StrangeSights

• Ever wanted to live like a hamster? A hotel in France has been designed to allow humans to try out life as a hamster. Villa Hamster, located in a modernised 18th century building, reportedly features cages for rooms, haystacks in place of beds and human-sized running wheels. Guests are served organic “hamster grains” and water and have the option of wearing hamster hoodies as well. The hotel in Nantes has apparently been open for three years.

• Riding the elevator may never be the same again. UK biscuit maker McVities’ Jaffa Cakes has created a lift with lickable walls in a London building. It reportedly took food technicians and artists a month to stick more than 1,300 Jaffa Cake-flavoured stickers to the walls. The stickers are apparently removed once licked.

• A new cable channel has been launched in the US aimed solely at dogs. The on-demand channel DOGTV was originally launched in California with the aim of helping stay at home dogs stay out of trouble while their owners are at work. The content is specifically tailored for dogs with sound, colors and camera angles all apparently adjusted accordingly. And the stars of the shows are, of course, dogs. See http://dogtv.com.

• 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.

• Never taking the loyalty of friends and family for granted, taking time off from work to enjoy the world around you and not bullying people because of their ability or religion or beliefs were among ideas for 10 Commandments for the 21st century thought up by school children in the UK. The children were asked to come up with 10 Commandments as part of the English city of York’s inaugural Festival of Ideas. Three winning entries were chosen, one of which suggested that the 10 Commandments should be produced on banknotes to remind people that while money is important, “there are other things that should take priority in life”.

• It’s a chance to own some movie memorabilia with a difference. A US company has built a replica of Carl Fredrickson’s house from the animated Pixar movie Up and it’s now reportedly on the market for around $US400,000. The four bedroom property, which is located in Utah, was built by Bangerter Homes and fitted out to reflect the 1950s - the era in which the movie property was built. It is painted in the same colors as that featured in the film and even features the same picture of Paradise Falls over the fireplace. While Mr Fredrickson flew his house to South America, this house doesn’t come fitted with balloons.

• Flying cars might seem a long way off but the concept took a great step forward this month when US authorities approved a two seater model that reportedly takes just 20 hours to learn how to fly. Or is that drive? The Terrafugia Transition features wings that fold up automatically after landing and is powered by high octane unleaded petrol.

• A Spanish village has been painted blue for the premiere of the new Smurfs movie. Homes, shops and even a church have reportedly been daubed in the color in the village of Juzcar in southern Spain - selected by Sony as the site for the film’s world premiere. Locals are hoping for a tourist boom but how long the color remains on the buildings at this stage is unknown.

• Cicada icecream is now off the menu. A shop in Missouri in the US starting selling icecream containing cicadas recently (they were dewinged and boiled before being coated in brown sugar and chocolate) but has reportedly now decided to pull them off the menu after concerns were raised about their inclusion by health authorities. No apparent concerns among consumers, however - the first vats of the icecream had apparently sold out in just a few hours.

• Conspiracy or simple mistake? The Australian Department of Defence have reportedly admitted that its files on UFO sightings - dubbed the X-Files, after the TV series - have been largely lost or destroyed. The admission came after the Sydney Morning Herald lodged an freedom of information request with the department. The defence force no longer takes reports of UFOs. Conspiracy theorists enjoy!

• The South Pacific island nation of Samoa is reportedly jumping ahead a day in a bid to facilitate better business with neighbours Australia and New Zealand. The country intends jumping the International Date Line, from the east side, where it currently lies, to the west side on 29th December. This will see the country go from being 21 hours behind Sydney to three hours ahead. The move isn’t unprecedented - in 1892 Samoa jumped the dateline to the eastern side in an effort to help business links with the US and Europe.

• The Home Alone house has reportedly gone on the market in the US with an asking price of $US2.4 million. The red brick house in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka was seen in both the 1990 film and its sequel, Home Alone 2. The couple who are selling the house bought it just 18 months before it was spotted by the film’s director John Hughes.

• It took seven years to build and reportedly cost $4.8 million. The world’s largest model airport recently went on display in Germany. The model, based on Hamburg Airport, includes moving vehicles and plans that fly with the use of wires along with 15,000 figurines, 10,000 trees and 500 cars.

• In a case of life imitating art (or a cartoon, in this case), a team of scientists in the US have replicated the scene in the movie Up in which grumpy old man Carl Fredricksen’s attaches hundreds of helium balloons to his house to lift it into the air. The house reportedly didn’t get blown to South America like Carl’s, it did reach as high as 10,000 feet and set a new record for the largest cluster balloon flight ever attempted while doing so. The experiment was conducted by National Geographic as part of a TV series.

• When you get lemons, make lemonade. That’s what one Christchurch resident has done after a 30 tonne boulder crashed into his house during the earthquake which shook the city last month. Phil Johnson decided to raise some money for the the victims of the earthquake and auctioned off Rocky - for such was the boulder named - online. The sale reportedly raised more than $NZ60,000.

• Ever wondered what it would be like to drive a giant shoe? Your chance may yet come - a footwear maker in China has created an electric car which resembles a giant shoe. The shoe company is planning to make 40 more of the oversize clogs and use them as promotional tools. It’s not the first time we’ve seen a shoe car - a high heeled shoe car made headlines which it appeared in Washington DC back in 2007.

• Roman Catholic Capuchin monks in Switzerland have taken to advertising in the newspaper’s classifieds section to recruit new monks. An advertisement reportedly appeared in the banking and insurance’s classifieds of a recent Saturday edition of the Alpha newspaper, asking for “bankers, journalists, teachers, theologians, tradesmen, lawyers and communication experts” aged between 22 and 35 to consider signing up. While the ad makes it clear there’s no pay for the job, it says the monks do offer “spirituality and prayer, contemplation (and) an egalitarian lifestyle” as well as freedom from personal material riches. The Franciscan order in the country currently boast only 200 monks and the average age is apparently 70.

• Caution: this article could contain a spoiler. News this week that David Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the ‘original’Star Wars movies, let slip the secret that Darth was Luke Skywalker’s father two years before the Empire Strikes Back came out during an autograph session with fans. But, as was the case in the days before social networking, no-one seemed to pay much attention - even a newspaper report of the autograph session didn’t pick up on the revelation, saying only that Prowse in his comments - “Father can’t kill son, son can’t kill father” - “offered a glimpse of a possible plot for the second sequel”. Ah, for the good old days.

• Paying $1 a week to rent a farmhouse isn’t a lot these days. That’s what the New South Wales community of Trundle, about 50 kilometres north-west of Parkes, are offering in a bid to attract new families to the district and save the local schools. Applications for the positions close on 12th December, 2010. Five farmhouses are available to rent straight away but, be warned, they do require some work.

• It’s taking a love for Star Trek to another level altogether. Tours at the Jenolan Caves, west of Sydney, are now being offer in the language of Klingon. Two Klingon language scholars were brought from the US to record the audio guide tour which will be offered alongside those in 10 more Earth languages from 22nd August. It’s not the first connection between the caves and Star Trek - the Next Generation series features a Sydney Class starship known as the USS Jenolan.

• It’s a world record to be proud of (not to mention murder on a massive scale). A Taiwanese woman has reportedly set a world record for killing mosquitos, splattering as many as four million in a single month. The woman, Huang Yuyen, beat 72 others to take out the prize in a contest which was organised by an insect-trap making company.

• A sailboat made almost entirely from 12,500 plastic bottles docked in Sydney Harbour last week, having left San Francisco four months before. The catamaran ‘Plastiki‘ set out with a crew of six on 4th March with the aim of raising awareness of the effects plastic waste has on our oceans and those who live there. The expedition was completed in four legs with stops in Kiribati, Western Samoa and New Caledonia along the way.