StrangeSights

• News from the UK this week that a man has changed his name to Buzz Lightyear. Steve Bolton, 26, apparently changed his name by Deed Poll because he was such a “massive fan” of Toy Story. A quick trawl of the net shows that odd names used for babies in the UK have included Justin Case, Barb Dwyer, Paige Turner and Mary Christmas while odd places names in the world include Australia’s Bang Bang Jump Up - a hill in Queensland, Blubberhouses - a village in North Yorkshire, UK, and Chugwater - a town in Wyoming, US.

• Seems the dummy didn’t quite do the job it was supposed to. Two prisoners has reportedly escaped from an Argentinian jail after a dummy, a football wearing a guard’s cap (think of the volleyball Wilson in the movie Cast Away) was used to man a guard tower due to staff shortages.

• Feeling lonely? Why not rent instead of buy? A US-based website, which has just been launched in the UK, reportedly allows people to ‘rent-a-friend’, paying an hourly rate to have someone accompany them to family and social occasions, watch a film, share a meal or even play sport. More than 200,000 friends are apparently available for hire in the US on the website, Rentafriend.com.

• Ever noticed that a person’s surname will often resemble their job (one need think no further than Seinfeld’s ‘library detective’, Mr Bookman, for an example!) Well, it may not be just you who thinks so. A series of studies in the US has found that a person’s surname may well influence the career they choose later in life. Carried out by Professor Ernest Abel, of Wayne State University in Michigan, the research apparently shows that doctors and lawyers are “disproportionately more likely” to have surnames resembling their professions, ie. Doctor for a doctor and Lawyer for a lawyer.

• Kissing while driving, building sandcastles and wearing squeaky sandals are among the activities reportedly banned in parts of Italy after a raft of new public order laws were introduced by local authorities as part of a campaign to stop anti-social behaviour. Other bans are reportedly aimed at feeding pigeons and stray cats, gathering in groups of more than two in public parks at night, and, wait for it, opening a kebab shop in Lucca, Tuscany (officials want to protect the town’s culinary heritage).

• Sick of gossip in the office? A US financial firm, Bridgewater Associates, has reportedly adopted a novel approach to the issue by banning such chat under a three strikes and you’re fired policy. Company president Ray Dalio has also reportedly ordered that all company meetings be recorded and stored in a ‘transparent library’ so the 1,000 staff can hear what they’re bosses are saying about them.

• Looking for a place to get away from it all? How about an entire village of your own, complete with pub and 40 inhabitants? The New Zealand village of Otira, on the South Island, has reportedly been put up for sale with an asking price of $NZ1 million. Current owners Bill and Christine Hennah bought the place in 1998 but say they now no longer have the energy to run it.

• They say that today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping but that’s certainly not the case with one newspaper. It’s reportedly appeared in TV’s and films since the 1950s - everything from TV series like Dallas and Desperate Housewives to films like No Country For Old Men. Might be time to update the film prop, although some of the stories which appear in the paper - ‘UN Debates Mideast Crisis’ - are probably - and sadly - just as relevant as they were 50 years ago.

• Ever wondered what that horrible high pitched noise is when you’ve been outside in the UK? No, well you’re probably over the age of 25. The Council of Europe is reportedly looking at banning the use of ‘mosquito devices’ - which emit a high-pitched sound only those under the age of 25 can hear and are used to discourage young people from gathering in places authorities don’t want them to. Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights organisation Liberty in the UK - where more of the devices are in use than anywhere else, told The Guardian newspaper the weapons contravene young people’s human rights. “What type of society uses a low-level sonic weapon on its children?” Good question.

• Collecting teabags would have to be one of the most unusual hobbies we at StrangeSights have come across - particularly used ones. But that’s what artist Patti Gaal-Holmes has reportedly been doing for the last 11 years, using the bags as a sort of diary and sometimes not only numbering them but writing on them who she drank the tea with and even what was talked about. The bags are apparently stored in suitcases. And yes, “they do smell a bit”, she concedes before adding that she finds it “a bit comforting”.

• North Korea has certainly adopted an efficient approach to supporting its soccer team in the World Cup with news this week that the team’s ’supporters’ - all uniformly dressed in red and led in their supporting by a conductor - had been handpicked to attend the event and even included a group of Chinese people specially recruited to cheer on their neighbours (and at the same time allow the North Korean Government to make sure there’s no defectors). Still at least they’ve had something to cheer about with the team only losing one goal to two when playing powerhouse Brazil in their World Cup opener.

• It probably won’t come as a surprise to most people that Darth Vader had a borderline personality disorder. French psychiatrist Eric Bui and a team from Toulouse University Hospital reportedly made the finding after a study of the Star Wars villain. “Turning to the dark side and changing his name could be a sign of identity disturbance,” he concluded, adding that he believed psychotherapy could have helped him. But then think how the Star Wars story would have suffered.

• Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men has reportedly found a new use as a means of attracting jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle. Biologists have employed the cologne to bring the big cats up to their cameras so they can study them and say the scent has proved surprisingly successful in bringing them in. The Wildlife Conservation Society say they intend expanding use of the cologne in other programs it’s conducting in South America.

• So you want to go out into the mud but are expecting a phone call and, with your mobile battery flat, you can’t leave the phone? If that dilemma’s been perplexing you, you need worry no longer - help is at hand. UK phone company Orange has released a pair of gumboots that will not only keep the mud off you but charge your phone at the same time. Developed for people attending outdoor music festivals such as the Glastonbury festival - where the product will be launched - the ‘Orange Power Wellies’ will give you one hour’s worth of charge for every 12 hours you walk.

• The recent launch of 3D TV is only one way in which formerly 2D media is becoming more interactive. In the US, one company has given an extra dimension to billboards by producing an ad for a grilled steak which does more than just look good to the drivers going past. It also smells good. Marketing company ScentAir says the sign, created for the Bloom grocery store chain and located in North Carolina, will dispense it’s aroma during the morning and afternoon rush hour until mid-June. Good preparation for the evening meal but not sure if I’d feel like a steak in the morning!

• Dog breeding has resulted in some strange mixes but spare a thought for a Golden Retriever and four Chow-Chows in China which have been dyed to resemble a tiger and four panda bears. The animals were all purchased by a pet park in Zhengzhou, Henan province, as part of a marketing bid.

• OK, so we’ve had boats made out of bottles, ‘aquacars’ and even an ‘aquabus’. Now a trio of Londoners have used a bouncy castle to paddle their way across Lake Garda in Italy. “Great Britain has such a great tradition as a seafaring nation and we really feel we have played no role at all in adding to this” admitted one of the would-be sailors. The trip was apparently part of Honda’s Live Every Litre project.

• Finishing a 5,000 piece jigsaw is a big moment for anyone - even more so if it’s been an effort that’s taken seven-and-a-half years. Just imagine the disappointment of Jack Harris, then, when he reportedly discovered that a piece was missing! The family of the retiree believe it may have been eaten by one of his daughter-in-laws dogs.

• A Japanese couple are believed to have become the first people to be married by a robot. The Tokyo ceremony - between Satoko Inoue, an employee at Kokoro, the company which made the robot, and her husband Tomohiro Shibata, a professor of robotics - was led by I-Fairy, a seated robot with plastic pigtails. Said the bride: “This was a lot of fun. I think that Japanese have a strong sense that robots are our friends”.

• We already have internet churches and online confessionals, now comes the idea of the virtual pilgrimage. A new service allows would-be pilgrims to the Shrine of St James in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela to pay for a ‘digital candle’ to be lit for them without ever leaving the comfort of their home. The operators of the scheme have permission to set up the the electronic candles at the site - a move which could have the added benefit of helping to reduce the risk of fire in the cathedral.

• In an ironic twist, a tiny sliver of the famous apple tree Sir Isaac Newton observed an apple falling from (and so ‘discovered’ the law of gravity) is heading for the weightless environment of outer space. British-born astronaut Piers Sellers is taking the piece of wood aboard the space shuttle Atlantis next week on behalf of the Royal Society of London.

• It’s a fair knock by any standard. Teenage English cricketer Oliver Hardaker celebrated a world record-breaking batting streak earlier this month when he smashed 329 runs, not out, in a single day’s cricket. The tally, which was arrived at during a game in the Yorkshire Dales, included 27 sixes and 28 fours off 144 balls.

• It’s a cautionary tale about what not to do when boating. A novice boat-owner in the UK ending up sailing in circles this week while trying to make his way from the Gillingham on the Medway River to the south coast town of Southampton. The man, who had bought his motor boat online, had reportedly set out with a road map instead of navigational charts and decided that as long as he kept the coast on his right, he would inevitably reach Southampton. Sadly for him, his theory meant he when reached the Isle of Sheppey - which lies only a short distance from Gillingham - he simply starting circling it and, unaware he was doing so, kept on circling it until his fuel eventually ran out and he ran aground. He was rescued by the coast guard, one of whom described the man as “very short on expertise”.

• He’s the most famous street artist in the world. But that didn’t stop council workers in Melbourne from reportedly inadvertently painting over one of Banksy’s works last week. The work - the stencil of a rat - was one of several works the reclusive artist created in the city when visiting in 2003.

• The idea of insuring body parts has been around for years but this week it was Formula One champion Fernando Alonso’s turn to give it the thumbs up. Alonso’s two thumbs were reportedly insured for 10 million euros as part of a PR campaign for his sponsor’s Santander. Why the thumbs? Not only essential for driving, they’re also needed to make a victory sign.

• It’s the latest in underground bunkers. Designed for the family looking to escape “the next earth devastating catastrophe, terrorist or nuclear attack”, an American company known as Vivos has unveiled its intention building a series of 20 underground complexes, each of which has been designed to autonomously house up to 200 people for a year. The complexes are designed as a wheel system with a central hub in which families can meet and socialise and spokes in which private living quarters are located. The company, whose website has a clock counting down the days to December 21, 2012 - the date that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will end, says it’s already had 1,000 applications for its first nuclear blast shelter located in California. The cost of buying a place in the new complexes has been reported at $US50,000.

• Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is getting the Twitter treatment. The UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company has teamed up with mobile phone content producer Mudlark to provide a version of the play in which actors are improvising their tweets based on the original play. The actors are also being encouraged to interact with the audience as well as each other. You can join in here: www.suchtweetsorrow.com.

• The Isles of Scilly, off the south-west coast of the UK, may only have nine miles of ‘proper’ road. But that hasn’t stopped the local constabulary from getting their hands on a speed camera to stop anyone who might even be thinking of hooning. But an arrest may be some way off - the highest speed reportedly clocked so far as been 34mph.

• It’s probably not a bad place to get shipwrecked - unless you have a morbid fear of rats. Australian family, the Barries, have been shipwrecked on the Micronesian island of Mogmog and will apparently have to stay as guests of the island’s 200 inhabitants for six months while they repair their yacht. There’s some great snorkelling to be had (sunken US warships abound) but no electricity, clocks or running water and the island is also reportedly home to coconut crabs (which, as their name suggests, can crush coconuts with their claws) as well as many, many rats.

• Dragging your husband around sound like fun? A new event at this year’s Countryfest in the WA town of Singleton (and believed to be a world first), the art of ‘husband dragging’ involves pulling him away from the ‘pub’, getting him to put out the rubbish and then having him run back to the ‘pub’ to skol a drink. The festival - which took place on 27th March at the showgrounds - also features a wife carrying event. The winner of this event is heading to the world championships in Finland.

• A couple of US academics have shown how portion sizes have grown over the past 1000 years by comparing servings depicted in images of the Last Supper. Cornell University Professor Brian Wansink and his brother, Craig Wansink, a professor of religious studies at Virginia Wesleyan College, examined 52 paintings of the last supper and used computer technology to examine and compare serving sizes. Their results showed the size of the main course has increased by 69.2 per cent, the size of plates by 65.6 per cent, and the size of bread served by 23.1 per cent and.