The Hershberger Award In March of 1973, the National Association of College Basketball Writers awarded The Hershberger Award to the top 15 rookies in the nation. It was never awarded again, and now we know why.
posted by Apoch
on Apr 5, 2013 -
16 comments
"I called Joe," Stewart remembers, "and asked if he wanted to come to spring training with me. I said, 'The Mets have this pitcher they picked up. They got him pitching in secret, under a big tarp. He has a 168 mile an hour fastball and he plays the French horn and went to Harvard and he was raised in Tibet by Buddhist monks and he pitches with one foot bare and one foot in a boot. And guess what?
You're going to be him.'" [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Apr 1, 2013 -
23 comments
"
In the 1950s, a DJ named
Jean Shepherd hosted a late-night radio show on New York's WOR that was unlike any before or since. On these broadcasts, he delivered dense, cerebral monologues, sprinkled with pop-culture tidbits and vivid stretches of expert storytelling. 'There is no question that we are a tiny, tiny, tiny embattled minority here,' he assured his audience in a typical diatribe. 'Hardly anyone is listening to mankind in all of its silliness, all of its idiocy, all of its trivia, all of its wonder, all of its glory, all of its poor, sad, pitching us into the dark sea of oblivion.' Shepherd's approach was summed up by his catchphrase: a mock-triumphant 'Excelsior!', followed by an immediate, muttered 'you fathead ... '" (
via)
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posted by Rustic Etruscan
on Feb 15, 2013 -
24 comments
On Monday October 15th,
XperiaBlog wrote about apparent photos of a Sony Nexus X phone found in a
Picasa gallery. By the end of the day, The Verge, Gizmodo, TechCrunch and CNET had picked up the story. The next day, the hoaxer revealed how
"an individual with no previous worldwide recognition save for a frontpage Reddit post, managed to alter the behavior of people in Russia, Japan, Uzbekistan, and Italy within the course of 24 hours, all from the comfort of my home while exerting next to no effort."
posted by dragoon
on Oct 19, 2012 -
34 comments
In the late 1970s the UK's Anglia Television ran a respected weekly documentary series:
Science Report. But when the show was cancelled in 1977, the producers decided to channel Orson Welles in their final episode. The result was
Alternative 3. Over the course of the hour, the audience would learn that a
Science Report investigation into the UK "brain drain" had uncovered shocking revelations: man-made pollution had resulted in catastrophic climate change, the Earth would soon be rendered uninhabitable, and a secret American / Soviet joint plan was in place to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars. The show ended with footage of a US/Soviet Mars landing from May 22, 1962. After Alternative 3 aired,
thousands of panicked viewers phoned the production company and demanded to know how long they had left to change planets. [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 20, 2012 -
22 comments
250 years ago newspapers like The Derby Mercury featured
breathless reports on the Cock Lane ghost. Fanny Lynes wouldn't rest until her husband was hanged for having poisoned her, and the story, supported by a Clergyman, led to crowds paying to visit the house.
The street outside was sometimes impassable due to the large number of spectators present at the séances until the Lord Mayor of London had to intervene, and he duly appointed a commission to look into the matter. Notables such as Dr Johnson spent a fruitless night next to a coffin before it was revealed that the truth of the matter
was more mundane.
[more inside]
posted by ersatz
on Feb 20, 2012 -
3 comments
Donald Crowhurst (1932–1969) was a British businessman and amateur sailor who died while competing in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a single-handed, round-the-world yacht race. Crowhurst had entered the race in hopes of winning a cash prize from The Sunday Times to aid his failing business. Instead, he encountered difficulty early in the voyage, and secretly abandoned the race while reporting false positions, in an attempt to appear to complete a circumnavigation without actually circling the world. Evidence found after his disappearance indicates that this attempt ended in insanity and suicide. (previously: 1, 2)
posted by Trurl
on Nov 17, 2011 -
11 comments
Video footage of the legendary Doctor Fox lecture. "The lecture that Myron L. Fox delivered to the assembled experts had an impressive enough title: 'Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education'. Those responsible for running the University of Southern California School of Medicine's psychiatry department's continuing education programme had taken themselves off to Lake Tahoe in northern California for their annual conference and a continuing education program. There, Fox - who was billed as an 'authority on the application of mathematics to human behaviour' - presented the first paper.
His polished performance so impressed the audience of psychiatrists, family doctors and general internists that nobody noticed that the man standing at the lectern wasn't really Myron L. Fox from the Albert Einstein School of Medicine but Michael Fox a movie actor who though having considerable experience in playing doctors in TV shows didn't know the first thing about game theory."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Sep 23, 2011 -
37 comments
The Observer ran a series of columns by Richard Geefe, a writer whose work was interrupted by his promise to himself and his editors that he would kill himself before the end of November 1999.
First,
second,
third,
fourth,
fifth,
sixth,
seventh,
eighth,
ninth,
tenth,
eleventh, and the posthumous
twelfth.
Reaction in The Independent. [more inside]
posted by Sticherbeast
on Sep 16, 2011 -
14 comments
Coal cares! "Puff-Puff™ inhalers are available free to any family living within 200 miles of a coal plant, and each inhaler comes with a $10 coupon towards the cost of the asthma medication itself."
[more inside]
posted by cmoj
on May 11, 2011 -
23 comments
After Nokia announced its strategic partnership with Microsoft (
here), howls of protest came from various directions, with the one getting the most attention being 'nine young investors' proposing a
'Plan B'. But wait...
[more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop
on Feb 17, 2011 -
42 comments
The “LSER” is a response to longstanding requests from subscription holders for a faster mode of self-ejection from the concert hall...The LSER will be a particularly comforting addition to the concert-going experience for patrons anxious about contemporary music, as in the case next month when music director Alan Gilbert will present “Le Grand Macabre” by the twentieth century master György Ligeti.
NY Philharmonic to install new Speedy Exit Ramp. via
Hell Mouth, the blog of
John Adams.
[more inside]
posted by Lutoslawski
on May 13, 2010 -
22 comments
Don't like those commercials that run before the movies in the theaters? Well, this weekend, Kraft Foods is introducing something new to screens across the U.S.,
"two- to three-minute branded-entertainment vignettes" that promise NOT to "knock you over the head with a bat as a brand commercial", but instead they... well... here's an example: Lunchables kids' meals present:
Alien Field Trip* (Warning: more artificially cheesy than Cheez Whiz). Kraft and other big advertisers are betting that
long-form ads will be "the Wave of the Future", and the perfect audience for them will be the folks who have already paid to see "Iron Man 2", "Sex and the City 2" or "Toy Story 3". What could possibly go wrong?
[more inside]
posted by oneswellfoop
on May 5, 2010 -
74 comments
Jani, a hindu man in western India, claims not to have taken in any food or water for 70 years. He has been under 24 hour surveillance since April 22 by a hospital team.
This video goes into a little more detail.
posted by mdn
on Apr 29, 2010 -
82 comments
It
looked legit and not entirely out of the realm of
possibility in today's heated political climate: an anti-gay resolution being introduced in Utah to expel homosexuals from the state. Except that it was an entire, elaborate
hoax courtesy of the
Yes Men.
posted by Leezie
on Mar 9, 2010 -
28 comments
Bogus! Why do fakes get made? Why do people fall for hoaxes? Greed, pride, revenge, nationalism, pranks, and gullibility mix in an archaeological setting. Archaeology Magazine examines eight classic cases, and more.
posted by amyms
on Dec 23, 2009 -
6 comments
The public's
opinion of the field of climatology has been shaken by the
leaked CRU emails. While it's
arguable that the messages show any
wrongdoing,
many pundits have now reached the conclusion that global warming is a hoax, coverup and conspiracy, years in the making with millions of faked datapoints. Sarah Palin has written an
editorial saying Obama should boycott the Copenhagen
COP15 summit.
posted by mccarty.tim
on Dec 9, 2009 -
270 comments
Mass: We Pray is an exciting new project from Boston based game developer Prayer Works Interactive.
Watch the trailer for examples of the 24 different services you and your family can participate in. Don't listen to the sites that
claim this is a
hoax. Preordering begins today!
posted by scrutiny
on Nov 20, 2009 -
45 comments
