Hoax Museum Blog: Miscellaneous

Bees — I didn't get around to posting for the last couple of days because a major situation developed in my house. We discovered that an entire wall in our guest room is home to a colony of bees. What a nightmare. I thought (hoped) it was some kind of hoax at first, because I didn't know that bees will build hives inside of walls. But sadly, it's very real. I spent the last two days moving furniture around, getting everything ready for the exterminator to come next week. But as much as it sucks to discover these uninvited guests in my house, I'm dying of curiosity to see what the hive looks like once the exterminator knocks down the drywall. Plus, now that I know they're there, I'm running into the guest room every couple of minutes to put my ear up to the wall and listen to them buzzing around. It's very creepy.

Book Contest Winners — The book contest has now been running for a week, and I got a lot of great responses. It was pretty tough making a decision (and any choice like this is bound to be somewhat random), but I finally opted to award a book to 'Redmond' for his account of the brownies with the secret added ingredient that turns urine blue. I'm also giving a book to Quentin Smith for his description of how they filled a school administrator's office from floor to ceiling with shredded paper (in order to give him a little more paperwork). The photographic evidence of the prank being pulled was great. So thanks to everyone for contributing their stories, and if you didn't win, don't worry. I think I'm going to have some more stuff to give away pretty soon.

Win a Free Book — One of the great things about having a website is that occasionally people send me free stuff, out of the blue. For instance, a British publisher named Harriman House sent me three copies of The Life & Death of Rochester Sneath by Humphry Berkeley. Since I don't have a use for three copies of the book, I've decided to give the two extra copies away.

But first, what is the book about? It documents a classic British public school hoax from the 1940s. Headmasters at elite British public schools such as Eton and Rugby began receiving letters from H. Rochester Sneath who described himself as a fellow Headmaster from Selhurst School nearth Petworth, Sussex. Sneath had many bizarre questions for his colleagues. For instance, he wanted to know how to deal with an infestation of rats, how to go about 'engineering' a royal visit, or whether it was advisable to provide special 'sex ed' instruction for the school maids. Remarkably, most of the headmasters believed that Sneath was a real person and responded seriously. Of course, Sneath wasn't real. He was the creation of Humphry Berkeley, who at the time was a student at Cambridge. When the hoax was exposed Berkeley was expelled for two years. This book collects together all of Sneath's letters and the responses he received. It's very short, taking about an hour to read, at most. But if you like British humor it's a classic, because Sneath perfectly skewers the pompous self-importance of the British upper class.

So here's what I have in mind. Since the book is about a school prank, post a description of a school prank in the comments section. Perhaps something that you participated in or have heard about. I'll choose the two pranks that I find the most amusing (and original) and send the winners a free copy of the book. Make sure that you include your email address in the appropriate box (though your email won't be publicly displayed... only I can see when people have entered email addresses, so that spammers can't harvest addresses from this site), otherwise I won't have any way of notifying you if you win. I'll let the contest run for a week before I choose the winner.

Back Home — I've finally made it back to San Diego. The vacation was great, but it's good to be back home. I'm also glad to see that the site wasn't completely overrun by spammers in my absence. Here's a few snapshots from the trip:


Posing with Nessie in Drumnadrochit.




The relatives I was staying with in Gloucester had a weird, mutant goldfish swimming around in their backyard pond. I dubbed it Nessie. Later we learned that the poor fish was suffering from dropsy and had to be put down before it popped and infected all the other fish in the pond.


   I was amazed by the meats they sold in French supermarkets. On the left is lapin, otherwise known as rabbit meat. Since the rabbits were already skinned, I couldn't tell if one of them was Bernd. On the right is pigeon meat, which isn't really very shocking, though you'd still be hard-pressed to find it in any American supermarket.


Here I am posing in front of the Piltdown Man Pub located in the town of Piltdown. Unfortunately the pub was closed when I was there, so I didn't get a chance to go inside. Plus, it was raining when this picture was taken, so I didn't stick around for very long.


Finally, here's an odd advertisement that was painted on a wall next to the hotel I was staying at in York. I had no idea if 'Bile Beans' were ever a real product, and no one I asked knew either.

Loch Ness Monster Seen? — I'm posting this message from Paris, France. So far I've been finding it very hard to get onto the internet, but when I turned on my laptop in my hotel room I discovered that someone nearby is running an open wireless network (it's definitely not the hotel... I think it's the cafe on the corner).

Anyway, when I visited Loch Ness a few days ago I didn't think I had seen the monster, until I later examined the pictures I had taken. Then I noticed this mysterious object on the Loch that I didn't see while taking the picture. Perhaps it's just a small boat... or perhaps it's Nessie. Hmmm.


By the way, if you ever stay in Loch Ness, skip the Loch Ness Lodge. It's a tourist trap. Opt for the Benleva Hotel instead. That's where the locals hang out. It's also got a great restaurant. I had kangaroo meat for dinner there (kangaroo meat in Loch Ness!!).

Vacation Time — I'm off to Europe for a two-week vacation, so don't expect that much in the way of posts during that time, though I'll be trying to check in from time to time. The itinerary is Loch Ness, Liverpool, Gloucester, Paris, Southampton, Canvey Island, and finishing up in York. So I'll be moving around quite a bit. Speaking of Loch Ness, I've haven't seen any word on how the Virgin sacrifice at the Loch went off. I'll try to find out when I'm there.

An Email from National Geographic — Any copyright lawyers out there willing to offer some free advice? I just received the following email from National Geographic (I'm sensing a bad trend developing here with emails like this... first the time travel mutual fund, and now Nat Geo):


One of our readers has informed us that you are featuring one of our
photographs on your website at http://hoaxes.org/weblog/2003/10/ [note: here's a more direct link].
We would ask that you either remove the photo immediately, or forward me
details of how long the image has been posted and how long you intend to
keep it posted so that we can determine an appropriate licensing fee and
send you a formal retroactive rights release and invoice. Please let me
know if you have any questions.


I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Nat Geo, unlike the time travel mutual fund, isn't someone you want to mess with. But on the other hand, I believe (hope) that my use of the image is protected by fair use. First of all, the image had circulated widely via email before I put it on my site. All I did was add some commentary to it in order to inform the public of the image's true source. Second, my use of the image hasn't deprived Nat Geo of any income since the image was too low quality to make print copies from. In fact, my commentary probably provided them with some free advertising.

I could just buckle under and remove the image, but this question of what is and what isn't fair use with regard to images that have escaped into the wilds of email is one that I'd very much like to know the answer to. Does a site such as mine, that tries to provide some information about random images that people find in their inboxes, have to request permission from the copyright owner whenever the owner is identified? Am I going to have to request permission from Touristguy to have his image on my site, or from that guy posing with the big bear? If so, that would potentially kill off large portions of my site.

Reporter Request — Here's an interesting comment that was just added to my entry posted back in June about Eric Bruderton (that guerrilla marketing campaign involving mysterious video footage of a group of armed men being attacked by unseen assailants in a country like Afghanistan):

I'm a reporter for the business radio show Marketplace, heard around the
country on NPR. I'm working on a story about the advertizing campaign for
The September Tapes. If you have strong opinions about the ad campaign, I'd
like to chat. And perhaps do a short telephone interview. I can be reached
at [see the comment for the email].
Thanks
Jeff Tyler

Being the suspicious sort that I am, I immediately checked out the IP address on the comment, and it did indeed come from someone at Minnesota Public Radio, so it appears to be legitimate. So if you have strong opinions about The September Tapes, by all means send Jeff an email.

Hoax Forum RSS Feed — I've now enabled the Hoax Forum message board with an RSS Feed. It'll send every new topic posted there straight to your RSS reader. Enjoy.

NYTimes Photo Shoot Outtakes — After whining about the vacuum cleaner being visible in the picture of me that appeared in the NY Times yesterday, I got an apologetic note from the photographer, Alan Decker, which made me feel bad. The presence of the vacuum cleaner was, of course, my fault, since I was supposed to move it before he arrived. Anyway, as Alan pointed out, in the other pictures he took (a few of which he just sent me) you really couldn't see it... except in this one puzzling shot. And here I am in my 'Buy Dehydrated Water' t-shirt.

On another, more serious note, I got this email from Ken Deffeyes:

Mounting a small set of pronghorn antelope horns on a jackrabbit head is an ancient Wyoming taxidermist's trick. However, the horns in this morning's New York Times look like deer horns. You've been hoaxed. It's a jackdeer.
So my jackalope is a fake! I'm thinking of trying to get my money back.

New York Times Story — This is going to be an egocentric post, because it's about me. I got my picture in the New York Times today. So does that mean I'm famous? Can I walk into an expensive restaurant now and get a table right away? I'm not betting on it. I'm featured in an article by Daniel Terdiman about hoax weblogs. Not that I've ever created a hoax weblog, but I do write about them. My friend Odin Soli, who created the Plain Layne hoax, also got his picture in there (Odin and I studied American History together in Grad School at UC San Diego). That animal on the left side of the picture is a jackalope. And if you look closely you can see my vacuum cleaner behind me, partially hidden by my shoulder. The photographer swore to me that there was no need to move it, because he said it wouldn't show up in the picture. Guess he was wrong. Not that anyone would really notice it... except my wife. The first thing she said when she saw the picture: "And there's our vacuum cleaner."

Site Update — I've been visiting family in Virginia this week, so posting has been pretty light... and will continue to be light until July 11th. Just in case anyone was wondering. That thumbnail there shows part of the Chesapeake Bay visible from my parents' front lawn. It's a lot nicer than the view of a busy road that you get from my house in San Diego (even though I much prefer San Diego weather).

Overhauled the Site — I just updated the blogging software that the site runs on. I've been working on this the past few days (that's why I haven't posted much). I'm sure there are some bugs in it, but hopefully I'll iron them out over the weekend. I moved from pMachine to Expression Engine (which is actually a revamped edition of pMachine). Unfortunately this means that many of the links on the site have changed. For instance, if you read this site through an RSS reader, you'll have to resubscribe using the new RSS links (see the sidebar for the links). But the new software has an atom feed also, so that's an advantage. Plus, the new software has a lot of other bells and whistles that should prove useful, such as the ability to assign entries to multiple categories.

Christian Science Monitor: Historic Hoaxes — If it weren't for the inconvenient fact that no one has a clue who I am, I'd almost feel famous, because I was interviewed not only by Wired, but also by the Christian Science Monitor, for this article. My mother always says that she could have had a son who was a doctor or a lawyer, but instead she gets a son who's a hoax expert. Well, it may not pay much, but at least I get interviewed a lot once a year, every April 1st.

Wired = Overloaded Server — Wired published an article about net hoaxes today, for which I was interviewed. The increased traffic it brought promptly melted down my web host's servers, which has been causing quite a headache for me. But regardless, it's nice to get the visitors. Perhaps a few of them were even able to view some of the site's content.

Museum of Hoaxes RSS Feed — I've finally gotten my act together to enable the RSS Feed that comes built into the software that I use to run this site. So if you use an RSS reader to scan blogs every day, you can now add the Museum of Hoaxes to your subscription list. The RSS Feed is here. I'll also add a button in the navigation bar on the right.

New Homepage Design — Anyone who visits here regularly will notice that I've changed the design of the homepage. I do this fairly often, never being very satisfied with my layout skills. I thought the last design was a little too busy, and some of the images were using up too much bandwidth. So my goal this time was to make the page more minimalist and get rid of the bandwidth-hogging images. I also created a new seal for the Museum of Hoaxes (visible at the right of the banner above). It shows a vegetable lamb (a lamb that scholars in medieval times believed grew from a plant out of the ground), and beneath this has the inscription 'Lana Ab Oculis Liberetur.' If my high school latin has served me correctly, this should translate to 'Let the wool from the eyes be lifted.'

April Fools Day — Because April Fool's Day is fast approaching, I revamped my list of the top 100 April Fool's Day hoaxes of all time. I juggled around the top ten a bit to better reflect the popular favorites. Most significantly, I added Sweden's 1962 classic 'Instant Color TV' hoax into the list, placing it at number three. Plus, by using pMachine I added the capability for readers to add comments to any one of the April Fools.

Muse Magazine — This week I started a new job as contributing editor to Muse Magazine. It's a magazine for young teenagers (9-14 years old) about science, history, and the arts, but I don't think that description quite captures its quirky nature. It runs articles on everything from 'Weird tales of the subway' to 'Could you live forever' (which is in the current issue). Its mascot is a trickster named Kokopelli (from Native American mythology) who loves to play pranks, which might explain why they were willing to bring a 'hoax expert' like me on board. For strange bureaucratic reasons (the kind that seem to plague all companies), the magazine doesn't really have an official site, but the other editors have created an unofficial Muse Magazine site on the sly. Muse is published jointly by the Cricket Magazine Group and the Smithsonian Magazine.

Upgrading the Weblog — I've finally taken the plunge and upgraded this weblog to a 'real' weblog, complete with permalinks, categories, and the ability to add comments. I'm using pMachine to achieve all this. I'm a little wary of letting people add comments, having encountered huge amounts of comment spam when I previously had a guestbook (especially, as I noted somewhere else, from 'cruddy german hotels'... I still can't figure out why they, in particular, turned out to be such a plague). But I'll see how it goes. If it becomes too time consuming for me to delete the spam, I may have to convert to allowing comments by registered members only. But for now I want to keep it open to all. I should give a nod to John Walkenbach's J-Walk Blog, from which I got the idea to use pMachine.