You Decide - The Art of the Prank

October 2, 2013December 15, 2023

“Pixie Dust” Regrows Finger

From Sarah:

Horse Jockey, Paul Halpern, Regrows Bitten-Off Finger With Help Of Powder Made From Pig Bladders by Anthony Rivas
MedicalDaily.com
September 17, 2013

lost-finger-200 Besides the initial pain, losing a finger may soon be a lot less distressing and debilitating, if one South Florida doctor has his way. That”s because he used a powder, known in the media as Magic Pixie Dust, to regrow one horse jockey”s digit “” both tissue and bone “” after it was bitten off by his horse while feeding.

“It”s a certain powder, a dust that you sprinkle on your finger every other day, you wrap it up, and long story short, it grew back “” the majority of it,” Paul Halpern, the New Jersey-based horse jockey, who spends some of his time in Florida, told NBC6. “I”m quite happy.”

The procedure is a form of xenotransplantation, more commonly known as cross-species transplantation, during which animal organs or tissue are transplanted into humans, and it’s non-surgical and painless. ACell, a producer of the MatriStem powder, says that it is made from tissue of pig bladders because the “protein scaffold” is “nearly identical to that of human tissue.” Continue reading ““Pixie Dust” Regrows Finger”

September 25, 2013December 15, 2023

East German Performance Enhancing Music Authenticity Questioned

From Marcy LaViollette: It wasn’t until I was telling someone else about this album created to inspire the Olympic athletes of East Germany that I began to doubt the validity of the back story. Great premise and great music!

Olympic-Sized Hoax? ‘Lost’ Krautrock Warm-Up Tapes Mysteriously Surface
by Philip Sherburne
Spin
June 10 2013

Does a new compilation provide the missing link between cosmic synth music and athletic doping?

a2392005402_200 As any runner can tell you, there’s a fine art to selecting the right music to keep you going, mile after mile. As a result, a whole mini-industry has sprung up to supply athletes with performance-enhancing playlists, from websites like Jog.FM and Rock My Run to Nike’s Original Run series of asphalt-friendly mixes from A-Trak, Cassius, and LCD Soundsystem. Yay, capitalism! But, as it turns out “” and is so often the case where sports are involved “” the Communists were way ahead of us. In the 1970s and early ’80s, the East German Olympic program employed the electronic composer Martin Zeichnete to create workout soundtracks for the GDR’s teams “” shimmering, motorik pulse-music that, in combination with a top-secret doping program, would aid the athletes in their goal to become the ultimate Menschen-Maschinen. Continue reading “East German Performance Enhancing Music Authenticity Questioned”

July 27, 2013December 15, 2023

Newsjacking Defined: Same Old Story, New Name

“Newsjacking” With a Dark Twist: When Hoaxes Infiltrate the News Cycle
by Mandy Nagy
LegalInsurrection.com
July 10, 2013

There is a term known as “newsjacking,” and it refers to the takeover of a news story or narrative and using it for other purposes. See the example in that link about when Oreo took over the power outage during the Super Bowl 2013, and you”ll understand exactly why such a term was ever coined. It”s typically seen as a positive term – the creative pairing of media savvy and perfect timing, resulting in a viral news success.

But there is a more sinister likeness to newsjacking that is increasingly employed today, especially given the advent of social media. And this is a version that comes with a dark twist.

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We see it in more primitive fashion when big stories break on social media: The trolls who post fake photos or fake reports of sharks swimming in the streets during a hurricane, or the Sandy Hook child who was (not) killed in the Boston Marathon bombing, or false reports of the NYSE being under three feet of water during Hurricane Sandy – the posts that trick mainstream media and leave them backtracking on their stories in the midst of the flurry.

And then there are those who craft their own narratives in a much more savvy way – some out of whole cloth, some mixed in with a little truth – and inject them into the news to achieve a particular gain, often a politically motivated one.

Read the rest of this article here.

February 18, 2013December 15, 2023

Sasquatch Genome Sequenced?

From Larry C.:

Bigfoot Is Real, And We Have DNA To Prove It: Researchers
by Lee Rannals
RedOrbit.com
February 14, 2013

sasquatchscience-200 We thought the first evidence would emerge from some backyard video footage, or a smartphone photo, but the real proof of the existence of Bigfoot actually lies in the DNA.

A team of scientists has published the results of a five-year study of DNA samples from Sasquatch in the journal DeNovo Journal of Science.

Researchers claim they have sequenced three whole Bigfoot nuclear genomes, helping to prove that the legendary creature exists in North America, and is a human relative that arose 13,000 years ago.

The scientists hypothesize that the Bigfoot creature is a hybrid cross of modern Homo sapiens, with a novel primate species, giving it the species name Homo sapiens cognatus. Continue reading “Sasquatch Genome Sequenced?”

January 16, 2013December 15, 2023

Heartbreak Hoax?

Notre Dame Football Star Manti Te’o Says Dead Girlfriend Was Hoax
ABC World News
by Colleen Curry and Dan Harris
January 16, 2013

The star of Notre Dame’s championship football team said the widely-reported death of his girlfriend from leukemia during the 2012 football season was apparently a hoax, and said he was duped by it as well.

Manti Te’o, who led the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship game this year and finished second for the Heisman Trophy, said in a statement today that he fell in love with a girl online last year who turned out not to be real.

He said during the season that his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died of leukemia in September on the same day Te’o’s grandmother died, triggering an outpouring of support for Te’o at Notre Dame and in the media.

“While my grandma passed away and you take, you know, the love of my life [Kekua]. The last thing she said to me was, ‘I love you,'” Te’o said at the time, noting that he had talked to Kekua on the phone and by text message until her death. Continue reading “Heartbreak Hoax?”