Wicked Thoughts

Was the Good Lord helping out?

Fireworks display accompanied by lightning in Perth, Australia

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THE NEWS

Odd news from around the world

NY: Embarrassing “SHCOOL” sign finally replaced: “An embarrassing misspelling of ‘school’ is gone from the street outside a New York City school building. Utility workers used heavy machinery to grind up the wrongly placed ‘H’ and ‘C’ in the ‘SHCOOL X-NG’ sign on Tuesday. The correction was made a day after the New York Post reported the spelling error. The words were created with industrial textured tape that permanently sticks to the asphalt. … the mistake outside the Manhattan building that houses three schools had been there since July 2010.”

German Parliament employee starts email meltdown after sending ‘reply all’ message to 620 MPs: “It’s the curse of modern communication – accidentally copying more people in on messages due to one slip of the mouse. But while most people may add a handful of extra recipients to their email conversation by hitting ‘reply all’, the consequences can be more serious if your company employs several thousand people. One admin officer inside the German Parliament discovered this to her cost when she unwittingly created an ‘email snowball effect’ at the Bundestag. The employee had attempted to forward a legal notice sent to thousands of MPs to a single colleague, but mistakenly hit ‘reply all’ when sending her message. The result saw 620 German MPs copied in on her innocent message to a colleague – and sparked an ‘overwhelming’ response when hundreds replied back in bemusement and anger. As time went on and the email conversation grew beyond control, the replies became increasingly bizarre. One read: ‘Greetings to my mommy’, while another said, ‘In Hannover-Linden it is three degrees, dry and partly cloudy’.”

Lovestruck male house mice sing ‘like birds’ to attract mates: “Male house mice sing like birds to serenade their mates, a study has found. But don’t expect to catch a performance in your kitchen – their high pitched soprano voices are beyond the range of human hearing. Scientists made the discovery after slowing down the ultrasonic courtship calls of mice to study them. They found that mouse music bore a ‘striking’ similarity to birdsong. The vocalisations were complex and personalised, containing ‘signatures’ that differed from one tiny crooner to another. Previous studies by the same group at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna confirmed that male mice sing when they pick up a female’s scent, and that females are attracted to their songs., Females were able to distinguish between their own brothers’ songs and those of unrelated males, even when hearing their siblings sing for the first time.”

New word “thongage” (like “corkage”) from Australia’s wild North: “”Thongage” is listed in the Macquarie Dictionary. The word was invented in Spellmans Tramontana restaurant in Darwin city when owner John Spellman, 65, started charging customers $10 for wearing the dreaded rubber slips in his upmarket Gardiner St eatery in March 2010. Mr Spellman says he brought in the charge to deter scruffy diners. “People think it’s amazing,” he said. “It started as an offhand comment. “We have people come from Perth and they want it on their bill, it is a tourism thing.” But Mr Spellman still isn’t budging on his dress code. “If you come in from Palmerston wearing thongs after fixing your car, I will charge you,” he said. “People look at me when I tell them, and I say ‘I’m famous for it’.”

Bridge taken out after hit from big ship: “Incredible images emerged of a hulking freighter wearing mangled pieces of a steel bridge on its bow after a collision in southwestern Kentucky Thursday night. In the pictures, the 312-foot Delta Mariner idles, still partially in the bridge’s path, and clearly looks much too large to fit beneath the aging Eggner Ferry Bridge, which crosses the Kentucky Lake Reservoir. The cargo vessel was carrying space rocket parts for the United Launch Alliance, intended for a vehicle that was scheduled to be shot into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Two sections of the bridge, which is the only route across the lake and the Tennessee River, collapsed after the crash. Unbelievably no one was injured after the collision, though one driver described the harrowing experience of slamming on his brakes and stopping just a few feet short of oblivion after finding the bridge suddenly stopped.”

And don’t forget to catch up with all the Strange Justice before you go.