Apparently this picture (click to enlarge) has been circulating around for quite a while (over three years), but I've just seen it. It shows a happy group portrait of twenty-two brothers and sisters posing for the camera while on a family holiday, but the grinning kid whose face is circled is none other than Osama bin Laden. This picture appeared in the Sun with the caption:

the 14-year-old is Osama bin Laden - and within a few years the grinning schoolboy was on his way to becoming the world's most cold-hearted mass murderer. The bin Laden children lined up next to a pink Chrysler Imperial for this snapshot on a trip to Falun, Sweden, in 1971. The holiday was paid for by their father Mohammed, a billionaire building tycoon. Osama inherited a fortune when his dad died soon afterwards - and used it to build a worldwide network of terror.

Is it just me, or does young Osama look a tiny bit like Bill Gates? Also, I had no idea he was only 47-years-old. He looks like he's nearing 60. (

Here's a Story that I would have thought for sure was an April Fool's Day hoax, except that it's not April Fools. It involves four female penguins being brought from Sweden to the Bremerhaven Zoo in Germany in order to test whether the male penguins there are gay or straight. Apparently the males seem a little confused about their sexuality: "The males have been observed trying to mate with each other and trying to hatch offspring out of stones." So the zoo will add the females and see what happens. But reportedly gay activists are outraged by this, arguing that "penguins had a right to form couples without human interference." A recent article reports that after a month the 'Swedish temptresses' have failed to turn the heads of the males. But are gay activists seriously protesting this, or are the protests tongue-in-cheek? Not being able to read the German sources, I'm not sure. If the Bremerhaven penguins really do turn out to be gay, then perhaps they can run for the president .

This is the exciting news about life on Mars that the media reprted on Feb' 16 :

A pair of NASA scientists told a group of space officials at a private meeting here that they have found strong evidence that life may exist today on Mars, hidden away in caves and sustained by pockets of water. The scientists, Carol Stoker and Larry Lemke of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, told the group that they have submitted their findings to the journal Nature for publication in May, and their paper currently is being peer reviewed.

This is how NASA responded to the news two days later:

NASA Statement on False Claim of Evidence of Life on Mars
News reports on February 16, 2005, that NASA scientists from Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have found strong evidence that life may exist on Mars are incorrect. NASA does not have any observational data from any current Mars missions that supports this claim. The work by the scientists mentioned in the reports cannot be used to directly infer anything about life on Mars, but may help formulate the strategy for how to search for martian life. Their research concerns extreme environments on Earth as analogs of possible environments on Mars. No research paper has been submitted by them to any scientific journal asserting martian life.

Pity. Though, of course, it's probably all just a .

Here's a fun account of a prank involving an attempt to brin a touch of class to New York City McDonalds:

The idea was to deck out a fast food joint with all the trappings of a five star restaurant. There would be a Maitre D’ standing behind a podium asking for your reservation, a hostess to seat you, a waiter to take your order, and an attendant in the bathroom. The obvious problem with this idea is that it would very likely be shut down as soon as it begins. I decided to focus on the bathroom attendant aspect, figuring that we could last much longer in a secluded men’s room.

My favorite part is how incredibly excited the group of British kids on a school trip were to find an attendant in the bathroom: "They've got a butler in the bathroom and he gave us sweets!" Also check out the video of the interaction with the store manager (about 3/4 of the way down the page).

A sensational archaeological hoax has been exposed in Germany. It's been revealed that Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten, a professor at a University in Frankfurt, has been systematically lying about the ages of skulls he found, claiming that they were far older than they actually were. In one instance he said that a skull was 21,300-years-old, although it was only 1300-years-old. As The Gaurdian reprts:

"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."

Apparently Prof. Protsch began his career as a forger when he returned from studying in America decades ago and discovered that he was unable to work a carbon-dating machine. So he just started making up the ages of things.

Iron Hymen is obviously a spoof, but it's still funny. It pretends to be the homepage of the "Abstinence-Only Education Program... produced by the US Dept. of Health & Human Services and the White House Office of Youth Purity." It offers the First Lady's list of 'Ten Things Every Girl Should Know About Boys And Their Vile Private Parts', as well as testimonials such as this one: "thanks to Iron Hymen, my baby cave is better guarded than a maximum security prison". It seems to be a spin-off of the WhiteHouse.org parody site. Probably not safe for work because of the general subject matter.

A new shock site called forsake our troops is doing the rounds. It purports to be the homepage of an organization "dedicated to the notion that our nation's military is grossly overcompensated, at the expense of the American taxpayers." In actuality, it's just an attempt to be outrageous. Apparently it was created by a White Power activist called Michael Crook (according to the true or better blog). Crook seems to have a history of doing things like this. Last year he created a fake group called Citizens Against the Troops. Seems like a charming fellow. Of course, this character could insist that he sincerely believes everything he's saying. But I would contend that he only sincerely wants to be obnoxious.
Update: This is the same Michael Crooks who once claimed to find a soldier's digital camera at a football game and told the media that he would return it for a 'finder's fee' of $1000.

page [1][2][3]