Derren Brown's Blog, page 17

Protect Your Family Jewels

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According to Mid-Day, a popular news service in Mumbai, a gang of thieving eunuchs are hypnotising unwitting housewives and relieving them of their valuables:

Asha Dilip Pandit, 55, was chatting with her daughter Shivali, 26, a teacher, when two eunuchs entered their home. Shivali gave them Rs 5 but the eunuchs refused to leave, while one of them asked for a glass of water. While Shivali was getting them water the other eunuch asked for tea.

One of the eunuchs followed Shivali into the kitchen. The other sat at the entrance of the house and told Asha that according to Vaastu Shastra, her entrance was in the wrong direction. This, she was told, was the main cause of suffering in the family.

The eunuch then asked for an empty glass, water and salt. They asked Asha and Shivali to watch the glass, and hypnotised them. They stole Asha's mangalsutra and gold chain, Shivali's gold ring and her father's ring

"The eunuch entered my house at 10.45 am. We regained consciousness at 12.30 pm. We don't remember anything that happened in between," said Asha. They later managed to piece together the story after one of their neighbour's told them that a eunuch was seen standing outside the house.

On realising they were looted, the family registered an FIR at LT Marg police station. The incident apparently is a common one in the area.

"We have carried out several raids to trace the gang of eunuchs who are hypnotising people before looting them. We have carried out searches at Kamathipura, Tardeo, Mahim, Bandra, Colaba and Bhandup areas," said a police officer.

We would like to remind our readers to guard their own valuables with renewed vigilance and to steer well clear of anybody making non-sequiterial requests for liquids and salts anywhere within their vicinity.

Source: Mid-Day

The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa

August 21st 2011 marks the one hundred year anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa by Leondardo da Vinci from the Louvre in Paris.

The portrait was taken by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian man, who took the opportunity to relieve the four iron wall-pegs of their famous charge and walk out with it under his painters smock.

The theft was not noticed until the following day and it consequently remained missing for two years before it's new owner unwittingly came forward.

The theft made international headlines at the time but has become largely forgotten in modern society, However, a new documentary feature, entitled "The Missing Piece – The Truth Behind The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa" goes to great lengths, with the participation of Vincenzo's now 84 year-old daughter Celestina, to uncover exactly what happened and why.

Screening of the documentary are likely to be limited so if you manage to track it down make sure to share your experience of it in the comments below.

Source: MonaLisaMissing.com

The Good Book?

Chances are that you may already be familiar with Penn & Teller, but what you mayn't have heard yet is that Penn, the looming, bombastic 'talkier' half of the legendary magic duo has just released a book: 'God, No!'

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In it he tackles, you guessed it, issues of Faith from the perspective of a confirmed Atheist.

He's currently doing Press duties to promote the publication, even going so far as to sit across a table from the delightful Piers Morgan who, in Penn's own words;

"Seems he hadn't read the book, and I had no idea what he was trying in the interview. Odd."

You can see a snippet of that odd interview here, read a short essay that Penn's penned for CNN giving a flavour of the book here and, if you're ready to go the whole hog, you can buy the book here.

Do let us know if you're going to get it, or have got it already, and what you think of it in the comments below!

South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog – pics

On Wednesday, Scientists from Seoul National University in South Korea announced that they have created a glowing dog while utilising a cloning technique designed to find cures for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Pictured is the team's genetically modified female beagle, Tegon, which was born in 2009 and was found to glow in a fluorescent green colour while under ultraviolet light.After two years of testing, the research team has found that the glowing ability is triggered by a doxycycline antibiotic and can be turned on or off by adding or removing certain drugs to the dog's food.

"The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases," explained lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun. He went on to state that humans and dogs have 268 common diseases, and that creating dogs with artificial symptoms could help in the treatment of these deadly diseases that affect humans.

Full story and pics at Toms Guide

Child Born with 34 Fingers and Toes Now a World Record Holder

Ten fingers. Ten toes. And another 14 tossed in for good measure. A one-year old boy in India is now a record holder as Guinness has recognized his 34 fingers and toes as the most belonging to anyone in the world.

This young man born with 34 fingers and toes set a Guinness World Record for most digits.

Akshat Saxena had seven fingers on each hand and 10 toes on each foot when he was born in India in 2010., a Guinness spokeswoman told The Huffington Post.

"I was so happy to see my baby as it was our first child," his mother Amrita Saxena told NDTV. "But later, when I saw his fingers, I was shocked and surprised," Doctors recently amputated the excess appendages in a series of surgeries and now Saxena has the typical five digits per limb, the Guinness spokeswoman said.

This prodigious polydactyl wasn't born with thumbs, but doctors planned to create them with pieces of the extra fingers.

Via Hindustan Times

 

Man with roughly 50-75% of his brain missing works as civil servant, lives normal life

A man with an unusually tiny brain manages to live an entirely normal life despite his condition, which was caused by a fluid build-up in his skull.

Scans of the 44-year-old man's brain showed that a huge fluid-filled chamber called a ventricle took up most of the room in his skull, leaving little more than a thin sheet of actual brain tissue (see image, right).

"It is hard for me [to say] exactly the percentage of reduction of the brain, since we did not use software to measure its volume. But visually, it is more than a 50% to 75% reduction," says Lionel Feuillet, a neurologist at the Mediterranean University in Marseille, France.

Feuillet and his colleagues describe the case of this patient in The Lancet. He is a married father of two children, and works as a civil servant.

The man went to a hospital after he had mild weakness in his left leg. When Feuillet's staff took his medical history, they learned that, as an infant, he had had a shunt inserted into his head to drain away hydrocephalus – water on the brain.

The shunt was removed when he was 14. But the researchers decided to check the condition of his brain using computed tomography (CT) scanning technology and another type of scan called magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They were astonished to see "massive enlargement" of the lateral ventricles – usually tiny chambers that hold the cerebrospinal fluid that cushions the brain.

Intelligence tests showed the man had an IQ of 75, below the average score of 100 but not considered mentally retarded or disabled.

"The whole brain was reduced – frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes – on both left and right sides. These regions control motion, sensibility, language, vision, audition, and emotional and cognitive functions," Feuillet told New Scientist.

Full Article

 

 

Bill Gates' advanced power reactor gets closer to reality.

Terrapower, a startup funded in part by Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates, is moving closer to building a new type of nuclear reactor called a traveling wave reactor that runs on an abundant form of uranium. The company sees it as a possible alternative to fusion reactors, which are also valued for their potential to produce power from a nearly inexhaustible source of fuel.

Work on Terrapower's reactor design began in 2006. Since then, the company has changed its original design to make the reactor look more like a conventional one. The changes would make the reactor easier to engineer and build. The company has also calculated precise dimensions and performance parameters for the reactor. Terrapower expects to begin construction of a 500-megawatt demonstration plant in 2016 and start it up in 2020. It's working with a consortium of national labs, universities, and corporations to overcome the primary technical challenge of the new reactor: developing new materials that can withstand use in the reactor core for decades at a time. It has yet to secure a site for an experimental plant and surprisingly, the funding to build it.

Full Story at Technology News

 

The mystery of the monumental post-apocolypse stones

The strangest monument in America looms over a barren knoll in northeastern Georgia. Five massive slabs of polished granite rise out of the earth in a star pattern. The rocks are each 16 feet tall, with four of them weighing more than 20 tons apiece. Together they support a 25,000-pound capstone.

Nobody knows exactly who commissioned it or why. The only clues to its origin are on a nearby plaque on the ground—which gives the dimensions and explains a series of intricate notches and holes that correspond to the movements of the sun and stars—and the "guides", written in many different languages on each side, instruct a future society on how to conduct itself.

The story of the stones is just as strange as the monument itself. It's since been covered in mystery and controversy. Books have been written, TV and press have swarmed to it and conspiracy theorists have pulled a mass of ideas for it's use, from UFO landing sites to satanic cults ready to take over the world.

Wired magazine's fascinating article writes:

The astrological specifications for the Guidestones were so complex that Fendley had to retain the services of an astronomer from the University of Georgia to help implement the design. The four outer stones were to be oriented based on the limits of the sun's yearly migration. The center column needed two precisely calibrated features: a hole through which the North Star would be visible at all times, and a slot that was to align with the position of the rising sun during the solstices and equinoxes. The principal component of the capstone was a 7\8-inch aperture through which a beam of sunlight would pass at noon each day, shining on the center stone to indicate the day of the year.

The main feature of the monument, though, would be the 10 dictates carved into both faces of the outer stones, in eight languages: English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, and Swahili. A mission statement of sorts (LET THESE BE GUIDESTONES TO AN AGE OF REASON) was also to be engraved on the sides of the capstone in Egyptian hieroglyphics, classical Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian cuneiform. The United Nations provided some of the translations (including those for the dead languages), which were stenciled onto the stones and etched with a sandblaster.

Read the full article at Weird Wired

Great white shark leaps on board research boat

According to the Cape Times, six researchers from South Africa are reflecting on what they describe as the fright of their lives after their own close encounter with a great white shark.

The research team from Oceans Research was working off Seal Island, near Mossel Bay, on South Africa's Cape coast, when the nearly 10-foot-long creature reportedly made its move.

Team leader Dorien Schroder told the newspaper that following more than an hour of shark activity around their boat, the Cheetah, the waters at the stern fell quiet.

"Next thing, I hear a splash and see a great white breach out of the water from one side of the boat hovering, literally, over a crew member chumming on the port side," she reportedly said.

According to Schroder, the shark landed with half its body in the boat, but in a panic, thrashed its way further onto the vessel, cutting fuel lines and damaging equipment.

As the team scampered toward a safer portion of the boat, the shark reportedly became stuck.

Full Story at MSNBC

Wild boar with bullet proof skulls invade New York, killing pets and chasing people

(Reuters) – Wild boar are invading the farms of central New York state, attacking livestock, killing family pets, chasing people and posing "devastating consequences" for the area, federal officials warn.

The feral swine are a non-native species suspected of escaping from game farms, and as many as a couple of hundred are roaming the state, said Paul Curtis, a natural resources professor at Cornell University.

While an exact picture of the wild boar population in New York State is unclear, a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the swine were successfully breeding in the three counties and producing litters averaging 4 to 6 piglets.

"We've shot probably 15 to 20 of them in the last three years," said Peter Andersen, a third generation farmer in Long Eddy in Sullivan County.

Noting how difficult it is to kill the wild boar, Andersen described what sounded like a scene from a horror movie that could be called "Robo-Swine."

"We've shot them right square in the head and the bullet will glance off and they'll get up and go. Their skulls are so thick in the front, if you don't happen to hit it at a perfect 90 degrees, with the way their heads have that kind of curved shape, the bullet will glance right off," he said.

Full article at Reuters