Oddities and curiosities - 4

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The President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad's private emails have been leaked. Highlights: the love songs he sends to his wife as his troops brutally put down protests, and the fact the he at one point purchased "Sexy And I Know It" by LMFAO.

I mean, it's pretty much old news now, but I still feel like I have to reference the fact that the KONY 2012 guy was found naked and masturbating in the street last week. A particularly strange coda to one of the weirder social media detonations of recent times.

Oh this made me laugh so and then I felt real bad: Til, the earless rabbit, Germany's newest animal celebrity (apparently that's a thing over there), was being filmed for a TV special when the cameraman accidentally stepped on him. A glorious career cut brutally short. Shades of that episode of Frontline where Marty did a story on the dog that had made it from Queensland to Melbourne and then ran it over on the way out.

I'm increasingly convinced that Clive Palmer is in the midst of having a public and very entertaining nervous breakdown, but for what it's worth, the CIA has denied that it's funding Greenpeace's efforts to halt coal mining projects. Which must have been a strange one for them.

Big amongst the teenagers of Perth at the moment: drinking litres of coloured milk and then vomiting it up on camera. Ah, my hometown.

I'll let the headline speak for this one: Hollywood swimsuit model who became 'head of global drugs ring' arrested in Australia after month on run from DEA. Apparently she was trafficking the drug "meths".

Death of the Week (boy, I hope that's a regular section): a 56-year-old American man has been killed after he was buried under a six meter avalanche of pinto beans. I guess that means you could call him a... has bean?! But seriously, my condolences to the family.

Stay classy, Herald Sun.



Old man from Peterborough grows world largest swede (38 kgs!), gets asked to go backstage with Snoop Dogg to share his secrets, smokes weed with Snoop Dogg. Good news story of the day.



Will the Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up (feat. Eminem). Almost uncannily good.



It's Real Science!

James Cameron: when he's not busy destroying Hollywood budgets or making blue forest sprites have sex in 3D, he's developing new machinery to explore the world's deepest, darkest ocean. Pretty much the equivalent of the guy inventing a new spacecraft.

30 million people in China live in caves. Or, to put it another way, more than the entire population of Australia live in caves in China. Apparently some of them are quite nice!

Here's a new potentially legitimate scientific theory: CO2 is making you fat. Yeah. You heard. Carbon dioxide is making you fat. Stop breathing now, fatty!

Turned to the bottle after your last break-up? Don't worry, you're not alone. Also prone to heartbroken drinking: the fruit fly. So grab the vodka, let some fruit go off and start drinking the pain away with 50 of your new buzzing friends. Warning: drinking vodka while flies settle on your body will probably not get you a new romantic partner. Unless you're looking for a fruit fly.

NASA has released a composite image of the entire night sky, taking in more than 560 million objects. To be frank, not as picturesque as you might hope, but still a hell of an achievement.

Hypothetical as all get out, but here's a video of what it might look like to travel through a wormhole.

Here's a Dutchman that has developed a system that allows him to fly like a bird. People are screaming fake on this one (with quite peculiar vitriol), but I want to believe. Hell, even if it is a viral campaign for something, they've been putting together videos for the best part of the year documenting the process, which is impressive enough in its own right.