Someone emailed me a videoclip titled "Road Rage". It shows an old woman slowly crossing a road, as a guy in a sports car lays on the horn, trying to get her to hurry up. I won't ruin the ending, but it's pretty amusing. However, the video (in the version I received) appears to be an unscripted scene accidentally caught on video by an amateur. There's no identifying information to suggest otherwise. But since I was curious about whether the scene really was unstaged, I managed to find it on Google Video. Their version was a few seconds longer, preserving the ending in which it's revealed to be an ad for IKEA. So apparently the scene was staged. It's still funny. But, I have no clue how the scene is supposed to inspire anyone to shop at IKEA.
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Viewers of NBC2 saw something strange during the station's coverage of Hurricane Wilma. In the Doppler loop video of the storm coming ashore, the number two suddenly appeared in the eye of the hurricane, formed momentarily by the swirling clouds. The number is so perfectly shaped that it seems like it has to be fake (some form of over-the-top station self-identification). But apparently it's real. The station swears that the image hasn't been altered, and they've provided a link to a NOAA image of the storm [the link is now dead] to prove that the number two really did briefly form in the eye of the storm. I'm sure that Scott Stevens will claim this is proof that the Yakuza really are creating hurricanes.
A photo is doing the email circuit, showing a bathroom that men who don't enjoy being watched as they 'go about their business' might not want to use. Yes, it is a real bathroom. It's located on the second floor of the Sofitel Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand. Here's from a press release about the bathroom:
Here's a new picture doing the email circuit. It's accompanied by this caption: |
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A photo of a "water bridge" is circulating around, accompanied by this caption:
In my hoax photo gallery I display a picture of the body of Abraham Lincoln lying in a casket and explain that the photo is fake because the army didn't allow any photos of Lincoln's body to be taken. But I just received an email from Rich noting that there is one authentic picture of Lincoln's corpse, and he's right. A photographer did manage to snap a shot of the dead Lincoln as he was lying in state in Manhattan's City Hall. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton had the photograph confiscated, and it was supposed to be destroyed. But instead, Stanton kept it, and it was found by historians almost 100 years later. It's the only true Lincoln death photo in existence.
About a year ago I posted an entry about cup stacking, since I found it hard to believe it was a real sport. Now after watching this video of Emily Fox stacking cups (requires windows media player and also viewable at speedstacks.com), I've got to say it's not only real but pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever seen cups move that fast. Assuming, that is, the video hasn't been speeded up.
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Quite a few hoax photos inspired by Hurricane Katrina are now popping up. Here's one that's now doing the rounds, as reported by David Emery on his site, showing the two Bushes (father and son) fishing in the streets of New Orleans. As hoax photos go, it's pretty obviously a joke. The image of the Bushes with the fish was lifted from a picture taken by AP photographer Steven Senne up in Maine on Father's Day, 2003.
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Jelena sent in the image to the right, asking "Americans do have a reputation, but this can't be for real, can it?" By real, I assume she means--is the RIAA really distributing this poster? The answer is no. Looking at the fine print on the side of the image, I can see that it's author was modernhumorist.com. |
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John Walkenbach gave me a heads up about this image, which has been puzzling visitors to his blog. Is it real or fake? His readers have already figured out that the message on the front of the bus means "cross on the zebra crossing" (or something to that effect) in Portuguese. In other words, it's warning people not to jaywalk, or they'll end up hit by a bus. It's hard to tell with such a low-resolution image whether or not it's real, but my hunch would be that it is real. I don't see any obvious signs of photoshopping. It reminds me of the 'Air Santa' image that was circulating around a few years ago (which seems a bit more fake to me).
A photograph of what appears to be dragons flying in the sky above Tibet has been generating some attention. The photograph was taken over a year ago:
