If you're still in a numerological frame of mind, you'll probably enjoy — and perhaps even find deep meaning in, or not — TMZ's list of coincidences involving Michael Jackson and the number seven:

• Michael Jackson signed his will on 7/7/02.
• Michael Jackson's memorial was on 7/7/09 ... exactly 7 years after the will was signed.
• Michael Jackson's two biggest hits -- "Black & White" and "Billie Jean" — were each #1 for 7 weeks.
• Michael Jackson's three biggest albums — "Thriller," "Bad" and "Dangerous" — each produced 7 top 40 hits.
• Michael Jackson was the 7th of 9 children.
• Michael Jackson was born in 1958 ... 19 + 58 = 77.
• Michael Jackson died on the 25th ... 2 + 5 = 7.
• Michael Jackson has 7 letters in his first and last name.

Yaawwwwwwn.

Mathematicians say the odds of improbable numerical coincidences occurring in everyday life are far greater than most people realize. And the tendency to see meaningful patterns in random data is deeply ingrained in human nature.

Read more:
• Michael Jackson -- #7
• Coincidences: Remarkable or Random?
• Skeptic's Dictionary: Coincidences

Like me, you probably slept through both of this morning's "once-in-a-lifetime events," namely:

1. the clock striking 12:34:56 on 07/08/09;
2. the clock striking 04:05:06 on 07/08/09.

Lest you think it was no big deal, reporters across the country scrounged up numerologists to explain the deep significance of it all.

"It's a good day to make money and have good health," said Betsy Carlson in the Palm Springs Desert Sun.

"I like to think every day is a good day to play the lottery," said "intuitive counselor" Barbara Evans in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Williams College mathemetician Edward Burger was having none of it. "It's a very silly thing," he told the San Antonio Express-News. Folks in countries like England, where today's date is 08/07/09, must have been inclined to agree.

Read more:
• Rare Time/Date Alignment Could Mean Opportunities
• Today's Date Provides Another 'Once in a Lifetime' Event
• No Great Meaning in Today's Numbers
• The Date Is Rare, in Case You Care

Like similar rumors circulating about actress Jamie Lee Curtis and hip-hop diva Ciara, the claim that popular Transformers star Megan Fox is a "transvestite," "transsexual," or "hermaphrodite" is nothing if not counter-intuitive. The last thing you'd think, looking at her, is that she's a man.

How, then, to explain scuttlebutt to the contrary circulating since late 2008?

Chalk it up to a perfect storm of media hype, irony, and satire, exacerbated by the actress's own careless remarks and a surfeit of prurient tongue wagging on the Internet.

Read more...

Billed as an "Unknown Life Form in North Carolina Sewer," this creepy YouTube video of what looks like nothing so much as a pulsating blob of meat lodged in a Raleigh, NC sewer pipe is quite real, though in truth it is neither "unknown" nor an "alien" life form, as many who've seen the video have speculated.

According to various experts it's a either a colony of tubifex worms (aka "sludge worms") or a colony of Bryozoans (tentacled organisms commonly referred to as "moss animalcules"), both of which are relatively common but rarely seen by the average person because their native habitats are underwater. It's not unusual to find either species thriving in sewers.

Read more:
• Raleigh 'Sewer Creature' Surprises City Officials
• Raleigh Blob Goes Viral as 'Sewer Monster'
• Don't Be Alarmed, But It Is Alive!
• Creatures from the Sewer
• Public Utilities Group Confirms Sewer Monster Is Real

Alex Boese has put together a terrific analysis of last weekend's spate of celebrity death rumors, including these pithy observations:

Status seeking is an important motive in why people spread these rumors. Being able to pass along new information makes people feel important in the eyes of their friends, even if the information later turns out to be bogus. Similarly, pranksters like to make up these hoaxes to gain approval from their social groups.

Rumors often serve as a form of entertainment and emotional release. It gives people a way to project their anxieties onto the world. In fact, rumors often spread without being believed, which seems to be the case with the recent death hoaxes.

Read more...

Is it true that the private parts of Prohibition-era gangster John Dillinger were preserved in a jar of formaldehyde and are still on display at the Smithsonian Institution?

Long story...

It was a bumpy weekend for the rich and famous, with the entertainment industry mourning the loss of three pop culture icons even as the Internet churned out one hoax after another declaring more celebrities dead.

The hoaxfest was triggered by mid-week announcements confirming that Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson had died. By Thursday afternoon the Internet was rife with false reports claiming that actors Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford had died as well. Death announcements for Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Ellen DeGeneres, Louie Anderson, P. Diddy, Natalie Portman, George Clooney, and Rick Astley — all bogus — followed in quick succession.

Pranksters used a variety of tactics to promulgate the rumors, including generating fake news stories on the Web, vandalizing Wikipedia pages, and hacking celebrities' Twitter accounts. Despite their rapid dissemination, all were debunked in fairly short order.

Read more...

Pop star Michael Jackson died today at the age of 50 after apparently suffering cardiac arrest.

Actor Jeff Goldblum did not die today after allegedly tumbling off a cliff in New Zealand. Rumors to the contrary were based on a hoax created by person(s) unknown using a fake news generator on the Web — the same fake news generator used in years past, as a matter of fact, to create false stories about the deaths of Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks, among others.

Harrison Ford? Not dead too. See above.

(Today's Amateur Debunker Award goes to Kevin Spacey.)

Read more:
• Michael Jackson Dies at Age 50
• Jeff Goldblum Death Rumors a Hoax
• Michael Jackson's Death Causes Commotion on the Web

Via Boing Boing: "With a sea of information coming at us from all directions, how do we sift out the misinformation and bogus claims, and get to the truth? Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine lays out a 'Baloney Detection Kit,' ten questions we should ask when encountering a claim."

Watch the video.

Some of those folks the mainstream media have labeled "Birthers" — you know, the ones who keep pestering the Supreme Court with lawsuits claiming Obama isn't eligible to be President because of his "questionable" citizenship status — are passing around a "news story" alleging that transcripts show he went to Occidental College on a Fulbright Scholarship reserved for foreign students only.

Guess what.

It isn't so.