Offbeat
This is how to fly, but there is only two seats
BBC
In the compendium of complaints about air travel, we have not yet encountered “I do not have an unencumbered, horizon-to-horizon view of the entire planet.” At some point, we surmise, someone must have shared that frustration, because Windspeed Technologies has come up with a solution.
The company’s SkyDeck is a clear bubble that pokes up out of the top of an airplane. One or two passengers access this viewing dome via a staircase, or (rather showily) in an elevator. Once they are head and shoulders above the fuselage, they may rotate their seats to view some particular object — the sunset, or a constellation, or a cloud that looks a lot like a bunny. The bubble is made of the same material as the canopies of a supersonic fighter jet, and it’s a teardrop shape mounted just before the tail to have the smallest possible effect on aerodynamics. Its…
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Manitoba UFO sightings date back to 1792
Manitoba has seen more than its fair share of UFOs over the years.
A new report suggests that there have been over 2,000 UFO sightings in Manitoba in the last 200 years.
The report, which has been compiled from Canadian and US government records, suggests that people have been seeing strange things in the skies over North America for several centuries.
“It’s not a phenomenon that’s a product of television and movies that are going on right now,” said researcher Chris Rutkowski. “These things go back quite a number of years. People have been fascinated with things in the sky and wondering, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’”
The earliest documented Manitoba sighting dates back to 1792 when two explorers reported witnessing a strange object cascading from the sky which “struck the river ice, with a sound like a mass of jelly, was dashed into innumerable luminous pieces and instantly…
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Butchers Demand Protection from Radical Vegans
French butchers have written to the government asking for protection against militant vegans, accusing them of trying to shut down the country’s traditional meat-eating culture.
Shops have been stoned or defaced with anti-meat graffiti and stickers, the French Federation of Butchers says.
Over the last few months, 15 shops were splashed with fake blood.
Federation chief Jean-François Guihard said in the letter that such attacks were a form of terrorism.
“It’s terror that these people are seeking to sow, in their aim of making a whole section of French culture disappear,” he wrote.
Vegans wanted to “impose on the immense majority of people their lifestyle, or even their ideology”.
“The vegan way of life has been over-hyped in the media,” Mr Guihard said, contributing to intolerance.
French butchers have an exalted place in traditional French life but incidents like these are not entirely new, BBC Paris correspondent Lucy Williamson reports.
One shopkeeper described his locks being glued shut 20 years ago.
As a result of a reduction in meat sales, farmers’ groups have appealed to President Emmanuel Macron’s government in recent weeks to prevent measures that they perceive as anti-meat.
Food makers want to stop the use of the terms “steak”, “fillet”, “bacon” and “sausage” for non-meat products.
A proposal to require schools to introduce a weekly vegetarian meal was rejected in parliament.
Man Caught Driving Car While Sitting on a Metal Bucket and Steering with Pliers
If you thought you needed a steering wheel to actually drive a car, let this story be an example of the opposite. A man in Norfolk, England, was really caught by police driving a battered car by using a metal bucket as a car seat and pliers for steering.
You might think that this guy was extremely unfortunate to get pulled over by cops, but you’d be wrong. What first caught the attention of police officers patrolling the streets of King’s Lynn, in Norfolk, was the battered state of the car this man was driving. It had no front wing, bumper or headlights and to top it all off, it also had a flat tire. Hardly what you’d call a roadworthy vehicle, but this was nothing compared to what awaited the officers inside.
The motorist behind the, well, definitely not steering wheel of this deplorable-looking car was actually sitting on an upside down metal bucket and steering the vehicle with a pair of metal pliers. There was no RPM meter or speedometer to speak of, in fact, the thing barely had any dashboard. But hey, it worked, so who needs that stuff anyway?
As you can imagine, the policemen themselves were quite shocked by the sight, and while their subsequent social media post didn’t mention what charges the driver faced, they did say that there were “too many offences to mention”.
Norfolk police tweeted photos of the car in its shocking state on Twitter, and they soon went viral, attracting all kinds of tongue-in-cheek comments. One person wrote that the car “gives a whole new meaning to the word bucket seat”, while another called it “ingeniously unbelievable”.
Russian Beast of the Ice
The NS Yamal is a Russian Arktika class nuclear-powered icebreaker operated by Atomflot (formerly by the Murmansk Shipping Company). It is named after the Yamal Peninsula in Northwest Siberia; the name means End of the Land in Nenets.
Laid down in Leningrad in 1986, and launched in October 1992, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, it never filled its designed role of keeping shipping lanes open. It has always carried passengers on arctic excursions. In July of 1994 Yamal took an excursion to the North Pole, with the NSF (National Science Foundation), to celebrate the Official Maiden Voyage. While at the exact north pole (verified by GPS & Inmarsat satellite coordinates) the crew and passengers celebrated with a barbeque – the ambient temperature was -10 degrees F (wind gusts were measured at -40 degrees F). Because of the ship 90/90 coordinates the ship captain (Smirnov) organized a swimming…
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Ester The Wonder Pig
She weighs over 600 pounds.
Kooky Alarm Clocks
If you snooze you lose goes the old adage. Getting up early and starting the day bright eyed and bushy tailed is the way to success for the go-getters out there. The downside is having to get disrupted out of deep sleep by noisy contraptions. Here are some strange alarm clocks that will force a person to jump into the rat race at full speed.
The Sub Morning cleverly lures you to the bathroom, by forcing you to submerge it in water
Once you get to the bathroom, you’re basically in the shower already and, once you’re in the shower, the day has officially begun.
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Clocky leaps off your nightstand and runs away, making you chase it around the room to shut off the damn beeping
This sneaky little thing forces both your body and your wits into action.
Target Alarm Clock
If you are a sucker for
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