Weird

I came across this interesting article about how birds in the wild are now imitating mobile phone ring tones. “The birds have an uncanny ability to mimic these ring tones,” states Ornithologist Richard Schneider. “This has picked up in tandem with the boom in mobile phone ownership.”

I can just see it. A future where birds are flying from tree to tree, pooping on your car and saying, “Can you hear me now?”

Ironic to write an article about alternative energy and making myself sound like a potty-mouth, but it’s the truth: Scientists have discovered ways to turn human urine, cow feces, and toxic waste into energy.

I discovered this little factoid while surfing through a series of fascinating articles on LifeScience.com. It turns out it’s possible to make a battery that, as far as tests have shown, will continue to produce a set amount of energy as long as you keep dropping in bits of cow poop. They originally created this cow battery from the microbe-rich rumen fluid from a cow’s stomach, but later on found that the stuff in plain old cow patties does the trick as well.

The toxic waste battery is powered by an organism that does double duty, eating the noxious industrial leftovers and, in the process, turning it into electricity. Now, that’s what I call a win-win situation: clean the environment and produce cheap, clean power. Not only that, it can do it under harsh conditions, including extreme heat and in the presence of radiation.

The pee battery, though, gets my vote for being the most practical. Imagine being in the middle of a blackout, with no batteries in the house, and your one flashlight starts going dead. What do you do? Open the cap on the bottom and pee into it. Instantly the bulb burns bright again, and hopefully you’ll be able to wash your hands in the light it provides.

One of the fun things about Google Ads is you never know what strange thing is going to pop up. For example: Take a Whiff. A pill to make your poop smell fresh and clean.

No, it’s not a joke.

This is an actual Google AdSense ad I plucked right off of Gmail today:

CIA Clandestine Careers
Want to Work with Special Forces? The CIA is Hiring. Apply Online Now.
www.CIA.gov

The CIA is getting desperate for spooks? So much so they’re advertising?

That’s just weird!

This can be fun, silly, or a bit on the creepy side: Google Talk
- not to be confused with the Google Talk instant messenger from Google.

It’s a website created by Douwe Osinga, one of Google’s employees who works in Zurich. How it works is, you type in the first part of a sentence, and using Google mojo it slowly, word by word, finishes your sentence for you.

What you end up with can be either nonsense, or … something else. It’s like the Internet itself starts trying to talk to you.

Here’s an example. I typed in “Groovy Mojo is” and it continued: Groovy Mojo is copyrighted and may not be used as a weapon of war.

Took the words right out of my mouth!

Note: Google Talk is rather slow, so you must be patient.