Must see: The Heart Attack Grill - people over 350 lbs. eat free

This is truly incredible – burger joint called the "Heart Attack Grill". The waitresses dress as nurses and the customers must wear hospital gowns. The menu – well every item is indeed worth a heart attack. Their 500+ pound spokesman died at 29. The owner of the chain dresses up as a doctor and in this interview is totally unrepentant about the fare served at his establishment. Then again, no one is putting a gun to the heads of his customers and it is a free country. Eat your heart out!

Qantas Airline employees want to get rid of John Travolta's inflight video

Travolta in Battleship Earth

Quantas Airlines employees are upset over John Travolta's inflight video, which has been called "tacky" and "corny". The three-minute safety demonstration video, played before take-off on every Qantas flight, has angered employees who would like "real pilot" to be in the video instead. A Qantas spokeswoman said they had received positive feedback from both staff and customers. "We're really happy with the video and we think it's really engaging," she said. They should be thankful he isn't doing a Scientology commercial  or showing his embarrassing bomb "Battleship Earth" to the captive audience instead.

Scientists search for asteroid to land on

 Asteroid 951 Gaspra Credit: NASA

The Orion spacecraft, which was initially meant to return humans to the moon until the project was axed by President Obama, is now being relaunched as a docking vehicle, that will allow astronauts to fly to and from the International Space Station. But there are bigger plans for the Orion. NASA is hoping a pair of Orion spacecrafts can be used to support a manned mission to an asteroid.

Since Obama last year outlined the goal of sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2015, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly where the mission should be going to. There are more than 7,000 known near-Earth objects, but it is still unclear which would be suitable for astronauts to land on. Many have unsuitable terrain or are spinning rapidly. "Right now we only have a few targets in our catalog. We need a lot more to provide us with maximum mission flexibility," former NASA astronaut Tom Jones said. "It’s time to get on with this search."

"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space," Obama said at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida in April 2010. "So we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."   Read more here.

This artist's illustration showing asteroid mission and NASA's Orion spacecraft  Credit: Lockheed Martin

Rand corporation tried to figure out how best to scare the hell out of ‘peasants, old people and… ignorant workers’

Cover of The Men Who Stare At Goats

This sounds more like something straight out of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" .


‘What types of superstitious appeals will be best adapted to the various audiences to be propagandised? A study of local superstitions as reflected in popular folk lore might be profitable in providing answers to these questions" 

Seems the Rand Corporation kept themselves extra busy during the old Cold War days producing a report "The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare" (PDF here). The paper was published for the US Air Force on 14 April 1950.

The paper outlines PSYOPS missions that made the locals nervous by exploiting their superstitions. A couple examples the report references:

• In the1920s on Afghanistan’s Northwest Frontier, the British planted loudspeakers in planes warning tribal peoples that God was angry with them for breaking the peace with India 
• During World War II the Germans projected imagery onto ‘drifting clouds’ 

The report details the use of chain letters to clog up enemy communications networks  and the use of bogus fortune-tellers and false astrological data to lower morale in civilians and their leaders.

This come from Mirage Men and you can read a lot more about this  on their site.

Video: The entire Appalachian Trail in just 4 minutes

Ever had the urge to hike the Appalatian Trail? Check out Kevin Gallagher's four-minute video-hike through the trail, which is 2,181 miles in legnth and spans 14 states. You might also want to check out "A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson, a very humourous account of hiking on the trail that should be required reading on the trail.

Some facts about the trail:

• Lowest elevation: 124 feet – near the Trailside Museum and Zoo at Bear Mountain, New York
• Highest elevation: 6,625 feet – on Clingmans Dome in Tennessee
• Approximately 165,000 white paint blazes mark the Trail's route.
• More than 10,000 people have reported hiking the length of the Trail.
• It takes approximately 5 million footsteps to walk the entire length of the Trail.
• More than 6,000 volunteers contribute about 200,000 hours to the Appalachian Trail every year.


Green Tunnel from Kevin Gallagher on Vimeo.

Burrito price increase has customer shooting up restaurant

Image by Lester Of Puppets via Flickr

An enraged Taco Bell customer in San Antonio, Texas fired a BB gun at an employee after finding out the price for the seven burritos he ordered has gone up in price. Restaurant patrons hit the floor when the man started shooting an the manager called the police and locked the door when the man fled. The manager saw him put an assault rifle and a handgun on the roof of his car. When police arrived he fired at them with an assault rifle and then barricaded himself in a nearby motel for three hours. Police finally lobbed tear gas into the motel and the man surrendered –– without ever getting his burritos. The Beefy Crunch burritos had been sold for 99 cents each as a promotion, but the promotion had ended and the price had gone up to $1.49. Now that is one cheap hombre!