Offbeat: 'Please dont stop the music' says student

A round-up of the craziest, oddest stories from across the globe.

Boos for moos

British Comedian Milton Jones performed a stand-up routine to a field of cows in an experiment intended to see if they have a sense of humour.

The comedian was joined by cow expert Bruce Woodacre on a Hertfordshire farm to test the reaction of a herd of fresians. He performed a special set of visual and verbal jokes, called Pull The Udder One, while Woodacre monitored the cows’ reaction. Some of the gags included were, “So you cows say you’re vegetarians -- but how come you all wear leather, eh?” and “Went to one of those farmers’ markets the other day -- bought a couple of farmers. Should taste lovely!”

Jones said, “Writing comedy for cows was very different to my day job but a comedian plays to his audience, so I wrote a raft of new material to really get under their hides.”

“They were a tough crowd to begin with, although I’ve played to tougher, and whilst I tried not to milk it too much when I was up there, in the end I can say hand on heart they were ‘udderly’ brilliant.” Woodacre, who has studied cow behaviour for more than 40 years, said: “Most of the herd crowded closely round the stage and jostled for a good position. They had their mouths open and their ears laid back, indicating they were relaxed and content. Though not everyone was entertained -- I definitely heard some low heckling moos and there were even a few walk-outs.”

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Full of hot air

No it’s not a balloon but a man in New Zealand who says he blew up like a balloon when he fell onto the fitting of a compressed air hose that pierced his buttock and forced air into his body at 100 pounds a square inch.

Steven McCormack was standing on his truck’s foot plate when he slipped and fell, breaking a compressed air hose off an air reservoir that powered the truck’s brakes. He fell hard onto the brass fitting, which pierced his left buttock and started pumping air into his body.  “I felt the air rush into my body and felt like it was going to explode from my foot,” he said while lying on a hospital bed in the town of Whakatane, on North Island’s east coast.  “I was blowing up like a football,” he said. “I had no choice but just to lay there, blowing up like a balloon.”

McCormack’s workmates heard his screams and ran to him, quickly releasing a safety valve to stop the air flow, said Robbie Petersen, co-owner of the trucking company. He was rushed to the hospital with terrible swelling and fluid in one lung. Doctors said the air had separated fat from muscle in McCormack’s body, but had not entered his bloodstream.

McCormack, 48, said his skin felt “like a pork roast” -- crackling on the outside but soft underneath. A hospital spokesman confirmed details of the freaky accident, which she said could have killed McCormack.  “It’s fair to say he’s lucky to be alive, it was a potentially life-threatening situation.”

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

‘Chick’ glasses

A Chinese farmer has given his chickens specially made glasses to stop them from fighting. Zhang Xiaolong says his aggressive roosters have become much more peaceful since he gave them the plastic glasses.

The glasses are actually blinkers which prevent the birds seeing straight ahead -- making direct confrontation more difficult. Instead they have to look around the sides which makes them more cautious. The farmer said, “My roosters were always fighting each other -- I was losing ten birds a day. I was inspired by my own glasses and thought if I could just block their view so they can’t see each other directly, they wouldn’t have fights.”

“It has worked really well. They can’t attack each other so confrontations have been minimised.”

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Rainbow poo coming to a toilet bowl near you!

No it is not the Rainbow poo that you find in Pet Society on Facebook. Scientists from Cambridge University have genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to act as a biosensor that can detect the presence of toxins and secrete a colourful pigment.

The synthetically engineered bacteria can be used to test water and air samples for various pollutants such as arsenic or carbon dioxide.  By the year 2039, the scientists think that their so-called E. Chromi could be mixed in with a special probiotic yogurt, which when eaten, would colonise the bowels and release pigments in the presence of diseases such as cancer, stomach ulcers and salmonella. If your poo was green, for example, you might have an ulcer, or if it turned orange, you may want to get tested for colon cancer.

The scientists have won the Grand Prize at the International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition (iGEM) in 2009. Since then, the original team from Cambridge University in the UK has joined with designers Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and James King to explore the possibilities of their technology.

SOURCE: NEWS.DISCOVERY.COM & POPJOLLY.COM

All I need...is the rhythm divine

If you think this is a new means of cheating during exams, then you are absolutely wrong. There are students who don’t like any disturbances when giving exams.

A schoolgirl in UK has won the right to listen to an iPod while sitting her exams -- after threatening to sue her school. The Edinburgh pupil claimed listening to music helps her concentrate during exams.

At first the unusual demand was rejected by Mary Erskine School and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. However, they were forced to back down after being threatened with legal action under the Equalities Act.

Teachers will load her favourite tracks on to a new iPod to ensure it doesn’t contain study notes. The pupil, who hasn’t been named, suffers from autism and attention deficit disorder. She’ll sit in a separate area so the noise doesn’t disturb other pupils.

SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Seeing-eye entourage for blind horse

Michelle Feldstein, owner of an animal shelter was prepared to provide special accommodations for the blind horse she recently added to the flightless ducks, clawless cats and homeless llamas inhabiting her animal shelter in Montana, US.

But nothing could prepare her for the 40-legged, seeing-eye entourage that accompanied ‘Sissy’, a sightless, 15-year-old quarter horse. “Sissy came with five goats and five sheep -- and they take care of her,” said Feldstein, owner of Deer Haven Ranch, a private rescue facility she runs with her husband.

The seeing-eye sheep and guard goats are never far from the white mare, and they never lead her astray. They shepherd Sissy to food and water, and angle the horse into her stall amid blowing snows or driving rains. “They round her up at feeding time and then move aside to make sure she gets to the hay,” Feldstein said. “They show her where the water is and stand between her and the fence to let her know the fence is there.”

Feldstein said she marvels at the blind mare and her barnyard attendants. “There’s a magic involved in sheep, goats and a horse becoming best friends,” she said. “When you watch them, you have to wonder, why can’t people do that?”

SOURCE: FOX40.COM

Man and ring reunited

A 90-year-old man who accidentally dropped his commemorative high school ring down a lavatory in 1938 has been reunited with it after 73 years.  The ring was found 200 miles away in a sewer by a sanitation worker who happened to have gone to the same school and recognised it. Jesse Mattos had dropped the ring, which bore his initials JTM and the year of his graduation, into a toilet in a butcher’s shop where he was working when a high school student in Mount Shasta, California.

Tony Congi, 52, a sanitation worker who graduated from the same high school in 1976, found the piece of jewellery in the sewer system and recognised it immediately. He had the ring cleaned and then looked at the 1938 year book, discovering there was only one person with the initials on it. He returned the ring to Mattos, who said, “Something like this ring thing was a real booster for me. I felt like I was a lot younger again.”

SOURCE: TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

Cutting cards

Baj Dengchun’s unusual skill of using a deck of cards to slice up anything from cucumbers to eggs has seen him become an internet star in China.

The martial arts fan can also burst balloons and break eggs with his unique talent. Bai discovered his ability after he realised he was not very good at poker and threw a deck away in frustration. He claims to be accurate with his card throwing from a distance of up to 50 metres.

Footage from the show has been viewed more than 570,000 times on YouTube. In it, officials check that his deck of cards is normal before he begins to hurl them at the cucumbers.

Bai said he has thrown more than 20,000 decks in his lifetime. “Today, I came to the talent show in order to show the Chinese martial arts to the world,” he said. Judges on the show called it “a very special performance.”

One joked he was putting him through because he did not want to end up like the cucumbers.

SOURCE: METRO.CO.UK

A hair-raising crime!

A mugger in Brazil cut off a woman’s hair and ran off with it after holding her up at a bus stop.

Police say that the woman’s hair was ‘virgin’, and therefore, completely real and untreated, and believe that the hair will likely be sold for the production of wigs.  Inspector Jose Carlos Bezerra da Silva said that a woman was waiting for a bus in the central city of Goiania when a man walked up to her, held a knife to her and sliced off her hair, which reached past her waist. She thought the man was going to steal her purse, so she turned her back to him.  Silva says he’s never seen or heard of a case like this in his 20 years on the police force.

The 24-year-old woman says she reported the case to the police because she had to explain to her evangelical church why she no longer had her long hair.

SOURCE: POPJOLLY.COM

The pool punishment

A northeast Ohio couple found themselves up to their ankles in trouble for rafting on a flood-swollen river without life preservers and lying about it afterward.

A judge sentenced them to stand in a tiny swimming pool while wearing life jackets and handing out water safety brochures at a festival in Painesville, Cleveland.

Twenty-year-old Grace Nash and 22-year-old Bruce Crawford pleaded guilty to misdemeanor misconduct during an emergency. Searchers spent hours looking for them last month after they were spotted on the Grand River. They made it to land but lied to an official about being in the water.

They chose the pool punishment and community service over 60 days in jail.

SOURCE: EMIRATES247.COM

Published in The Express Tribune, May 28^th, 2011.