Real-Life Weirdness

[Jovus]

Originally Posted by Brett

Well, a lot of mercury compounds are red, including cinnabar and mercuric oxide. Often a brilliant orangey-red: cinnibar is used as a pigment under the name "vermilion". But it's news to me that any of them is known as "red mercury". Though of course triplumbic tetroxide is well known as "red lead".

Lavoisier refers to it as red mercury. Admittedly he moves away from that nomenclature quickly in his attempt to establish a coherent system, but the reference is there, especially in alchemical tradition.

[Anaraxes]

Similar discussion going on in the GURPS forum.

[William]

Mysterious strangers start showing up at your house. Some of them try to break in. Some of them try to talk their way in. What are they after?

As it turned out for this guy, a drug dealer had been telling people that the apartment had been used for a stash of $900,000 in cash. Yeah, a hoard in the basement does tend to draw the adventurers....

[Anaraxes]

Some researchers in Texas are trying an unusual approach to combat fire ants — parasitic flies that turn the pesky insects into zombies whose heads fall off.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...s/6420449.html

Then just add a little Science Gone Wrong, and you get Giant Radioactive Headless Zombie Fire Ants. Unless, that is, the flies mutate to become parasites of human hosts. Let the plague begin.

[William]

US military abruptly ends an informal arrangement allowing astronomers access to data on incoming objects tracked by otherwise-classified antimissile surveillance satellites.

But they're not hiding anything they spotted, of course not. Right? :^)

[Johnny Angel]

I seem to remember a story from a couple years ago... I think it was in Russia; a guy was riding around on a bicycle dressed as a ninja and robbing people. I found that to be somewhat weird.


In other news... What's in a name? http://www.al.com/news/press-registe...l=3&thispage=1

[Anaraxes]

Researchers have developed a fuel cell that produces electricity from human blood.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freea...unt=35&index=8

Just the thing to power your nanotech, your Technomancer / Horror hybrid, or the Matrix.

[moldymaltquaffer]

http://www.newmajority.com/ShowScrol...b-9b910e70f40b

Take a Mediterranian sea cruise with heavily-armed Russians civilians who are paying some $5,000 a day for the priviledge of shooting at pirates off the coast of Africa.

No word on whether taxidermy of trophies is included, or extra.

[William]

Mysterious pulsating slimy blob found in North Carolina sewer! I think that's about all we need to start with, right there.

(What is it actually? Well, those boring old party-pooping scientists are suggesting that it's a bio-film-covered colony of Tubifex tubifex worms. It moves because a single worm coils randomly, and stimulates the rest of the mass to do so, making it contract like a single muscle. Gee, sounds to me like a plausible motive ability for a horrible hivemind worm creature. ^_^ )

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by William

Mysterious pulsating slimy blob found in North Carolina sewer! I think that's about all we need to start with, right there.

(What is it actually? Well, those boring old party-pooping scientists are suggesting that it's a bio-film-covered colony of Tubifex tubifex worms. It moves because a single worm coils randomly, and stimulates the rest of the mass to do so, making it contract like a single muscle. Gee, sounds to me like a plausible motive ability for a horrible hivemind worm creature. ^_^ )

Aha! Obviously the flesh burrowing nightmare has been revealed.