The Enigma of Amigara Fault

Umm, okay, this was pretty fucking creepy.

This is cool too, and I'd been meaning to post about it. Only after having read the above do I realize there's a connection.

ludicrously inaccurate CNN article about camel spiders

This article is amazingly inaccurate.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The family of a British soldier serving in Afghanistan has been forced from their home after a poisonous [WRONG] spider [ALSO WRONG] hitched a ride back with him and apparently killed their pet dog [I REALLY DON'T SEE HOW.].

Lorraine Griffiths and her three children, aged 18, 16, and 4, moved out of their house in Colchester, southeast England, and are refusing to return until the spider [NO] is apprehended [BECAUSE THEY ARE SERIOUSLY MISINFORMED], the UK Press Association reported.

Griffiths told the East Anglian Daily Times that the spider [NO]appeared after her husband, Rodney, returned from a four-month tour of duty in Helmand province, the arid southern Afghan frontline in the fight against Taliban extremists.

"My son Ricky was in my bedroom looking for his underwear, and he went into the drawer under my bed, and something crawled across his hand," she told the paper.

She said their pet dog Cassie confronted the creature, which they identified on the Internet [SKEPTICISM ALERT]as a camel spider, but ran out whimpering when it hissed at her.

"It seems too much of a coincidence that she died at the same time that we saw the spider," she said. [Uh, exactly how much later did the dog die, if it saw the thing and "ran out whimpering"? Maybe it died of a doggie heart attack or something.]

The desert-dwelling camel spider, actually an insect [SO VERY FUCKING WRONG]rather than an arachnid [NO, IT IS IN FACT AN ARACHNID, THOUGH NOT A SPIDER], can run up to 25 kilometers (15 miles) an hour and reach 15 centimeters (6 inches) in length. Its bite is not deadly to humans [One of the few accurate statements in the article]but can kill small animals [[Well, they are predators and they have ginormous--for their size--powerful jaws, but they can't kill animals that much bigger than they are. AND THEY ARE NOT VENOMOUS THEY HAVE NO VENOM THEY ARE NOT AN INSECT ALSKDJFLKSAJFLASKJDFKLAF SO WRONG. Laziest reporter ever. Or something. I don't even know. Is there someone I can email about this?]

"Researchers have hypothesized that foot fetishism increases as a response to epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases. In one study, an increased interest in feet as sexual objects was observed during the great gonorrhea epidemic of twelfth century Europe and the syphilis epidemics of the 16th and 19th centuries in Europe. In another study, the frequency of foot-fetish depictions in pornographic literature was measured over a 30 year interval. An exponential increase was noted during the period of the current AIDS epidemic. The researchers noted that these epidemics overlapped periods of relative female emancipation. Sexual focus on female feet was hypothesized to be a reflection of a more dominant posture of the woman in sexual-social relations."

Huh.

"Hair whorls on the head (parietal whorls) have been intensively studied because of the association indicated between brain development and abnormal hair whorls. (Both brain cells and skin cells are derived from an embryo's ectoderm tissue.) Abnormal hair whorls are used as a preliminary predictor of abnormal temperament in most domesticated animals, especially cows, but also in evaluating the mental status of apes and humans. A recent study found that homosexuals are more likely to have the less common counter-clockwise hair whorl phenotype than heterosexuals. Right and left handedness have also been linked to clockwise and counter-clockwise whorls, respectively."

Way fucked.

Wikihow is a goldmine.

http://www.wikihow.com/Become-Inspired-to-Write-Poetry

(This is the poetry as therapy school of writing)

goths

"Fashion's Unlikely Conservatives." Interesting take.

Also, I spent a lot of time the other night on tvtropes.org It's about uh, tropes in television. Not really doing it justice there. But it's both insightful and really amusing, and the tropes are applicable to other media as well.

Number 16 Bus Shelter

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7522952.stm

These names rule.