StrangeSights

• The dogs recently hit the surf in California for the 7th annual Loews Surf Dog Competition. This year saw more than 50 dogs showing their moves on the waves at Imperial Beach in San Diego - they are judged in a range of categories including small dogs, large dogs and tandems (sounds like a page out of Dr Seuss’ Go Dogs Go!) - as well as the setting of a number of new world records including one for the most dogs ever to ride on one board - 14.

• The Welsh community of Monmouth - famous for being the birthplace of King Henry V - has become the world’s first “Wikipedia town”. The move, dubbed Monmouthpedia, means Wikipedia now hosts more than 700 articles about the town and means visitors can use their phones to scan barcodes at places like historical sites, schools, museums and pubs to bring up relevant articles in a range of languages.

• The word ‘bogan’ has reportedly officially entered the Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary’s June list of new word entries has apparently included the word which it defines as being Australian and New Zealand colloquial “depreciative term for unfashionable, uncouth, or unsophisticated person, esp. of low social status”.

• 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.

• The Anglican church of St Hilda’s in Ellerburn, North Yorkshire, has been running Sunday services for more than 1,000 years. Until, that is, the bats drove them…well…batty. An infestation of hundreds of bats has led to the suspension of services for the first time in the church’s history with the unwanted inhabitants reportedly covering the altar with guano, annoying worshippers and filling the church with a disgusting smell. The congregation have spent thousands in creating a new home for the bats in nearby woodland but the protected species just keeps on coming back. They are now seeking permission to have the bats removed for good.

• Over planking already? Now comes the next weird fab from the world of social networking - owling. While planking involves getting a photo of yourself lying horizontal on all manner of objects and in all sort of places, owling takes the same concept but simply replaces the lying down with assuming a crouched position, like an owl on a perch. The mind boggles at what comes next.

• Just how high is Mt Everest? The answer is that no-one knows, not exactly anyway (or rather several groups claim to know but none of their measurements has the acceptance of everyone). In 1856, the mountain was found to be 8,840 metres high. Surveys since have come in with different heights - Indian surveyors put the height at 8848 in 1957 while in 1999 a US expedition found it to be 8,850 metres high with an ice-cap of another metre and in 2005, a survey by China in 2005 put it at 8,844.43 metres tall (plus an extra 3.55 metre high ice-cap). In the hope of settling what is at times a controversial debate, Nepalese authorities have reportedly launched a two year survey to measure the peak and ascertain its height for themselves. We wait to see who’s proved right.