Real-Life Weirdness

[Inquisitive Raven]

Originally Posted by D10

I cant find a news source but like a decade ago or something there was a town here in Brazil where all man started going blind! The small folk thought themselves cursed until they discoverd that there was high levels of methane (or something that started with M) in their system, and that the town had only only supplier of booze.

When they went to see this supplier, they discovered he was adding methane to the booze (it was not beer, it was cachaça), when asked towards his motives the old man said.

"I just wanted it to be a hell of a drink"

true story.

At a guess, not methane, but methanol aka methyl alcohol aka wood alcohol. And yes, blindness is a sign of methanol poisoning (see link for list).

[D10]

Yes you are correct, its methanol.

[Flyndaran]

Has anyone posted about the relatively recent mule offspring?
The one from china is genetically 3/4 donkey 1/4 horse with some features of horse, donkey, and mule.

The one from the U.S. is weirder because the mule mother only passed on her horse half of d.n.a to her donkey sired offspring making it another mule.

Now you can have a "realistic" half-elf from half-elf and human parents.

[Nostri]

There was a "ghost city" that appeared above the Xin'an River.

The video for it is pretty cool, it actually looks like the city is just sitting there in the water. The explanation that token scientists give is vague enough for use in a game too.

[Dammann]

The Indian Gas Boom is the backdrop to a campaign a friend of mine ran recently. There were all these torches, where a pipe stuck into the ground was lit. Towns made fountain-like flame displays. And there is all this oil down there, which we cannot now extract easily, due to the lack of natural gas pressure.

[Anaraxes]

"Giant lizards being hunted down in South Florida"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43580006...s-environment/

Adventurers needed, of course.

Nine non-native Nile monitor lizards have been spotted in two counties so far. They're up to seven feet long. But a little exaggeration for game purposes never hurts. Maybe these are just the babies, or a first wave of runts displaced by the _real_ threat.

[tHEhERETIC]

Apparently it's an old story, but I stumbled onto this on a Korean talk show. The Curse of 'My Way' Karaoke

The TV program used "The Ring" style imagery to make it seem spookier than it is.

[William]

Treasure!

MUMBAI, India — A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a south Indian temple has unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion, government officials said Monday. The treasure trove, at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, is widely believed to be the largest find of its kind in India... Searchers have found bags of gold coins, diamonds and other jewels and solid-gold statues of gods and goddesses. ...

Story here.

Unimaginable riches buried for hundreds of years in vaults beneath a temple complex as the government changes hands repeatedly and adventurers tromp around on the surface looking to make fame and fortune in exotic lands? Possibility of terrifying idols to inhuman deities, or scoffing scholars breaking a seal never meant to be broken?

Why is there not a GURPS India. sigh

[Anaraxes]

Lots of perfectly non-weird uses for the Broadcastr smartphone app, which basically lets you associate recordings with a particular place (GPS coordinates from your phone), where other users can then hear that recording when they pass by.

http://venturebeat.com/2011/04/20/br...r-android-app/

My first thought on reading about the app, though, was "Stories from the past imprinted on a place that you later experience? Psychometry." It's not much of a stretch to imagine automatic recordings all over the place, with the wizardly possessors of high search-fu (or just good search engines) able to pick out the relevant records from the background babble. With only a little more extrapolation, you can record things like emotional state, too.

Casual technology is starting to become indistinguishable from psi powers, if not magic.

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Casual technology is starting to become indistinguishable from psi powers, if not magic.

Technology is approaching the point of being Sufficiently Advanced™.

Welcome to the future. :D