Weird News Thread

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Here is a thread to post any news clips you find odd, weird or otherwise unusual. Most on-line news services have their own odd news category.

Wasps Could Replace Bomb, Drug Dogs (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051203/ap_on_sc/bomb_sniffing_wasps)


Enter the Wasp Hound — a 10-inch-long plastic cylinder made of PVC pipe with a hole in one end and a small fan on the other. Inside is a Web camera that connects to a laptop computer for monitoring the behavior of five wasps housed in a transparent, ventilated capsule.

When the wasps detect a target odor, they converge around the vent, creating a mass of dark pixels on the computer screen. Otherwise, they just hang out inside the capsule.

They can work for as long as 48 hours, then they're released to live out their remainder of their two-to three-week life span.

Ok. Verging on the weird biotech future. Sounds like a great idea to me. Who woulda thought the insect world could be harnessed in such a way, or even just wasps.

I suppose if a wasp were captive for 48 hours of their 2-3 week lifespan it might be like enslaving a creature for 1/16 of its life. This practice doesn't seem bad though and I buy cage-free eggs.

I wonder if PETA or some other group will come out with a SAVE TEH WASPS movement.

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Mysterious sweet smell returns to Manhattan, without explanation (http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-smel1209,0,5226916.story?coll=nyc-moreny-headlines)


Call it molasses- or maple syrup-like, the mysterious fragrance that confounded the noses of perhaps thousands of New Yorkers seven weeks ago returned to several spots in Manhattan Thursday.

Once again, no one knew what it was.

"Sweet," said Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the city department of environmental protection, which received a handful of calls Thursday afternoon from lower Manhattan to midtown. He added: "We keep sheets here for phone calls that we get and it's just, 'sweet, sweet, sweet.'"

:?:

[Showal]

Originally posted by Backlash
and I buy cage-free eggs.


haha i got a good chuckle out of that.

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I was driving to school the other day, and there was a big roadblock down the road. It was very snowy, so I wasn't surprised.

Finally I reach what's causing the roadblock.

Somehow an ambulance had managed to crash.

On a tree.

In the branches.

15 feet above the ground.

The ambulance was literally being cradled by this tree.

I still dunno how it happened. The weird thing is is that nobody seemed as amazed as I was. Like they see shit like that every day.