Creepy clown sightings just part of photography project...or so we are led to believe

When people began reporting seeing creepy clowns all over the town of Wasco, California, no one knew what to think. Turns out it was all part of a photography project:

Former cop shows you the quickest way to get yourself killed during a home invasion

According to former New York police detective Wallace Zeins, in a recent report on NBC's Today, all you need is a set of car keys and a can of hornet spray:


I don't know Mr. Zeins, but I'm willing to bet he keeps something a bit more intimidating that a can of Raid next to his bed.

Welcome to the second grade. Here's your bulletproof blanket.

Here's something you parents can look for in the near future at Target's back-to-school sale:


From the Bodyguard Blanket web site:

Bodyguard™ blanket was developed and tested to specifically protect our children and teachers in the event of a school shooting. Bodyguard™ blanket is designed to be bullet resistant. It is made of the same materials our U.S. soldiers wear while in battle, and is equal to or exceeds the protection used by our police departments. After extensive research, it is estimated that Bodyguard™ blanket provides bullet resistant protection against 90% of all weapons that have been used in school shootings in the United States. We are so confident in the protective properties of Bodyguard™blanket we are encouraging every administrator to make it an integral part of school and university lockdown protocol.

I'm sorry, but if things are so bad that your kids need access to bulletproof blankets at school, perhaps it's time to rethink your education options.

(via BenSwann.com)

What can devour a 9-foot great white shark?

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that something in the ocean is eating great white sharks. The bad news is that there is something in the ocean big enough to eat a great white shark.

Eleven years ago, a film crew was tagging sharks to study their movements along the Australian coast. One tracking device from a nine-foot great white washed up on shore four months later, and the data it contained was disturbing.

The data indicated that the shark suddenly plunged over 1,900 feet early one morning. The temperature then shot up from 46° F to 78° F, something that could only have happened if the shark had been swallowed by...something.

From the Smithsonian Channel:

Video shows skydiver almost getting hit by meteorite

If you decide to go skydiving, be sure to watch out for meteorites. Anders Helstrup, member of the Oslo Parachute Club, was wearing a helmet cam that caught images of a meteorite narrowly missing his open chute. A geologist confirmed that a meteor had exploded in the atmosphere about 12.5 miles (20 km) above Helstrup and his fellow skydivers.


And, yes, this is entirely believable.

Pumpkin Spice: Official Movie Trailer

Yes, it's that time of year again. Time for pumpkin-flavored everything.


USA Today reports:

The flavor of pumpkin is suddenly showing up in everything from M&M's to vodka to Pop-Tarts. While the orange gourd is seasonal, it is increasingly becoming a year-round obsession, with sales topping $290 million last year, reports Nielsen. The sheer number of pumpkin offerings domestically jumped nearly 19% last year.

"Pumpkin is everywhere these days," says Andrea Riberi, senior vice president at Nielsen. "And, seemingly earlier than last year."

Here are a few pumpkin-laced treats to look for this year:

M&M's. For those wanting to toss an October twists into the bags of trick-or-treaters, Target is the exclusive seller of Pumpkin Spice M&Ms.

Pop-Tarts. Kellogg's has brought back Pumpkin Pie Pop-Tarts. They come frosted and sprinkled with pumpkin pie-flavored filling.

Pringles. No joke, folks. Here come Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles, for chip snackers with a sweet tooth.

Ice cream. Baskin-Robbins is bringing back Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream this month. And Pumpkin Pie is the Blizzard flavor of the month at Dairy Queen.

Doughnuts. Dunkin' Donuts Pumpkin Pie Donut is made with pumpkin pie-flavored buttercream, and the icing is sprinkled with graham cracker topping. "Perhaps, more than any other flavor, pumpkin evokes the feelings of nostalgia and comfort," says Stan Frankenthaler, executive chef at Dunkin'.

Barbie without makeup

Barbie has been criticized for giving young girls an unrealistic image of beauty. Perhaps the critics are right. Artist Eddi Aguirre shows us the real Barbie, sans makeup:

An updated, more accurate Google logo

(from Watchdog.org)

Find a dirty bomb? Don't try to wash it!

But that's exactly what one woman in the U.K. did when she discovered an unexploded World War II bomb in her garden:

Photo: ALAMY

Carole Longhorn, 65, took a number of unusual safety stops after discovered the explosive - including putting a plastic chair on top of it - before bomb disposal experts took it away.

She hit the metal object with a spade while she was gardening at her home and when she looked closer realised it was in the shape of a shell.

The gardener then put a plastic seat on top of the bomb just in case it went off while she shouted for her husband Clive, 60.

Once she had dug it up she took it inside their house and left it on the coffee table, before Mr Longhorn heard a rattle and turned around to see his wife washing mud off the bomb in the sink.

Police were called and experts confirmed they believed that the bomb was still live. They took it to a nearby quarry where a controlled explosion was carried out.

Yikes!

A pessimist would say hand sanitizer is 0.01% ineffective

(from xkcd.com)

Your password can't protect you

Wired's Mat Honan has some sobering information for those of us who have so much of our lives online. He begins by focusing on what most computer hacks have in common:

The common weakness in these hacks is the password. It's an artifact from a time when our computers were not hyper-connected. Today, nothing you do, no precaution you take, no long or random string of characters can stop a truly dedicated and devious individual from cracking your account. The age of the password has come to an end; we just haven’t realized it yet.

Honan knows his stuff. He was a hacking victim whose online presence was virtually wiped out.

It's a scary article, but a must-read for just about everyone.

(via Kottke)

How hot dogs are made (watch at your own risk)

They certainly taste better than they look, but even that may not be enough incentive for some of you after seeing this.

(via Kottke)

Global bacon shortage?!

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

Record-setting formation performed by 138 skydivers

After 15 attempts over the course of three days, 138 daredevils set a world record yesterday for the most skydivers in a single, vertical, heads-down formation. It's actually quite dangerous, but they make it look so effortless.


Read more here.

Whopper with over 1,000 pieces of bacon

The folks at Burger King have always said you could "have it your way." Well, one customer in Tokyo, Japan, took them up on it, ordering a Whopper with 1,050 pieces of bacon.

I don't know how long it took him to recover, but when he did he returned and ordered a Whopper with 1,000 pieces of cheese.

Rebuilding Detroit...with zombies?

Detroit is a dying city. People are leaving in droves. Entire neighborhoods have been completely abandoned, evoking images of Chernobyl or scenes from some post-apocalyptic film. Government officials have pretty much run out of ideas about how to revitalize the city and have asked the public for help.

One group has come up with a rather unique proposal. The project is entitled Z World Detroit, a "zombie themed experience park":

Imagine that you're living through the zombie apocalypse. You and your group are looking for sanctuary in an abandoned urban landscape. You are out of ammo so you are relying on your smarts to survive. As you start to adjust to your new surroundings, your relative calm is broken by a pack of zombies.

People panic and start to run. Some in your group aren't fast enough and fall to the zombies. Soon they will also be zombies. Where do you go? The odds say make a run for it and you listen. Your group runs down the street and hides in an old warehouse. Is it safe in here? Will the growing zombie horde pass without noticing you? What about your supplies? What about the friend that was lost in the chaos? How long will you survive? Will you make it through the night?

This sounds like an interesting video game, but where is the real thrill in a video game? Suppose this was real. Suppose you were in this with your friends. Suppose you were really running and hiding. Now that would be interesting.

As far as urban renewal plans go, this really isn't that bad. It's certainly better than anything some city planning commission would come up with.

Amazing, jaw-dropping surfing video

This day at Teahupoo- Aug 27th 2011 during the Billabong Pro waiting period is what many are calling the biggest and gnarliest Teahupoo ever ridden. Chris Bryan was fortunate enough to be there working for Billabong on a day that will go down in the history of big wave surfing. The French Navy labeled this day a double code red prohibiting and threatening to arrest anyone that entered the water.

(via Kottke)

Please don't shave in the restaurant bathroom

I recently walked into a restaurant bathroom to wash my hands and noticed that the last guy had trimmed his beard and emptied out his electric razor all over the sink. And do you think he bothered to clean up after himself? Of course not.

I sincerely hope it was a customer and not an employee.

Maggots on a plane

Over the last decade, airline travel has grown more and more unbearable. Now, passengers can't even count on getting a decent packet of peanuts.

Victoria Cleven found that out the hard way while on a Qantas flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne. In the middle of eating her bag of trail mix, she glanced down and noticed that hers had come with extra protein...in the form of live maggots.

"I couldn't talk," Cleven said. "I was nearly throwing up. I was beside myself." She did, however, hold her composure long enough to take a quick video of her discovery:

Nuclear bombs on America's highways

If ignorance is bliss, that would explain why Americans are so happy. We love our hot dogs; we just don't want to know how they're made.

The same could be said of the inner workings of our government. We want transparency, but we still want to be able to sleep at night. If you fall into that category, you may not want to read on.

A show of hands: How many of you stopped to think about how nuclear weapons and other radioactive material were transported across the country? Not many. For those of you who did, you probably thought it was in secret military cargo planes flying in the dead of night. Think again:

As you weave through interstate traffic, you're unlikely to notice another plain-looking Peterbilt tractor-trailer rolling along in the right-hand lane. The government plates and array of antennas jutting from the cab's roof would hardly register. You'd have no idea that inside the cab an armed federal agent operates a host of electronic countermeasures to keep outsiders from accessing his heavily armored cargo: a nuclear warhead with enough destructive power to level downtown San Francisco.

That's the way the Office of Secure Transportation (OST) wants it. At a cost of $250 million a year, nearly 600 couriers employed by this secretive agency within the U.S. Department of Energy use some of the nation's busiest roads to move America's radioactive material wherever it needs to go—from a variety of labs, reactors and military bases, to the nation's Pantex bomb-assembly plant in Amarillo, Texas, to the Savannah River facility. Most of the shipments are bombs or weapon components; some are radioactive metals for research or fuel for Navy ships and submarines. The shipments are on the move about once a week.

Here's a map of the most-traveled routes. You might want to refer to it when planning your next road trip:

(via The Tea Party Economist)