Mud horse versus Grass Mud Horse

We start with the "mud horse," which I encountered in a Neatorama post.  It's a sled-like device used by fishermen to transport collection baskets and supplies to their nets staked at the low-tide limits.   The flat bottom distributes the weight, allowing for more efficient movement than carrying materials on one's back.   Such devices have apparently been used since time immemorial on the tidal flats of the English coast.

The top photo shows a mud horse (with basket and nets) from an exhibit at the British Museum.  Below that is Adrian Sellick, reposted by the Telegraph to be the last mudhorse fisherman in England -

Mr Sellick, a father-of-four, fears the mud-horse method will be lost forever when he finally gives up as there is currently no one interested in learning the trade...

'It is difficult work, you lie on your belly on it and push with your feet across the beach, but you sort of pick up techniques from watching.  I don't believe you could do it unless it was in your blood, I am the fifth generation of my family to use the mud-horse and I could never give it up.'' 

A large photoset showing Mr. Sellick at work is posted at grovelinda's Flickr photostream.

While researching that topic, I kept encountering unrelated material about a "grass-mud horse," such as this YouTube video (subtitles NSFW)(content repeats after 0:53):

This rather bizarre entity is explained at China Digital Times, first with these lyrics:

There is a herd of Grass Mud Horses*
In the wild and beautiful Ma Le Desert**
They are lively and intelligent
they are fun-loving and nimble
They live freely in the Ma Le Desert
They are courageous, tenacious, and overcome the difficult environment

Oh lying down Grass Mud Horse
Oh running wild Grass Mud Horse
They defeated river crabs*** in order to protect their grass land
River crabs forever disappeared from Ma Le Desert

and these footnotes:

* Grass Mud Horse (草泥马) is phonetically equivalent to “F**k Your Mother!” in Chinese
** Ma Le Desert (马勒戈壁) is phonetically equivalent to “Your Mother’s C**t”
*** “River Crab (河蟹) ” is phonetically equivalent to “harmony (和谐).” Chinese netizens say their deleted posts have been “harmonized,” or “eaten by the river crab.” So “river crab” became a code name for internet censors. 

So the song and the videos and the phrase "Grass-mud horse" are vehicles used to protest internet censorship in the P.R.C.

“Grass Mud Horse (草泥马)” is not an uncivilized word and is not officially banned, therefore it can be sung publicly. Although many people use “Grass Mud horse” as an alternative curse or just use it randomly, this word and its deviant expression already generated a pattern of discourse and sub-culture. “Grass Mud Horse (草泥马)” represents such information and opinions which cannot be accepted by the mainstream discourse, and “the Song of the Grass Mud Horse” has become a metaphor of the power struggle over Internet expression.

This alpaca-like animal appears to be the representation of a grass mud horse:

and this CNN video from last year summarizes the entire meme:

I expect TYWKIWDBI will now be banned in China...

Albino redwood trees

I didn't know they existed, until I read a story at NPR...

Park rangers in the Northern California Redwood Forest are protecting a decades-old secret. Actually, eight of them: Albino redwood trees...

Kuty points to a white bush. It's about six feet tall and it's sprouted from the base of a normal redwood tree.

Mr. KUTY It's not particularly tall. It's not particularly big. And so it could look dead.

STANDEN: Until you get up close. Albino redwood trees lack chlorophyll. Their needles are limp and waxy. They're the exact color of a glow-in-the-dark star you might find in a kid's bedroom. And while no one really knows for sure, albino redwood trees may be extremely rare.

Mr. KUTY How rare? Some people say there's 25 in the world.

STANDEN: And yet, eight of them live here. This park has the largest known concentration of albino redwoods anywhere, and that makes it the epicenter for a scientific mystery...

Without chlorophyll, they can't photosynthesize, meaning they can't convert sunlight into energy. The only reason that albino redwoods survive at all is that they are connected at the root to a parent tree from which they will suck energy for their entire lives...

Via Kottke (whence the photo).

On a bicycle built for two

Charles B. Tripp the armless man and Eli Bowen the legless man. Both men traveled with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circuses. 

Via Black and WTF.

Icelandic "Necropants" explained

If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have to get permission from a living man to use his skin after he's dead.

Nábrókarstafur
After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into the pants they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign, nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation the owner has to convince someone else to overtake the pants and step into each leg as soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the money-gathering nature for generations.

I suppose it's reassuring to note that sorcerers in Icelandic folklore got informed consent before flaying a dead person's corpse.  But I think I see a trick in the guarantee: the scrotum will never be empty as long as the original coin is not removed.  Well, duh (perhaps some subtlety has been lost in translation). 

Text from the website of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, via Got Medieval. Photo via Flickr user HelenPaisson of a latex reproduction housed in the aforementioned museum.

U.S. nukes reportedly compromised by aliens

Aliens from outer space, to be more precise.  I first saw the story at Reuters last week, in a piece dated September 15:

Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby.  Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality.

One of them, ICBM launch officer Captain Robert Salas, was on duty during one missile disruption incident at  Malmstrom Air Force Base and was ordered to never discuss it. Another participant, retired Col. Charles Halt, observed a disc-shaped object directing beams of light down into the RAF Bentwaters airbase in England and heard on the radio that they landed in the nuclear weapons storage area. Both men will provide stunning details about these events, and reveal how the U.S. military responded. 

More at the link.  I didn't know what to think of it.  Today the story was picked up by the Telegraph - re British nuclear weapons sites:

Col Charles Halt said he saw a UFO at the former military base RAF Bentwaters, near Ipswich, 30 years ago, during which he saw beams of light fired into the base then heard on the military radio that aliens had landed inside the nuclear storage area.

He said: "I believe that the security services of both the United States and the United Kingdom have attempted - both then and now - to subvert the significance of what occurred at RAF Bentwaters by the use of well-practised methods of disinformation." 

The testimony was supposed to take place today.  I'll defer any commentary, except to say I'd be delighted if it's true.

Not your average beauty contest (1956)

See if you can guess what's going on before viewing the answer in Endless Forms Most Beautiful's Flickr photostream.

Illustrations from an old safety manual

Credit to CreativePro (which has more cartoon panels), via Metafilter.

Edwardian-era Batman

A "found image" posted at I Like Riddles.  (Looks a bit like Hugh Laurie).

Killed by a circus clown

A newspaper blurb from 1854. At first I assumed this was reporting the death of a small child. Then I noticed that the deceased was 13 years old.

Original source: California Biographical Collection Burial Records, via Ye Olde News.

This is a giant tricycle. Obviously.

Photo via Black and WTF, via Sloth Unleashed, which appended the following backstory:

This giant tricycle was a promotional stunt, publicizing “VIM” tires made by the Boston Woven Hose and Rubber Company. In 1895 ten men rode it 37 miles from Nashua to Concord, New Hampshire, to take part in the Merchant’s Week Bicycle Parade; not that it was strictly speaking a bicycle.

The wheels were 11.5 ft in diameter and it weighed 1900 pounds, presumably including the crew. Apparently it terrified all the horses it met, and an advance party was required to throw blankets over the heads of said horses to stop them bolting.

"Thelma soon regretted wearing the zebra print dress..."

(Hat tip to Brap Gronk re the title). 

Image credit to Albert's EYE, via Uncertain Times.

"Feederism" is a sexual fetish

Many of you probably saw this past week a story about a 600-pound woman who wants to increase her weight to 1000 pounds.  The tabloids suggested that she was "trying to set a world record" and that she did garner some financial support from men who pay to watch her eat.  Salon explains that it's more complicated than that:

The site... shows her posing naked, in lingerie, wearing handcuffs and rubbing folds of her flesh against another obese woman. Men don't just "pay to watch her eat," they pay to get off.  Her site is but a small part of a thriving online community for fat fetishists...

Then, there are sites that cater to feederists, who like to watch super-sized women eat, sometimes to the point of painful fullness. Often times, there is a male "feeder" who gives a female "feedee" fatty junk foods.

Feeders get off on the idea that their feedee might one day become too 'satisfied' -- and too obese -- to move, thus making them completely dependent on their feeder. It's an extreme manifestation of the idea that masculinity in men involves eroticized dominance over women...

There's more discussion and explanation at Salon.

"More bars than grocery stores"

The top map was reportedly generated by searching the Google Maps directory for the terms "bar" and "grocery store," and the bottom one by the normalized (?) number of mentions of "bars" in Google Maps.

I would have some doubts re the validity of the data, especially re the regional variation in terminology (bar vs. pub vs. nightclub vs. whatever) and possible influences of licensing laws, but the concentration in Wisconsin certainly does reflect the state's reputation.

Credit to Floating Sheep, via Consumerist.

How to survive being buried alive

I remember thinking this over on my own and coming up with basically the same solution (as I remember, those musings occurred after watching Uma Thurman in Kill Bill).  I hadn't thought of the shirt maneuver (and I'm not sure even now that I would waste my time doing that). 

Full details at Worst Case Scenario.

p.s. - I think I'll append this old joke (because it's not worth a separate post):

What do you want people to say about you after you're dead?
"I want them to say he was a good person who loved his family."
"I want them to say he will be remembered as a valuable member of the community."
"I want them to say - Look! He's moving!!!"

Edible googly eyes!

Made of trimmed medication-type gelatin capsules enclosing giant round sprinkles.  Step-by-step instructions at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, including how to incorporate them into a flying spaghetti monster. 

Via Neatorama.

Sperm longer than their bodies

Biologists at Ludwig Maximilians University were surprised to discover that male seed shrimp have been creating sperm lengthier than their own bodies for at least 100 million years. “We would expect the development of these strange things,” said the team leader, “to stop at a certain point.”

Found in Harper's Magazine Findings.

An excerpt from Pervye na Lune (2005)

Strange.  For an explanation, see IMDb, Wiki, and The Accidental Russophile.

Was the frozen head of Ted Williams abused?

This story circulated this past October, via ESPN and the Milwaukee Examiner - allegations that the cryogenically frozen head of legendary baseball superstar Ted Williams was mistreated by employees at the cryogenics facility:

Larry Johnson says in the book "Frozen: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death" that he watched an Alcor official swing a monkey wrench at Williams' frozen severed head to try to remove a tuna can stuck to it. The first swing accidentally struck the head, Johnson contends, and the second knocked the tuna can loose.

Stephen Colbert commented on the topic at the time (begin at the 1:35 mark if you want to skip the Glenn Beck diatribe).  I have heard nothing since then. Since the allegations were made as publicity for a book one can be forgiven for being cautious, but on the other hand I consider cryogenics for human bodies to be pseudoscience, so such shenanigans wouldn't surprise me.

Addendum: Found something this week in the Phoenix New Times indicating that Williams wanted to be cremated rather than frozen:

"It is my wish that no funeral or memorial service of any kind be held and that my remains be cremated as soon as possible after my death. I want you to see that my ashes are sprinkled at sea off the coast of Florida where the water is very deep," the letter, penned by "The Kid" himself, says.

But no update re the abuse allegations.  Moving on to other things...

A real-life Ouroboros

The photo above shows a king snake that reportedly took its own tail into its mouth and couldn't egest it because the snakes teeth are pointed caudad to prevent prey from escaping. I was skeptical that perhaps this was a sham contrived episode, but it appears to have been real. The incident has has been posted on a variety of news sites and blogs, but curiously I haven't yet seen anyone note that this corresponds precisely with the mythical Ouroboros.

This photo credit to Picture Partnership, via the Telegraph.

Wallachian parking lot?

Had this been created by Vlad Tepes, the spindle would have entered the tailpipe. This was actually "The Spindle," an iconic sculpture in Berwyn for twenty years. It was eventually demolished after an eBay auction failed to provide any bidders.

Car enthusiasts are invited to identify the makes/models/years of the 8 cars.

Photo credit johnmartine63.