Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

The Pear Cable Challenge — Last week James Randi heard about some high-end audio cables being sold by the Pear Cable company for $7250 -- $302 a foot. This prompted him to extend his million-dollar challenge (which for years he's been offering to anyone who can prove the existence of the paranormal) to anyone who could detect a difference in sound quality to the human ear between Pear's cables and similar cables sold for only $80 by Monster Cable.

The CEO of Pear Cable has now responded (though not directly to Randi), calling the offer a hoax:
I've posted about ridiculous over-priced products sold to gullible audiophiles in the past. And ILikeJam has an amusing list of Really Stupid Audiophile Products, such as the Audioprism CD Stop Light Pen. (It's a magic marker that you're supposed to use to color in the edges of your CDs, because this will somehow make them sound better.)

Of course, because expectation and suggestion play such a huge role in sensory perception, the Pear Cables probably really do sound better to the people who buy them. But I'm also sure that no difference would be detectable to the human ear in double-blind testing.

Mouse in Beans — Here's something else to add to my page of gross things found in food:
Apparently she doesn't want money. Or so she says. Instead she wants the company to recall all cans of its green beans. I don't think that's going to happen.

The Flight to Nowhere — Cranky Media Guy forwarded me this fascinating article about a new concept in travel. You pay your money, get on a plane, and then go nowhere. You just pretend that you're going somewhere. Meanwhile a stewardess serves you drinks and the "pilot" makes announcements such as "We will soon be passing through a zone of turbulence," and "We are about to begin our descent into Delhi."

This concept is the idea of Indian entrepreneur Bahadur Chand Gupta, and it's proving quite popular. His customers are people who have never flown on a plane before, because they're too poor to afford it, but they're curious to experience what it might be like. I suppose it's no different than the simulators you can find at amusement parks here in America.

Hypnotist Robbers — A New Hampshire convenience store clerk claims that he was robbed. However, the thieves didn't use any weapons or threats. Instead, they used hypnosis and mind control to make the clerk not notice that they were taking more than $1000. First coast news reports:
Patel says that the actual moment of hypnosis occurred when the thieves gave him a piece of paper and asked him to cut it into eleven smaller pieces. The clerk has also said that he'll pay back what was robbed.

Apparently this method of robbery has been used before in India (the thieves were Indian, as was the clerk), but I've never heard of it being used before this in America.

Cursed Japanese Kleenex Commercial — A commercial for Kleenex that aired in Japan during the 1980s became the focus of an urban legend. Derek Bassett last year described the legend on his blog Mohora:

Here's the commercial, which Derek uploaded to YouTube.



The ad is kind of creepy, but as you can hear, the song is not an old German folk song, but rather "It's a fine day" by Jane & Barton. Derek also notes that there were no strange deaths associated with the commercial. The woman in the ad, Keiko Matsuzaka, is still working as an actress.

There was also an "angel version" of the commercial that aired at the same time as the "demon version," and Derek has uploaded this to YouTube as well. (via The Home of Ads)

Blue Peter Socksgate Scandal — For the second time in six months, the hosts of Blue Peter have had to apologize for deceiving their viewers. For Americans who don't know what Blue Peter is, it's a British children's show featuring always peppy presenters. It's been on the air for decades, and is like a TV institution over in Britain. I remember watching it as a kid when my family lived in London.

The latest incident involves a cat named Cookie. The show had asked their viewers to vote on what to name the next Blue Peter Cat. 40,000 votes were cast, and the name "Cookie" won, but the Blue Peter production team decided to veto that choice and instead pretend that the name "Socks" had won. It's difficult to understand their reasoning. Maybe they believed that a cat named Cookie would prove to be a disaster for the show's ratings.

The Blue Peter presenters recently apologized for the cookie cover-up and announced they would be adopting a new cat named Cookie (shown in the thumbnail), while simultaneously keeping Socks around as well. The Socksgate scandal cost Richard Marson, the Blue Peter editor, his job.

In the previous case of deception, Blue Peter had faked the winner of a charity phone-in competition. (Thanks, Joe!)

Links: The Guardian, Times Online, CNN.

John Harvard Becomes Halo Master Chief — The statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard is a frequent target of pranks, and recently it became a target once again. Students from MIT transformed John into the character "Master Chief" from the video game Halo 3. The MIT Tech explains:
I think the new look suits him.

The statue bears the inscription "John Harvard, Founder, 1638," and is thus known as the "statue of three lies" because a) the statue does not actually depict John Harvard because the statue maker had no images of Harvard to work from. The guy in the chair is actually a nineteenth-century Harvard student. 2) John Harvard did not found Harvard. It was merely renamed after him after he gave the school a lot of money. 3) The school was founded in 1636, not 1638.

The Peace Fetus — This image appears to have been circulating on the internet for almost a year, but it was new to me. It's an ultrasound of a fetus displaying a peace sign. Cute. And apparently real.

The ultrasound was taken on December 13, 2006. It shows the baby of flickr user pkoczera. (I don't know his real name.)

Yeti Footprint Photo Fetches Monster Price — A 1951 photo of a "yeti footprint" recently sold at Christie's for £3,500. That's almost $7000 (thanks to the lousy exchange rate we Americans are currently stuck with).

The photo was taken in the Himalayas in 1951 by Eric Shipton, who was a member of a reconaissance expedition scouting the region before attempting to climb Mt. Everest. Another member of the team, Tom Bourdillon, included this note with the picture when he sent it to his friend Michael Davies: If anyone wants some photos of footprints of the San Diego Yeti, taken in my backyard, I'm willing to sell them for a reasonable price. (Thanks, Cranky Media Guy)

Cops Writing Cops — Cops Writing Cops claims to be a site created by a bunch of police officers in order to publicize the problem of cops who give other cops tickets for traffic violations. They invite cops who have been ticketed by other cops to write in with their stories. In their "About Us" section, they write:
Here they offer their argument about why cops should not be ticketed for traffic violations:
Whoever created the site has carefully concealed their identity. (The site was registered via Domains by Proxy.) This makes it difficult to know whether or not they're for real. But I'm having a hard time taking it seriously. It reads a lot like what someone who was angry at the police and wanted to make them look bad would create. (Thanks to James for the link)

Porthemmet Beach — The website for Porthemmet Beach advertises that it is the best beach in Cornwall. It also claims that it's the only beach in the UK to allow topless sunbathing. So how does one find this beach? These are the directions on the website:
Apparently in recent months tourists have been trying to find this idyllic beach. But with no luck, because the beach doesn't exist. It's the tongue-in-cheek creation of Jonty Haywood, a teacher from Truro. According to the BBC, if people were actually to follow the directions to Porthemmet, they'd find themselves leaving the county. In an interview with The Independent, Haywood explained why he created the hoax website:

"Although I would like to claim there is an important underlying point being made here, there isn't. Sending tourists off to find an imaginary beach is funny."

(Thanks to Sarah Hartwell, messybeast.com)

New Yorker on Joyce Hatto — Mark Singer has written an article for the New Yorker about the Joyce Hatto hoax, that was revealed earlier this year. I was busy finishing Elephants on Acid when it was making headlines, but Flora posted about it.

Hatto was supposedly a virtuoso pianist, whose talent was discovered only very late in her life, when she was already in her seventies. She was notable for being able to masterfully play a wide variety of works, including compositions by Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, and Rachmaninoff. But it turned out that her husband had been taking recordings of other pianists and claiming they were recordings of Joyce. Singer tries to understand what motivated Hatto's husband to do this. It's a good article. Definitely worth a read.

Bat Bugs Have Fake Genitals — National Geographic has an article about a "hotbed of deception" in the natural world. It involves the genitals of a small, reddish-brown parasite called the bat bug. In order to protect themselves from the unwanted advances of male members of the species, female bat bugs have evolved a region on their body similar to a fake genital:
It turns out that male bat bugs sport a similar fake genital area, because males often perform "the same injurious sexual acts on other males." All in all, the sex life of the bat bug sounds like a rather unpleasant affair.

Fake Acupuncture Better Than Medicine? — A study conducted in Germany found that "fake" acupuncture worked almost as well as "real" acupuncture, and that both performed better than conventional care (which included painkillers, massage, and heat therapy). Reportedly, 47 percent of patients receiving real acupuncture to treat lower back pain improved, as did 44 percent of the fake acupuncture group, but only 27 percent of the usual care group got relief. The study has been published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, which is a reputable journal.

According to the AP report, this is what is meant by fake acupuncture: Personally, I've always been skeptical of acupuncture because I don't think that the theory of "qi energy" has any more validity than the ancient western notion of humoral theory. So it made sense to me that fake acupuncture would work about the same as real acupuncture. What surprised me was that both performed better than painkillers.

It's hard to explain why any form of acupuncture would work, unless it triggers a placebo effect, or if the pain of inserting needles is causing the body to produce its own painkillers. But I'm still going to be reaching for the advil when I have a muscle ache instead of poking needles in myself. (via Side Effects May Vary)

Best of the forum - 21st September 07 — Due to my ongoing computer problems and personal situation, this is again brought to you by Madmouse.

Peruvian Meteorite (eovti)
An apparent meteorite landing in Peru has led to reports of illness amongst locals. Original suggestions for the cause of the sickness included radiation poisoning, but that seems unlikely.

Sign Language Translator (Madmouse)
There’s been a lot of discussion in the forum about this story. A group of UK students have developed a system to translate spoken or written words into British Sign Language that is then displayed by an avatar. Suggested uses include translating for meetings and for phone calls. This seems like a very good idea to me, although a lot more development is needed.

Belgium For Sale on Ebay (LaMa)
A disgruntled Belgian, protesting about Belgium’s political problems, put the country up for sale on Ebay. He pointed out that, although the nation is second-hand, the offer included free delivery.

Bigfoot Revealed!!! (gray)
A prankster who has posing as Bigfoot to scare campers for the last two years was captured in Manitoba. Apparently the man was less intimidated by the police than he was by the telling-off delivered by his last ‘victim’.

Top of Mt. Everest Sawed Off — A Chinese artist, Xu Zhen, claims to have climbed to the top of Mt. Everest, sawed off the top of it, and brought it back to China where he now has it on display in an art gallery. From the gallery's press release: Along with the top of Mt. Everest, gallery visitors can view a video of Xu Zhen's team sawing off the peak. 3. I wonder if they "explain" exactly how they "transported" it back down once they "sawed it off." (via kottke.org)

Rude Crop Circle — The Smith family, owners of Hee Haw Farms in Utah County, weren't too pleased when they found a crop circle in their corn maze. According to the Deseret News:
What kind of message are the extraterrestrials trying to send? Unfortunately I couldn't find an aerial picture of this crop formation. (Crop circle seems like the wrong word.)

Floating Barn — A picture of an apparently floating barn has recently been making the rounds.



According to whoever posted it on panoramio.com, the barn is located in Ukraine, 1 km from Krasnosilka. However, the same person also titled the picture "kin-dza-dza," which is the title of a Russian science-fiction movie. I don't know if that's supposed to mean that the picture looks like something out of a science-fiction movie, or if it's fake.

I'm inclined to think that the building is real, and that the image wasn't photoshopped. I think that the steel beams at the back of the building could support the entire structure. Here's another image of the building, from a different angle.

Ecowatts Miracle Tube — The Mail on Sunday reports that a British company called Ecowatts claims to have created a device that seems to create energy from virtually nothing. It's a 12-inch tube that you plug into your electrical outlet. The device then creates more heat energy than the electrical energy put into it can account for. They hope to market this revolutionary tube as a home-heating device.

Sounds like another free-energy scam to me. If the device really did output more energy than is put into it, heating homes would be the least of its abilities. You could use these things to create limitless amounts of power at virtually no cost.

Jim Lyons, who works at the University of York, apparently tested the device and has given it his stamp of approval. If a real researcher from a respected University has okayed the device, then it must be for real. Or, maybe not. Here's Jim Lyons's bio from scimednet.org:
I'd wager that Ecowatts's miracle tube never makes it to market as a working device. (Thanks to Russell Jones for the link)

Is my baby gay? — A website called Is My Baby Gay offers to inform you of your child's sexual preferences for a fee of only $19.99. They direct customers to print out a circle on a piece of paper. You're then supposed to apply the tongue of your baby to the center of the circle for 15 seconds. You mail this piece of paper to the "Is My Baby Gay" testing center, and they promise to get back to you with an answer within two weeks. If they turn out to be wrong, they promise that they'll refund 150% of your purchase price.

At first I thought this had to be a joke, but apparently they really will take your money. They've set up a paypal payment system to do so. Which transforms this from a joke into something more like a scam. [Note: I didn't actually try to pay them anything, so perhaps at the last minute they decline to take your money... but somehow I doubt it.]

On their front page they've included a phrase which is apparently their legal escape clause: "Results are intended for entertainment purposes only."

I'd like to think that no one would actually take this site seriously and mail in their baby's saliva sample. But there's probably someone out there dumb enough to think this might be for real.

Even dumber would be someone knowing there is no such thing as a saliva test for sexual preference, but paying $19.99 anyway just for the fun of getting some bogus results.