Daily Dispatch

Russian Spies and UVB-76—a Link?

A few weeks ago we posted on the mysterious Russian shortwave radio signal known as UVB-76:

Long story short: It’s a shortwave radio station broadcasting from near Moscow, Russia, that has emitted a pulsed buzzing sound every day, all day, for the past 28 years. Nobody knows why. Sometimes very faint voices can be heard behind the buzz, and twice in all those years it stopped for a few seconds…and a man could be heard saying something Russian.

And now…it has stopped.

And now we have yesterday’s news that eleven Russians have been arrested in the U.S. for spying:

Great White Shark Spotted Off Massachusetts

Summer has begun—so bring on the shark stories.

And on that note, here’s a list of shark attack facts from Uncle John’s AHH-INSPIRING Bathroom Reader (p. 104), a book you may want to add to your bathroom reading library:

• Sharks can detect the heartbeats of other fish.

• Mako sharks have been known to jump into the very fishing boats that are pursuing them.

• Bull sharks have been known to kill hippopotamuses in African rivers.

• Approximately 10 times more men than women are attacked by sharks.

• While in a feeding frenzy, some sharks bite their own bodies as they twist and turn.

• A 730-pound mako shark caught off Bimini in the Bahamas contained in its stomach a 120-pound swordfish—with the sword still intact.

• Lemon sharks grow a whole new set of teeth every two weeks.

• Sharks have a sixth sense. They can navigate by sensing changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

• Sharks will continue to attack even when disemboweled.

Ants!

We’re delving into amazing, mind-boggling, supercool, and largely unknown by most people facts about ants. Not ones like “Ants can lift over ten gajillion times their body weight—because everyone knows that!

Australia’s Suicide-Spot Angel

This is one of those stories where the heartwarming rises up and beats the canoles out of the heartbreaking:

For almost 50 years, Don Ritchie has lived across the street from Australia’s most notorious suicide spot, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour called The Gap. And in that time, the man widely regarded as a guardian angel has shepherded countless people away from the edge.

What some consider grim, Ritchie considers a gift. How wonderful, the former life insurance salesman says, to save so many. How wonderful to sell them life. “You can’t just sit there and watch them,” says Ritchie, now 84, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside. “You gotta try and save them. It’s pretty simple.”

RIP Jimmy Dean

Mr. Jimmy Dean has gone to that great sausage maker in the sky:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Jimmy Dean, a country music star known for his hit about a workingman hero, ”Big Bad John,” and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on Sunday. He was 81.

His wife, Donna Meade Dean, said her husband died at their Henrico County, Va., home.

We always admired Mr. Dean hear at the BRI—and not just because of “Big Bad John.” We wrote a little something about him some years ago in an article about people who had made the Big Time—despite not having done a lot of schooling:

The singer-songwriter left school at 16 and joined the Merchant Marines. He knew that fame could be fleeting, so after his prime-time TV variety show ran its course, he founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company and kept his TV appearances to folksy sausage commercials. He sold the company to Sara Lee in 1991, but is still chairman of the board.

And oh man, check this out, Jimmy doing that great song must have been just a year ago or so:

Crocodiles Can Surf Ocean Currents

Great. first it was giant flying sharks, now it’s giant surfing crocodiles. What’s next: hyenas on motorcycles?

“Saltwater crocodiles enjoy catching a wave and can travel hundreds of kilometres by ‘surfing’ on ocean currents, a study suggests. […]

During the research, a team led by Dr Hamish Campbell, from the University of Queensland, captured 20 crocodiles living in the North Kennedy tidal river in Queensland, northern Australia, and tagged them with satellite transmitters.

They found that during the period of study, eight of them ventured out into the open ocean. One travelled from the river mouth all the way to the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland’s far north. That amounts to a total of 590km covered over 25 days.”

Not only that—they actually wait until the tide goes out so they can take advantage of the currents:

Tinfoil Hat Warning: Code Weird

Okay hold on to your tinfoil hats, BRI fans, you’re not going to believe this, but…UVB-76…has stopped…buzzing. I know, unbelievable, right?

What’s that? You’re not familiar with UVB-76? Well, don’t worry. Neither were we. So we did a little research. Long story short: It’s a shortwave radio station broadcasting from near Moscow, Russia, that has emitted a pulsed buzzing sound every day, all day, for the past 28 years. Nobody knows why. Sometimes very faint voices can be heard behind the buzz, and twice in all those years it stopped for a few seconds…and a man could be heard saying something Russian.

And now…it has stopped.

Here’s some video, and comments from shortwave radio fans:

The Great Hockey FLUSH OFF

Looks like Uncle John’s going to have to get himself a ticket to Pittsburgh, PA:

The Pittsburgh Penguins are looking for 250 students to help with an important task and there’s only one major requirement: You must know how to flush a toilet.

Uncle John totally knows that!

Construction is near completion on the NHL team’s new arena, the Consol Energy Center. But like with any new arena or stadium, officials need to simultaneously flush all the toilets and urinals to make sure everything is working. The Penguins are calling the June 10 event the “Student Flush,” a spinoff of their popular ticketing program known as “Student Rush.”

And they can each take a copy of Uncle John’s Shoots and Scores Bathroom Reader with them when they…go! Woo hoo! Pittsburgh here we come!

Stop Everything: It’s Towel Day!

Holy Cow, we almost missed it. (Thanks, Ginger.)

“2001: Two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, fans get together and celebrate May 25 as “Towel Day” in his memory. The tradition continues each year since.”

Why towels, for the three non-Hitchhiker fans out there? Take it away, TowelDay.org:

From the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

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