Offbeat
Shark Family
“Baby Shark” likely originated from a campfire song or chant. Some sources have mentioned traditional myths as a basis, others camping origins in the early 20th century, and some see it as possibly developed by camp counselors inspired by the movie Jaws. It became a campfire song where each member of a family of sharks is introduced with different hand motions. Also several different versions of the song have the sharks hunting fish, eating a sailor, or killing people who then go to heaven.
Uncle Shark
Rainbow Taxi Fleet
Unlike the rest of the world, where taxis are usually yellow and black, Bangkok’s taxis come in a full range of colors. There are pink taxis, orange taxis, purple taxis, green taxes, yellow taxis and taxis in various combinations. While taxi color in other countries signify nothing in particular, Bangkok’s taxis are actually color coded. The single-color are company taxis, personal taxis in cooperation or alliance and rental company taxis. These color include bright green, bright sky blue, red, orange, yellow, blue, pink, purple, violet and tan. The bi-colored taxis are in 3 kinds including yellow-green, red-blue and yellow-orange. The yellow-green are the personal private taxi. The red-blue are the rental taxi. The yellow-orange are the company taxi. Taxis are abundant in Bangkok so you can pick any color you like, but the yellow-green taxis are generally reckoned to be better, being owned and driven by the owners themselves.
Traffic more or less looks like a free for all
Bangkok’s colored transportation isn’t limited to just taxis; the buses are colored too and each color signify a different fare, route, ownership and whether or not it has air-conditioning. The non-air conditioned regular buses are colored a combination of red and cream. These are operated by Bangkok Mass Transit Authority (BMTA) and are the cheapest bus service in the city. With the air pollution and heat in Bangkok, traveling on these buses can be a trying experience, especially during daytime and rush hours. The white-blue color buses are no better – non-air conditioned – and the fares are slightly higher.
The cream-blue color air-conditioned buses, also operated by the BMTA, are slightly more convenient than the regular buses. The yellow-orange color Euro II buses are also air-conditioned and relatively new. Purple or red colored are micro-buses that are privately owned and offers an alternative bus service to the population. They are air-conditioned, have a fixed fare regardless of the distance travelled and only stops if there are still vacant seats available, so every passenger is guaranteed a seat.
Giant Presidential Heads
In Croaker, Virginia stands a sight that would make just about anyone stop in their tracks. 43 ghostly effigies of presidents past crowd together in the tall grass. Some of the 18-to-20-foot busts have crumbling noses. Tear-like stains fall from the eyes of others. All have bashed-in heads to some degree. This could be a scene from the world’s most patriotic horror movie, but it’s all too real—and Howard Hankins’ family farm is just the latest stop on the busts’ larger-than-life journey from iconic pieces of art to zombie-like markers of America’s past.
The busts are all that remains of Virginia’s Presidents Park, a now-defunct open-air museum where visitors could once walk among the presidential heads. Presidents Park first opened in nearby Williamsburg in 2004, the brainchild of local landowner Everette “Haley” Newman and Houston sculptor David Adickes, who was inspired to create the giant busts after driving past Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
But their presidential visions soon (literally) went bust. The park, which cost about $10 million to create, went belly-up due to a lack of visitors in 2010. Doomed in part by location—it was hidden behind a motel and slightly too far away from colonial Williamsburg’s tourist attractions, the park went into foreclosure.
That’s where Hankins, who helped build the park, comes in. Before the land was auctioned off, Newman asked him to destroy the busts. But Hankins didn’t feel right about it, and instead offered to take the heads and move them to his 400-acre farm. And so began the laborious process of moving 43 giant presidents, each weighing in between 11,000 and 20,000 pounds, to a field ten miles away. Hankins estimates the weeklong process cost about $50,000—not including the damage done to each sculpture during the move.
New Paper Claims Conspiracy Theorists are Prone to Commit Petty Crimes
A newly published paper in a psychology journal offers the distressing conclusion that conspiracy theorists are prone to commit petty crimes. The unfortunate findings reportedly come via a pair of studies conducted by researchers in England. The first found that those who subscribe to conspiracy theories are also “more accepting of everyday crime” and the second survey determined that these individuals were likely to engage in such behavior in the future.
According to the paper, these hypothetical transgressions were along the lines of “trying to claim for replacement items, refunds or compensation from a shop when they were not entitled to do so.” The reasoning for why conspiracy theorists may be more willing to embrace the proverbial ‘five-finger discount,’ researchers argue, is that their alternative worldview causes them to become disconnected from the shared social contract in which such actions are frowned upon.
While one can take some solace in the fact that the study did not find that the possible crimes were particularly egregious, the overall conclusion is troubling nonetheless, since it paints conspiracy theorists in a rather unfavorable light. No doubt those who advocate for such controversial concepts will counter with the claim that the research was designed to do that very thing and is part of a larger agenda aimed at undermining their ideas.
Hot Rod Lincoln
My pappy said “Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’,
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln. “
Have you heard the story of the hot rod race,
Where the Fords ‘n’ Lincolns were settin’ the pace?
That story is true, I’m here to say,
That I was drivin’ that Model-A.
It’s got a Lincoln motor and it’s really souped up,
That Model-A body makes it look like a pup.
It’s got eight cylinders and uses ’em all,
Got overdrive that just won’t stall.
With a four-barrel carb and a dual exhaust,
With 4-11 gears you can really get lost.
Got safety tubes but I ain’t scared,
The brakes are good, tires fair.
Pulled outta San Pedro late one night,
The moon ‘n’ the stars was shinin’ bright.
We was drivin’ up Grapevine hill,
Passin’ cars like they was standin’ still.
All of a sudden in the wink of an eye,
Cadillac sedan passed us by.
I said “Boys that’s the mark for me,”
By then the tailight was all you could see.
Now the fellas ribbed me for bein’ behind,
So I thought I’d make the Lincoln unwind.
Took my foot off the gas’n’man alive,
I shoved it on down into overdrive.
Wound it up to a hunderd an’ ten,
My speedometer said that I hit top end.
My foot was glued like lead to the floor,
That’s all there is an’ there ain’t no more.
Now the boys all thought I’d lost my sense,
Them telephone poles looked like a picket fence.
They said “slow down, I see spots,”
The lines on the road just looked like dots.
Took a corner’n’side-swiped a truck,
Crossed my fingers just for luck.
My fenders was clickin’ the guardrail posts,
The guy beside me was white as a ghost.
Smoke was comin’ from outta the back,
When started t’ gain on that Cacillac.
Knew I could catch him, I thought I could pass,
Don’tcha by then we’d be low on gas.
We had flames comin’ from outta the side,
You could feel the tension, man whatta ride.
I said “look out boys, I got a license to fly,”
And that Caddy pulled over and let us by.
Now all of a sudden she started knockin’
Down in the dip she started to rockin’
And I looked in the mirror, a red light was blinkin’,
The cops was after my hot rod Lincoln.
They arrested me ‘n’ they put me in jail,
‘n they called my pappy to throw my bail,
‘n he said “son you’re gonna drive me ta drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that hot rod Lincoln.
No, this is not Avatar, this is Planet Earth
Tepuis are flat table-top mountains found in the Guayana Highlands of South America, especially in Venezuela. In the language of the Pemon people who live in the Gran Sabana, Tepui means ‘House of the Gods’ due to their height.
Tepuis tend to be found as isolated entities rather than in connected ranges, which makes them host to hundreds of endemic plant and animal species, some of which are found only on one tepui. Towering over the surrounding forest, the tepuis have almost sheer vertical flanks, and many rise as much as 1,000 meters above the surrounding jungle. The tallest of them are over 3,000 meters tall. The nearly vertical escarpments and dense rainforest bed on which these tepuis or mesa lie make them inaccessible by foot. Only three of the Gran Sabana’s mountains can be reached by foot, among which the 2,180m-high Roraima is the most accessible.
Tepuis are the remains of a large sandstone plateau that once covered the granite basement complex between the north border of the Amazon Basin and the Orinoco, between the Atlantic coast and the Rio Negro, during the Precambrian period. Over millions of years, the plateaus were eroded and all that were left were isolated flat-headed tepuis. Although the tepuis looks quite barren, the summit is teeming with life.
The high altitude of tepuis causes them to have a different climate from the ground forest. The top is often cooler with frequent rainfall, while the bases of the mountains have a tropical, warm and humid climate. Many extraordinary plants have adapted to the environment to form species unique to the tepui.
Some 9,400 species of higher plants have been recorded from the Venezuelan Guayana, of which 2322 are registered from the tepuis. Approximately one-third of the species occur nowhere else in the world.
There are 115 such tabletop mountains in the Gran Sabana region in the south-east of Venezuela where the highest concentration of tepuis are found. The most famous among them is Mount Roraima. Roraima, was unexplored until 1884. Today, the plateaued summit is a popular destination for backpackers and home to small waterfalls, natural quartz-lined pools and Punto Triple, the point at which the borders of Venezuela, Brazil and Guyana meet. Mount Roraima is said to have inspired the Scottish author Arthur Conan Doyle to write his novel The Lost World.
The other famous tepui is Auyantepui, home to Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world. Auyantepui is also the largest of the tepuis with a surface area of 700 km².
Rock N Roll
Very close call for the big house.
Fast Food Restaurant Sparks Controversy for Serving Burgers with Fake Line of Cocaine on Them
Pablo’s Escoburgers, a Melbourne fast-food restaurant named after infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, has been slammed for its controversial name and the fact that it serves one of its burgers with a line of white powder on top and a rolled fake dollar bill.
The backlash against Pablo’s Escoburgers started on Wednesday, when the pop-up eatery uploaded a photo of its “The Patron Burger” on Facebook, with a caption that read “infamous patron burger that people are lining up for”. It featured an otherwise delicious burger with a line of fine white powder on top and a fake rolled up $100 bill stuck into the top bun. That white powder turned out to be garlic powder, but a lot of people found the reference to snorting cocaine very offensive. The fact that other photos showed a small plastic bag with more garlic powder and a spoon, which allegedly come with The Patron Burger, only made things worse.
Pablo’s Escoburgers promotional photo.
“You are so naive. I hope you one day actually talk to a Colombian and realise how offensive your restaurant is,” one Facebook user commented on the Pablo’s Escoburgers page.
“How can we explain to you people that IT ISN’T FUNNY? Try to do that with Hitler and see what happens. Use your brain folks,” another person added.
There was so much negative feedback that Escoburgers co-owner Vaughn Marks put out a written statement to clarify things.
“We are very proud of our burgers but we do also understand that Pablo Escobar was a horrible man who destroyed the lives of thousands of Colombians,” the statement read. “We do not condone, idolize or promote Pablo Emilio Escobar or his actions in any way. We are however Australian and know how to have a laugh about a good play on words. Its just a name of a pop-up burger bar not really a theme. Hard not to offend someone in 2019.
Marks also made it very clear that he has no plans of changing the restaurant’s name.
It’s worth mentioning that despite the controversy around the restaurant’s name and the way some of the burgers are served, not everyone was offended. In fact, a lot of people expressed their approval:
“Looks amazing! Love all the princesses complaining haha,” one Pablo’s Escoburgers fan wrote on Facebook.
“Brilliant marketing! Nothing better than eating burgers and coke,” another person commented.
The MarkoZen Blog 