Next Best Thing

In a hydration-obsessed culture, people can and do drink themselves to death. Liquid H 2 O is the sine qua non of life. Making up about 66 percent of the human body,  water  runs through the blood, inhabits the cells, and lurks in the spaces between. At every moment water escapes the body through sweat, urination, defecation or exhaled breath, among other routes. Replacing these lost stores is essential but rehydration can be overdone. There is such a thing as a fatal water overdose. Earlier this year, a 28-year-old California woman died after competing in a radio station's on-air water-drinking contest. After downing some six liters of water in three hours in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" (Nintendo game console) contest, Jennifer Strange vomited, went home with a splitting headache, and died from so-called water intoxication. There are many other tragic examples of death by water. In 2005 a fraternity hazing at California State University, Chico, left a 21-year-old...

The much-illustrated book known as the Voynich Manuscript (a.k.a. MS 408 in the Yale Library) is very old, nobody knows who wrote it, and nobody knows what it means. It could be outsider art or a channeled work or it could have deep meanings, possibly alchemical. It it has fascinated and confounded experts in many disciplines for centuries – including professional codebreakers. Since its writing has yet to be deciphered, those who have perused it have grouped its content according to its illustrations. These artworks include botanical drawings, astrological and astronomical graphics including charts, biological works including miniature nude females, nine cosmological medallions, some pharmaceutical art, and some continuous text pages with star-flowers marking each entry (or possible recipe). One of its early, though not earliest, owners was a 17th-century Prague alchemist named Georg Baresch, who was so confused by it that he sent off a copy to Jesuit scholars for translation wor...

In this day of online collaboration, the internet encyclopedia Wikipedia stands at the forefront of collected knowledge, due to its interface allowing anyone to edit. Because of this, Wikipedia’s collection of articles contains not only the normal and mundane, but also many articles you might not expect to find in Encyclopædia Britannica. Hopefully, this list will be able to deliver to you some entertainment, and perhaps expand your knowledge. All of the entries you are about to read are valid articles from Wikipedia, slightly condensed and listed by category. No guarantee of validity is attached to these articles, and readers are encouraged to comment here and change the things that they think are wrong on Wikipedia. For a full and rather lengthy list of interesting or strange articles compiled by Wikipedians themselves, go  here  , or simply search Wikipedia for “Wikipedia:Unusual articles”. “Wikipedia:Unusual articles”. 10 Places Mojave phone booth The M...

It's poetic, the notion that the flap of a butterfly's wing in Brazil can set off a cascade of atmospheric events that, weeks later, spurs the formation of a tornado in Texas. This so-called "butterfly effect" is used to explain why chaotic systems like the weather can't be predicted more than a few days in advance. One can't know every little factor affecting the atmosphere — every flutter of every butterfly in Brazil — so there's little hope of foreseeing the exact time and place a storm will touch down weeks later. The butterfly effect is all the more pleasing because the computer model that led to its discovery resembles a butterfly. The mathematician Edward Lorenz created the model, called a strange attractor, in the 1960s; it's a line that alternately spirals around two adjacent ovals, mapping out the chaotic solution to a set of interrelated equations. Lorenz found that the shape of the attractor was extremely sensitive to initi...

A very black carbon nanotube coating renders objects into silhouettes and could form the basis of a future stealth device. Like a cloak of invisibility, the material makes things disappear completely when viewed against a black background. "The most exciting thing is that it makes any 3-D object look like a shadow," said researcher Haofei Shi at the University of Michigan. "You know something is there but you don't know what it is." The effect works even under direct light and from multiple viewing angles, showcasing the first perfect light-absorbing coating, Shi said. Capable of swallowing a broad spectrum of light, the paper-like material has potential for roomy stealth airplanes and sun-gulping solar cells. "You can wear a coat made of this material and you will look like a flat sheet of black paper," said co-researcher Jay Guo at the University of Michigan. "They cannot perceive any 3-D aspects of the person in the coat … Th...

The secret recipe for Coca-Cola, the world's best-selling soft drink, has stayed under lock and key in a bank vault in Atlanta since 1925. That is, until today (Dec. 8), when the priceless list of ingredients was carefully moved to a new vault that is now on display at the World of Coca-Cola Museum in downtown Atlanta. "The time has come for our secret formula to come back home," The Coca-Cola Company's chief executive officer, Muhtar Kent, said at the unveiling of the new exhibit, according to the Associated Press. While visitors to the beverage company's corporate museum will now be able to experience the titillation of being near the coveted recipe, which dates back to 1886, they won't be able to jot down any notes: It will remain hidden from view, contained in a giant metal vault that can only be accessed by keypad and hand-imprint scanner. As both a marketing ploy and a clever business measure, the Coca-Cola Company makes much ado about the ...

Tens of thousands of people gathered on Saturday (Dec. 10) in Moscow's Bolotnaya Square to protest against the regime of Vladimir Putin and his party. But amid the pro-democracy chants and police presence, there was a mysterious visitor: An unidentified craft was spotted hovering high above the event. It was strangely silent, and clearly not a helicopter. The UFO was caught on video, and had some protesters wondering if they were being watched by aliens. According to a report in Britain's the Daily Telegraph , "Witnesses are at a loss to explain the object seen by thousands." Spacecraft or aircraft? The UFO is unlike most suspected extraterrestrial spacecraft (such as typical "flying saucers") in that it seems to be held aloft by four (or perhaps six) small propellers. Such propellers would be useless to travel through space, as there is no air for the propellers to push against. Instead, many suspected the UFO of being an unmanned camera dron...

An accused witch, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. She had been convicted of practicing "witchcraft and sorcery," according to the Saudi Interior Ministry. Such a crime is a capital offense in Saudi Arabia, and so Nassar was sentenced to death. Nassar's sentence was appealed — and upheld — by the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council. Nassar, who claimed to be a healer and mystic, was arrested after authorities reportedly found a variety of occult items in her possession, including herbs, glass bottles of "an unknown liquid used for sorcery," and a book on witchcraft . According to a police spokesman, Nassar had also falsely promised miracle healings and cures, charging ill clients as much as $800 for her services. Many Shiite Muslims — like many fundamentalist Christians — consider fortune-telling an occult practice and therefore evil. Making a psychic prediction or using magic (or even claiming or pretendi...