You are almost positive that a friend, neighbor or even family member is a psychopathic murderer. But how to be sure?
Well wait no longer! Researchers based out of Cornell have concluded that there are tell-tale signs in the speech of psychopathic murderers even specifically different than those of non-psychopathic murderers.
To examine the emotional content of the murderers’ speech, Hancock and his colleagues looked at a number of factors, including how frequently they described their crimes using the past tense. The use of the past tense can be an indicator of psychological detachment, and the researchers found that the psychopaths used it more than the present tense when compared with the nonpsychopaths. They also found more dysfluencies — the “uhs” and “ums” that interrupt speech — among psychopaths. Nearly universal in speech, dysfluencies indicate that the speaker needs some time to think about what they are saying.
The study also found that psychopaths were more fixated on self-preservation factors including eating, drinking and monetary resources to justify their actions.
Are we moving closer to proving that electromagnetic fields help our brain hemispheres communicate?
Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have made a puzzling finding: people born without a corpus callosum (which links the two hemispheres of the brain) — a condition called agenesis of the corpus callosum, or AgCC — still show remarkably normal communication across the gap between the two halves of their brains.
The Japanese earthquakes and resulting tsunamis dominated the news in early 2011 bringing horrifying picture of destruction and tragic loss of life. But in the rebuilding phase, a strange side effect emerged. Survivors of the disaster reported seeing a larger than usual amount of unexplained activity in the sky.
UFOlogists claimed it to be visitors from beyond surveying the damage on Earth. But one man has a different theory: flying cryptids have been unleashed over the Land of the Rising Sun.
The appearance of these atmospheric beasts varies wildly. Accounts have variously described them as amorphous and cloud-like behemoths, finned squid-like creatures, floating jellyfish, translucent, vaporous blobs, amoeba-like organisms, and even dragons. The sizes of atmospheric beasts likewise run the gamut from tiny and bird-like, to gargantuan monsters hundreds of feet long.
…The thing is that earthquakes and tsunamis influence more than just the Earth and the seas. When the powerful earthquake hit Japan on March 11, it not only jolted the Earth, but also shook the skies above. When earthquakes and tsunamis occur, they generate surface motion that in turn can trigger waves that can shoot up all the way to one of the highest parts of the upper atmosphere, to what is known as the ionosphere. These events are known as seismotravelling ionospheric disturbances.
Brent Swancer, writing for Cryptomundo, goes on to note that Japanese earthquakes in 2004 also triggers Sky Beast sightings.
We might be on the verge or radically shifting the meaning of the term Napoleon complex from “small man who’s a really big jerk” to “person in afflicted by an alien microchip in their head.”
Dr. Dubois made the amazing find while studying Napoleon’s exhumed skeleton on a $140,000 grant from the French government.
“I was hoping to learn whether he suffered from a pituitary disorder that contributed to his small stature,” he explained.
But instead the researcher found something far more extraordinary: “As I examined the interior of the skull, my hand brushed across a tiny protrusion.
“I then looked at the area under a magnifying glass – and was stunned to find that the object was some kind of super-advanced microchip.”
Even more shocking, Napoleon’s Skull has been added to the list of hardware which will be able to run Android’s Ice Cream Sandwhich OS.
Simone Allyne is the Weird Things eBook reviewer focusing on readily available, affordable Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you have a book you’d like reviewed, please email WeirdThingsMail@Gmail
1066 Oleander Place seems a typical tract house in Southern California. It looks just like all the other houses in its subdivision, but what no one understands is that this house is deadly, very deadly. It consumes all who enter it, spiritually, psychologically, and physically. Even a short visit to the place challenges fate. Can you imagine Thanksgiving in that house!?
The Slab is a haunted house story, which takes place in a tract home in modern-day California. It was filled with the deep dark foreboding that makes horror novels so captivating. The atmosphere was spooky and frequently scary. The thought of your home not being a safe place to be just adds to the creep factor of this book.
What happens on Oleander should stay on Oleander! Domestic violence, sexual and animal abuse is shown to you in a way that will have you wanting to put this book down because it’s just too disturbing to keep reading. Despite this, I found myself wanting to finish reading to see the final outcome. One thing is for sure, you will be thankful when you are done reading. Thankful that you never lived at 1066 Oleander!
There have been lots of books written about haunted houses, and I have read quite a few myself, but Michael Collings doesn’t give into clichés. You’ll find no cold spots or levitating objects here. Rather, each horror becomes personal to the individual experiencing it.
It did start out a little slow and I wondered where it was going in the beginning, but I kept reading. Like I mentioned earlier, I found it hard to put down. The horrors in this book will keep you reading and the ending left me shocked and sad. It had a creepy vibe and a sense of history. The characters were also well fleshed out in my opinion.
The Slab is a great read and I highly recommended for people who don’t mind graphic horror novels.
The social hierarchy of a wasp is pretty rigid. But what if a snide little parasite made you a deal. You could live the life of a queen, no foraging for anyone but yourself, living off the fat of the land. All you have to do is become subservient to a macabre march of death that enslaves your brethren and propagates the evil parasite.
For many paper wasps through Europe, the answer is “yes, please!”
The parasite X. vesparum infects the wasp which withdraw from their previous social pattern and instinctively fly away to a meeting point with other parasites. It’s there the parasites mate, with the male hosts disposing of their wasp coats, leaving them to die. But the females remain inside the wasps, turning them into zombie queens which find food for themselves and fatten up while infecting other nests and plants with the parasite larva.
“After that, they start wandering among the colonies,” spreading their deadly larval load, said Manfredini. “They don’t lay eggs. They don’t build colonies. They’re completely anarchic.”
Get your zombie queen paper wasp costume ready for Halloween!
Men are funnier than women, according to a new study out of UC San Diego.
But only barely, a scientist quickly added realizing he still has to go home to his wife.
And men mostly found other men funny which accounts for the slight advantage, added a young lab tech whose blind date arrived awkwardly while the announcement was made.
Although those qualifiers are not true (nor funny) the facts remain that men tested funnier on average than women, if just barely.
…the study’s first author Laura Mickes, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC San Diego Department of Psychology and a Ph.D. graduate of the same department, “The differences we find between men’s and women’s ability to be funny are so small that they can’t account for the strength of the belief in the stereotype.”
Men edged out women by 0.11 points out of a theoretically possible perfect score of 5.0, while about 90 percent of both male and female study participants agreed with the stereotype that men are funnier.
So how do a pack of intellectuals measure what is funny and what isn’t? Why a controlled version of a New Yorker cartoon caption contest, of course! (tea cups cling as pinkies arise) Each volunteer wrote captions for the legendarily erudite scribbles and then had they rated by other test takers. The study also tested to see if funny captions were more memorable.
Cyclops Shark! Sharks have moved into a new level of nightmare fuel!
Earlier this year fisher Enrique Lucero León legally caught a pregnant dusky shark near Cerralvo Island (see map) in the Gulf of California. When León cut open his catch, he found the odd-looking male embryo along with its nine normal siblings. “He said, That’s incredible—wow,” said biologist Felipe Galván-Magaña, of the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine Sciences in La Paz, Mexico.
Sharks are being born with one eye and if it weren’t for this intrepid fisherman, he’d be creeping out the waters around California even as we type this sentence.
There is a breath of fresh air, a unique buoyancy, to viewing a television series where you trust the storyteller. Gone is the nagging sense of second guessing or internal apologizing for obvious flaws because you so want to love the project as a whole.
It’s just you and the story, riding the rhythm of plot.
That is The Walking Dead.
Of course any informed fan of the series is living in fear, not unlike Andrea trembling behind the RV door with a curious walker sniffing inches away, as to when the current sense of rapture might abruptly end after AMC’s senseless in-production banishing of series mastermind Frank Darabont.
But enough of the dread, let’s focus on the now.
The zombie apocalypse survive-a-long returned to television Sunday after a nearly yearlong absence with nothing short of the best episode the series has delivered to date. Characters reset, season plots began to emerge and a few Lost tropes were dusted off for good measure.
The End is back, read on AFTER THE JUMP to get all the details on “What Lies Ahead” including the episodes best moments, ratings triumphs and a countdown as to when we can all start panicking about the quality of the series… Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew geeks out about the new Space X launches and proposes the first ever Weird Things meet-up. Brian descends into the jungle to find a furry, bipedal creature. Justin plays referee as the rest of the crew argue with each other on which side of the great Shark / Octopus War they are going to be on. Who will you choose?
Support the show by purchasing Andrew’s new book The Chronological Man: The Monster In The Mist for only 99¢ at Amazon.com by clicking the image below!
Simone Allyne is the Weird Things eBook reviewer focusing on readily available, affordable Science Fiction and Fantasy. If you have a book you’d like reviewed, please email WeirdThingsMail@Gmail
“Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just eat people, like a normal vampire, but no, not only do I have a conscience, I have a roommate with a Kal-el complex and a priest for a best friend. “
I love vampires and I love detective stories, so imagine my excitement when I came across Hard Days Knight by John Hartness! He’s taken two of my favorite genres and combined them into one heck of a story!
It’s the week before Halloween and all Hell is about to break loose, quite literally.
Vampire private detectives Jimmy Black and Greg Knightwood have been hired by a young boy to keep him from being cursed for all eternity, but end up with a bigger problem than they could have ever imagined; a problem roughly the size of the 7th circle of Hell.
Hartness writes a story that feels like a cross between Moonlight and Cara Lockwood’s Every Demon Has His Day. His writing is witty, culturally relevant and has a good dose of pop culture references to keep you turning the pages to see just how bad it can get for these two self-professed nerdy, permanently college-aged vampires.
Our protagonists find themselves trapped in the middle of a multiple kidnapping case, during which Jimmy and Greg uncover a plan to bring forth an archduke of Hell. In their attempt to thwart a literal Hell on earth situation they enlist the help of a police detective, a priest, a witch, and a fallen angel (who also happens to own strip club) to save the world. This unusual group of human and non-human band together to stop zombies, witches, neuroses and potentially the worst sunburn of their lives while cracking jokes and searching for the perfect midnight snack.
Hard Day’s Knight is a perfect fall read, just in time for Halloween!
Walking Dead mastermind Robert Kirkman has famously said his most popular franchise was borne from wondering what happens after a zombie movie. Typically, a zombie outbreak story begins with a relatable reality, add zombies, initial crisis ensues, survivors band together and after a few casualties the initial crisis is solved. But when the credits roll, our main characters are left in a world changed forever.
What happens to them? How do they cope? How do they eat? Do they forget the past? Do they make a future?
The Walking Dead is that story and Kirkman is telling it twice. Once in the original comic incarnation and simultaneously on AMC as a surprisingly popular hour-long drama (returning with a second season this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET on AMC) of which he is a writer and executive producer. There is a reason his second draft, initially reshaped by mastermind Frank Darabont, is more popular.
Thanks to more consistent relatable characters, key revisions in the canon story and new wrinkles added exclusively in the AMC series it’s way, way better than the source material. Some might disagree but we survive by pulling together and not apart, with a warning of heavy spoilers through the first season of the AMC show and the first 25 issues of the comic, I’ll explain my position. Read the rest of this entry »
While filming the fifth installment of the Resident Evil franchise 16 zombie extras fell from a platform. Emergency responders, who were unaware of the costumes, were taken aback when brought to the pile of mangled faces, discolored skin and peeling flesh.
Paramedics responded to the call from Cinespace Film Studios around 8 a.m. to find what appeared — thanks to Hollywood special effects makeup — to be people who had suffered some untold catastrophe.
“I could see the look on the first paramedic, saying ‘Oh my God,'” Toronto emergency medical services Commander David Ralph said with a laugh.
Toronto Police Sgt. Andrew Gibson said responders quickly figured out which zombies were injured and which were just in character. “It did kind of catch us off guard when we walked in,” he said.
Thankfully, none of the injuries were life threatening and all of the zombies will live on to stagger another day.
Interesting find on Deadline today suggesting that Box Office success can be directly predicted by your impatience while watching a DVR’d episode of Fringe.
More specifically, commercials for movies that are fast forwarded more often tend to do worse when released in theaters than those that get viewed. One might think this would reward high spectacle films that would showcase an eye-popping visual to stop a FF in it’s tracks but it isn’t that simple. According to TiVo the most skipped movie ad is The Three Musketeers which features all manner of zeppelins, swordplay, muskets, jumping, bodices and swordplay.
The least skipped? Shrek spin-off Puss In Boots.
What still needs to be adjusted for, in our opinion, is repetition of ads. We might suspect that a film with an ad in heavy rotation for two weeks would get a higher skip rating in the second week than the first because people have seen the clip already.
So the next time you want to predict Box Office success, look no further than your own thumb for the answers.
