Saturday, December 30, 2006


I checked one of my Hotmail accounts, and when I signed out, the MSN homepage came up. After I followed a couple of links, I found the "weirdest science stories of the year" on MSNBC. The page has links to items on, with descriptive paragraphs and illustrating photos. The stories are odd enough, I suppose, but what I found most interesting was a couple of the photos used to illustrate them.

First, for the story "Whales found to speak in dialects," which is about blue whales in different parts of the world making different sounds, they used this picture:

Dolphins aren't blue whales

I guess knowing that dolphins photographed through a blue filter aren't the same thing as blue whales isn't one of the qualifications for being a science editor at MSNBC.

But my favorite photo is the one they used to illustrate "Penis transplant removed." Of course, a mainstream American website won't show a photo of an actual penis, so I guess they thought something "medical" would be most appropriate. This was their choice:


Kind of gets you right there, doesn't it?


  1. I felt a pain in my nether regions when I looked at your second picture...

  2. Here is what the article says next to the picture:

    Chinese doctors removed the transplanted penis of a 44-year-old man who had lost his own in an accident. The organ was removed two weeks after the transplant because of psychological problems encountered by the man and his wife.

    Psychological problems? After losing a penis in an accident? Who would have thunk it? lol


What do you think?