Mermaid hoaxes were perhaps popularized by P.T. Barnum and his famous circus. He advertised having the remains of a FeeJee Mermaid. FeeJee is the sucker spelling of Fiji I believe. Rotten.com describes these supposed remains as looking like a Hollywood pitch gone wrong: “It’s like Gremlins meets Piranha meets Ebirah!” PT Barnum went ahead and used drawings of traditionally attractive mermaids in order to lure crowds. It’s the damn patriarchy keeping abominations down. The three ring huckster need not have bothered apparently, as the attraction continued to appear before sell out crowds even after Barnum publicly confessed that the mermaid was a hodge podge of glued-together parts from totally unrelated critters. (via rotten.com)

Biotech Hobbyist magazine already offers online instructions for growing human skin, but now they are gearing up to help you figure out what to do with your vat of flesh. From the Biotech Hobbyist web site: “What to do? There are endless things to do with skin-do you want to make it glow in the dark? Do you want it to talk directly to your computer by interfacing it with silicon? Of course you do! The next project installments will explain how to splice in an amplified Great Star coral gene that will make your tissue glow cyan under UV light.” Yes, how can I make blob-like clones of my parts glow in the dark and post personals ads to the web? (via Mars Dust)