From Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, April 2, 2008:

The Flying Penguins Documentary hosted by Terry Jones, was a brilliant and well produced April Fools Day prank by BBC to promote the BBC iPlayer.

Here’s a behind the scenes look for the Flying Penguins Documentary prank.

April Fool’s Gag Pranks Financial Media
by Katy Marquardt
U.S. News & World Report
April 1, 2008

As I was enjoying my own April Fool’s joke this morning—which involved a fake E-vite to a lame smoothie party—hedge fund manager Doug Kass was pranking the financial media. In his early market commentary, “Time to Buy the Bull?” the typically bearish Kass announced he was raising his year-end targets for the S&P 500:

While I initially expected a 5% to 10% decline in the S&P 500 this year, my new year-end S&P target is 1,666, for a gain of 26% from current levels. I might be low.

The Big Picture gives a rundown on which news organizations fell for the stunt (all links are now wiped clean).

cartoon: inkcinct.com.au

From Deborah Thomas:

The Project for Public Spaces, presents their astounding accomplishments in their April 1 newsletter. Here are a few highlights. For the full spectrum of victories in their effort to create more livable cities, visit here.

Los Angeles now a pedestrian paradise
Los Angeles–A bicyclist pedaling leisurely down Wilshire Boulevard spots a friend strolling down the sidewalk and pulls over to chat. A tall, tanned man wearing a Versace suit stops in the middle of a crosswalk to flirt with a blonde woman in a short skirt and high heels. Welcome to rush hour in L.A. (Click on headline to read the full story)

AAA shifts focus from autos to pedestrians
ORLANDO - AAA is re-branding itself the American Amblers Association to reflect its changing role in helping people enjoy the nation’s parks, playgrounds, public markets and greenways. (Click headline to read the full story)

Rush Limbaugh: Living the Good Life in Copenhagen
COPENHAGEN - In his first interview since moving here, reformed global-warming denier and ex-radio show host Rush Limbaugh said he has secretly vacationed in Copenhagen for years. (Click on headline to read the full story)

Posted by Dan Savage on the Stranger, thanks Angela:

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off!
March 12-13, 2008

That’s the motto of Eunicure, a loosely affiliated group of “board-certified urological surgeons” that offers hope—in the form of castration—to homosexuals that have failed to control their desires through prayer, meditation, or other non-scalpel-based interventions. From the Eunicure website…

Q. Isn’t the Eunicure extreme?
The Eunicure is not for everyone and should be no one’s first choice. Only if all other forms of treatment have failed to eliminate your homosexuality should you consider what Eunicure offers. However since the rate of AIDS and suicide is so much higher among homosexual men than among those without such an orientation, the Eunicure method can and does save lives.

Q. Is the procedure painful?
The procedure is conducted under a local anesthetic and post-operative pain management is taken very seriously. That said, there will be some discomfort after the procedure that should pass in a week or so.

Q What can I expect after the procedure is complete?
The main effect will be a complete lack of sexual desire of any kind. While loss of testosterone may entail side-effects such as the potential for loss of body hair, positive side-effects may also include the retention of head hair that might have been lost due to the effects of testosterone. It is a common misconception that a man’s voice will rise, but that is false. There are some reports of hot flashes and loss of bone density.

Q is the procedure reversible?
No. The Eunicure procedure is something that requires serious thought and we suggest counseling because there is no going back. While testosterone injections can reverse some of the effects, they cannot completely replace what you will be losing.

This can’t be real, right? Eunicure’s website seems like a cross between www.GodHatesShrimp.com and Donnie “God Hates a Fag” Davies. And wouldn’t any surgeon that castrated an otherwise healthy man—even if the castrated dude was a self- and ball-hating homo—be running the risk of losing his license? And this question from the Eunicure fact sheet makes me think the website is a spoof… (more…)

From Steve Lambert:

A brilliant prank. At CheatNeutral, they offer to “offset your infidelity” for a small fee. You cheat, pay them $5, and they make sure there is someone else who doesn’t cheat - therefore there is less cheating in the world. They then go on to get coverage on the BBC and US media talking about what a scam carbon offsetting is.

via LiveLeak.com:

Who’s Lee Camp? This is according to the Huffington Post, February 24, 2008:

Over the past five years Lee Camp has performed standup comedy at over 300 colleges nationwide, but we don’t hold that against him. Seventy-five percent of his jokes go over the audience’s heads even though he’s not that smart. (He has had more than one audience member yell out ‘Who’s Karl Rove??’) He was named one of the best New Faces at the 2006 Montreal Comedy Festival and has also performed endless shows with Laughing Liberally. As an actor he’s had one sentence in at least three percent of the television shows you like, and as a writer he’s published three humor books you haven’t read. So he’s ubiquitous in stuff you’ve never seen. He views himself as a cynical optimist because he sees the glass as half full of shit.

Editor’s note: Alex Boese from the Museum of Hoaxes called this one right on February 11.

‘Suicide blogger’ claims project was art
by Jasper Hamill
Sunday Herald
February 17, 2008

Identity of ‘90DayJane’ still unknown as site closed.

News of her imminent death swept the internet - a young woman who called herself 90DayJane started a blog with one promise: “I am going to kill myself in 90 days.”

But last week, after only seven daily entries, it emerged that her promise may have been a hoax. In a final blog, the 24-year-old claimed the whole project was a piece of art made in tribute to Christine Chubbuck, an American journalist who shot herself live on air.

Overwhelmed by the public response, the mysterious woman with the thick black bob wrote: “My closeness to this project must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours.”

There has been a furious online search to uncover the artist’s identity, spurred on, in part, by the belief that it was her final statement that was false and that she wrote it to escape the unintended scrutiny of the 150,000 visitors to her site. Certainly, one of her final comments - the claim that her project was meant as a “mirror to reflect the isolation” felt by internet users - suggested a unsettled frame of mind. (more…)

Update, January 24, 2008: That Mushroom Cloud? They’re Just Svejking Around — An article from the New York Times, that interviews three representatives of Ztohoven and explains a bit about their motivation.

Hoax nuke blast seen on TV weather
CNN.com/Europe
January 3, 2008

Prague, Czech Republic (AP) — Members of a Czech art group who hacked into television broadcasting with images of a hoax nuclear explosion were charged and will have to stand trial, a state prosecutor said Thursday.

The television broadcast:

The six members of the Prague-based Ztohoven group were charged last month with spreading false information and face up to three years in jail if convicted, said Dusan Ondracek, the state prosecutor in the northern town of Trutnov, who is in charge of the case.

The trial could begin by the end of January, Ondracek said.

On June 17, viewers of a Czech television channel watching a Web cam program monitoring weather in various Czech mountain resorts could see a nuclear explosion taking place in the Krkonose or Giant Mountains in the northern Czech Republic.

In December, the project was awarded the NG 333 prize for young artists by Prague’s National Gallery together with a cash prize of 333,000 koruna (US$18,350).

Related link:

French Press Falls For Major Facebook Prank
TechCrunch
January 9, 2008

This is probably the biggest hoax in the history of Facebook. It happened in France and is one of the most discussed stories in the French blogosphere right now. It all started a few weeks ago with a simple third-party Facebook application that was aimed at designating, every quarter, a new “Facebook Worldwide president”. A young 28 year-old French man by the name of Arash Derambarsh decided to run for the presidency believing this was a real election (or faking to believe) and started to invite his friends and even created an official program: stimulate tolerance across religions, fight illiteracy, and promote French culture worldwide. Until then, there was nothing really worth talking about.

But here is the crunch: Arash landed at the top of the application and became “president” (for the record, during the first session the application had been installed 140k+ times and the “candidate” received officially 9k+ votes..). He used that information and got some coverage with French media that started to report the news and really believed that a French man had become the new worldwide president of Facebook without event taking the time to validate the facts or understanding what this title implied. (more…)

A Holiday to Remember in Bagdad, courtesy of Abidin Travels.

For your trip to Bagdad, follow the links for flights, car rental, hotels, tours, food, and more.

The Web site, part of Abel Abidin’s installation for the 2007 Venice Biennale is a multimedia virtual tour showing what life is like for Iraqis at this moment.

Helpful hints found on the Web site:

Nonverbal communication

Useful items

(more…)