Offbeat: Webs, holy water and chubby toddlers

A collection of the odd, the crazy and the curious from across the world.


April 14, 2011

The tree-wide-web

It looks like a scene from a low-budget horror movie, but this is in fact a real-life picture from Sindh! The floods that submerged more than a fifth of Pakistan last year also forced millions of spiders in one of the flooded regions in Sindh to climb into trees to escape the rising floodwater. As the water took a long time to recede, the spiders decided to make themselves at home...in true arachnid style! The trees quickly became covered in a coocoon of spiderwebs. The result is an eerie, alien panorama, with any vegetation covered in a thick mass of webbing.

However, the unusual phenomenon may be a blessing in disguise. The UK’s department for international development (DFID) reports that areas where the spiders have scaled the trees have seen far fewer malaria-spreading mosquitoes than might be expected, given the prevalence of stagnant, standing water. Score one for our eight-legged friends!

SOURCE: WIRED.CO.UK

Bring on the Holy Water!

A surge in Satanism fuelled by the internet has led to a sharp rise in the demand for exorcists, the Roman Catholic Church has warned.

The web has made it easier than ever before to access information on Devil-worshipping and the occult, experts said during a six-day conference held recently at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome. Carlo Climati, a member of the university who specialises in the dangers posed to young people by Satanism said, “In just a few minutes you can contact Satanist groups and research occultism. Hence there is a particular risk for young people who are in difficulties or who are emotionally fragile,” said Climati.

Concurring with Climati, Gabriele Nanni, a former exorcist said, “We must be on guard because occult and Satanist practices are spreading a great deal, in part with the help of the internet and new technologies that make it easier to access these rituals.”

An exorcist should intervene, Nanni said, when ‘’the moral certainty has been reached that the person is possessed’’ shown by phenomena ‘’of a certain importance, such as changes in the body or in the voice’’.

Other signs that experts look out for are an ability to speak languages that the possessed person does not know and an awareness of hidden or distant objects.

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH

Sofa, so good



While most people who have a sweet tooth love munching on cakes and biscuits, one mom in the United States has a very different kind of craving.

Mother-of-five, Adele Edwards, from Florida, is addicted to another kind of snack, which most people normally just sit on to eat their dinner. Edwards apparently loves chomping on household items — such as elastic bands and rubbers. However, her biggest weakness is snacking on the polyester stuffing in her sofa.

Shockingly, during the course of her lifetime, Edwards believes she has eaten her way through eight settees and five chairs, consuming almost 224 pounds (lbs) of cushion in the process. Doctors have warned the 30-year-old mum that her addiction could kill her, but she just can’t stop herself.

According to doctors Edwards is suffering from a disorder called Pica, where patients often eat inedible items. She even had to have an emergency treatment recently, so that chunks of foam could be taken out of her intestines. Edwards said: “I was 10-years-old when I was first introduced to cushion. At first, I thought it was strange but, after sucking it for a while, I came to like the texture.”

The mum said from that point on, she began eating cushions quite regularly and would frequently swallow chunks “as though it was candy floss”. “It sounds strange but, to me, foam tasted like sweets.”

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

World’s first ‘artificial leaf’

If you’re sick and tired of power shortages ruining your plans, worry no more...your future is looking bright and leafy!

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) may have finally done it for you. They have created a practical artificial leaf that can turn sunlight and water into energy. The researchers from the MIT’s Nocera Lab, led by Dr Daniel Nocera, claimed that they’ve created an artificial leaf made from stable and--more importantly--inexpensive materials. The artificial leaf looks nothing like the natural leaf that it mimics, but its inputs and outputs are the same.

Placed in a gallon of water and left in the sun, these artificial leaves could provide a home in the developing world with basic electricity for a day, Nocera said. In the future, such technology could at the very least power parts of the globe that are currently off the grid with clean, plentiful, and easy-to-come-by energy.

SOURCE: POPSCI

The return of the ‘bottled message’



After a quarter-century, a German boy who tossed a message in a bottle off a ship in the Baltic Sea, has finally received an answer.

Daniil Korotkikh, a 13-year-old Russian was walking with his parents on a beach when he saw something glittering lying in the sand. “I saw that bottle and it looked interesting,” he said. “It looked like a German beer bottle with a ceramic plug, and there was a message inside.” His father, who knows schoolboy German, translated the letter that was carefully wrapped in cellophane and sealed by a medical bandage.

It said: “My name is Frank, and I’m five-years-old. My dad and I are travelling on a ship to Denmark. If you find this letter, please write back to me, and I will write back to you.” The letter, dated 1987, included an address in the town of Coesfeld.

The Russian boy and the German man met each other earlier this month via an Internet video link. The boy in the letter, Frank Uesbeck, is now 29. His parents still live at the letter’s address. “At first I didn’t believe it,” Uesbeck said. In fact, he barely remembered the trip at all; his father actually wrote the letter.

So, don’t you feel lucky you have access to email as you don’t have to wait for 24 years to get a reply?

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH

Immaculate ‘chair-ception’



Couples looking to conceive should maybe look at taking a trip to a hotel in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK, where a blue swivel chair is purportedly causing staff members to fall pregnant.

A grand total of seven workers at the Best Western Moore Place Hotel have conceived in the past two years after using the seat at reception. Four of them have already given birth, all having boys. While three are expecting their bundles of joy later in the year — and should perhaps think about painting their nurseries blue.

Employees have now dubbed the seat the ‘fertility chair’ and some are reportedly refusing to sit on it for fear of its effects. “We first started joking that if anyone wants a baby boy then they should come and take a seat on our fertility chair, but now it’s just so surreal that it’s happening every time,” general manager Giles Shaw said.

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

The Cow-mom cometh



Babies could someday drink human-like milk derived from herds of genetically modified (GM) dairy cows, which scientists say could supplement breast milk and replace baby formula.

In China, scientists have created 300 cows that produce milk with some of the properties of human breast milk. The researchers introduced genes similar to human lysozyme (also called HLZ) and other human proteins into Holstein cattle embryos, and implanted the embryos into surrogate cows. Once the GM cows started lactating, the researchers using a purification process were apparently able to make the milk taste like the human milk.

Given that this sounds like the plot for a sci-fi movie, how long will it be before the cows get organised and stage terrorist attacks against burger joints?

SOURCE: POPSCI.COM

Girl gets drag queen face-lift for £5K



Twenty-one-year old Collagen Westwood, who claims Lily Savage and Dead Or Alive singer Pete Burns as her idols, paid £5,000 to plump up her lips and straighten her nose.

In her over-the-top make-up and elaborate wigs, she regularly gets mistaken for a man while out clubbing but insists she loves it. “It doesn’t offend me — I think drag queens look fantastic,” said the aspiring singer, from north London. “I’ve admired drag queens since I was a little girl. My mum always had a lot of friends who were drag queens and I wanted to be just like them.”

The story doesn’t end here. Westwood is keen to go even further to try to confuse people about her gender. “I’m saving up for more surgery. I love being plastic. I can’t wait until I’ve got enough for liposuction and to have some ribs removed — so I can fit into even smaller corsets,” she said.

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

The chubby, tubby toddler



At the age of three, Lu Hao from China tips the scales at 133 pounds, which is five times the average weight of a normal child of his age.

The toddler, who was born underweight at 5.7 pounds, has baffled doctors with his insatiable hunger and rapid weight gain. They suspect that Hao’s remarkable weight, may be linked to his low birth weight. Hao’s parents have attempted to curb their child’s diet and encourage physical activity. But all such attempts went in vain.

The three-year-old prefers to ride on his mother’s motorcycle rather than walk to kindergarten and throws temper tantrums when his parents attempt to lighten his food intake. Hao’s father, Lu Yuncheng, said that the toddler can eat three big bowls of rice at a sitting and “cries non-stop” if denied what he wants.

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH

Published in The Express Tribune, April 9th,  2011.

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