Hoax Museum Blog: Miscellaneous

Real Simple Magazine — The Museum of Hoaxes got a nice little write-up in this month's issue of Real Simple magazine. I think they mentioned the "paranormal stuff" on the site (which, honestly, there isn't a huge amount of) because it's the October issue, and they were trying to tie it in with Halloween.

Museum Mail: Hello, this is KBS 2TV quizshow program in South Korea —
I checked with a Korean-speaking friend who tells me 퀴즈쇼 사총사' is a well-known quiz show in S. Korea. So I'm flattered they contacted the Museum.

I answered their questions. Would you be able to?

Attention NYC Residents—Something to do on Feb. 23 — I'm passing along a message from longtime friend of the Museum, Bob Pagani:


I live in San Diego, so I can't attend. But if you live in NYC, check it out!

Looking for eye squirters — I assume this email was sent to me because buried in the Museum's blog there's a post about eye squirting. So I'm passing it along to you all, in case anyone is interested:


If you want to squirt milk from your eye on TV, contact me and I'll give you the casting producer's email address.

Hoax Archive Makeover — My New Years' resolution was to start posting regularly again here, since it makes me feel sad and guilty when I neglect the hoax museum. It's just too easy, when other things demand my attention, to fail to look after the site, given that there's no boss (except my conscience) to tell me to get back to work.

Now I didn't post any updates for the first 24 days of the year, so it may seem like I already broke my resolution. But not quite. I took the time to give the Hoax Archive a big makeover, which was sorely needed, though it turned out to be a lot more work than I had anticipated. Since the Hoax Archive was the original core of the site... how this all got started and out of which emerged the book version of the Museum of Hoaxes... I have a strong, sentimental attraction to it and hated seeing it grow increasingly disorganized. Also, since I recently reacquired the full rights to the Museum of Hoaxes book, I can now legally have everything in the book up on the site.

My goal was to make the Archive look more like galleries that could easily be browsed, and less like a blog. So people can now click through the time periods, from the middle ages to the present, and get a quick visual sense of the character of each period. It's also now much easier to quickly find a hoax, if you know roughly when it occurred. Check it out and let me know what you think.

And now (hopefully) back to regular blogging! (Yeah, I say this every time I resume blogging after a long break, and each time I mean it. With any luck, this'll be the time I stick to my commitment.)

Balloon Boy Trading Card — Back in June 2011, Richard Heene, of Balloon Boy fame, tried to sell the balloon he had used in his hoax. He hoped to get $1 million for it, but ultimately had to settle for $2500.

But the guy who bought it from Heene resold part of the balloon to the Topps trading card company, which has cut up the balloon into small pieces and glued them on to Balloon Boy trading cards. (link: Yahoo! Sports) It's part of a "used memorabilia" line of cards, but would also make a nice addition to their line of Great Hoaxes Trading Cards, released in 2009.

Since I'm a sucker for any (affordable) hoax-related memorabilia, I'll probably end up buying one of these cards.

Why Am I Still Getting Emails About Midget Rentals? — Apparently it's true that the internet never forgets. Seven years ago I posted about a company claiming to rent midgets for parties. In that post I didn't say I was renting midgets. I simply said there was a business claiming to rent them. In fact, I thought the idea sounded so odd that I had some doubts about whether the business was real. (And I probably shouldn't use the term 'midget.' I think 'little person' is now the preferred term.)

Anyway, soon after making that post, I started getting email queries from people interested in renting little people. In 2008 I first noted I was getting these strange emails, and I'm still getting them today, at the rate of about one every two months. Here's the latest I received, from a dental office in Atlanta:


I don't know what there is in that seven-year-old post that makes people think I'm running a little-person rental service. Check back in another seven years to find out if I'm still getting the emails.

A real-life Museum of Hoaxes — The Irish Times describes a real-life Museum of Hoaxes -- the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris:


It sounds a lot like the Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA.

Old Fulton NY Post Cards — There are some odd things about the Old Fulton NY Post Cards site. First of all, despite the name, it has nothing to do with old postcards. Second, it's full of strange animations. A goldfish floats around the screen, and there's a head with spider legs that crawls about. There are sounds (such as a cannon and fireworks) that play at random moments, and you can't turn them off.

But these odd things are just the wrapping around the true content of the site, which is 17 million pages of scanned, fully searchable pages of old New York state newspapers. All completely free. There aren't even any ads. If you like doing historical research, it's a goldmine. The site has been around for a while, but I just discovered it last month, and it's now become one of my favorite sites.


The really strange thing about the site is that it's been put together by one guy, Tom Tryniski, who runs the site off of servers in his home. To put this in perspective, Tryniski has managed to put together an online newspaper archive that's larger than the Library of Congress's newspaper archive. Much larger. And far more comprehensive.

Anyway, I've been finding all kinds of old hoax-related material on it, which is why I'm so excited about it. For instance, I found the original text (warning: pdf) of the man-eating tree of Madagascar hoax, published in the NY World on April 28, 1874, which I posted about last month.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've been finding the original texts of lots of old newspaper hoaxes -- stuff that I don't think anyone has seen for over 100 years. I'll be posting some of my finds in the next few weeks.

Cardiff Giant in Perth — Here are some pictures, courtesy of Nettie and Smerk, of the Cardiff Giant enjoying the sights in Perth. (Nettie sent me the pictures about three weeks ago, but Thanksgiving and the moon hoax distracted me. At least, that's the excuse for my slowness that I'm going with.)



So where should the Cardiff Giant go next? Any volunteers to host him? I'm hoping it might be possible to send him somewhere in the general neighborhood of Australia. Japan, maybe? I'll wait a week for responses, and in the meantime I'll also see if I can find any volunteers through non-MoH channels.

MOH chosen as one of America’s Kitschiest Roadside Attractions — It's official. American Express's Travel and Leisure Magazine has chosen the Museum of Hoaxes as one of America's Kitschiest Roadside Attractions. We're honored to be recognized in this way!

MOH as one of America’s Great Roadside Attractions — I just received an email from someone who works at TravelandLeisure.com (an American Express Publishing site):

Hmm. What should I send them?

Update: "Fred in na gadda da vida" suggested I send them this picture, which he kindly created. But I'd already sent them the three images on the 'About the Museum' page.

New Site Design — Unless you're reading this post by RSS, you should be looking at my new site design, which I spent the past week working on. My design skills aren't that great, but I'm hoping it's an improvement over the old design. One of my main objectives was to emphasize that the site isn't just a blog and forum, but also has a large archive of info about hoaxes throughout history. Which is why I put the new archive links front and center.

One feature you may not notice immediately: when you load the site you'll currently see either a pair of jackalopes or nessie to the right of the main banner. I've set it up so that random images will load in this place -- and clicking on the images will take you to the article about whatever hoax they represent. I just need to make some more images to add into the random rotation.

Updates to the Site — I spent the last five days updating the software that runs this site. It was a pretty nightmarish process. First the update changed every URL on the site. Once I managed to fix that, I discovered that the server was repeatedly crashing.

My webhost looked into the issue and found that spammers were trying to submit large amounts of comment spam, which was locking up the servers. (Most of the spam wasn't making it onto the site because the spammers apparently weren't filling out the captcha form, but I guess it was still putting a strain on the server to have to keep denying the spam.) So to combat this, I had to make one large change to how the site runs. From now on, only registered members can submit comments. In fact, only registered members will even be able to see the comment submission form.

Of course, this won't stop spammers from registering and posting spam. But it will stop the lazier type of spammers who simply direct their autobots at the site's comment form and blast away until the server collapses.

This change will mean that there will be far fewer comments on the site. And I know that some people are basically allergic to having to register for sites. But the spammers didn't leave me much choice. And it should make the site more spam free and thus more pleasant for people who do leave comments.

So the spam problem was addressed, but the servers were still freezing up. After a lot more investigation, one of the guys from the software company traced the problem to a bug with how the software was dealing with comment pagination, and he fixed the bug. So, at last, the site appears to be working. Fingers crossed.

I'll keep an eye on the comment pagination problem, and if it looks like it's not fully resolved, I'll simply turn off pagination for all threads and set the comment count high enough so that all the comments for most threads can fit on one page. For those few threads with a lot of comments, I'll ask people to continue the discussion over at the forum, because the forum's software doesn't seem to have the same problem with pagination.

Checking In (again) — Been a little quiet here lately. Hello? Do I hear an echo?

I've returned from book writing (my new book, Electrified Sheep, is available for purchase in the UK... an American version is coming out in 2012), as well as home remodeling, and now I'm slowly slouching my way back toward blogging, one small step at a time. The first step was to address the problem of what to do with all my weird science material (such as my list of the Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments which, somewhat confusingly, was housed here at the Museum of Hoaxes). I did this by creating the Mad Science Museum. My plan is that the MSM will serve as a sister site to the MOH.

The second step is to focus on the Hoax Museum again, and that means updating the site's software. That'll take me a couple of days because the software is now so out of date that updating it is going to cause a lot of things to go haywire.

The third step will be to freshen up the site's design and address the spam problem. Final step: start blogging again. So to those few people who may actually see this note, stay tuned for more!

The Return of the Curator — Last week I handed in the final section of my book manuscript to my publisher. I think I originally anticipated completing it in June or July. So yeah, it took me a little longer than anticipated.

The title, I've recently learned, is going to be Electrified Sheep. This refers to a series of experiments in which sheep were placed in lightning simulators. I didn't actually come up with this title. I suggested a whole bunch of other titles including The Indestructible Atomic Pig and Psychoneurotic Atomic Goats, but the publisher decided to go with the sheep. The lesson is that authors don't get to choose the titles of their books! But the sheep title has been growing on me. I like the fact that it evokes Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

Anyway, I took a few days to decompress, and now I'm ready to turn my attention back to the Museum of Hoaxes. I'm not sure if there are any people still reading the site, except for the forum regulars... but that gives me the opportunity to make a fresh start and change things around a bit.

First of all, the comments pages need to be completely revamped, because the comment spam has run out of control. I'm thinking of making it so that all non-member comments have to be approved by a moderator, and all new members also have to be approved by a moderator. This will mean that far fewer comments get posted, but to me that's an acceptable trade-off.

And before I do that, I need to upgrade the entire site software, which will take a couple of days.

I also want to change around the front page of the site to highlight the fact that the site isn't just a blog, but is more like a blog sitting on top of a hoax encyclopedia. I want to put a "featured hoax of the day" on the front page, much like wikipedia has a featured article of the day.

So that's my plan.

I'd also like to say hello to everyone whom I haven't communicated with in almost a year. I'm finally back from secluding myself in the archives! I don't know why I write such research-intensive books. I guess I just like torturing myself. If I were smart I'd write my next book on a topic that doesn't require any research at all... maybe a novel about teenage vampires. I've heard those kind of books sell well -- a lot better than non-fiction books about sheep in lightning simulators, that's for sure!

Checking In… — Like the Loch Ness Monster, I've been hard to find recently. So I thought I'd resurface for a moment and say hello. I've been working hard on my next book, and finding it difficult to focus on anything other than that.

I had grand plans to work on the book AND keep posting to the blog... but it hasn't worked out that way. It's hard to focus on two projects at once. Well, some people can do it, but not me.

Anyway, until the book is done (around June) I'll probably be pretty scarce around here, unless I'm procrastinating, in which case I may throw up an occasional post. But in the meantime, perhaps I'll put up some kind of notice at the top of the blog so that people don't think I've fallen off the edge of the earth, or anything like that: "Curator absent... writing a book!"

A note from the curator — I've recently started work on a new book, which is the reason for my absence from the site. I need to deliver the manuscript to the publisher (Macmillan) by June 2010. I assume it will be published in late 2010 or early 2011. The title is still undecided, but the book will essentially be a sequel to Elephants on Acid — though sequels are always worse than the original, so I prefer to think of it as an entirely new project that also happens to be about bizarre things done in the name of science.

Other people seem to be able to work on several projects simultaneously, but I just can't do it. So after working all day on researching and writing about science, I find it very hard to mentally switch gears and think about what hoaxy things to post on the site.

Nevertheless, as days go by and I don't post anything, I start to feel a nagging sense of guilt. So in order to alleviate this sense of guilt, what I'm going to try to do is to post stuff, but make it as short and simple as possible. Essentially just a link and a quotation. My theory is that if I don't have to think much about what I'm posting, I may be inclined to post more often. That's better than not posting at all... at least until the book is done.

We'll see how it goes. If you all see any hoax-related items in the news, forward me the links, and that'll make my job even easier.