelong interest in music. During the 1960’s, he was the keyboardist and leader of two rock bands, Cleopatra and the Weizures and the Gross National Product. Weigel’s composition, “Everybody’s Doing Their Thing,” rose to number 15 on the Billboard charts in New York.

After reading our comments in 2001, Jenniffer Weigel, (Columnist/Reporter at Chicago Tribune and Tim’s daughter), sent us this:

Thanks so much for your kind words. The wiener man will be sorely missed, and I’m glad that he could be a part of the nude hippo experience.

Take care,

jenniffer

I am happy that we had the opportunity to not only watch Tim on TV, but that he gave the time during his busy schedule to talk with us, a small and very new local program.  Wiener-man…We miss ya!

Today, Jen Sweet, my very close friend and fellow member of Hippo has been in a 3 year battle with a very rare and lethal glioneuronal brain tumor.  I have dedicated myself to do whatever I can for her and so many others by supporting the the American Brain Tumor Association.

I hope that you can help join us in this fight!   Click here to donate to the ABTA!

I know that this is going to come as a shock to the many apocalypse fanatics out there, but scientists believe there will be events happening on and around Earth after 2012 and, more importantly to me, that humans will be around to witness them. I know, I know, you’re bummed since you were planning on maxing out your credit cards and calling it a day. Unfortunately for you that type of irresponsible behavior will just get you in lots of trouble. So, rather than be a wasteful little miscreant, now might be a good time for you to reconsider your woe begotten ways and start planning for your future. One thing you may need to seriously take into account is whether you want to be as pale as those of us who work in the dark dungeons of the World News Center or if you’d prefer to have that healthy, skin cancer causing, glow. Because if science is right (and, well, it does tend to be since, after all, that’s the whole freaking point of science) the sun you see in the sky might be getting ready to go through a cool down period. And the last time it did that the earth was plunged into a mini-ice age.

Or, to me more technical about it, you may be able to book a snowball fight in Hawaii.

Our BFF, Ian O’Neill, has the 411. Although, to be fair, he would never talk like that, not even for money.

As perplexing as it may sound, solar researchers are predicting the sun is about to fall into the doldrums, again.

Despite all the incredible solar flare action we’ve seen in recent months as our nearest star ramps up toward solar maximum, which is expected to occur in 2013, scientists are predicting the next solar cycle (Cycle 25) will be notable in that it might not even happen.

Remember the deep solar minimum that persisted for the first two years of this solar cycle? Well, it could get worse than that.

This finding was announced today at the 2011 meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, being held at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Researchers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory have collected a number of observations of the solar interior, visible surface and corona (the sun’s atmosphere), and all the data points to an incredibly lazy sun in the near future.

Sunspot Hibernation?

“This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said in a conference press release. “But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.”

This conclusion is based on three separate, but related, fields of solar study.

First, solar astronomers using the Global Oscillation Network Group observing stations — a system that measures pulsations on the solar surface to understand the internal structure of the sun — have not detected the sun’s “torsional oscillation.”

This east-west flow of plasma inside the sun normally indicates the onset of sunspot formation for the next solar cycle. Before Cycle 24 commenced, the position and strength of the torsional oscillation correctly predicted the late arrival of this cycle’s sunspot activity.

But its non-detection points to some rather strange solar behavior. “We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now,” said Hill, “but we see no sign of it. This indicates that the start of Cycle 25 may be delayed to 2021 or 2022, or may not happen at all.”

Weak Magnetism

In another line of research — a study I’ve been following with great interest for some time — Kitt Peak astronomers Matt Penn and William Livingston have been studying sunspot magnetic field strength data since 1991. Although 20 years is a very short period in solar terms, they’ve noticed a magnetic weakening trend.

For a sunspot to form on the solar surface, the magnetic field needs to attain a certain strength to push the surface plasma aside, exposing the solar interior as a cool spot — a sunspot.

These magnetic forces are monstrous when compared with the magnetic field strength of our planet — which measures in at less than 1 gauss at the Earth’s surface. To maintain a sunspot, the magnetic field threading through the surface needs to be at least 1,500 gauss.

By Penn and Livingston’s reckoning, the decline in measured magnetic field strength inside sunspots in recent years points to future sunspots possessing magnetic fields below the 1,500-gauss threshold. This means — you guessed it — sunspots can’t exist at all.

When is this magnetic field weakening predicted to dip below the threshold? Only four years from now, in 2015.

Coronal Signs

In a third line of inquiry, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force’s coronal research program at NSO’s facility in Sunspot, N.M., has noticed a slowdown in the “poleward rush” of magnetic activity in the sun’s corona as Cycle 24 has progressed.

Usually, the magnetic field tied into the corona will drift from approximately 70 degrees latitude at the start of each 11-year solar cycle and move poleward, eventually reaching as far as 85 degrees north. However, due to the sluggish nature of the current solar cycle, it is unknown whether this poleward rush will happen at all.

“A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the sun,” said Altrock. “Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the sun.”

All these factors appear to converge on a common conclusion: Something weird is going on inside the sun, and theorists are currently at a loss to explain the phenomenon.

But one thing is for certain — the sun is slowing down and magnetic activity is growing weaker. Could the next solar cycle be the weakest in modern history? Might Cycle 25 not start at all? Are sunspots a thing of the past?

Maunder Minimum 2.0?

Although it might be a mystery, we have possibly experienced this phenomenon before.

Beginning in 1645, astronomers monitoring the sun observed no sunspots for 70 years. This period is known as the “Maunder Minimum,” and it is thought to be tied into a long-term cycle where the sun’s magnetic activity shuts down.

On Earth the “Little Ice Age” froze Europe around the same time, and a growing body of evidence suggests the sun’s slowdown may have caused the climate to cool.

Over the coming months and years, solar physicists will be watching the sun very closely, waiting to see if sunspot activity picks up or shuts down completely. So enjoy the current rash of solar flares and beautiful coronal mass ejections; it might be some time before we see a solar cycle like this again.

On the plus side, a nice ice age now and then wipes out global warming for a while, so that’s one less thing you’ll need to worry about. On the down side it means that I’ll be writing fewer articles about bikinis since all the women will be wearing parkas.

Of course if you’re the worrying type and have noticed that science has found numerous black holes in our vicinity you’ll probably want to avoid the latest article from Irene Klotz. She writes that science has discovered exactly how suns die when they get sucked into a black hole. It’s painful, slow and sad. Worse, she has pictures so your nightmares can be more graphic.

Just a little something for you to think about as you try and make plans.

In any case, today’s Fathers’ Day. So from all of us here at the World News Center to all of you males who’ve procreated responsibly, here’s hoping you’ve stocked up on winter gear and firewood.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!