Hypnotist David Days tripped over a participant's leg and fell unconscious during a performance on Friday. Three people were "asleep" onstage at the time; when Days couldn't be roused after a few minutes, the audience was asked to leave. Though he came around a short time later and "woke up" the hypnotized volunteers, the incident was a little weird. Days's team claims he really did trip; the theater manager insists it was all part of the show.

The hypnotist later wrote on his Facebook page: "I would just like to let my fans know that I am completely fine.

"A little bruised, but that's all. Thanks for your support tonight, it was a great show with some great volunteers."

However, Alan Coman, treasurer of the Royal Manor Theatre, has disputed Mr Days' claims that he passed out and said the episode was "only a joke".

"It was part of a project for students who were filming the whole thing... but they (the people on stage being hypnotised) weren't pretending because they didn't get up to help.

"The audience didn't know (that it was part of the act) but it was purely to test hypnotism," he said.

But Mr Days' manager, Tara Nix, insisted it was not part of the show.

An audience member talked to BBC about the show, insisting that it initially seemed to be a joke, but when Days was pulled backstage and someone ran to find a first-aid kit, they realized it wasn't.

"At first the audience, including us, found it very funny and thought it was part of the act, but as time went on we began to realise that it was not part of the show and he had actually hurt himself.

"At this point we become very worried not only for David Days but also the guests that were onstage oblivious to anything as they were still hypnotised.

"They simply just sat there 'asleep'."

Though nothing like this has ever been reported, Days does keep a back-up hypnotist and a recording on-hand to bring volunteers out of hypnosis in case of emergency.

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What makes a nerd nerdy? Is it a proclivity for using words like "proclivity," or the social ineptitude only a lone acne-suffering lunchtime outcast can claim? It's the always-handy calculator, isn't it? Kuriositas explores the history of the nerd in an interesting piece that looks at the history of the word "nerd" and the image associated with Nerdus sapiens through history. (Note that this word nerd has subtracted two points for use of the non-word "irregardless.") Link

Image: Flickr user Bayat

It doesn't look like it, but the girl in the illustration above has two gray eyes. (And some vicious-looking fingernails.) This is due to the "opponent process" our brain uses to interpret signals from photoreceptors in our eyes--a process that sometimes produces weird and counterintuitive visual results. There are more illusions with full explanations in Scientific American's "Colors Out of Space" slideshow. Link

Image: Akiyoshi Kitaoka

(Watch on YouTube)

From Freddie Wong, the guy in Jedi A-Holes from John's post last week, a new video. This time, he's not out being a Force-abusing delinquent--he's the Arcade Dominator. I'm only a little bit envious of his mad skee-ball skillz.

Link via The Daily What

In the deep, dark ocean, many sea creatures make their own light for hunting, mating and self-defense. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder was one of the first to film this glimmering world. At TED2011, she brings some of her glowing friends onstage, and shows more astonishing footage of glowing undersea life.

In a bit of controversy on campus, the Breakfast Club--a group of about 40 male and female Worcester College students--get together in the library on Wednesday afternoons to do group revision... with a bit of stripping. The "Half-Naked Half-Hour" began in 2009 when Breakfast Club students decided it would be fun to partially disrobe in the Oxford campus library to break  "the monotony of a long day's revision" and "cool down during the hottest periods of the day."

Not anymore.

Librarians sent an email to the college saying the practice was 'unacceptable' and 'a distraction to other readers'.


In their email to students, the library committee warned: 'While half-naked half-hour may have seemed like a piece of harmless fun, we ask you please to stop this kind of behaviour in the library.

'If inappropriate behaviour continues, library staff will refer the matter to the Dean.


'It is not appropriate for groups of people to organise social or other kinds of events in the library without the permission of the librarian.'

The Breakfast Club members are unhappy, naturally, claiming the ban on nudity in the library "quite literally left our college in a state of chaos." According to reports, other students--as well as visiting heads of state--are just fine with it.

Link | Image: Nude Reading by Roy Lichtenstein

I have a slightly-more-than-passing interest in comics, which is to say that I find them interesting and have a couple of favorite artists, but remain unfamiliar with most of the esoteric details that actual fans are aware of. That said, I've always thought Catwoman was one of those lesser Batman foes, without any kind of historical intrigue. Today, Dr. Von Fangirl proved me wrong. Sorry, Catwoman.

The history compiled in Dr. Von Fangirl's post goes beyond common knowledge and delves deep into out-of-print minutiae regarding Selina Kyle's turn to our favorite pleather-wearing bad girl.

If you were to wander into a comic shop and ask the clerk behind the counter why Selina became Catwoman, chances are they wouldn't be able to tell you in great detail. Not because she doesn't have a detailed history, but because most of the comics that touch on her origin stories are out of print--and have been for a long, long time. In fact, this problem isn't limited to just the clerk in the comic shop; so little information is available online regarding Selina's origins that there is no way to get a complete picture of who she is from any source.

About eighty percent of Catwoman’s post-crisis comics appearances remain uncollected, including all of her 90‘s solo-series (except four issues in ‘The Cat File‘--which is out of print). This means the only way you’ll find them is by scouring back issue bins--and even then, you might not know what to look for. If you ever want to read Selina’s complete origin story, it’d take forever to track everything down and piece it together.

Thus, after nearly nine months of preparation, searching, research and hard work, I have compiled the most complete post-crisis Catwoman origin in history. Since I own about four hundred of Selina’s four hundred-sixty comics appearances published since the crisis--indeed, I own EVERY appearance from 1986 to 1999 as well as her 1989, 1993 and 2002 series and am slowly filling in what few gaps are left--I was able to comb through every appearance, looking for mentions of her origin so that nothing would be left out.

It's a long post, but worth it if you like knowing things other people don't--it's full of those. Read more at Well, What's the Matter? Link

Only one in four million lobsters is blue, a genetic mutation in coloring that makes for an interesting-looking creature. This blue lobster was caught Wednesday off the shores of Prince Edward Island, the only one since 2009. Blair Doucette, the fisherman who nabbed the beauty, says he has never caught a blue lobster in his 30 years of fishing. He is considering donating the lobster to a local aquarium.

Link | Image credit: Karen George

MI6 and GCHQ trolled an al-Qaeda online magazine by replacing bomb-making instructions with a list of recipes for the best cupcakes in America. "Operation Cupcake" was launched to disrupt efforts by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsular who were recruiting “lone-wolf” terrorists with a new English-language magazine.

When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to “Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom” by “The AQ Chef” they were greeted with garbled computer code.

The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for “The Best Cupcakes in America” published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.

Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said “the little cupcake is big again” adding: “Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it's updated for today’s sweet-toothed hipsters.”

It included a recipe for the Mojito Cupcake – “made of white rum cake and draped in vanilla buttercream”- and the Rocky Road Cupcake – “warning: sugar rush ahead!”

The efforts are ongoing, as the cupcake recipes were quickly replaced and the magazine has since been distributed with its original content. Read more at the Daily Telegraph. Link

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The Swedish coast guard (and a certain sailor's wife) are probably not too impressed with the recent antics of a drunken seaman. After leaving port without his wife, the sailor looked around his boat, couldn't find her, and naturally called the coast guard to report her drowned.

The distraught man, drifting in his disable craft with a broken tiller near Kalmar off the south coast of Sweden, claimed his wife had drowned after he couldn’t find her on the boat, The Local reports.

Rescuers soon found that the sailor’s wife had never been on the boat and was safe on land.

The boat was towed back to shore, and the drunken man was given a breath test and arrested for boating while intoxicated.

Link | Image

(Watch on Vimeo)

The German-based production team know as Polynoid is a collaboration of Jan Bitzer, Ilija Brunck, Csaba Letay, Fabian Pross and Tom Weber, all design, music and storytelling geniuses. This 5-minute film, Loom, took one year to create.

It's creepy but oddly mesmerizing. If you're an arachnophobe, this might not be the best animation for you. But I watched it and, rather than being terrified, I was awed. The only time I really squicked was in the spinneret shot near the end.

Link via reddit | Polynoid

The population of giant carnivorous hermaphrodite snails (formally, Powelliphanta) is on the rise in New Zealand, and that's a good thing. Six years ago, New Zealand's Department of Conservation (DOC) found 51 live specimens in Hawke's Bay. Recently, a new survey team spotted 75 live Powelliphanta.

"Powelliphanta are one of our most amazing native invertebrates," DOC ranger Mark Melville told The Dominion Post. "They are carnivores, giants of the snail world. They can live up to 20 years and they lay eggs that look like small birds' eggs."

The snails dwell on damp forest floors and forage for food at night. They mainly prey on earthworms but are also known to eat slugs, using a row of sharp, backward-facing teeth to grab their prey before devouring it using digestive enzymes.

Like some other land and freshwater snail species, powelliphanta snails are hermaphrodites. This means that any adult can mate with any other adult because both female and male sexual organs are present in each snail.

The species has been victim to endangered habitat and natural enemies, but the conservation efforts in areas like Hawke's Bay are proving beneficial.

Link | Image: Flickr User JK and Rocky, CC License

Move out of the way, police dogs! German police have a new best friend--the vulture. A team of three carrion-seeking birds have been trained to help officers find bodies. The only hitch is that the birds tend to peck at their finds. Um, yeah. That could be a problem.

Named Sherlock, Miss Marple and Colombo, the three vultures all have keen eyesight and an acute sense of smell. The idea is that birds could do a better job in handling rough terrain and scanning larger areas. Which is great and all but I hope the police remember that vultures are scavengers. So don't be surprised if a body is missing a couple eyeballs and has more flesh wounds than it should because of the vultures.

Link | Image

It's called the "Immersive Cocoon" but it's really more like a residential-scale Holodeck, where you can work, exercise, watch movies, play games, or visit the aquarium. Designer Tino Schaedler and design-and-ad firm NAU incorporated everything a 3D virtual reality consumer could want, including motion capture cameras, motion-sensing floor panels, 3D surround sound, 360-degrees of interior display space and even air conditioning. Dvice has a gallery of cool ideas for the Immersive Cocoon.

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(YouTube link)

Usually, when Tom Dickinson puts a piece of tech in his Blendtec, it's rendered unusable (and sometimes aflame). But the world's toughest cellphone, the Sonim XP3300 Force, came out ugly but still functioning. It looks like most of the damage was to the phone's exterior. The Gorilla Glass screen remained intact, as did the military-grade component housing. It may have "mostly blended," but this is the first time a phone was left un-obliterated by a Blendtec.

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