Today’s Historical Note

On this day in 1513, the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. This is the first recorded instance of what has come to be called "Spring Break" or "The Fountain of Youths."

Penguin Airstrikes!

The Telegraph reports that a colony of flying penguins has been spotted, confirming Darwin's theory of evolution. Or disproving it. Or something.

Camera crews discovered a colony of Adélie penguins while filming on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands.

The programme is being presented by ex-Monty Python star Terry Jones, who said: "We'd been watching the penguins and filming them for days, without a hint of what was to come.

"But then the weather took a turn for the worse. It was quite amazing. Rather than getting together in a huddle to protect themselves from the cold, they did something quite unexpected, that no other penguins can do."

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are happy to report that we have discovered a colony of car-sized rats which we have dispatched to King George Island to eat the flying penguins. One has to keep nature in balance, after all. Flying penguins would give the seagulls an inferiority complex.  

The Naked Launch

A German author is set to launch his latest book - with a nude reading.

A book about naturism in East Germany is to spice up its publicity tour – with a naked book reading.

East Germans became famous for "Freikoerperkultur" (FKK) before the fall of the Berlin Wall, happily stripping off at summer nudist camps.

Now author Thomas Kupfermann has written a book about the subject, compiling snapshots and memories from leading lights in the naturist movement.

The sold-out reading today at a bookshop in north-eastern Germany will apparently be shrouded in heavy curtains to prevent over-curious onlookers ogling the audience. 

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard would never stoop to such naked opportunism. The upholstery on the office chair is much too scratchy. Not that we've checked. Honest.

Who’s Running The Asylum?

Why, the Johnson county (Iowa) board of supervisors, of course. The board voted to allow self-proclaimed ghost hunters access to a former insane asylum located in that county. Mind you, there have never been any ghosts reported there.

Brandon Cochran, museum operations assistant for the historical society, said there have never been reports of ghosts or bizarre happenings at the building and that bringing in a paranormal team is "kind of taking the pre-emptive approach.

He wants an Iowa-based paranormal investigative team to come in for one night. Cochran said he hopes they don't find any paranormal activity and the investigation can put to rest any speculation.

A four-person Carroll Area Paranormal Team will use thermal imaging equipment and voice recording systems, Cochran said.

The mind boggles. In other odd news, a Farmer in Australia is wondering who threw the suspected bits of spacecraft onto his property:

CANBERRA (Reuters) - A cattle farmer in Australia's remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites.
 
Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.

Rumor has it that the Johnson county board of supervisors is sending a team of UFO investigators. Meanwhile, signs of giant sharks have been found in the St. Clair River in Michigan:

"It's a shark tooth," Craig Wentz said. "It's petrified. It's rock."

Michigan State University paleontologist Michael Gottfried said the 3-inch long tooth comes from an extinct species called Carcharodon megalodon, or the "megatooth" shark. The megalodon, which went extinct 2 million years ago, reached lengths of more than 60 feet.

By comparison, Great White sharks generally are about 20 feet long.

Rumors that the Johnson county board of supervisors is sending shark hunters to investigate are not true. They are actually sending the ghost hunters to locate Chief Brody and Quint so they can ask them to look into the matter.

Gimme Some More Of That Snake Oil, Pardner

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has taken a rather dim view of the entrepreneurial adventure of a Texas rattlesnake rancher. It seems his "ancient Asian elixir" - a rattlesnake in a bottle of cheap vodka - has drawn their attention - and the rancher's arrest.

SANTO, Texas - A rattlesnake rancher who calls himself Bayou Bob found a new way to make money: Stick a rattler inside a bottle of vodka and market the concoction as an "ancient Asian elixir." But Bayou Bob Popplewell's bright idea appears to have landed him on the wrong side of the law, because he has no liquor license.
 
Popplewell, who has raised rattlesnakes and turtles at Bayou Bob's Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch for more than two decades, surrendered to authorities Monday. He spent about 10 minutes in jail after the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission obtained arrest warrants on misdemeanor charges of selling alcohol without a license and possessing alcohol with intent to sell.

Personally, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard prefer our vodka be snake-free. However, our enterprising side also sees a business opportunity. After all, the natural remedy market - formerly known as 'voodooism' - is growing rapidly. So we have begun researching several all-natural products that we might be willing to invest in. We've rejected Baby Seal Oil and Snail Darter Syrup, however. We are very interested in the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Tonic, though.

Thank Heaven For Experts

Rumor has it that this man will shortly be the newest spokesman for the IPCC, explaining why the predictions from climate models are not actually matching the real world observed results.

No really.

Not A Peep Out Of You!

The Washington Post ran its second annual peep show this year. No, nothing off color. It is a contest for people to create art with marshmallow peeps.

A bounty of mallow rained down on us this Lenten season. The Peeps came not like locusts but like meteors of great ambition and, yes, some arts-and-crafts psychosis. More than 800 entries choked the Sunday Source's inbox for the second annual Peeps Diorama Contest. Our cup runneth over. Thank you.

There was the usual — several "Give Peeps a Chance" and "Village Peeple" dioramas, as well as a bunch encouraging Peeple to vote (well-meaning, yes, but we're tired of the campaigns) — but most were either clever or sensational, or some twisted combination of both.

They have an amusing slideshow of some of the entries. There are a few clunkers in there, but on average, they are very funny. There are some very clever and talented peeple out there. Ones with entirely too much time on their hands. Something light and amusing to start out with on Easter Sunday. Enjoy.

Getting Bagged

One Irish pub in New Jersey has a curious custom. For the past 24 years they have held a post-Saint Patrick's Day party known as "Bag Day." Revelers at The Irish Pub must attend the celebration wearing a paper bag as a hat.

 ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - Paul Murphy came all the way from Glasgow, Scotland, to stand against the back wall of The Irish Pub with a pint in his hand and a paper bag on his head.
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He did not stand out in the least at the bar, which was packed Tuesday afternoon with people wearing brightly decorated paper bags atop their heads, for this was Bag Day, the second-greatest day of the year at The Irish Pub.

Each March 18, the day after St. Patrick's Day, people come from far and near to jam the joint, most wearing some sort of bag fashioned into a hat atop their head. The tradition dates back 24 years to a group of exhausted waitresses and casino workers who realized they had worked through the entire night and missed St. Paddy's Day.

"We said, 'We didn't have too much fun on St. Patrick's Day; let's start our own holiday,'" said Cathy Burke, who owns the pub. "The bartender had just brought out a pile of bags that they use behind the bar, and we put some on our heads and said, 'We declare today Bag Day, the official holiday of The Irish Pub and anyone who has to work on St. Patrick's Day.'".

Well, you've heard of getting bagged before. This seems logical. After the wearin' o' the green comes the wearin' o' the bag. Of course, after two days of non-stop partying, many people will experience the unheralded third event: the usin' o' the bag. 

Interstellar Opportunity

Here's your chance to own your very own split-level flying saucer! An unusual flying saucer shaped home is up for auction in Tennessee. Built in 1970, the odd structure stands on six "landing legs" and sports a curved custom bar.

The home "landed" on a twisting road leading to Chattanooga's Signal Mountain in 1970 — just after television executives grounded the run of the original "Star Trek" series. It will be sold to the highest bidder Saturday.

The circular house — ultramodern when it was built — is ringed with small square windows and directional lights and perched on six "landing gear" legs. It has multiple levels, three bedrooms, two baths and an entrance staircase that retracts with the push of a button.

Terry Posey, an agent with Crye-Leike Auctions of Cleveland, Tennessee, said the current owner has had the property only four months and didn't want to comment. Posey posted an e-Bay ad and said he already has a $100,000 bid.

John Kleeman of Litchfield, Connecticut, an attorney and space culture enthusiast, said he knows of variations of the flying saucer design in Florida, Connecticut and California.

I'm familiar with what is known as the "Mushroom House" in the Rochester, New York area (the current owners apparently dislike that label, preferring "Pod House.") The man who used to farm the land around our house in Illinois lived in a round house - it was not saucer-shaped, just round. One word of caution on this style of home, however. These are not recommended for families with small children.

You can't make a kid stand in a corner in one of them. 

Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

Or Rubber Ducky, You're The One. One shudders to think of the offspring that might result from this mating. It just isn't natural, a frog with a crush on a plastic duck ….

Caught in the slimy embrace of an over-excited and mightily confused frog, this plastic duck looks as though it's desperate to escape.

The frog's misguided sexual antics were photographed by Mike Coleman, 49, in his garden pond.

The father-of-two, of Hexham, Northumberland, said: “I just happened to look out to the garden pond and I saw the yellow duck bobbing about on the surface.

“I thought, 'Whatever is going on there?'

"I went to have a look and it was clear the frog had gone a bit barmy and was trying to mate with the duck.

"I managed to get a photo while it was still clamped onto the duck."

Yes you did, capturing the romantic amphibian and his very surprised looking consort in mid-embrace. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. These interspecies - or interspecies and hydrocarbon construct - matters are delicate. Is society ready for amphibian-plastic hybrids?

Oh, wait. There is Michael Jackson, isn't there? Carry on. 

An Irish Variant On The Stairway-Free Zone

Being a guitar player, I have visited many guitar stores through the years. Once I even made a longish side trip on a drive to Florida to stop at Gruhn Guitars in Nashville. I'm still alive, a testament to my wife's patience. In a fair number of those stores, there is (or was) a sign declaring the store to be a Stairway to Heaven free zone. Why? Because after hearing thousands of budding rock stars fumble through the opening to that tune, most guitar store employees had heard it butchered enough. Well, there is an Irish variant of that. One bar in the US is declaring a Danny Boy free zone for St. Patrick's Day. 

"It's overplayed, it's been ranked among the 25 most depressing songs of all time, and it's more appropriate for a funeral than for a St. Patrick's Day celebration," says Shaun Clancy, who owns Foley's Pub and Restaurant, just off Fifth Avenue opposite the Empire State Building.

The 38-year-old, who started bartending when he was 12 at his father's pub in County Cavan, promises a guest free Guinness if he or she sings any other traditional Irish song at the pub's March 11 pre-St. Patrick's Day karaoke party. On other nights, guests will be rewarded with a surprise.Not everyone agrees.
Foley's is going head to head with a pub near Detroit — AJ's Cafe in Ferndale, Mich. — which is staging a "Danny Boy" marathon on St. Patrick's Day weekend, offering 1,000 renditions of the song over 50 hours.

Funniest thing about Danny Boy? It was written by an Englishman who never visited Ireland at all.

The lyrics for the song published in 1913 were written by an English lawyer, Frederick Edward Weatherly, who never even visited Ireland, according to Malachy McCourt, author of the book "Danny Boy: The Legend of the Beloved Irish Ballad." Weatherly's sister-in-law had sent him the music to an old Irish song called "The Derry Air" and the new version became a huge hit when opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink recorded it in 1915.

Well, we'd like to propose a substitute song. While it may not be any better or more uplifting than Danny Boy, it has a certain demented charm. Heck, what could be more fitting on St. Patrick's Day than Another Irish Drinking Song?

Paranoia Strikes Deep….

…into your life it will creep. The Daily Mail reports on a, shall we say, breathess report from the New Scientist (which could better be described as the Old Conspiracy Theorist, but we digress).

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction - beetles, rats and sharks turned into cunning spies courtesy of a brain implant or two.

But such scenarios are fast moving from fantasy to fact, with laboratories around the world hatching a new breed of spy.

Moths, beetles, rats, pigeons and sharks have been installed with electrodes, batteries and even video cameras in an attempt to create the ultimate spook.

This week's New Scientist reports: "The next time a moth lands on your window sill, watch what you say.

"It may look like an innocent visitor, irresistibly drawn to the light in your room, but it could actually be a spy - one of a new generation of cyborg insects with implants wired into their nerves to allow remote control of their movement.

"Be warned, flesh-and-blood bugs may soon live up to their name."

And less than half a century ago they were promising hovercars. Damn them. The man keeping us down all over again, man. As usual, the New Scientist has it all wrong. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have had this technology for ages.

The Mystery Of The Three Right Feet

Authorities in Canada are more than a bit concerned after the third shoe dropped, so to speak. A third severed human foot - size 12 and wearing an athletic shoe, just like the first two - has washed up on a beach in Western Canada. 

A severed right foot has been found on a beach in western Canada - the third such find in the last six months.

The latest foot, still wearing a trainer, was washed up on Valdes Island, a tiny, isolated community in British Columbia, earlier this month, the Victoria Times Colonist reports.

Local police are calling it one of the most bizarre cases in recent memory, but are unclear whether any foul play is involved.

What's oddest about this is that feet don't normally float once detached from the rest of its previous owner. Well, the case is at least 1/3 solved, at any rate. After all, three rights make a left. 

Aliens Bombard Portland

This time it was caught on tape. CNN is dutifully reporting that it was just a meteor. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard know better, of course. We also know what the outcome will be for folks in that area, don't we?

(Photo by Joel Friesen) 

Science For The Masses

From the Telegraph comes this report on amazingly obvious science. That is to say, science that is so obvious that it should be a crime that research money was diverted to fund the studies.

If you give kids more toys they'll play more

Scientists have recently hit upon an extraordinary method for cutting levels of childhood obesity: give kids toys that make them run about.

The US study concluded that supplying infants in childcare centres with balls, skipping ropes and hula hoops can encourage them to exercise more at playtime. Surely this must have crossed someone's mind before?

The researchers from the University of North Carolina went one step further, however, surmising that the best toys for getting children to run around are non-stationary ones. Whilst climbing frames can help 'motor skills', they don't incite children to charge around with gay abandon as much.

Surely the main conclusion from this study is that some childcare centres need to be given a good kick up the backside for not giving their children the opportunity to goof around with a tennis ball.

These days even zoo animals are given toys to play with so that they remain fit and healthy. And since you can't expect a four-year-old to take themselves off on a five mile jog any more than you can a mongoose, surely the provision of toys is a bit of a no-brainer.

The stories in the article are from the website Null Hypothesis, the Journal of Unlikely Science where you can learn about even more insane wastes of money, read spoofs of science and discover the top ten most deadly vegetables. None of which are Brussels  sprouts, however. It's a fun site.