She said she was Princess Antoinette Millard from Saudi Arabia. She was actually from Buffalo, New York. But somehow she managed to con her way into millions of dollars. Her cover was blown when she filed fake insurance claims. It's amazing how the old fake princess con never seems to go out of style.
CIO Magazine has a little blurb about these night-vision contact lenses available for a mere $300 from Phoenix Sight (scroll down to find the listing). They're powered by blinking your eyes. But actually, there is no such company as Phoenix Sight, so don't go asking your optician for these just yet. The source of this wild-eyed invention is a Design Challenge sponsored by Popular Science and Core77. The relevant entry is here. The description notes that to get the contacts to work, even in theory, you'd first have to rub neodymium-iron-boron gel in your eyes, which really doesn't sound very pleasant. I have no idea if the military ever has experimented with anything like this. (via Jeff's Super Happy Funtime Blog)
According to this official looking website, the military is now readying for a general draft. But wow, they're sure asking some weird questions of draftees. For instance, under the Mental Fitness Pre-Screening section, they want to know if you suffer from "NPR listenerism." But wait a second. You guessed it. It's not really a military website, despite the official-sounding URL they managed to acquire. No, it's just another gimmick to sell some t-shirts. The site is pretty well-designed, however. It had me going for a second or two.
The Indian Army has admitted that some battles fought last year high up on the Siachen Glacier north of Kashmir were completely fake. The reports of enemy casualties were made up, and the video footage of a Pakistani bunker being blown up was staged. The bunker actually had been built by Indian troops. The army officers apparently did all this in order to win awards for gallantry.
I had come to think I was never going to get my Ph.D., but I shouldn't have been so pessimistic. All I need to do is lower my standards a bit and sign up for one of those PhDs that Saint Regis University is practically giving away. A Georgia math teacher did, and she got a $16,000 pay raise. Or you could save even more money and get any degree you want, from any institution of higher learning, from BogusPhD.com.
Are you tired of cleaning dirty cat litter? Then "Don't change the litter. Change the cat." Get some Catch-It Diapers for Cats. Actually I had a dog that had to wear diapers for a while (really), but somehow I don't think a cat would take too kindly to these things. Which must be why Catch-It also offers a line of bandages and other first-aid supplies.
Here's your chance to bid on a rare collectible item: an unopened 24-pack of Angel Soft toilet paper that shows the baby sporting a gaping flesh wound. The seller suggests it's a manufacturer's misprint. Or maybe the toilet paper is cursed (the seller didn't suggest this, but he should have, since everyone knows that demonically possessed items sell like hotcakes on eBay) . It could be like those photographs in The Omen that foretold how people were going to die. Whatever it is, misprint or mark of the devil, the wound seems a little hoaxy to me, though I suppose a printing error could cause something like this.
For a brief while, there was a chance to buy a Lavender iPod on eBay. But now the item has been pulled. Probably because lavender iPods don't exist. (via engadget)
If you're a woman who wants breast augmentation surgery, but can't afford it, then try signing up at InvestInMyBreast.com (mostly safe for work, though some nudity if you look around enough). This site connects women who want breast implants with charitable-minded people who want to help them achieve this goal. So women simply post their pictures, state why they want implants, and the donations start rolling in. Sounds great (well, actually, it sounds bizarre), but as soon as I started checking out the site my baloney detector started to go off. The big catch is that women will only ever receive their donations if, and only if, they reach their goal amount (usually $4000-$5000). It's an all-or-nothing system. But during the year that the site has been up, it doesn't appear that any woman has come anywhere close to achieving their goal amount. So what happens if, as is probable, a woman never reaches her goal? If the system was fair, the donations would be refunded to the donor. This doesn't happen. Second most fair would be to pay out the donations to the women, after a certain amount of time. This doesn't happen either. Instead, all donations are kept by the owners of the website itself. In other words, if you do donate money it's almost certain that your 'donation' will never result in a woman getting breast implants. Instead, it'll line the pockets of the site's owner. Of course, then there's the question of whether these women are who they say they are. I suspect that at least some of them are either shills or fakes. And if you search long enough, the site itself does admit, in its users agreement, that "InvestInMyBreast.com cannot and does not guarantee any user's identity." (via NewYorkish)
I've actually been to Lynchburg, Virginia, but somehow I missed the little-known attractions that it offers, such as the Fletcher Farm Rhino, the ABC Cemetery in which all the graves are in alphabetical order, Mags the headless cat (pictured), and the world's only car that runs on Kool-Aid.
