Now, I consider myself to be pretty internet savvy. I know how to search for stuff I need, what sites are good and what sites suck, and all kinds of stuff I’m sure you probably don’t even want to think about. But even I fall for things sometimes, and though I tend to do research on stories that I don’t quite fall for, some stuff gets me. I don’t feel bad though; it gets pretty much everyone else, too.

Remember Aliza Shvarts? She reportedly repeatedly artificially inseminated herself, then took all kinds of abortifacient (read: abortion-inducing) drugs and herbs for an art project. Everyone was all kinds of upset over this one, and it was taken seriously since Yale reported it and everything. Alas, not so much; Aliza’s work was entirely fiction.

Then there’s the one guy who re-grew his finger with pixie dust. Everything grew back in about four weeks, reportedly, and things worked just fine. Of course, it helps that he only had a minor injury and certainly didn’t have his finger severed at the knuckle or anything.

On the flip side, there are stories that can’t possibly be true but are. Read More »

April Fools’ day and I have never gotten along.

In second grade, my Elementary School decided it would be cute to ring the warning bells every five minutes—you’re late for class… APRIL FOOLS’!

Middle School saw surprise pop quizzes—it’s worth 90% of your grade and you didn’t study—APRIL FOOLS’!!

High School? College? More of the same…

This morning, at midnight on April 1st, my boyfriend paused on the sidewalk, looked at me significantly, and said “Suzie, I’ve decided to go to Med School”—APRIL FOOLS’! (he’s applied to grad and law school so for a minute I was like… omg!– then I saw his smirk and was like… oh right… )

When I saw the Reuters article on pranks this year, however, I had to chuckle at the new heights of advertising that this day of strange glee has allowed two Australian companies to ascend:

Google Australia announced a new feature enabling one to search the Internet for future content, including sports results…

Australian airline Virgin Blue took out ad space in newspapers offering special “Stand Up fares” complete with complimentary calf massages for flights longer than two hours. Read More »

So…this morning on my way to school, I was reading this girl’s newspaper over her shoulder on the train (I know this is annoying. Sue me.) and I saw a very unusual headline.

I thought it was a hoax or something, but when I got to school, I looked it up, and sure enough it’s real.

Um…a woman sat on a toilet for two years and her skin grew around the toilet seat.

I am not happy about this. It’s weird enough that she grew into the toilet seat, but what I want to know (and what none of the articles I’ve read bothers to explain) is why her boyfriend waited two years to do anything.

Look, if I’m stuck to a toilet seat, my boyfriend better tell someone asap or else it’s over.

You hear me, bitch? OVER.

Its science fiction time, friends!

A small lab in California claims to have cloned the embryos of two men, making it the “first documented demonstration that ordinary cells from an adult human can be used to make cloned embryos mature enough to produce stem cells”.

Although the lab says it destroyed the embryos after 5 days, they insist they have all their records and assure the public that the tests were performed numerous times. Experts have supposedly acted very “coolly” to this announcement, partly because of a clone hoax executed by Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk a few years back, and partly because the creation of cloned embryos has happened before. The big announcement, researchers agree, would be if a new stem cell line has been created. Read More »