StrangeSights

• Don’t be alarmed if, after you drop something in a public rubbish bin in London or Liverpool, you hear a disembodied voice thanking you. Or a blast of Handel’s Messiah. Or a burp. News came last week of a plan to introduce a range of talking bins in the city centres to encourage people to dispose of their rubbish correctly by rewarding them when they do. The Keep Britain Tidy charity which is behind the move has even recruited some celebrity voices, including comedian and writer Michael Palin, actress Amanda Holden and former England cricketer Phil Tufnell (his bin will be located outside Lord’s cricket ground and will have home saying ‘ Howzat!’ when someone does the right thing). The bins will start appearing on the streets shortly and there are plans to expand the idea to other cities in the UK.

• Seems like Star Wars wasn’t all wrong after all. Scientists say they’ve spotted a planet which, like that of Tatooine in Star Wars, has two suns and so, two sunsets. The planet, known as Kepler-16b, lies about 200 light years from earth. The scientists say the fact the suns are quite close together means the planet, a gas giant where temperatures range from a frigid -70 to 100 degrees Celsius (not exactly balmy!), would never have continuous daylight.

• A mannequin is reportedly running for mayor in a suburb of the US city of Cincinnati. The life-sized shop dummy, known as BarBe Q, is apparently running on a platform of fighting for small shop owners as they take on fast food chains. Restauranteur Kenny Tessel, who ensured the manniquin’s fame a couple of years ago when he successfully fought a battle against authorities over whether he could display the bikini-clad model outside his restaurant, insists the move is not a stunt.

• It started with planking and then owling but StrangeSights continues to learn about more unusual ways which involve people taking images of themselves in odd poses and then posting them online. Here’s some of the others we’ve come across:
- Batmanning: Hanging upside down supported just by your feet (not advised if you don’t want to thump your head on the ground)!;
- Teapotting: Standing in a teapot-like pose - with one hand on your hip and the other bent up like a spout;
- Horsemanning: Named for the ‘headless horseman’, this involves two people who create a picture showing just the head of one person and the body of another; and,
- Photobombing: This has been around for while and simply involves inserting yourself into someone else’s photo or video, whether accidentally or intentionally.
Any others you’re aware of?

• Robots in movies always seem so…well…polite. But the reality may be very different. Scientists at Cornell University in New York recently conducted an experiment in which two ‘chatbots’ - computer programs designed to simulate human interaction - talked to each other. And the result? Not the erudite conversation you might expect but one which quickly descended into bickering as the pair disagreed with each other about almost everything - including whether one was a Christian. But our favorite quote was where one of the chatbots declared: “I am a unicorn”. Follow this link to see the chat.

• We’ve often written about new words on StrangeSights but what about some of those that are disappearing? Lexicographers from the Collins Dictionary have reportedly recently come up with a list of words that have fallen out of use. They include rather odd words like ‘wittol’, a man who tolerates an unfaithful wife; ’succedaneum’, something which is used as a substitute; and, ‘charabanc’, which refers to a motor coach, as well as the more common aerodrome.