Cynical-C Blog

List of cats with fraudulent diplomas:

Colby Nolan is a housecat who was awarded an MBA degree in 2004 by Trinity Southern University, a Dallas, Texas-based diploma mill, sparking a fraud lawsuit by the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office.[1]

Colby Nolan belongs to a deputy attorney general. In looking to expose Trinity Southern University for fraud, some undercover agents had the then six-year-old Colby Nolan obtain a bachelor’s degree in business administration for $299. On the cat’s application, the agents claimed that the cat had previously taken courses at a community college, worked at a fast-food restaurant, babysat, and maintained a newspaper route. Then the school informed Colby that, due to the job experience listed on his application, he was eligible for an executive MBA for $100 more. The agents then sent for Colby’s transcript, which claimed that Nolan had a 3.5 grade point average.

Jerusalem syndrome:

The Jerusalem syndrome is a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences that are triggered by, or lead to, a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single religion or denomination but has affected Jews and Christians of many different backgrounds.

The best known, although not the most prevalent, manifestation of the Jerusalem syndrome is the phenomenon whereby a person who seems previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem. The psychosis is characterised by an intense religious theme and typically resolves to full recovery after a few weeks or after being removed from the area.

(via Best of Wikipedia)

Borborygmus:

Borborygmus (plural borborygmi) (pronounced [?borb?r???m?s]) (from Greek ???????????) also known as stomach growling, or rumbling, is the rumbling sound produced by the movement of gas through the intestines of animals, including humans. The word borborygmus is an onomatopoeia for this rumbling.

From Wikipedia:

Snake wine (r??u r?n in Vietnamese) is an alcoholic beverage that includes a whole venomous snake in the bottle. It originated in Vietnam and can be found around Southeast Asia. The snakes, preferably venomous ones, are not usually preserved for their meat but to have the snake poison dissolved in the liquor. However, the snake venom is denatured by the ethanol; its proteins are unfolded and therefore inactivated.

(via Best of Wikipedia)

Hollywood Accounting:

In accountancy, Hollywood accounting is the practice of distributing the money earned by a large project to corporate entities which, though legally distinct from the one responsible for the project itself, are actually owned by the same people. This substantially reduces the profit of the project proper, sometimes eliminating it altogether. The effect of this practice is to reduce the amount which the corporation must pay in royalties or other profit-sharing agreements.

Examples:

Winston Groom’s price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film’s commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing.[2] That being so, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel’s sequel, stating that he “cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure”.

Stan Lee filed and won a lawsuit after the producers of the movie Spider-Man did not give him a portion of the gross revenue.[3]

The estate of Jim Garrison sued Warner Bros. for their share of the profits from the movie JFK, which was based on Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins.[4]

Art Buchwald received a settlement after his lawsuit Buchwald v. Paramount over Paramount’s use of Hollywood accounting. The court found Paramount’s actions “unconscionable,” noting that it was impossible to believe that a movie (1988’s Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America) which grossed US$350 million failed to make a profit, especially since the actual production costs were less than a tenth of that. Paramount settled for an undisclosed sum, rather than have its accounting methods closely scrutinized.

The film My Big Fat Greek Wedding was considered hugely successful for an independent film, yet according to the studio, the film lost money. Accordingly, the cast (with the exception of Nia Vardalos who had a separate deal) sued the studio for their part of the profits. The original producers of the film have sued Gold Circle Films due to Hollywood accounting practices because the studio have claimed the film lost $20 million.[5]

Wrap rage:

Wrap rage, also called package rage, is the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open hard-to-remove packaging, particularly plastic blister packs and clamshells. Consumers suffer thousands of injuries per year, such as cut fingers and sprained wrists, from tools used to open packages and from the packaging itself. Some companies are now coming up with solutions to improve frustrating and potentially dangerous packaging.

For example:

(via Best of Wikipedia)

Glass delusion:

The glass delusion was an external manifestation of a psychiatric disorder recorded in Europe in the late middle ages (15th to 17th centuries). People feared that they were made of glass “and therefore likely to shatter into pieces”. One famous early sufferer was King Charles VI of France who refused to allow people to touch him, and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself from accidental “shattering”.

(via Best of Wikipedia)

Traumatic Insemination:

Traumatic insemination, also known as hypodermic insemination, is the mating practice in some species of invertebrates in which the male pierces the female’s abdomen with his penis and injects his sperm through the wound into her abdominal cavity (hemocoel).[1] The sperm diffuse through the female’s hemolymph, reaching the ovaries and resulting in fertilization. The process is detrimental to the female’s health. It creates an open wound which impairs the female until it heals, and is susceptible to infection. The injection of sperm and ejaculatory fluids into the hemocoel can also trigger an immune reaction in the female. Bedbugs, which reproduce solely by traumatic insemination, have evolved a pair of sperm-receptacles, known as the spermalege. The spermalege reduce the damage to the female bedbug during traumatic insemination.

(via Best of Wikipedia)

From Wikipedia:

Drapetomania was a supposed mental illness described by American physician Samuel A. Cartwright in 1851 that caused black slaves to flee captivity.

But there was a cure:

Cartwright prescribed “whipping the devil out of them” as a “preventative measure.”

(via Best of Wikipedia)

From Wikipedia:

Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116 (pronounced [ˈalbɪn]) was a name intended for a Swedish child who was born in 1991.[1]

Parents Elisabeth Hallin and Lasse Diding had planned to never legally name their child as a protest[2] against the naming law of Sweden (Namnlag (1982:670)), which reads, “First names shall not be approved if they can cause offense or can be supposed to cause discomfort for the one using it, or names which for some obvious reason are not suitable as a first name.”

Because the parents failed to register a name by the boy’s fifth birthday, a district court in Halmstad, southern Sweden, fined them 5,000 kronor (roughly €500/$600 US). Responding to the fine, the parents submitted the 43-character name in May 1996, claiming that it was “a pregnant, expressionistic development that we see as an artistic creation.” The parents suggested the name be understood in the spirit of ‘pataphysics. The court rejected the name and upheld the fine.

(via Best of Wikipedia)