GETTING GOOSED

The events of January 15, 2009, gave new meaning to the fear of flying. At 3:27PM, a flock of Canada geese struck an outbound plane leaving LaGuardia, blowing out both engines and sending the aircraft plummeting to the ground. The incident made a hero of Captain Chesley Sullenberger, who safely piloted the plane into the Hudson River, but it also made Canada geese out to be small, feathered suicide bombers.

The truth is, Canada geese populations in the United States have skyrocketed since 1960. Today, America is home to more than 4 million of the birds. Why the sudden spike in numbers? The geese thrive on trash. Landfills and estuaries provide them with so much food they can live in one place year-round, instead of migrating. And because there's lot of garbage surrounding New York's airports, many geese call the Big Apple home. During the past two years, there have been more than 200 instances of Canada geese flocks colliding with airplanes that were landing or taking off near JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark.

Following the "Miracle on the Hudson", state and federal authorities have worked to deter the birds from nearby flight paths. They even enlisted the help of wildlife biologists, who've tried all sorts of tricks. They've cut the grass near the runways to undesirable lengths and played goose distress calls over the airport loudspeakers. More aggressively, they've trapped geese by the hundreds and euthanized them. So far, the geese have not counterattacked. Not yet.

(Image credit: Flickr user Alanna@VanIsle)

MIKE THE HEADLESS CHICKEN

When a Colorado farmer named Lloyd Olsen botched the decapitation of his rooster in 1945, he didn't realize he'd given birth to a legend. For the next 18 months, Mike the Headless Chicken ran around with his head cut off. Operating with only one ear and most of his brain stem, Mike made the best of the situation. Before long, he was earning his owner thousands of dollars a month touring as a sideshow. The rooster's only real handicap was that he didn't have a mouth, so he had to be fed through an eyedropper directly into his neck. Sadly, while being fed one night, Mike choked to death. His legacy lives on, however. In his hometown of Fruita, Colorado, "Mike's Festival" is held every third weekend in May. Events in his honor include the "Run Like a Chicken with Your Head Cut Off" 5K and a "Pin the Head on the Chicken" contest.

(Image Source: Mike the Headless Chicken)

DUCK, DUCK, SHUTTLECOCK

In 2006, professional badminton players noticed something strange. Their shuttlecocks, which routinely whiz around the courts at speeds of 150 mph, weren't moving so fast. The phenomenon was especially strange because the process of making a shuttlecock is highly controlled. Each feather in a premium shuttlecock is hand-selected from the left wing of a goose, and each goose can supply only two quality feathers, at most!

So what caused the change? The avian flu. When geese began transmitting the disease, Chinese manufacturers switched to using duck feathers. Luckily, our fine feathered friends have been on the mend, returning smiles to the faces of badminton players everywhere.

__________________________

The above article by David Goldenberg is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the November-December 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss' entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!

News.com.au got schooled in the ways of Star Trek fandom when they posted an article containing errors about the Trek universe. Today they printed an apology with corrections.

News.com.au apologises unreservedly for the error.

There was no intention whatsoever to suggest Captain Kirk may have commanded the Galaxy Class Starships Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E.

Any damage to the Star Trek brand incurred by the use of the term "hyperspace" is regretful.

No malice was intended and a correction to the original article will be made.

We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man, a sentiment expressed by several readers.

The kicker is that, intentionally or not, there are at least nine errors in the apology. http://www.news.com.au/technology/were-sorry-for-claiming-captain-kirk-was-in-command-of-captain-picards-starship/story-e6frfro0-1225947119042 -via Metafilter

Every week, y'all get mighty creative on us for the Fill in the Bubble Frenzy with boy genius Mal and his talking dog Chad! Fill in the empty speech bubble and win any T-shirt available in the NeatoShop -take a look around, pick one out and tell us what shirt you’d like with your submission in the comments. If you don't specify a t-shirt with your entry, you forfeit the prize. Enter as many times as you like (text only, please), but leave only one entry per comment. Even if you have no idea what he's saying, check out the other entries! Also check out Mal and Chad’s comic strip adventures by Stephen McCranie at malandchad.com.

Update: Congratulations to winner tyson, who said, "If you elbow me off, I'm just going to come after you on that rhino." That's good enough to win a t-shirt from the NeatoShop!

(YouTube link)

This guy made a Mecha {wiki} costume for Halloween and spared no expense.

Sheet metal, aircraft aluminum, and other parts: $600.
Rivets, bolts, hardware: $250.
Tool purchases/rentals: $200.
Spraypaint: $90.
Truck rental to carry costume: $210.
Hours: 250+.
Looking like you could take down a tank: priceless.

It's a good thing he rented a truck. That's a lot of weight to walk home in, considering he couldn't fit through a bus door. -via reddit

Chris Roth served on a jury for a civil case that lasted for seven days. The case was interesting (involving a stripper), but seven days in a jury box is still a long time. Jurors were given notebooks to jot down important things, so Roth drew pictures. Lots of them, which you can see at his blog. Link

(YouTube link)

This Lego Star Wars animation tells a version of the original trilogy in which Jar-Jar Binks messes everything up. -via Boing Boing

An 18-month-old boy in Paris fell out of a sixth-story apartment window Monday afternoon. He bounced off a canopy over a ground-floor cafe and into the arms of a doctor who was passing by!

The man who caught the boy was walking by with his wife and son, who spotted the boy falling.

Another witness told Le Figaro that the doctor positioned himself by the awning and caught the boy in his arms after he bounced off it.

The witness, Francois, said the boy cried a bit at first but quickly calmed down.

The doctor, identified as Philippe Benseniot by France Info, said it was pure luck.

"I was there at the right time," he told France Info.

The child was taken to a hospital but was found to be uninjured. Link -via Fortean Times

This illustration contains the names of 48 musical groups rendered as icons. Can you figure out the names of the bands? Click on the image at El Espíritu de los Cínicos to see the answers. Link -via Gorilla Mask

The game of marbles is estimated to go back 5,000 years. Through most of their history, marbles were made of stone, bone, clay, or whatever material was available. Truly round marbles were a rare and expensive toy, but we eventually found ways to make enough of them for everyone.

1. The glass maker Elias Greiner Vetters Sohn worked for Farbglashuette Lauscha, a German glass company founded in the 1500s. In 1846 he invented the marbelschere, or marble scissors, with which a glassmaker could cut a rope of glass and forms balls with the soft pieces. Greiner received a patent in 1849 for the invention of "artificial semi-precious and precious stone balls", or as we call them, glass marbles. To produce enough of these hand-made marbles, the company gave Greiner his own factory.

2. Marbles were first mass-produced in Akron, Ohio in 1884 when the Akron Toy Company began producing clay marbles. The man behind the marbles, Samuel C. Dyke, founded The American Marble & Toy Manufacturing Company in 1891, which became the biggest American toy company of the 19th century. For the first time, marbles became cheap enough for children to buy them with their own money.

3. Samuel Dyke also produced handmade glass marbles in Akron. In 1890, he hired master glass maker James Harvey Leighton to train workers in making glass marbles. Eventually, Dyke's factory was turning out a million marbles a day. When it burned in 1904, so many children rummaged through the ruins for marbles that, for safety's sake, the remains of the building were buried. But there was no shortage of marbles for sale, as dozens of companies in the Akron area were making marbles and other toys at the time.

4. Danish immigrant Martin F. Christensen invented a machine to mass-produce glass marbles in 1902, but didn't receive a patent on his creation until 1905. However, by then he had already opened a marble factory in, yes, Akron, Ohio which cranked out 12 million glass marbles every year.

5. In the mid-1990s, the site of the burned American Marble factory was a parking lot. The city decided to replace it with a park, and as the ground was dug up, thousands of very old marbles were uncovered. So a portion of the park became home to the American Toy Marble Museum, which opened to the public in 2002. Many of the unearthed marbles are on display at the museum in Akron.

W00t! It's time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what this ...thing is used for?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many as you'd like. Post no URLs or weblinks, doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update 11/7/10 - The answer is A Japanese traveling candlestick, it's missing the part that would have caught the wax. Oskar got it right first, but didn't specify a T-shirt. Congrats to Cristal who made laugh with "Mr. Burns' liver spot locator."

Prank Packs are gift boxes with ridiculously fake products printed on the outside. Give a gift in one of these and be ready for an uncomfortably awkward expression of gratitude: "Uh, thanks, I always wanted a motorized rolling pin (or a talking coffee cup, or a hat that doubles as a fish net)." That's when you show them the nice personal gift that you put inside! This year's new designs include the pictured iArm, the Pet Petter, and the Family Blankeez. Link

This is a wonderful way to look at the world. I just wish I knew who the original artist is. -via The Daily What

Update: The artist is Selin Jessa. http://positive-posters.com/submission/perspective-5/ -Thanks, Andy!

A return visit to a carbon sink facility
by Nan Swift, Improbable Research staff

The Museum of Burnt Food continues to grow and prosper. Since our last visit to the museum, the collection has moved to a new facility in Arlington, Massachusetts. A small lake next to the building serves as a scenic, yet high-capacity emergency reaction vessel. Curator and founder Deborah Henson-Conant has nearly doubled the museum’s holdings. The photos here represent a small but diverse sampling.

Always a leader in the campaign against global warming—and in particular, the struggle to reduce the amount of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere—the Museum of Burnt Food is the first major museum to develop an in-house carbon sink policy. Every year, every item in the collection is washed in a carbon sink. After washing and drying an item, the museum staff evaluates its condition; in selected cases the item is reburnt.

Cider in Situ #2

Apple cider warmed on a stove ad infinitum. This specimen of Cider-in-Situ is a companion piece to the famous “Free-Standing Hot Apple Cider”—the original seed which grew to become the Museum of Burnt Food. Donated by Gary Dryfoos, circa 2000.

Burnt Whole Wheat Tortilla

What was intended as a “quick snack on a whole wheat tortilla” became this item in the Museum of Burnt Food. Topping unknown. Donated by L. Von Hopper. Acquired in 2003.

Whole Wheat Toast under Glass

Whole wheat toast, burnt. Acquired circa 1995.

“Kruncheroni ’n Cheese”

Remains of attempt by a 14-year-old boy to make dinner from a package of Kraft Macaroni-and-Cheese. On loan from private collection of David and Susan Beno.

Thrice-Baked Potato

Thrice-baked potato (Solanum tuberosum extermino). Acquired pre-1989.

Burnt Lemon

Etiology unknown. Acquired circa 1996.

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the July-August 2008 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

(YouTube link)

Surely you remember the useless machine, which did nothing but turn itself off (previously and previously). Here is a variation that made me laugh, from Saskview. -Thanks, Brett!

TV has seen a lot of talk shows come and go -some going faster than others. That can really hurt if it's one of your favorite celebrities trying out the talk show format. If you remember those less-than-successful series, you'll do well in today's Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored 75% -beat that if you can! Link