Frogger

A Greek highway has been shut down due to an influx of "millions" of frogs from a nearby lake. More details here. Re-enactment below:

Eyeballing

No one has a finger on the pulse of current youth trends like the stodgy old matron of traditional media. Think about it: If it weren't for local TV news and weekend style sections of the newspaper, how would you know that the kids these days are into baggy pants, hip hop dancing, and "fisting"? You wouldn't, grandpa. So instead of blowing off this story as more trend-mongering bullshit, you should instead be grateful that someone's trying to keep you relevant. According to people, kids are engaging in a dangerous practice called "eyeballing" wherein they pour vodka directly into their eyes in order to get "crunk" (a portmanteau of "drunk" and "cunt"). Doctors say this is a bad idea, since the alcohol in vodka can eat away at layers of the cornea. But little do these doctors know, kids today think corneas are "whack" (a portmanteau of "actuary" and "whack"). So, if you see a young person pouring vodka directly into his eyes, best to snatch the bottle out of his hand and smash it on his face. Or you could kneel down next to him and pour a liter of Grey Goose into your own eyes. I hear there's nothing kids like more than adults trying desperately to be their friends. More details here.

How to Handle Hitler

Louis C.K. is one of the world's finest comedians. I'd argue he's the world's FINEST comedian, but Glenn Beck is still alive. Anyway, here's an improvisational set from Louis C.K. wherein he proposes a novel idea for dealing with Adolf Hitler via time travel. Scientists should take note.

Handsy

Years after their initial discovery, scientists have declared a strange walking fish to be a new species. The pink handfish uses its fins to walk along the ocean floor rather than swimming like a respectable member of its race. Little is known about these creatures other than the fact that they're terrifying freaks. If we allow fish to evolve hands, it will destroy the commercial seafood industry. How are anglers going to catch their prey when the fish can simply grab the hooks with their veiny little paws and pull the bait right off? Luckily, we don't have to worry about exterminating these beasts before they can breed. The Japanese are known for their lust of all animals' most distinctive appendages. It won't be long before the pink handfish is rendered extinct from some Tokyo restaurant's ambitious all-fish hand soup menu. More details here.

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Ghost

So, CCTV footage from a parking lot at a Scottish hotel shows a strange object some say is a ghost. That's not so unusual. When confronted with anomalous images, the Scottish often jump directly to the ghost theory, since their land is teeming with malcontented spirits. You see, ghosts are often doomed to walk the earth after suffering a violent death, and 92% of the deaths in Scotland can be attributed to aggravated boredom. But I'm pretty sure this image isn't of a ghost. Watching the footage, you can clearly see rain falling. And if you've ever seen rain fall on a camera lens, you know that's exactly what this thing is. But click through to the source link and take a gander at the comments. Someone is defiantly proclaiming that this footage was not taken on a rainy night, despite the appearance of water droplets falling from the sky. You might think this is a case study in willful delusion, but you'd be wrong. Not many realize, but the Scottish government pays operatives to deny rain ever falls in the country, lest the rumor drive down tourism revenue and, consequently, undertaker profits. In other words, Scotland is a wet, dull mess. More details here.

Electronic Closet Opener

It may be a savvy advertising slogan, but there really is an iPhone app for just about everything. Whether you want to make surreptitious fart noises bellow from your pocket, play games with your greasy thumbs blocking the screen, or do things you'd do on a computer only at a fraction of the size and with twice the awkward fumbling, there's almost nothing you can't accomplish with Apple's amazing devices. Now, there's the Get Out GLBT app, which provides helpful resources for gay people who want to come out of the closet. No, it won't generate a hypnotic, sub-audible tone to lull your bigoted parents into a false sense of security. It's really just a glorified forum. Still, it's in your pocket at all times, which could come in handy. Or, if you've downloaded it to your iPad, it's in your lap. Which is really kind of a burden. More details here.

Driving Druid

The Austrian government has hired a gang of Druids to make their roadways safer using ancient magics. And they claim a pretty high rate of success. The druids were asked to restore the "terrestrial radiation" to sites that experienced a higher number of traffic accidents than normal. Supposedly, one such site showed a 100% decline in fatal accidents after the druids did their stuff. "We were really skeptical at first," said engineer Harald Dirnbacher, "and certainly didn't want people to know what we were doing, so we kept it a secret." I'm a little confused as to how one goes from skeptical to "okay, we'll hire a team of full-time druids, but we'll keep it on the down low". I suspect this had something to do with the Big Druid lobby. Always trying to muck up the system with their eldritch ways. It's because of them you can't browse the men's racks at Macy's without wading through a mountain of burlap robes. Fucking Druids... More details here.

Sarcasm Scanner

Researchers at Hebrew University (makers of some of the world's best hot dogs) claim to have created a computer algorithm that can identify sarcasm. This is good news for the millions of autism spectrum geeks who suffer on the internet from an immunity to nuance, as they'll finally be able to understand what everyone's actually talking about. Well, most of the time. The algorithm reportedly has a success rate in the 70% range. Let's just hope they don't feed this thing any of our cherished documents. No one wants to know that when Christ delivered the Sermon on the Mount, he was making the jackoff motion the whole time. More details here.

Gypsies, Trannies, Thieves

A Portland, Oregon female-to-male transsexual is claiming he was conned out of $150,000 worth of merchandise by a local psychic. The tranny thing wouldn't be an issue except that the psychic contends that her accuser is crazy, alternating between his male and female personas and trying to besmirch her good name. Drakar Druella says he was suffering a mid-life crisis and sought the psychic services of Cathy Stevens, a gypsy fortune teller. According to Druella, Stevens had him purchase a $22,000 Vatican "tabernacle" to cleanse him of negative energy, a $46,000 Hummer to take on spiritual retreats, and $38,000 in Rolex watches for, I'm guessing, telling time. Druella feels duped, though one wonders whether a saner person might have started suspecting foul play after the first $50,000 or so in frivolous charges. But Stevens claims Druella intended to go into business with her and that spending all that money was his idea. She also says the police have targeted her for being a gypsy, thereby violating her religious freedom. I don't know what's what here. Druella seems pretty unhinged, as he claims he was abused in Satanic rituals before the age of five. And Stevens seems like a con woman, since she claims to have psychic powers. The only thing I can say for certain is that this has all the makings of a hilarious third theatrical team-up for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. More details here.

New Forum

You may not realize, but this site has its own forum, which you can conveniently visit by clicking the "forum" link at the top of the page. What's there? Not much, really. That's where you come in. Feel free to drop by and register your useless opinion about any and all topics. Because if there's one thing the internet needs more of it's useless opinions. And returning visitors should take note of several cosmetic changes. More importantly, there have also been several back-end changes that should make the whole forum experience run a lot smoother. This is all thanks to the coding skills of Richard Peacock, whose years spent learning computer languages were well worth the trading of all human contact. Yes, Richard is the inspiration for the TV movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble". No, it wasn't any kind of illness that kept him in there.

FYI

The earth ate a whole family in Vancouver Quebec. Just so you know. More details here.

Laura Bush: Freedom Figh-- TOO LATE!

Appearing on a recent edition of "Larry King (Still A)live", former first lady and world record holder for longest time spent not blinking one's eyes (63 years and counting!) Laura Bush revealed that she's a-okay with gay marriage. Also, she's pro-choice and believes it's important that abortion remain legal for "medical reasons and other reasons". Too bad she was never in a position to effectively champion these causes while her husband, the former president of the United States of America, called for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. I understand that literacy was her issue of choice, but was she really that terrible at multitasking? I mean, she took a few minutes every year to show some asshat from the "Today" show around the White House Christmas decorations. She maybe could have mentioned that her husband and the entire political party to which he belonged was dead wrong on civil rights issues. But she probably didn't want to rock the boat. Too much rocking, and you might get a splash in the eyes, and then where would her non-blinking record go? More details here.

Closing the Book on Ethnics

Not content to have stolen the title of America's Most Backward State from Florida, Arizona has now outlawed ethnic studies classes from it public schools. To review, the state just passed a law requiring police to harass anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant, thereby turning every brown person within its borders into a suspected criminal. Now comes this new bill, which bans any curriculum "designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group", that advocates "the overthrow of the United States government", or that promotes "resentment toward a race or class of people". Two of these criteria I can sort of get behind. If you're going to offer an ethnic studies class, you should probably offer it to students of any race. And it's always a bad idea to push armed revolution to angry teenagers (though I'd also argue that civics classes reveal how deliciously easy it would be to orchestrate a presidential coup...). But the last one seems a step too far. It's impossible to learn anything about the history of North, South, or Central America without creating a resentment toward white Europeans whose first inclination upon spotting New World shores was to play Whack-a-Mole with the heads of the native children swimming to meet their ships. Plus, there was the whole smallpox blanket thing. And the gold thievery. But hey, that's all behind us. There's no reason to feel resentment toward today's white people. Unless you happen to be a brown Arizonan who doesn't like showing his ID to every passing cop. More details here.

Vamps Bite Back

An anonymous New Zealand man says he was attacked by vampires after waking up in a park after a night of drinking to find bite marks on his neck. You may think this is no big deal in New Zealand, a backward fantasy land crawling with mythical beasts such as orcs, goblins, and Radagast the Brown. But it's a widely accepted fact that vampires don't actually exist outside the sexual fantasies of confused pre-teen girls (also where horses exist). Regardless, it looks like this man was telling the truth. Two people have been arrested and charged with "wounding with intent to render a man unconscious". And at least one of them (pictured) has fessed up to the crime, explaining, "Yeah, I bit a guy ... He hit on my missus. My girlfriend and my mate were biting him. If I'd hit him, I'd have really hurt him, so I thought I'll bite him seeing as they're already biting him." Fair enough. More details here.

In My Country, Aliens Abduct YOU!

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, governor of the Russian republic of Kalmykia (also a former chess champion, but that's every Russian), told a radio station that in 1997, he was abducted from his Moscow apartment and taken aboard a spaceship, where aliens communicated with him telepathically. These types of claims aren't uncommon in a country where 70% of all groundwater has been replaced with vodka, but one Russian MP believes there should be a full-scale investigation. The worry is that because Ilyumzhinov is the governor of a Russian republic, he may have shared state secrets with the aliens. According to the MP, the governor should be personally interrogated by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. On the surface, this doesn't sound like an unreasonable request. Better safe than sorry, as they say. Well, in Russia the phrase literally translates as "better thrown out a window by the KGB than sorry", but the sentiment is the same. However, one wonders whether it matters much if aliens have the nuclear launch codes or governmental Facebook passwords or whatever when they have the power to suck people out of their apartment windows and take them on space rides. More details here.

Superweeds: Superweed-ay

For years, farmers have been spraying their fields with Roundup, the weed-killing miracle chemical that cut down on labor costs and also fed the sociopathic glee of the world's most hateful weedists. But it seems certain species of weed have adapted to the poison, creating a new breed of superweed that could DESTROY THE KNOWN UNIVERSE! Or, at least, raise the cost of food. These superweeds have to be plowed into submission or pulled by hand, adding a premium to the cost of farming. Plus, many farmers purchase genetically modified seeds for Roundup-proof crops. If Roundup stops working on weeds, then there's no reason to use it at all. Thus, there's no reason to purchase these GM seeds, putting mom and pop megacorporations like Monsanto in fiscal trouble. And I'm no scientist, but it doesn't seem like there's any reason why superweeds couldn't also adapt to hand pulling by developing limbs, nervous systems, and their own mechanized weapons. As Jeff Goldblum wisely said, life finds a way. More details here.

CELEBRATHON!

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Donate at least $10, and you'll receive an original piece of digital art depicting the savage evening when Brian Thompson, host of The Amateur Scientist Podcast, was sexually assaulted by Bigfoot, as recounted during our live show in Atlanta earlier this year.

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Abomination

You thought it was just typical conservative douchebaggery when so many elderly, closeted homosexual Republicans warned that legalizing gay marriage in the U.S. would bring an onslaught of man-on-animal unions. But who's laughing now? Last week, a German man married his dying cat Cecilia. And is gay marriage legal in Germany? You bet it is. Granted, Germans still haven't technically legalized human/beast marriage, but at the very least, this story is proof of concept for slippery slopers on the religious right. Because no minister worth his weight in incense would officiate at such an unholy ceremony, the man paid an actress $395 to pretend to marry him to his cat, which he claims to have been sleeping with for ten years. There's no telling whether he means "sleeping" in the colloquial sense, but I don't think anyone can share a bed with someone or something for a decade without experiencing a couple of nights of antsy fingers. Fortunately, the world was spared a prolonged mockery of real marriage when the cat subsequently died of feline asthma. So, happy ending. More details here.

President 2.0

Last month, Poland's president and several other government officials were killed in a plane crash. A special election is scheduled for June 20th to replace him, and it looks like voters will have a rare opportunity to repeat themselves, since the late president's twin brother is running for the office. Jaroslaw Kaczynski says he'll put aside his crippling grief to grab power via sympathy vote carry on his dead brother's legacy. And as much as I despise the very concept of twins, this doesn't seem like such a bad model for other countries to follow. It makes good political and fiscal sense to only elect identical twins to high office. If there's a spare, you don't have to worry about any dimwitted running mates (Biden, Quayle, Cher) having to step up to the plate with little to no preparation. Plus, you can afford to cut security in half, since it's only 50% as important to ensure the president's safety. And the electorate won't even be able to tell the difference. The new president and the old president will laugh alike, walk alike. At times, they'll even talk alike. The only danger, of course, is if genetic freakishness has imbued the twin with some sort of crippling weakness; say, for instance, a hot dog makes him lose control. You don't want a frankfurter to send your leader into a nuclear button-smashing rage. More details here.

WHAT IS THIS???

A commercial fisherman from Maine has harbored a dark secret in his garage for fifteen years. No, it's not a plastic bag full of neighborparts. It's a skull. BUT FROM WHAT??? It seems the skull was pulled from a depth of 300 fathoms beneath the sea, which may or may not be the optimal breeding depth for the Star God's arcane brood. His brother-in-law wanted to toss the infernal artifact back beneath the waves, but this fisherman opted to keep it, as he's a collector of strange things. STRANGE THINGS SUCH AS OCCULT CURSES??? Maybe. But it's likely the skull belonged to some sort of bottom-dwelling fish, as it has an opening on one side that suggests the presence of gills. But, the thing also has been leaking a strange brown liquid lo these past fifteen years, so who knows what it is? (Probably a fish.) More details here.