Archive for the 'World of Weird' Category
January 17th, 2008 by OddO
Ever wonder what the world really looks like through someone else’s eyes? Representations of the planet have changed with the times as have the people who made them. These are just a few strange, innovative and/or humorous examples past, present and future.
Cartograms such as those above are a way to represent statistical information in visual form, expanding and contracting areas of a typical map to show various kinds of information and a readily understandable format. Above are a map of the world showing resource distribution and a map of American political affiliations. For more technology empowered mapping, see the US’s evolving obesity over time and energy production potential as well as this map of world economic activity.
Ever have trouble finding a date? Well, this map may be for you! National Geographic did a survey and mapped the relative proportions of female and male singles throughout the United States. The result: a relative abundance of men on the West Coast and women on the East Coast, so choose accordingly! Maybe West Coast should spend less time looking at maps of the Star Wars and Star Trek universes and pick up some maps that made history.
Ever wonder what the world looked like 500 years ago? It used to be that high-resolution world maps like the one above were kept (at best) in glass cases in museums or (at worse) were secreted away in vaults. Now antique maps
are readily available to the world via sites like Wikipedia and are changing the way (and resolution) in which we look at the past.
Ever write or draw maps or directions on your hand? Believe it or not this is nothing new. These gloves were created for the 1850 Great Exhibition in London and enabled visitors to easily find their way. Imagine the possibilities of this in the digital age: an ever-shifting GPS-based glove map that changes orientation and location with the wearer!
There have been many attempts to ‘map the internet‘ in various forms and with differing degrees of success. Some of these are more convincing than others, such as the first series above that depicts information transfer overlaid on a world map. Some simply make points about the relationships of key internet players in a familiar way, such as the subway map of the internet. Another curious internet phenomenon: here is a list of places blurred out from Google Earth.
With the past and the present covered, what about the future? Well, scientists have developed a map of what the world is predicted to look like in 250 million years that bears a remarkable resemblance what scientists speculated the world did look like in the equally distant past. This Future World, like Pangea, is a place where all of the continents are again pushed together to form one or two mega-continents. Still want more maps? A great collection of 175 maps spanning 4,000 years is available for purchase.
January 8th, 2008 by Odds n Ends
From subterranean Martians to female hysteria, people have been known to believe some pretty bizarre things. What does it take to make a believable scientific hypothesis out of a strange idea like Hollow Earth theory, what suspension of believe is needed to agree with the Intelligent Design nutjobs
? Apparently, not much. Here are five of the strangest examples and who knows what people will find hilariously untrue from our era in 50 years? Everyone will no doubt have other ideas for what the world’s weirdest theories are so give it a shot in the comments below!
1. Trepanation
Ouch. In one of the oldest known medical interventions, a hole is drilled in the skull of a patient who is suffering from defects such as seizures or migraine headaches. The idea was to relieve pressure in the head which was believed to be causing the ailment. Today, trepanation is used on a very limited basis as a mechanism to access the brain for necessary surgery. Some people practice recreational or spiritual trepanation, presumably because they need modern medicine like they need a hole in the head.
2. Female hysteria
Women in the Victorian age were said to be suffering from female hysteria when they were moody or a little more “difficult” than usual. Fortunately for them, the treatment was something called pelvic massage. We can’t laugh too hard at this one, though. Many years later, it directly caused vibrating devices to be widely available for, um, home treatment.
3. Expanding Earth
As bizarre theories go, this one doesn’t sound that far-fetched. Expanding Earth is the idea that the planet was once a lot smaller and completely covered in one continent. If you mentally shrink the globe and try to fit the continents together like a puzzle, you could almost start to believe this theory
January 7th, 2008 by OddO
… you use your combination taser/mp3 player. You know what a bother it is to carry both your MP3 music player and your Taser gun? Worry no more. Today at CES, Taser International introduced the Taser MPH — the first combination hand-held music player and Taser.
… you steal another man’s wife. A Mississippi businessman must pay more than 750,000 dollars in damages to the man whose wife he wooed away, after the US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in the case.
… you let your illegal immigrant child become famous. The father of Rhode Island’s first baby of 2008 faces deportation after being arrested for violating immigration laws, while his roommate, also an illegal immigrant, was found dead of a suspected suicide hours after the arrest.
January 3rd, 2008 by OddO
Christmas Power Tools = New Years Hospitalizations: Wellington – Christmas gifts of things like power tools to New Zealanders, who are dedicated do-it-yourself home handymen, lead thousands of them to hospital, a newspaper reported on Friday. The Accident Compensation Corporation received about 10,000 claims for DIY injuries last year, of which about 2,000 were classified as moderate to serious, the New Zealand Herald reported.
Pig + Space Heater = House Fire ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — A man’s effort to keep his pig warm during Wednesday night’s freeze ended up starting a fire that caused about $50,000 in damages to his St. Johns County home. Firefighters were called about 10:20 p.m. when a home on Frances Avenue caught on fire. They later learned the homeowner brought his pig onto the porch and put out a space heater to keep it warm.
Unlikely= Not Impossible: It is a tale some would say smells a bit fishy, but Kristy Brittain swears it is true. Last Friday she was kneeboarding behind a boat off Slopen Main on the Tasman Peninsula, east of Hobart, when she was tossed from her board in rough conditions. In the fall she lost a nose stud from a piercing she had done only a week before Christmas. Miss Brittain, 25, of Magra, never expected to see the tiny stud again. Enter a hungry flathead.
December 27th, 2007 by OddO
Some pictures are worth 1,000 words, but others are worth 1,000,000. By (subjective) category, here are 10 of the most amazing viral images of 2007. Undoubtedly some of these you will have seen before, but some will be new as well. Click on the images below to go to the full-sized originals. Enjoy!
Most Touching: Loyal to the End
Most Geeky: Why We Love Firefox
Best of Technology: 1 Gigabyte Then and Now
Best of the Web: Why Net Neutrality is So Important
Photoshop Humor: Photo With and Without Flash
Religious Humor: God’s Inbox
Religious Satire: Satan Goes to Sunday School
Commercial Humor: FedEx Pwns UPS
Gaming Humor: Carmen Sandiego Finally Found
Celebrity Humor: Chris Farley Found Alive
Honorable Mention: Do Not Take This Flyer Down
Greatest Image Collection of 2007: 56 Wonders of the World at WebUrbanist
