Hoax Museum Blog: Urban Legends

Obama vs. Perry: “Boys Will Be Boys” — Status: Real Photos, False Captions



The political dirty tricks season is upon us again, and so we get the image above, which has recently been circulating around conservative blogs. (Thanks to Gayl for forwarding it to me.) Its intent is obvious: to show that Rick Perry was serious and heroic as a young man, whereas Barack Obama was a bit of a punk.

The pictures themselves are real. The picture of Obama was taken in 1980 by Lisa Jack when both were freshmen at Occidental College in L.A. The picture of Rick Perry is undated, but must have been taken sometime between 1972 and 1977, when Perry served in the Air Force.

Therefore, the captions of the images are incorrect. Obama would have been 19 at the time the photo was taken, whereas Perry would have been between the ages of 22 and 27. So the comparison isn't quite fair. By the time he was in his early 20s, Obama was working as a community organizer in Chicago.

Furthermore, Perry himself was reportedly a bit of a punk while in college. According to a recent article in The Texas Tribune:


A fairer comparison might have been to contrast Obama looking laidback in his straw hat and cigarette dangling out of his mouth with Perry exploding a toilet.

The Fake Photos of Hurricane Irene —
This rule was in full effect during Hurricane Irene, as twitterers by the thousands shared fake hurricane photos with each other. The NY Times Technology Blog has collected some of the more popular ones:


Widely claimed to show Irene approaching North Carolina, this is really a photo of a storm approaching Pensacola, Florida around three weeks ago.


An image of the East River flooding was an old image taken during a previous storm (though I don't know which previous storm). Someone scanned and posted it.


A shot of the Times Square subway station flooding was, again, an old image recycled to become Hurricane Irene. It was actually taken in 1996 when a water main burst and flooded the station.

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!

Birth or Not — The Premise: A couple claims to be allowing the internet to vote on whether or not they'll have an abortion.

This has been getting a lot of attention on blogs over the past few days, and by now it's been definitively proven to be a hoax. Kevin Hoffman points out what I think is the most telling piece of evidence. The couple registered the domain name birthornot.com over two months before the baby was supposedly conceived. Also, the man behind the site has been identified as Pete Arnold, who is apparently a well-known right-wing troll.

So, in other words, this is just another cynical shock-style hoax designed to be offensive. (Thanks, Bob!)

Bunga Bunga — The news from Italy is that Silvio Berlusconi has been engaging in some wild "Bunga Bunga" parties. Or so says a 17-year-old Moroccan belly dancer who attended one of these parties. No one is really sure what a Bunga Bunga party entails, except that Berlusconi apparently learned the practice from Muammar Kaddafi, and it has something to do with sex.

On Slate.com, Brian Palmer explores the mystery of just what Bunga Bunga might be. The leading theory is that it derives from an old joke in which some western explorers are caught by a primitive tribe and offered a choice between Death or Bunga Bunga. I've actually heard this joke before. The punchline is that when an explorer chooses death, after realizing Bunga Bunga involves some kind of awful sexual torture, he's told that it will be "Death by Bunga Bunga." At least, that's the version I heard. On Slate, Palmer tells a slightly different version.

Anyway, there's a hoax connection here, because "Bunga Bunga" also happens to be the phrase uttered by Horace de Vere Cole and his accomplices while hoaxing the British Navy in 1910 during the Dreadnought hoax.

RIP Geoffrey Crawley — Geoffrey Crawley, who played a role in debunking the Cottingley Fairy hoax, died recently on October 29. The New York Times ran an interesting article about his life. From the article:

I've always thought it was strange that it took sixty years for the fairy photos to be fully debunked, even though the hoax itself wasn't particularly sophisticated.

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!

Happy April Fool’s Day, 2010! — Happy April Fools! I've been busy working on my book, but April 1st has managed to pull me back to the site.

Last year I posted a brief rant about the origin of April Fool's Day, explaining how every year reporters write articles claiming that the most likely origin of the holiday is the Gregorian calendar reform of the late 16th century. This explanation gets trotted out every year, even though there's just no way it's true. Last year I noted:


This year is already true to form. Yahoo's Buzz Log posted an article about April Fool's Day which not only manages to identify calendar change as the likely origin of the day, but claims that it's a hypothesis I support! Mike Krumboltz, the author of the Buzz Log piece, writes:


He even links to my article about the origin of April Fool's Day, apparently not realizing that much of my article is spent trying to debunk the calendar-change hypothesis.

Some things never change!

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!"

Crop Circles and Ostension — An article on smithsonian.com discusses the history of crop circles and why people believe in them. Part of the reason is the paradox of ostension. Fake evidence, even if proven fake, nevertheless tends to reinforce belief:


According to Jan Harold Brunvand in The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, there are a number of varieties of ostension. Ostension itself involves people inspired to act out legends. Examples of this would be "people forming satanic groups and practicing rituals based on stories they have heard, as well as carrying out mutilations, sacrifices, murders, or other crimes." Then there's pseudo-ostension, in which people pretend to act out legends. Example: "teenagers dressing as the grim reaper to scare other teens visiting a legend-trip site." Finally, there's quasi-ostension in which people use legends to explain mysterious events. Example: "observers interpret some puzzling information (such as cattle mutilations) not as a likely result of natural causes (like the work of predators) but as resulting from cult activity or visits from extraterrestrials, as described in rumors and legends."

Parents of Balloon Boy receive their sentence — Richard Heene is going to have to serve 90 days -- 30 in jail and 60 in a work-release program. Mayumi Heene has 20 days in jail. Prosecutors have asked that they also pay $47,000 in restitution. They're also barred from making any money from the incident. So no money from book deals. Link: LA Times

Ancient shroud casts doubt on Shroud of Turin — Archaeologists have found a burial shroud sealed within a 2000-year-old tomb in Jerusalem. Comparing the newly found shroud to the Shroud of Turin adds to the evidence that the Shroud of Turin is a fake. From nationalgeographic.com:

Margaret Mead Redeemed? — A new salvo has been fired in the ongoing controversy about whether the anthropologist Margaret Mead was "hoaxed" during her research in Samoa in 1925. I've got a brief article about the controversy in the hoax archive. To summarize: Mead traveled to Samoa, interviewed some teenage girls about their sexual behavior, and concluded that Samoan culture had very relaxed, easygoing attitudes about sex. Almost sixty years later Derek Freeman challenged her findings and claimed that the teenage girls had told her wild tales, which she had been gullible enough to believe. Freeman's claims were partially based on the testimony of one of Mead's interviewees, Fa'apua'a, whom he tracked down in Samoa.

Paul Shankman has now written The Trashing of Margaret Mead in which he comes to Mead's defense. Skeptic.com has posted an excerpt from his book. Shankman argues:


(Thanks, Joe!)

Fake Salvation Army Bell Ringers — Police are warning that a fake Salvation Army bell ringer is on the loose in Topeka, Kansas:


I never give to the Salvation Army anyway. (Yes, I'm a scrooge). So I'm pretty much immune to this scam.

Related posts:

• Salvation Army Gold Coin Mystery

The Christian Side Hug: Real or Hoax? — Thanks to Peter for drawing our attention to this strange new concept. (Link to his forum post.) Apparently side hugging is gaining popularity in the land of conservative Christians. The idea is to avoid the dangerous risk of "two crotches touching." Therefore:


But upon closer examination, I think this is another example of Poe's Law. In other words, it's satire. The concept of the side hug traces back to the humor site Stuff Christians Like, where it's identified as satire.

Jacob Hadcock: the new Craig Shergold — The Craig Shergold rumor strikes again. Jacob is a real kid, and he really has leukemia, but he isn't dying. But somehow word got out on the internet that he was dying, and that his last wish was to get christmas cards from everyone. So now the cards are pouring in by the thousands. Link: Associated Press.

Below is one of the youtube videos spreading the rumor.

Boy suspended from school for drawing Jesus — Outrageous! A young boy was suspended from school for drawing a picture of Jesus on the cross! Let's all get worked up about this.

Oh, wait a second. Turns out the story was mostly b.s. cooked up by the boy's father. The boy wasn't suspended, though a teacher did order a psychological evaluation of the boy: "She said the drawing was seen as a potential cry for help when the student identified himself, rather than Jesus, on the cross, which prompted the teacher to alert the school’s principal and staff psychologist. As a result, the boy underwent a psychological evaluation."

Link: boston.com (Thanks, Bob!)

Fake Gospel of St. Mark — A version of the Gospel of St. Mark, once thought to date from the Byzantine era, has now been determined to be a late-19th-century fake. From the Chicago Sun Times:


More support for Jean Hardouin's Theory of Universal Forgery.