A couple of days go, I received the following email from a college friend of mine who lives in Sri Lanka. It read:

I Hope you get this on time ?
Am sorry I didn’t inform you about my trip to Spain for a Program, I’m presently in Spain and I’m having some difficulties here because i was robbed on my way to the hotel and the thieves made away with all my cash, cell, passport and other document, presently i have limited access to internet, I will like you to assist me with a loan of ($4,100) to sort-out my hotel bills and to get myself back home,or any amount you can lend so i can make arrangements and return back. I have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will appreciate whatever you can afford to assist me with, I’ll Refund the money back to you as soon as I return, let me know if you can be of any help. I don’t have a phone where I can be reached. Please let me know immediately.

Regard

(Signed with my friend’s name)

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The soldiers of Belarus have clearly been putting in a lot of practice to produce a remarkable display.

(Via Gawker)

This video shows what looks like a small bus plowing at high speed into the back of a line of stationary cars waiting at a highway off-ramp. Amazingly, there are said to be no serious injuries, which is what makes the accident watchable, as otherwise it would be too tragic for words. [Read more…]

Suppose you are a top athlete who has just won a major international track event. A 14-year old girl in a mascot costume comes up and tries to give you a little gift bag. How should you respond? Here’s how French steeplechase winner Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad reacted. [Read more…]

This Sudoku puzzle published in The Telegraph claims to be the world’s hardest puzzle, though I am not exactly sure how one measures that. [Read more…]

Via Jerry Coyne, I came across this site that gives a series of photographs that ‘will restore your faith in humanity’ just in case it needed to be done. [Read more…]

Apparently it is not uncommon for Russian car owners to mount cameras on their dashboards to record everything as they drive along. This makes for some remarkable videos and someone has made an interesting compilation.

It struck me that such videos of what an accident actually looks like might make good viewing at driver training schools, and be quite persuasive about the importance of defensive driving.

Just two days after my post on the variations on the Nigerian 419 scam, I got the following comment that gave me the good news that the criminal syndicates behind this fraud have been captured and that I am now eligible to get $50,000.00 to compensate me for my trouble..

Here’s the comment that I dispatched to the spam folder: [Read more…]

Today is Father’s Day.

In our family, I resolutely discourage celebration of Father’s Day, seeing it as a purely marketing gimmick to get people to buy useless stuff. I have said this so strongly that my children know not to give me a gift or even send a card and that it is perfectly fine by me if they forget it altogether and not even wish me on the phone, since I too usually forget it until I read the newspaper comics for that day, since some cartoonists use it as a theme, often in sappy ways. [Read more…]