Germany's "Forest Boy" a hoax

No one is shocked.

In a revelation that shocked almost no one, Germany's "Forest Boy" has been shown to be a hoax. German police finally released a photo of the Forest Boy last week, and a woman in the Netherlands recognized him as a 20-year-old man who was declared missing in the Netherlands last September.
Several months ago, a young man who called himself "Ray" showed up at Berlin City Hall with a wild story. He claimed that he had been living in the woods of Germany with his father for the past five years, and that he decided to leave the woods after his father died.
 
Ray claimed that he could only remember his first name, his birth date, and the first name of his mother and father. He said that his mother had died in a car accident when he was 12, and that he and his father had been living in the woods ever since. 

Ray's story was suspect from the beginning. He was only able to provide vague details about the car accident, had no information on how his father died, and was unable to give police directions to his father's supposed burial site. He also turned up in Berlin looking fit and healthy, with a relatively recent hair cut, clean shaven, and with fingernails that were clean and well maintained - not dirty or chipped, the way you would expect from someone who had been living in the woods. 
 
There have been many documented cases of amnesia and people living in the woods, but Ray's story never seemed to be one of them. Nothing about his story made sense, while at the same time he seemed cogent and mentally stable. His German was very good, if strangely un-accented. Unlike so many people who have suffered great tragedies, or memory loss, or who have spent a long time in the woods, Ray seemed fine.
 
Contrast this with "Peter the Wild Boy," who was found "living alone and naked in a German forest in 1725." It is presumed that Peter, who suffered from a genetic abnormality similar to Down's Syndrome, was abandoned by his parents. He never learned to speak, disliked clothes, and preferred to sleep on the floor in a corner.
 
German authorities are quite peeved with Ray, who has spent seven months living on public assistance that could have gone to people truly in need. The unanswered question is, why? Why leave your home country and turn up in another one with a wild - yet suspiciously vague - story?

Corpse medicine: dead people keepin' us living

Although almost entirely out of practice now, many people in history depended on remedies for the living, made from the dead.

So here’s one for well after dinnertime: corpse medicine. Yes, in our less educated and far-more violence-tolerant past, we often used body parts as a salve or remedy for every kind of affliction one could imagine. Almost all of these ancient cures were pure superstition (i.e. desperation), but people no doubt believed in them because they were, suffice it to say, plentiful. Our past is full of violence and depravation (there were some good things too), and a human body, even a long dead one, was often not very hard to come by.

Mummies in Egypt are as archetypal to our thinking of that area of the world as castles and Europe, samurais in Japan, or overalls and America. According to io9, from the 12th century to the 17th century, mummy powder was considered a valuable remedy for everything from stomach ulcers and headaches. Plaster casts of ground up ancient Egyptian were thought to cure skin ailments and broken bones. They were even given to sick hawks, which were popular for hunting in the Middle Ages.

Also hailing from the ancient times, ancient Rome to be exact, were the restorative powers of gladiator blood. Widely considered a cure for epilepsy, blood and liver would be harvested from fallen gladiators, and would even be administered directly from the fallen warrior’s arm. In fact, the gore was even sold at stands outside the coloseums directly after a fatal fight.

Physicians in the 17th century did not undergo quite the same rigorous education as they do today. In evidence, English physician John French would use human brains, distilled with lavender and other things as an epileptic cure. He recommended using the brain of a young man that had died violently to be marinated in wine and horse dung before being distilled. Even worse, a German chemist diced and mashed an entire corpse into a paste before distilling it.

Some necrotic remedies may exist today. Tai Bao capsules, reportedly composed of powdered placenta and aborted fetus material, are considered valuable in improving virility, beautifying skin, and even treating asthma.

There are plenty of crazy claims out there that go much farther than just “snake oil.” Using a hanged man’s hand to cure cysts, boils, and even hemmorhoids was popular in the 17th through 19th centuries. In addition, executed men would often have their fat excised and boiled into an ointment to cure everything from joint issues and tremors. There’s even a disturbing report from China of a “Mellified Man,” a man that is given only honey until her dies, and then buried in a coffin full of honey. After 100 years the seal is broken and the resulting “confection” is used to treat battle wounds.

Cactuar: The Other Walking Cactus

Let's just be thankful that the Cactuar exists strictly in the world of fantasy

A while back, after watching Rango, I was moved to do some research and write an article about whether or not there really is such a thing as a "walking cactus" or "Spanish dagger," as mentioned in the movie. At the time, I was able to find:
 
1. A prehistoric arthropod discovered in China, a species of Diania dubbed "walking cactus"
 
2. Two species of yucca called "Spanish dagger." Yucca gloriosa, which is not native to the Mojave desert (which I discovered in researching the article), and Yucca schidigera which is native to the Mojave (which a commenter later turned up).
 
3. A true cactus, Stenocereus eruca, known as the "walking cactus" or "creeping devil," capable of moving across the desert floor at  a blistering top speed of two feet per year.
 
But in the months since that article was posted, another commenter pointed out a fourth walking cactus. And like the walking cactus in Rango, these ones move like humans, talk and hatch evil schemes. It is none other than the Cactuar of the Final Fantasy video game franchise.

The Cactuar's original design stems from a doodle in the high school notebooks of Final Fantasy character designer Tetsuya Nomura. They are a recurring enemy in the series, and take the form of the familiar barrel cactus with two legs and two arms which move stiffly, usually held at right angles. The Cactuar have two eyes and a mouth, usually depicted as two big black holes for the eyes and one long black hole for the mouth. In some versions the Cactaur is also known as Cactrots or as Sabotenders.
 
Like many Final Fantasy characters, the Cactuar appears in several Mario games as well: in Mario Hoops 3-On-3 it can be unlocked as a playable character on the Glare Desert level. Other Cactuars appear in the Glare Desert as spectators and in the final cut scene. The basketball-playing variety of Cactuar has actual segmented legs and arms, which allows him to run, jump, and dunk the ball. Cactuar can also play volleyball in Mario Sports Mix.
 
As a general rule, Cactuars have low HP, but they move quickly. They also have a very effective trademark attack: "1,000 Needles," which deals 1,000 HP damage regardless of your defenses. Let's just be thankful that the Cactuar exists strictly in the world of fantasy, because encountering an attack like that is a rather shocking thought!

The Death of Lincoln: Conspiracy Central

Lincoln conspiracy theories run deep, but here's an overview.

Five days after General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln was shot by an actor who reportedly was trying to restart the Civil War. The real Abraham Lincoln may not have fought vampires in his spare time as a new movie (based on a successful novel) alleges. But he was a formative presence in the early history of our country. 
 
What might Lincoln have accomplished, if he hadn't been assassinated at the relatively young age of 56? More to the point, what was he killed to prevent? Lincoln conspiracy theories run deep, but here's an overview.

 
Booth And His Two Pals: The "Simple Conspiracy"
Dubbed "the Simple Conspiracy" by researchers, Booth's conspiracy is well documented in his diaries and letters. John Wilkes Booth and two co-conspirators had arranged a conspiracy to overthrow the American government.
 
Each of the men was assigned to assassinate a key member of government: Booth was to kill Lincoln, Lewis Powell was to kill Secretary of State William Seward, and George Atzerodt was assigned to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. By making the government leaderless, Booth and his cronies hoped to give the South a chance to rally and come back to win the Civil War.
 
Image courtesy Flickr/jason.stajich
 
Both Powell and Atzerodt failed their assignments. Powell only wounded Seward, and Atzerodt lost his nerve and fled Washington D.C. without making an attempt on Johnson's life.
 
But who was really pulling the strings? Was this plot just the work of three disgruntled southerners? Or was it part of a larger conspiracy by the South to win the Civil War at any cost? Would the Confederacy have stooped to assassination, planning to take the country by military coup? 
 
Today it is generally recognized that Booth, Powell, and Atzerodt originally planned to merely kidnap their targets. The plan was to hold them hostage for Southern prisoners of war, whom the North had recently stopped trading. No one can be sure when the plan turned to assassination, or why. 
 
 
Did Lincoln's Nightmare Predict His Own Death?
About two weeks before his assassination, Lincoln had a nightmare in which he wandered an empty White House which rang with the sound of sobbing mourners. In the dream he finally came upon the East Room, where he encountered a corpse wrapped in funeral clothes being mourned by a crowd of people. When Lincoln asked what had happened, he was told that the body was that of the President, who "was killed by an assassin."
 
Image courtesy Flickr/Kansas Explorer 3128
 
Even though Lincoln dismissed it as "only a dream," he told his biographer that "I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since." He was still bothered by it some ten days later, just a few days before his assassination.
 
 
Was Andrew Johnson Involved?

Vice-President Andrew Johnson escaped Booth's "simple conspiracy" unscathed. And Johnson certainly had motivation to kill Lincoln: once Lincoln was dead, Johnson became president. Johnson also had a grievance against Lincoln, who had shut him out after Johnson's drunken and disgraceful behavior on Inauguration Day.  (Johnson would later be impeached on the grounds that he was working to undermine Congress.)
 
 
It does seem that Booth and Johnson knew each other, or that Booth seemed to think so. About seven hours before he shot Lincoln, Booth stopped by the hotel where Johnson lived and left him a little note. "Don't wish to disturb you," Booth wrote, "Are you at home? J Wilkes Booth." He left the note in Johnson's box, and Johnson's private secretary later testified that he found it there.
 
Mary Todd Lincoln herself believed that Johnson was involved in her husband's murder. Then again, some people believe that Booth deliberately left the note in order to implicate Johnson in the assassination he was planning for later that night.
Image courtesy Flickr/Marion Doss
 
 
Are The Rothschilds To Blame?
The Rothschilds, the world's most powerful family, seem to find themselves at the center of every conspiracy theory eventually. In the case of Lincoln, there is speculation that the Rothschilds had him killed because of his financial policies. 
 
Image courtesy Flickr/jimbowen0306
 
When Lincoln needed money to finance the Civil War, the Rothschilds (among others) offered loans at exorbitant interest rates. Lincoln turned down their offer, and found financing through other routes. Furthermore, Lincoln's protectionist policies would have hurt the Rothschilds' bottom line. If they couldn't buy their way into the American government, so the theory goes, the Rothschilds would prefer to assassinate it and roll the dice to try again.
 
 
The 18 Missing Diary Pages
Booth famously kept a diary, a small red appointment book (about the size of a modern Moleskine notebook). After Booth was tracked down and killed and his diary examined, eighteen pages had been ripped out and were missing. (These missing pages also featured in the popcorn summer thriller, "National Treasure: Book of Secrets.")
 
Image courtesy Flickr/bhrome
 
According to some accounts, 50 years later those missing pages were found hidden in a trunk in the attic of Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War. Stanton has been described as "power hungry," and was later accused of witness tampering and otherwise skewing the results of Booth's trial. It's worth noting that Booth's trial was not held as a civil trial but as a military tribunal, and therefore fell under Stanton's jurisdiction.
 
The Stanton conspiracy was popularized in a book written in the 1930s which was later turned into an even more popular movie in 1977, "The Lincoln Conspiracy."

Micronations: DIY Statehood

Always a sub-culture, micronations have blossomed in the internet era

I first learned about micronations back in the late 1990s, while reading Neal Stephenson's runaway science fiction bestseller Cryptonomicon. The novel introduces the concept of stateless data haven, one of which was coincidentally created on Sealand the year after Cryptonomicon was released. It seemed like the book was coming to life! 
Sealand is one of many micronations, part of a long history of secession from the rest of the world. Sealand is based on an abandoned off-shore WWII anti-aircraft platform in international waters in the North Sea. For a nation of five people, Sealand has a surprisingly engrossing history which includes not only the aforementioned data haven but also currency scares, international weapons infractions, and an international scandal involving Sealand passports being involved in high-profile crimes.

Anyone can declare a micronation at any time. The key difference between a micronation and a fantasy nation, political exercise like a school's "Model United Nation," or role-playing group is that a micronation is tied to a specific physical asset, be it an island, a home, or a parcel of property. Reading this article, you can draw a line around your desk and declare it your own micronation. And many people have done exactly this, for a variety of reasons. 

Some micronations seem to be strictly works of whimsy. Others are a form of political protest, seceding from what is seen as a heavy-handed government. Still others seem to be the work of people who may well be suffering from a mental illness, be it autism or schizophrenia or possibly both. And then you have the "art project" micronations, such as those which are established specifically for the purpose of writing about micronations themselves. (Very meta!)
 
The tricky thing about declaring your own micronation is getting recognized by other (one hesitates to say "real") nations. But short of that, micronations typically involve setting up a charter, a coat of arms, creating a flag, setting up a website (as a diplomatic interface), designating a royal family, and constructing physical signage. Some micronations have gone as far as to issue their own currency and stamps, which are hot collector's items. 
 
If you have ever been curious about micronations, Wikipedia is an excellent place to start. It not only has a long list of all known micronations, it also has separate articles on each one, filled with all kinds of history and fascinating information.
 

Is a town in India being overrun with poisonous spiders?

This story is starting to look like just a case of panic.

Sometimes those "news of the weird" stories that sound too weird to be true really ARE too weird to be true. It's a case of dueling journalists at this point: I have seen armies of articles that make a plausible case both for and against the report that a small town in rural India is being flooded with killer poisonous spiders.
This CNN article is one of the most skeptical. It makes the point that one of the people who was bitten was probably actually bitten by a poisonous snake. It also adds that the man was not taken to a Western hospital for treatment, but instead was brought to a local healer or shaman for assistance. (There are a lot of illnesses where faith healing can be useful - the placebo effect is surprisingly strong. But I don't think "snake bite" is one of them.)
 
The article also cites a reporter who believes the second person wasn't bitten by anything.

About 20 people have sought medical assistance for spider bites in the northern Indian town of Sadiya in the last two weeks. Only a few of them were confirmed as having been bitten by a spider, and most of them were bitten by known local species. I read another report somewhere that one spider bite a week requiring hospitalization is about normal for this part of the world, in this time of the year.
 
It appears that the spider panic began locally, and has been spread online. The rumor is that the town's festival ended with a panic involving a swarm of biting spiders of an unknown species. And yet we have no photographs of this swarm, and no confirmed reports of anything other than normal spider species present in normal numbers.
 
There are no native species in Assam which are venomous, although there are many spiders that can give you a scare. It's possible that an introduced species has overtaken the small town of Sadiya, although no unusual species have been collected yet. Speculation that this could be the work of Australian funnel web or black wishbone spiders is entirely fantasy at this point.
 
People have reported that the large spiders are quite aggressive, some have claimed that the spiders leaped at them and latched on to bite. Unlikely though it all may sound, panicked district officials  are giving serious consideration to spraying the entire town with DDT. Let's hope it doesn't come to that; Sadiya is certainly home to millions of innocent if not helpful insects, and the repercussions to local wildlife could be severe.

Amelia Earhart: Evidence found?

Earhart may have survived for a time on tiny Nikumaroro Island

The mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance has enthralled people for almost 75 years. As glamorous as she was pioneering and innovative, Earhart's legacy ended too soon when she and her navigator disappeared over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937. But a series of tantalizing clues indicates that either she or her navigator (or both) may have survived for a time, stranded and desperate on the tiny island now known as Nikumaroro.
Nikumaroro (formerly called Gardner Island) is part of the Phoenix Islands in the western Pacific. It is a small, comma-shaped ring of land with a large central marine lagoon taking up most of the middle of the island. The lagoon is connected to the Pacific via a bridge that floods at high tide, and is dry during low tide. The island features only a tiny strip of beach a few feet wide, and is surrounded by a rugged coral field which drops off sharply to the surrounding deep ocean floor.

Earhart disappeared in July of 1937. In December of 1938, a small group of British settlers were dropped off on the island as part of a misguided settlement plan (which quickly failed). In addition to some scattered skeletal remains, they found the broken remains of bottles which once held freckle cream (Earhart was known to be self-conscious about her freckles) and a hand cream that was popular with women in 1937. The bottles had been broken and used for survival: some had melted bottoms, from standing in a fire to boil water. Other shards had been used as cutting tools.

The bones were sent away for analysis and promptly lost.
 
A new analysis of transmissions recorded after Earhart's disappearance finds it credible that they were transmissions from Earhart herself. The battery for her radio was located at the bottom of her plane, where it would have been subject to shorting out from sea water if the plane had landed in the water (as it must surely have done, to some extent). The transmissions give a compass heading that passes directly through Nikumaroro. 
 
Later transmissions were received for up to a week after Earhart's disappearance; while they were dismissed at the time, researchers now believe that they point to a scenario where Earhart's plane was stranded on a tidal coral flat. This would have made the plane accessible during low tide, but only for a few days until the plane's batteries were destroyed by the seawater.
 
TIGHAR, the private organization which has been researching Earhart's disappearance, has planned a high-tech search of the ocean floor for Earhart's plane to start this July. 
 

Transgenic Sting Ray Shoes

Best case scenario, it's shoes made of fake leather. Worst case scenario, a con.

Update, 12/22/12: Yep, I called it! It's a hoax. 

So here is a thing which is - I would estimate - at least 93 percent fake. 

Rayfish Shoes is a company based in Thailand which lets you choose the crazy-pants color and pattern you want, then injects the necessary genes into a stingray fetus. When the stingray grows up to shoe size, Rayfish harvests the stingray's leather and boom: transgenic shoes with the wacky pattern grown right into the skin!
 
The claims of being able to custom design skin color patterns (like fuchsia leopard print, or acid yellow zebra stripes) is patently false. Not only is this not possible with today's technology, it's probably not possible at all, ever. 

There is no single gene to control color or coat pattern in animals. And even if there were, there's no way to inject that gene into something as biologically dissimilar as a stingray and have it not only remain a viable fetus, but grow up to express those very same genes. That's just not how biology works. End of story.

It's difficult to tell what exactly is not fake about this. I have doubts that Stingray is even raising rays in aquaculture for shoes, since stingrays are notoriously difficult to raise in an aquaculture environment. In Asia, it's far cheaper just to hire the manual labor to go out and harvest wild stingrays. 
 
It's even difficult to tell if the resulting shoes will be made of stingray leather at all. Obviously the claims of using genetic manipulation to create your custom color patterns are utterly false. But how easy is it to dye stingray leather in the wild colors and patterns Rayfish Shoes promises? It seems a lot more plausible that Rayfish Shoes are just made with regular old vinyl, patterned with stingray leather grain and colored to the user's request.
 
Frankly, the more I examine the site, the more convinced I am that it's someone's "art project," and that it will never actually ship a pair of real world shoes. I see no information about sizing, for example, which you would think would be a fairly important consideration for a shoe company.
 
At best, this is a prank similar to the venerable old Bonsai Kitten website. At worst, it's a cynical way to defraud people out of thousands of dollars for a pair of regular old pleather shoes with a wacky back-story filled with lies. At the VERY worst, it's a con that will take people's money and never deliver a thing.
 

CDC insists there is no Zombie Apocalypse

But they WOULD say that, wouldn't they?

The Zombie Apocalypse has weighed heavily on the hearts and minds of Americans in the last week. It all started with one crazy-ass story, and quickly spiraled out of control as every single zombie-related news story got pushed to the top of the heap. This is clearly just a case of selection bias run amok, but it looks like it will take a little while longer to burn itself out.
In the mean time, the CDC has been pushed to the point of making a public statement to the effect that it isn't possible for corpses to reanimate themselves, and that there is no zombie disease. Sure, easy for them to say! If you have watched the first season of "The Walking Dead," then you know that CDC headquarters in Atlanta apparently includes a vast and surprisingly effete collection of wines. I don't know where their wine cellar is, but judging from what we see in the show, it must be huge.

(Also, the CDC's headquarters come with roll-down metal shutters at ground level, so that it can close itself up like a New York City deli when the Zombie Apocalypse comes. The things you learn on television!)

We all know the CDC's disavowal is disingenuous. The idea that zombies are literally the reanimated dead has lost a lot of currency in recent years. The movie "28 Days Later" never uses the word "zombie." Instead, its victims are fully alive, if driven to maniacal lengths with a violent disregard for their own safety. The Rage Virus is something like a super-fast, super-sized version of rabies. And it creates the infamous "fast-running vampires."
 
Is this what it feels like, at the beginning of the apocalypse? Most zombie stories take place just after the apocalypse has begun, typically as it has nearly run its course. The traffic jams have already crested and been abandoned; the shopping malls are dusty, yet still full of merchandise.
 
There are a lot of things you can do to prepare yourself for the apocalypse. But I think the best all-around option is to get yourself in peak physical condition. A fit body can run from zombies even after the gasoline's all gone, and in the absence of electricity. Being in good shape will also make it easier for you to migrate, forage for food, and survive in a post-apocalyptic world.
 
And I think, all things considered, that the best way to do this is with the help of the iPhone app "Zombies, Run!"
 

Bath Salts and Cocaine Psychosis

Two great tastes that go great together! No, wait: the opposite of that.

Both bath salts and the term "cocaine psychosis" have been much in the news lately, thanks to the bizarre story out of Florida (where else?) of a man who stripped naked and started eating some poor homeless man's face. This "cannibal attack" was fueled, many suspect, by cocaine psychosis. And given the attacker's situation, most of the speculation is focusing on bath salts.
 
These are not your mother's bath salts!
The term "bath salts" is a confusing one. It still refers to the stuff that you pour into a nice hot bath to relax and enjoy. In that context, bath salts are mostly Epsom salts with some soap (for suds) and perfume (to smell nice). You can buy traditional bath salts at places like The Body Shop and Amazon. 
 
Traditional bath salts look like, well, large grains of salt. And that is the primary connection between traditional bath salts and what I'll call "bath salts." 

A loophole in FDA regulation means that designer drugs can often escape legislation for a little while, if they are sold under another name, with a different ostensible purpose. Which is why people can take a designer drug very similar to meth, label it "bath salts," package it in a plastic tub, and legally sell it to people who know full well that it's drugs.

 
(The same thing is happening in the UK, but there it's "plant food.")
 
"Bath salts" has become a catch-all term for this type of drug, which is frequently adulterated with speed, cocaine, PCP, or LSD. Quality control is kind of an issue here. And even though the drugs are labeled "not for human consumption" to skirt regulations, I think we can be sure that they will be as illegal as meth before long.
 
Until then, if you know which convenience store to go to, you can buy a meth/LSD concoction over the counter. Although you may not want to. Whether it's a "Reefer Madness" style panic or not, a lot of drug-addled bizarre rampages are being blamed on bath salts. It seems that many people trip badly on bath salts, while developing super-human strength.
 
"Cocaine psychosis" is the slang term for a short-term psychotic break which has been instigated by drugs, typically stimulants. For whatever reason, sometimes instead of just experiencing a regular high, a drug user will experience a violent episode of psychosis which may involve delusions, paranoia, and terror. 
 
The good news is that these psychotic episodes are short-lived, and run out when the drugs wear off. The bad news is that people in the grip of stimulant psychosis can do a lot of damage until that point!
 

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