Archives for March 2012

Please enjoy our History of Easter a week early.

There once was this guy named Jesus. He spent an inordinate amount to time trying to get people to be nice and respect each other. A good example would be found in this bon mot; “If anyone says, I love God, but hates the brothers or sisters, he is a liar … Whoever loves God must also love the brothers and sisters.” (I John 3:20, 21). He also tossed off these nuggets in Matthew 5:0, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” In return for his troubles he was nailed to a cross and killed. Then this guy named Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body in a piece of linen cloth and buried him in a cave. Three days after that He either rose from the grave and went to the right hand side of His Father (Mark’s version) or He hung out for a few weeks and did dinners and parlor tricks with wounds (John’s version).

Either way a couple hundred years later this cat named Eusebius claimed that he had transcribed and translated a letter in the Syriac chancery documents written by the king of Edessa. Don’t worry, this will all tie together in the next sentence. The letter written, allegedly, by King Abgar of Edessa was to Jesus, asking him to come cure him of an illness, purportedly a venereal disease. Jesus apparently replied by letter, saying that when He had completed His earthly mission and ascended to heaven, He would send a disciple to heal Abgar. We do know that King Abgar was healed and ruled for many years after this. Tradition says that, although none of the letters mention this fact, he was healed by touching the burial cloth that bore the image of Jesus. Currently known as the Shroud of Turin.

Now you can clearly see why the holiday is celebrated with bunnies and candy.

Wait, what? You can’t? Believe it or not the seeds of bunnies and candy are in those opening paragraphs.

Confused? That’s okay. Lots of people are.

See, the cat I mentioned before, Eusebius, was one of those people who was a convert to this new religion. He was a convert because the evangelical wing of Christianity was venturing into realms they’d never been to before. Unlike the days when Saul who became Paul was preaching to the great unwashed and saying that circumcision was just a state of mind, the Christians of this later day were wandering into areas where no one had the slightest clue about monotheism. Jesus was a Jew and Jews only have one God which is what monotheism means. Many Roman citizens knew about Zeus and he was the one big god over all the lesser gods. Not really monotheism but close enough for rock and roll. It got the conversation started. And when the Caesar of the day had Mark write his gospel so they could understand what Peter was going on about, they laid the groundwork for their own conversion.

But what is now Eastern Europe was populated by a wide variety of pagan tribes. And many of them worshiped this goddess named Ostara a/k/a Eastre. She was the goddess of fertility. Not just human reproduction, but flowers blooming, sheep making lambs, crops being planted and so on.

Now we get to step to the side for a moment and talk about, oddly enough, menstrual cycles.

Don’t worry, it’s nothing creepy or weird.

You see Jews, and many pagans, follow a Lunar calendar. It’s a nice, holistic, way to stay in tune with the planet, know when to plant your crops, gauge your wife’s fertile times and so on. It also moved dates around a bit since there the full moon’s appearance isn’t exactly clockwork. It was exactly this kind of mamby pamby stuff that Christians then were trying to stop with their adherence to a solar calendar and conversion, occasionally forced, of pagans into believers.

So, while Eusebius was transcribing his famous letters, missionaries were trying to convert a large group of Germanic pagans to the faith. The problem they had was that, instead of the theological battle they expected, the pagans really thought the whole Jesus thing was great. But, and this was a big BUT for the Catholic Church, they saw no reason that Jesus and His Father couldn’t hang out with all the other gods they’d been introduced to. Amon Ra? Come on down! Zeus and Apollo? Party on guys! And so on.

And Eastre. Especially her. You see, to the pagans, Jesus’ resurrection was the same as what happens every spring to the land. It is reborn. And they celebrated that rebirth every year with festivals and symbols. And no symbols more clearly say “Let’s have lots of sex and populate the lands” better than rabbits and eggs.

And since they were already celebrating rebirth, adding a resurrected Jesus to their party just made sense. To them anyway. To the Church it was a horror. And the Church spent a couple hundred years trying to make them stop.

As you walk through your local Wal-Mart and see the baskets full of bunnies and colored eggs and so on you can tell how successful they weren’t.

It didn’t help that Passover tends to fall around the time of their spring rites. Nor did it help that the Church needed bodies for taxes and military support. To keep everything moving forward the occasional blind eye, as it were, got turned.

So, just like Valentine’s Day and Christmas, pagans are responsible for some of the most enduring symbols of modern religious holidays. There are those who argue, and I think rightly, that had the Church not let the pagans add their celebrations to the standard religious holidays there may not have been any church at all. Or, if it did exist, it would be more of a novelty religion like Zoroastrian.

Also a monotheistic religion, and older than Judaism, in case you’re curious.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

I love people. They do the funniest stuff and then are happy when I write about it. Seriously, my job often consists of waking up, having my coffee and then laughing my butt off. When I calm down I share with you. And only you. I don’t like that creepy dude back to the left. Just you. And, I know that you (and only you) really like when I talk about Florida – the state that makes your weird uncle Elroy look employable – and I can understand that. You also seem to enjoy the science stuff as long as I don’t get too carried away with it. You and I have agreed that I will avoid the political stuff as much as possible. That’s a dark place no one wants to visit. Still, that leaves me a lot of leeway when it comes to subjects. You and I have discussed the joys of sexbots, psychotic Nazis and aliens in the same article, BOOBS! and more. Much, much more.

And today will be no different. We’ll start our day with every young boy’s idea of the perfect pet. Nine pound Gambian rats that invaded Florida. Of course, you knew they would only invade Florida.

When it comes to giant rat infestations, New York gets all the attention.

But a breed of giant Gambian rats have been rapidly reproducing in the Florida Keys despite a decade-long effort to wipe them out. KeysNet reports the invasive African native species first began showing up between 1999-2001 after a local exotic animal breeder released eight of the rats into the wild.

“We thought we had them whipped as of 2009,” said Scott Hardin, exotic species coordinator for Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. “We think they have not moved far but they clearly reproduced,” he said.

The rodents, officially known as the Gambian pouched rat, are the largest known breed of rats in the world. They can grow up to three feet in length and weigh as much as nine pounds. Wildlife officials fear that if the rodents make it to the Florida mainland, they could devastate local crops.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been working with Florida officials to wipe out the rodents, and there are only an estimated few dozen at large, but they can reproduce quickly and do so only five months after being born. After producing a litter, the Gambian rat only has to wait another nine months before having another litter, bearing up to six babies at a time.

Officials thought they had successfully gotten rid of all of the Gambian rats back in 2008, but several of the burrowing creatures recently began showing up in the yards of local residents. “We were skeptical but went back and talked to people and [saw] there were rats that we missed,” Hardin told KeysNet.

Using cantaloupe and peanut butter as bait, officials plan to distribute another 200 traps in an effort to clear the keys of the Gambian rats, some of which are larger than the average house cat.

“We’re going to try to trap at least that often until we see signs that we have knocked them back,” Hardin said.

Trap? Alive? To what end? Oh, yeah, this is Florida, they need more vermin.

Like the guy who got arrested for calling the cops. How does that work, you ask while laughing? Easy, call 911 to whine that she’s screwing up your “hands on breasts” viewing pleasure. That’s right, she interrupted his Facebook time and he called 911. Even in Florida that’ll get you arrested.

Of course not all morons live in Florida. God was kind enough to sprinkle them all over the world so everyone could enjoy one. For example, this nice Austrian man comes to mind. He got a job, he didn’t want a job so he sawed off his foot and cooked it.

In a desperate bid to keep collecting unemployment, an Austrian man reportedly sawed off his own foot — and then cooked it, just to be sure it couldn’t be reattached and foil his plan.

Just before he was due for a health check with jobs officials, Hans Url, 56, of Mitterlabill, held his leg to his circular saw and sliced off his foot at the ankle, the Daily Mail reported.

He then tossed his severed foot into an oven to prevent doctors from possibly reattaching in his bizarre bid to remain on unemployment.

“The planning was meticulous,” police spokesman Franz Fasching said. “He waited until his wife and his adult son had left the house and he was alone.”

After he hacked off the foot, a profusely bleeding Url was airlifted to a hospital in Graz and almost died en route, according to a hospital spokesman.

“The food was too badly burned to reattach. All we could do was seal the wound,” the spokesman told the Mail.

That might not help the 56-year-old stay out of work, though, according to a spokesman for the Austrian Public Employment Service’s local job center.

“Even now losing a foot does not automatically mean he will not be able to work,” the spokesman, Hermann Gossinger, said.

“We will see what work we can find for him,” Gossinger added. “This is a tragic case but it will not help the man.”

According to the Daily Mail, Url had been required to come in that day for a medical exam to prove he was not fit for work, after Public Employment Service officials had become suspicious of his claim of a bad back.

Way to go from “being committed” to “should be committed” in record time. This is exactly the kind of deadbeat that Fox News is always warning us about. Well, except for the fact that he’s white and has a sexy Austrian accent (just like Hitler did) and doesn’t wear a hoodie.

Close enough I guess.

The whole “celebrity moms” who are rearing future serial killers is a blog for another day. Let’s just say that January Jones, Mayim Bialik or Alicia Silverstone should each have their children taken from them immediately.

If not sooner.

Because, as every World News Center reader (and that means you) knows, it’s just a tiny step from being fed like a demented bird to dressing up like a ninja to steal pot.

A pot delivery man in southern California said two men dressed as ninjas ambushed him while he was making a delivery of doctor-prescribed cannabis to a patient Friday night.

The man, reportedly in his 40s, told West Covina police he dropped a bag of marijuana and cash, which the ninjas took.

The two assailants were allegedly carrying batons and not a ninja’s trademark shuriken throwing stars, nunchucks or katana blades, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune reported.

Police said this is the first instance of a ninja-related crime in the area.

Let’s go through this step by step, shall we?

“A pot delivery man.” This is his job. He gets up in the morning, puts on a paper hat and gets in his pink and blue weedmobile and commences to avoid being unemployed.

Good for him.

Then he gets attacked by Ninjas.

Sure, and how many times did he use the word gnarly in his report to the police? And how do you call the insurance company and say “My weedmobile was attacked by Nijas and …”

That sound you hear is an insurance agent hanging up.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Yesterday we took a look at some incredibly dense people who clutter up our world. And I heard from people who really, really, wanted everything I wrote to be satire. Sadly, it wasn’t. There really are United States citizens who can’t find the U.S. on a map. There are also people who think that Back to the Future is a documentary. These people are, to be polite, morons. What kills me about each and everyone of them is that, when presented with proof that they are 100% wrong, they’ll just shrug and say “we agree to disagree.” No, no we don’t. Facts are not opinions. They either are or are not. You do not get to say “Ohh, I like this fact but not that one.” That’s not how facts work. Facts are what we build opinions on. Without them everything you say is meaningless. Which, as it turns out, applies to one out of five grown adults.

So let’s take a peek at some people who can declare, with 100% unshakable conviction, that they saw President Barack Obama rob a McDonald’s.

Or it might have been former President Ronald Reagan.

Was he Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? Seems the people who witnessed a masked man robbing a Burger King restaurant in Lake Park, Fla., weren’t so sure.

Employees initially reported that a man wearing all-black clothing with red gloves and sporting a Ronald Reagan mask held up a Burger King at gunpoint on Tuesday morning, Palm Beach County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Teri Barbera told The Palm Beach Post News.

The robber, who had a woman accomplice also wearing a mask (president not specified), demanded money from the cashier and made off with about $400, according to the Miami New Times.

Detectives who reviewed the restaurant’s surveillance video determined the gunman was actually wearing a mask resembling Obama, the Palm Beach Post reported.

There was no explanation for the presidential discrepancy.

It’s not the first time a masked Obama bandit has struck a fast-food restaurant.

On Jan. 28, a man robbed a McDonald’s in Riviera Beach, also in Palm Beach County, while dressed in black wearing an Obama mask, according to the Palm Beach Post. This time, he had white gloves.

Sheriff’s officials didn’t immediately return a call to msnbc.com about whether they think the same person is responsible for both holdups.

All them there prezzidense look alike to me.

Oy freaking vey.

And, obviously, that can only happen in Florida. Just like getting bit in the butt by a bear while taking out the trash.

Also in Florida a woman seemed hell bent on setting the record for being the stupidest criminal in history by trying to smuggle tainted urine IN to a drug test.

A vagina, while typically thought of as an organ used for reproduction or sexual activity, has many uses, as is evident by the studious criminals often profiled on The Huffington Post. We have covered everything from the hiding of knives and marijuana pipes, to an innovative 27-year-old woman who allegedly stashed more than 100 items — including 54 bags of heroin and loose change — in her vagina.

So while the act itself comes of little surprise, the items female criminals will hide in their lady bits still tends to raise an eyebrow or two at the HuffPost Crime desk. Case in point: Mischelle Lindy Salzgeber, a 20-year-old woman from Dade City, Fla.

According to police in New Port Richey, Salzgeber, who is on probation for dealing in stolen property, attempted to thwart a drug test using someone else’s urine.

Salzgeber’s alleged crime may not be unique, but her technique is certainly interesting.

Authorities suspected something was amiss when they conducted a body scan of Salzgeber. The X-ray scan revealed Salzgeber had what appeared to be a pill bottle hidden deep inside her vagina.

Questioned by police, Salzgeber allegedly said the item was actually a small vodka bottle. The young woman said the bottle, which was empty, had contained another person’s urine and that she had tried to use it to pass a drug test at the probation office, police said.

Unbeknownst to Salzgeber, the urine that she allegedly used in place of her own was found to be dirty. The failed drug test led to Salzgeber’s arrest.

Salzgeber was arrested on a felony probation violation. She is being held without bond at the Land O’ Lakes Detention Center.

Of course, as you may already know, anything a Floridian can do a Nigerian can do better. Or, if not better, at least with a cooler accent.

Want to get noticed for a rock-solid stomach? Try ingesting almost five pounds of heroin pellets.

During a patdown, customs agents spotted a Nigerian woman at a D.C.-area airport on March 14 who had what was described as an “abnormally rigid” stomach, by U.S. Custom and Border Protection officials.

Security personel working at Washington Dulles International Airport became more suspicious of 52-year-old Bola Adebisi when she gave vague answers about her destination, according to authorities

That led to a brief, forced stay in a nearby hospital where an X-ray allegedly revealed that 180 drug-filled pellets gave her the firm tummy.

Adebisi was hospitalized until she passed all the drugs, which weighed in at 4 pounds, 12 ounces — touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area.

Customs officials put the street value of the drugs at $180,000.

This seizure crushes the previous record, set by in 2011 when Yomade Aborishade, 46, of Lagos, Nigeria expelled 100 pellets with a combined weight slightly over four pounds.

“The amount of pellets and heroin this woman ingested is incredible, a serious health risk, and very troubling if these numbers become the new normal,” CBP Port Director for the Port of Washington, D.C. Christopher Hess said in a press release. “We’re hopeful that this arrest sends a strong signal that CBP officers are proving to be successful at detecting internal concealment methods, and that we remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners and intercepting this deadly poison before it can reach our communities.”

Adebisi faces criminal charges.

“touted as the largest bellyful of drugs found in the D.C.-area” …. I did not know there was a competition between various “areas” for finding the moist prolific drug mules. What could they possibly win?

No, I really don’t want to know, but thanks anyway.

Let’s wrap this day up with proof that there’s hope for humanity. First, let’s take a look at a nice young lady who got good grades and was, therefore, promptly expelled from school.

A school that barred a sixth grader after she dyed her hair pink with her parents’ blessing to celebrate her good grades lifted its ban on Tuesday following an outcry from civil rights advocates.

After missing three days of classes, pink-haired Brianna Moore headed back to Shue-Medill Middle School in Newark, Delaware, on Tuesday after administrators reversed their decision after a call from the Delaware branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“We’re on our way right now,” said Kevin Moore as he drove his 12-year-old daughter to school.

At his daughter’s request last week, he helped dye her hair a shade called crimson storm, which has a pink hue, as a reward for improving her grades.

But when she showed up for school the next day, she was sent home and told not to return until her hair met school policy mandating a “natural color, brown, blond, black, natural red/auburn.”

The ACLU soon got in touch with attorneys for the school district and asked, “Don’t you think this is unconstitutional?” said Kathleen MacRae, ACLU executive director in Delaware.

Moore was invited back to school with assurances she would not be punished, said Wendy Lapham, school district spokeswoman.

“The hair is not going to be an issue,” Lapham said.

Next schools will regulate skin tone.

“I’m sorry Ms. Whiffenpooof, you’re too tan to learn today.”

Of course schools exist not only to teach our young but to crush their dreams and rip their souls out of their chests.

First the story of the happy youth who was trying to better himself and the world around him.

This prom season, Minnesota student Mike Stone is on a mission to bring a special lady to his high school dance: a porn star.

The situation might call to mind scenes from the 2004 movie “The Girl Next Door,” in which three teens take porn stars to prom as part of a plan to film a modern sex-ed video. But it seems this Minnesota student just wants to stand out on his special day.

In an interview with the Daily Dot, Stone said many of the girls he asked to prom were already going with someone else. So, he took a different route and hopped on Twitter to contact some adult film stars.

After nearly 600 Tweets, at least two porn stars have offered to take Stone up on his offer.

Megan Piper, who never made it to her senior prom, said she’d be willing to attend the dance as long as Stone took care of the travel costs from Los Angeles.

“If you can get me there, then yes :),” she tweeted.

And adult film star Emy Reyes was honored by Stone’s proposal and responded by saying, “Awww that’s reappear [sic] hun and i would love tooo.”

Now, the teen’s next mission is to raise about $400 to buy his possible date — who, as of late Tuesday afternoon, appears to be Megan Piper — a plane ticket to Minnesota for the big night on May 12.

Piper said she’s excited about the possibility of attending the dance with Stone.

“I thought it was really cute, and I thought it would make his night by saying ‘yes’,” she told The Huffington Post.

The 19-year-old moved from Georgia to Kansas during her senior year of high school and couldn’t attend her own prom. She even had a navy dress with a corset top picked out for the occasion.

“It was so cute,” she recalled. However, if she does fly to Minnesota, Piper says she’s using the opportunity to shop for a new gown.

When asked about the possibility of Emy Reyes attending the dance, Piper said she was open to sharing the spotlight with her friend.

“If she decided she wanted to go, too, that would be really cool,” Piper said.

As of a couple of hours ago, Stone, who says he’s 18, did not have a PayPal account set up to receive donations, but that might soon change with the amount of exposure he’s been getting.

However, the teen’s special date might very well be a surprise to his parents and principal, who reportedly have no clue what Stone has been planning, the Daily Dot reports.

As for Piper, the adult film star isn’t keeping her boyfriend in the dark about her potential date.

“He knows I love him so he doesn’t mind,” she said.

Regardless of how Stone’s plan pans out, he now joins the ranks of several teens who have taken extraordinary measures to secure a date to prom.

Much like Stone, 18-year-old Kevin McGuire used social media to secure a date with Taylor Swift. And although the songstress won’t be able to attend McGuire’s prom, she invited him to the Academy of Country Music Awards as her date.

Brady McHale, on the other hand, took advantage of his position as volunteer firefighter and executed his prom proposal atop a ladder truck positioned outside of his high school’s windows.

Ashley Shay decided to take a more public route, pitching her prom proposal on a local billboard.

**Sniff** Makes me proud to be a man. The youth does his “Y” chromosome proud. Naturally his dream was crushed some estrogen fearing flunky.

A Minnesota high school has reportedly barred one of its students from taking a porn star to prom.

Mike Stone, 18, said he scored his dream date after firing off tweets to celebrities and porn stars including former Charlie Sheen gal pal Bree Olsen.

Another porn star, Megan Piper, said she’d attend the May 12 event at Tartan High School in Oakdale on condition that Stone pay for her plane ticket from California, the Minnesota Star-Tribune reported.

But the plans were scuttled after a local community website got wind of the plans and Stone was hauled into the principal’s office, according to the Daily Dot Internet newspaper.

“He was saying that it’s not a good thing to do that,” Stone told the Daily Dot. “I said, ‘I was just doing it to see what actually happened.’”

In a statement to the Star-Tribune justifying the ban, the superintendent of Stone’s school district cited a policy that restricts those whose “visit is not in the best interest of students, employees or the school district.”

Stone told the Daily Dot he wasn’t punished by school officials, though his mother was furious with him after receiving a call from his principal.

Yeah, I can see a mom having an eensy weensy bit of an issue with the whole “My baby’s boinking a porn star” thing. Because, let’s face it, that’s where this whole thing was headed.

Bless his soul.

One thing’s for sure, neither he nor the pink haired lass above will ever fall prey to the whole “world is flat” brigade.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

Mitt Romney, in an attempt to prove that the vampire minority was gaming the health care system with their demands for sunscreen, had himself bitten and transformed before a NYC rally. When he took the stage during the day to highlight how harmless UV radiation was to vampires he promptly exploded into millions of tiny, bloody, pieces. Several hours later Roger “Scooter” McDaniels – the only openly gay member of Romney’s campaign – burst into song, began dancing the Funky Chicken and screaming financial updates in Babylonian. He also, loudly, claimed that Mrs. Romney’s vagina was nicknamed “Love Puppet,” a fact she demurely confirmed as it became apparent to all that Scooter had been possessed by Mitt. Oddly enough, while Romney may have been unelectable while alive – due to his many conflicting views, slavish dedication to a financial philosophy that nearly bankrupted the nation three times and inability to truly understand that Americans need food to survive – the dead vampire / snappily dressed gay guy version of Romney has captured the country’s imagination. Polls show him now leading President Obama 53% to 42% with 5% of the country believing that The Hunger Games is a documentary.

The above is funny because it’s satire. The below is scary as hell because it’s not.

One in five Americans can’t find the US on a map. It’s that big blob just above Mexico if you’re still not sure. If that doesn’t help, ask a Mexican.

The same amount believe witches are real. The nice thing about these people is that you can tell them anything, no matter how outrageous, and they will believe you. They are really that stupid.

“No, it’s true, the only way to prevent your son from catching the measles is for your 19 year old daughter to have wanton sex with me for a month.”

“Whew, I’m so glad you got here in time!”

Not surprisingly the same number believe that the sun revolves around the Earth. These people are so bone crushingly dense that it defies logic. On the other hand you can bang their daughters too without fear of recrimination.

One if five Scots think the Loch Ness Monster is real. This in spite of a century’s worth of nothing to even remotely support that belief.

One in five humans think aliens are living among us. Because, as any scientist can tell you, all sentient life will have two arms, two legs and so on. Hell, some of them will even vote Republican. You’ll never be able to know.

“Mary, why does Bob keep a tank of methane in the bedroom?”

“It’s from his doctor, It helps him sleep at night.”

“Hmmm, maybe I should try that. My apnea is horrible.”

One in five Swedes believe in ghosts. Well, look at the bright side, one quick trip across the pond and you can be banging Swedish bikini team wannabes.

One in five Brits think light sabers are real. This story I have to share.

Light sabers from “Star Wars,” time travel and hover boards from “Back to the Future.” Many people in the U.K. believe all these things from science fiction and fantasy are, in fact, reality.

The results of a survey that opened National Science and Engineering Week in Britain last week reveal a fine line between science and fiction in the public’s eye.

Here’s what the survey reveals, according to Birmingham Science City, which created it. Note that in all cases, the respondents incorrectly believe the following:

• More than a fifth of adults believe light sabers exist.
• Almost 25 percent of people believe humans can be teleported.
• Nearly 50 percent of adults believe that memory-erasing technology exists.
• More than 40 percent believe that hover boards exist.
• Almost one-fifth of adults believe they can see gravity.

“We commissioned the survey to see how blurred the lines between science fact and fiction have become,” said Pam Waddell, director of Birmingham Science City.

“While films and TV can be acknowledged as creating confusion, it is also worth highlighting how advanced science has now become, and many things deemed only possible in fiction have now become reality or are nearing creation due to the advancements of science,” she added.

Some amazing feats of science have already started to bring us closer to science fiction than ever before.

While 78 percent of Britons believe that an invisibility cloak, such as the one seen in the Harry Potter movies, is merely fiction, University of Birmingham researchers are inching closer to making objects disappear.

And most people — seven out of 10 adults — think it’s impossible to move objects with the mind. But researchers at Coventry University’s Serious Games Institute collaborated with NeuroSky in California to develop a headset to read brainwaves and turn them into digital signals. Users of these “brainwave readers” will be able manipulate images on a screen through the power of their minds.

When the British survey asked what inventions people most wanted to see become reality, men voted for time machines and teleportation, while women hoped for something more practical: a universal cure for all diseases.

If you’d like to test your knowledge of science fiction and fact, take this very short Birmingham Science City quiz, and then compare your answers to how 3,000 others did.

National Science and Engineering Week runs through March 20 in the U.K.

“Jeez Bob, knock off the doughnuts, I can see your gravity from here.”

Of course, these are the same people who believe that Sherlock Holmes was a real person and God controls the stock market.

Or, as noted on The Hub Pages, one in five people is a moron.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.

We, as a planet, are living the ancient Chinese curse regarding “interesting times.” People who were once relegated to the end of the bar where they could sport their tinfoil hats and demand that “someone do something about them things that done need stuff done to them” all while pouring salt in their beer are now being elected to office. Often while wearing their tinfoil hat and carrying their salted beer. We also live in a world where cultures, despite the kicking and screaming of the raging xenophobes, are blending. This is a mixed blessing. Our differences make us stronger but assimilation helps us understand our brethren better. Often times we find ourselves attempting to figure out which pieces of our culture to keep and which to discard. For example, just because it has been a tradition for all the white kids to wear black face at Christmas events, is this really how you want the world to perceive you from now on? And for those who answered yes, could you explain why without sounding really crazy? Thanks.

But all of the above is meant to frame what is about to come. Some people have just decided that the world needs one extra slot just for them. For example, Venus Angelic has taken cosplay to a whole new level.

A lot of girls enjoy dressing up their dolls, but a 15-year-old London teenager gets her kicks dressing up like her dolls.

She’s Venus Angelic and she is becoming the latest Internet cult figure thanks to her bizarre YouTube videos. Angelic teaches viewers how to make themselves look like a ball-jointed doll and offers other strange makeup tips.

“Some people were asking me, ‘how do you do your makeup?’ and I decided to put a tutorial on YouTube,” Angelic told the cast of RightThisMinute, a daily syndicated TV show that focuses on the strangest clips hitting the Internet.

Angelic has been dressing up like her doll for two years and was inspired by a love of Japanese anime culture that started when she lived in Japan for a couple of years, according to RightThisMinute producer Betsy Gessel.

“She’s not Japanese,” Gessell told HuffPost Weird News. “But she spent some time there and it influenced her.”

It not only influenced her look, but also her voice, which sounds like a babyish version of Yoko Ono. Angelic insists it’s real.

“Yes, of course it’s my real voice,” Angelic told RightThisMinute. “I think [it sounds that way] because I speak five languages and all the accents mix together.”

Gessell, who spoke with Angelic at length is more skeptical.

“She’s not Asian. She’s western,” Gessell said. “Her mom had an almost German accent. I also think she really is a teenager, but, in some ways, she does seem wise beyond her years.”

As far as Angelic’s mom is concerned, she does approve of her daughter’s dollish ways.

“She actually thinks it’s cute to wear cute and frilly clothes,” Angelic said. “I don’t think that I will ever stop. I think I will grow in my style and just keep doing what I love.”

As Angelic grows in her style, Gessell predicts so will her popularity.

“She has influenced a lot of people,” Gessell said. “[Dressing like a doll] is something a lot of people think about and she’s making it safe.”

I’m missing something somewhere. What difference does it make if she’s Japanese or not? I know they invented cosplay, they also invented sushi, that doesn’t mean that they alone can like it. Anyway, as she grows older she’ll realize that the only money she can make with that look is in porn. Then we’ll either be gifted with some very odd porn or she’ll get a new hobby.

One young lady who has been forced to pit reality against fantasy is 12 year old Natasha Mora whose nickname is Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel isn’t just letting down her hair — she’s chopping it off for the first time in her life.

Natasha Moraes de Andrade, 12, has the fairy-tale nickname because her hair is 5 feet, 2 inches long. That’s less than two inches shorter than her body, the Sun reports.

The Brazilian pre-teen has never had a haircut. But the arduous task of brushing for an hour and a half each day and a $600 yearly shampoo bill have led Moraes de Andrade to finally agree to trim her locks.

“I love my long hair and I’ll be sad when it’s gone,” she said, according to the Daily Mail. “But it’s a pain looking after it. I can’t do a lot of things, like P.E. lessons at school.”

Moraes de Andrade told the publication she hopes to sell her hair for around $5,000 and use the money to refurbish her bedroom.

Though her wavy locks are strikingly long, Moraes de Andrade is a far cry from earning the world record for longest hair. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, that title belongs to China’s Xie Qiuping, whose measures a solid 18 feet, 5.54 inches.

According to the book, Qiuping has been growing her hair since 1973, when she was 13-years-old.

At least she’s using her loss for her gain as well.

Speaking of personal gains, new studies report that women experience orgasms while exercising. But only during specific exercises, so pay attention.

Women may not need a guy, a vibrator, or any other direct sexual stimulation to have an orgasm, finds a new study on exercise-induced orgasms and sexual pleasure.

The findings add qualitative and quantitative data to a field that has been largely unstudied, according to researcher Debby Herbenick, co-director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. For instance, Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues first reported the phenomenon in 1953, saying that about 5 percent of women they had interviewed mentioned orgasm linked to physical exercise. However, they couldn’t know the actual prevalence because most of these women volunteered the information without being directly asked.

Since then, reports of so-called “coregasms,” named because of their seeming link to exercises for core abdominal muscles, have circulated in the media for years, according to the researchers.

“Despite attention in the popular media, little is known scientifically about exercise-induced orgasms,” the researchers write in a special issue of the journal Sexual and Relationship Therapy released in print this month. [5 Myths About Women’s Bodies]

Herbenick and her colleagues used online surveys to gather their data, which included answers from 124 women who had experienced exercise-induced orgasms and 246 women who reported exercise-induced sexual pleasure. Most of the women, ages 18 to 63 and an average age of 30, were in a relationship or married and 69 percent said they were heterosexual.

The researchers found that about 40 percent of both groups of women had experienced exercise-induced pleasure or orgasm on more than 11 occasions in their lives. Most of the women in the “orgasm” group said they felt some level of embarrassment when exercising in public places.

The “orgasm” group mostly said during the experiences they weren’t having a sexual fantasy or thinking about someone they were attracted to.

Of the women who had orgasms during exercise, about 45 percent said their first experience was linked to abdominal exercises; 19 percent linked to biking/spinning; 9.3 percent linked to climbing poles or ropes; 7 percent reported a connection with weight lifting; 7 percent running; the rest of the first-time experiences included various exercises, such as yoga, swimming, elliptical machines, aerobics and others. Exercise-induced sexual pleasure was linked with more types of exercises than the orgasm phenomenon.

Answers to open-ended questions in the survey revealed some interesting details, the researchers found. For instance, the abdominal exercises tied to orgasms seemed to be particularly associated with the exercise in which a person supports their weight on their forearms on a so-called captain’s chair with padded arm rests and then lifts their knees toward their chest.

The open-ended questions also revealed the orgasms tended to occur after multiple sets of crunches or some other abdominal exercise rather than after just a couple repetitions; they also seemed to happen after the woman had really exerted herself.

“Many of these women talked about it happening even as children,” Herbenick said during a telephone interview, adding that some indicated an experience at age 7 or 8.

“We had at least one woman in the study who was a virgin, and she really loved that she could have these experiences at the gym,” Herbenick said. [10 Surprising Sex Statistics]

The researchers aren’t sure why certain exercises lead to orgasm or sexual pleasure, though Herbenick hopes to tease out the trigger in ongoing research.

“It may be that exercise, which is already known to have significant benefits to health and well-being, has the potential to enhance women’s sexual lives as well,” Herbenick said, adding that it isn’t clear whether these exercises could actually enhance women’s sexual experiences.

The research has various implications regarding women’s sexuality. For one, orgasm and sexual desire have topped women’s list of sex concerns, with around one out of four women not reaching orgasm during sex. The researchers suggest “it may be that physical exercise has been overlooked in clinical approaches to women’s orgasm.”

Second, scientists have long debated the evolutionary context of the female orgasm and its link to sexuality and reproduction. However, if many women are experiencing orgasm during exercises not related to sex, then exercise-induced orgasm may reveal what orgasm does and does not have to do with sex or reproduction, the researchers note.

In addition, exercise-induced orgasms may be one way for scientists, and women themselves, to learn about the process of orgasm. “It may be one way for women to learn more about how their bodies work in that regard,” Herbenick said.

As for how other scientists may react to the finding: “I think from having talked with colleagues, while some people have heard of these [exercise-induced orgasms], many of our colleagues haven’t either,” Herbenick told LiveScience. “So I think that’s going to be interesting,” seeing the reaction. She added that some might question, “‘Is this a tooth fairy type of thing or does it really happen?’ I have no doubt that it happens.”

I could have saved them a ton of money. When my ex used to work out she’d come home with a glow like you wouldn’t believe. At first I thought she was cheating on me but, no, she was working on her “core.”

She had a wonderful core.

Of course there are other ways to self induce various feelings. Nokia is hoping that people are becoming so attached to their phones that they will tattoo the ringer into their flesh.

Today’s best smartphones still can’t alert human owners about an incoming call or text without either annoyingly loud rings or vibrations that can go unnoticed. That’s why Nokia would let smartphone owners feel the vibrations on their skin through a magnetic tattoo.

The touch-based twist on cellphone alerts surfaced in a Nokia patent filing reported by UnwiredView.com. If the tattoo idea ever became reality, it could mean an end to the days when a silenced cellphone means missing calls and text messages during a movie or music concert.

Smartphone owners could specify their mobile devices to send out patterns of magnetic pulses as shorthand Morse code for different phone alerts, according to the Nokia patent filing. A series of short, strong pulses might let the owner know about messages from a certain friends, while a weaker series of long pulses might signal that the phone’s battery is running low.

The skin tattoo’s ink could contain permanent magnets ranging from iron to magnetite. It could even use rare earth elements — such as neodymium — used as powerful magnets for hybrid car motors and computer hard drives.

If smartphone users don’t like the idea of a magnetic tattoo etched into their skin, Nokia’s patent allows for other choices such as a temporary magnetic spray, stamp, sticky decal or perhaps a wristband.

Nokia even envisions the possible use of paramagnetic materials that act as magnets only in the presence of an outside magnetic field. Such tattoos could prove a better choice for people with medical implants or others who have extra sensitivity to magnetic materials.

This latest example of haptic feedback technology — based on the sense of touch — also represents another way of connecting human bodies to everyday gadgets. Past ideas for merging humans and mobile devices have included turning human skin into multitouch controllers.

For those of you worried that the evil government was going to insert chips in us it must be a great relief to realize we’re going to do it to ourselves.

Maybe not.

Of course I can’t let you go through your day without introducing you to a moron, and today’s no exception. Homeland Security arrested a drug smuggler with the license plate SMUGLER at the Smuggler’s Inn and …. oh, just read it.

You would think a drug runner would know better than to get into a car with a personalized license plate with the letters S-M-U-G-L-E-R.

Or that she would think twice before booking a room at the Smuggler’s Inn, a mere sprint from the Canadian border.

Homeland Security agents received a tip in mid-December about a cocaine deal at a Pizza Hut in Bellingham, Wash., the SeattlePI.com reported, citing recently released court documents. They set up surveillance at the Pizza Hut and watched as a GMC Yukon with a driver and two passengers pulled in. The license plate read SMUGLER.

Agents followed the SUV to the Smuggler’s Inn, pulled it over and found, in a large, white box, nine bricks of cocaine weighing just under 24 pounds, the P-I reported.

One of the passengers, Jasmin Klair, 20, admitted that the illicit cargo was hers and agreed to cooperate with law enforcement officials, according to court documents. She explained to agents that she had been told to book at a bottom-floor room facing Canada at the Smuggler’s Inn, a bed and breakfast with rooms named “Al Capone” and “DB Cooper.” Klair wanted the “Captain’s Room,” about 150 feet from the border.

While agents interviewed her, she started receiving text messages from two men who had given her the job, the Vancouver Sun reported. Authorities prevailed on her to beckon the two men to the Smuggler’s Inn.

They arrived within minutes, the Sun reported, and made a run for it when police ordered them to stop.

One of the two men, Narminder Kaler, allegedly told agents that he would have received $2,000 for the deal, according to the Sun. He sorely needed it, he is alleged to have said, to pay off a $325,000 debt for losing 115 pounds of marijuana a year and a half ago.

Klair, 20, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to conspiring to distribute cocaine, the P-I reported. She will be sentenced on May 29. Kaler and Gurjit Sandhu are in jail and face similar charges, according to the P-I.

Boulé, the Smuggler’s Inn owner and driver of the SUV, took the recent events in stride. Last year, 57 people were arrested going through his property.

“It’s part of life on the border,” Boulé said. “The officers go through on the hour every hour. There are sensors in the yard. We’re on camera where we live.”

Wow.

I guess her “Hi, I’m a drug dealer” neon sign was in the shop.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.