“This may sound like science fiction, the ability to selectively erase memories,” says Huganir. “But this may one day be applicable for the treatment of debilitating fearful memories in people, such as post-traumatic stress syndrome associated with war, rape or other traumatic events.”

[Physorg.com via Kotaku]

No words.

[KRTV]

A Colorado man had a rude awakening when he kneecapped himself while sleeping.

Sanford Rothman, who lives on Mineola Court in southeastern Boulder, told police he woke up to a “bang” and discovered he was shot in the left knee. He said he did not have a clear recollection of the incident.

According to the police report no alcohol or drugs were involved, and nobody else was in the house at the time. Sleepshooting could be the next exciting chapter in the field of Parasomnia.

[dailycamera]

It looks like we’ve misunderstood how smart great apes. Is this the beginning of the end for us?

Great apes might be much more similar to us — and just as smart — than science has led us to believe.

A new study will examine the extent to which common designs of comparative psychology research, which rates humans as more advanced than apes, are fatally flawed.

You maniacs! You ruined it!

[Science Daily]

The team conducts an investigation in a haunted hotel room. Seriously spooky stuff happens to the so-called skeptics. Will they survive the night?

Subscribe to the Weird Things podcast on iTunes
Podcast RSS feed
Episode archive
Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings102910.mp3

[podcast]http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings102910.mp3[/podcast]

Sponsored by:

Glenn Caine GodlessGeekBlog.blogspot.com

Timothy O’Briant Strips4.com

Heather Willis via Adam Willis

Please introduce yourself to Skynet Suzette, the latest winner of the Loebner Prize. The Loebner Prize is a version of the Turing Test where a judge talks to both a computer and a human at the same time for a set interval and then chooses which one they think is human. Suzette was able to fool the judge into thinking it was human after a complete 25 minutes of conversation. No word yet on the human who failed to convince a judge they weren’t a machine.

New Scientist: Are you surprised that you fooled a human judge?
Suzette: No, I am not surprised.

Artificially intelligent AND cocky? I’m sure everything will turn out fine.

[New Scientest]

According to the upcoming National Geographic documentary The Truth Behind Zombies, we may be a few mutations or lab experiments away from a full scale zombie apocalypse. If the rabies virus, which can cause violently mad behaviour, was combined with the ability of the flu virus to spread quickly through the air, it might be the right combination for our very own disaster.

“All rabies has to do is go airborne, and you have the rage virus” like in 28 Days Later, Max Mogk, head of the Zombie Research Society, says in the documentary.

Jeremy Wade hosts a show on Animal Planet called River Monsters. He caught a goliath tiger fish that he nicknamed a Giant Piranha.

[Seedorama]

The best place to hunt for ghosts are places where a lot of people tragically died. So really, the question isn’t why 100 paranormal investigators are heading out to look over the sunken wreckage of the Titanic in 2011. It’s what took them so long?

“I think it will be dramatic,” the 35-year-old author and freelance writer said. “We’re probably going to hear people screaming for help.”

The Titanic Endeavor Tour, headed by Matthew “Sandman” Kelley, a paranormal researcher from Markleysburg, Pa., will charter a boat to the shipwreck 960 miles east of New York and try to invoke the spirits of those who died there. Expedition members will dine from the Titanic’s menu, observe a memorial service and strain to detect, through psychic sensitivity or special equipment, traces of souls who haunt the site.

Question: if the spirits are confined to the remains of the ship, are they really upset they’re still underwater? They surely weren’t used to it in life, so would they become used to it over time? Even if they want to scare you are they going to be do busy ghost drowning?

Is James Cameron involved?

[Sun-Sentinel]

Rent has gotten scary enough that 51% of those polled would happily share their house with a ghost if that meant that they could live there for free. In fact, over a quarter of the respondents would be quite satisfied with simply going halfsies with a haunted roommate.  No word yet from USA Today on cryptids or aliens, but we will keep you updated.

[USA Today]

“From a distance it resembled a rather large man in a fur coat, leaning tenderly over the grave of a loved one. But when the two women in the Russian village of Vezhnya Tchova came closer they realised there was a bear in the cemetery eating a body.”

A complex mathematical problem known as the Travelling Salesman Problem, and which is known to take a supercomputer days to solve, is effectively being solved by bees in real time. Researchers at Queen Mary, University of London and Royal Holloway have discovered that bees can quickly determine the shortest route between flowers even when they learn about the flowers in a different order. The problem that the Travelling Salesman must solve is finding the shortest route that allows him to visit all the locations on his route. The current method used by computers to solve it is by comparing the length of all possible routes and choosing the shortest. Scientists hope to study the bees to better manage our own networks while also learning the “minimal neural circuitry required for complex problem solving.”

[Queen Mary via Robots.net]

You know a plan is closer to reality when you start accepting checks for it. With that being said, this is an awesome plan:

Pete Worden, the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, recently hinted that billionaires are being recruited to kick in contributions for a deep-space mission known as “the Hundred Year Starship.” The idea builds on the long-discussed concept of sending people on one-way missions to space destinations, in hopes of jump-starting colonization of the final frontier.

Worden is quoted as saying NASA has already committed $100,000 to the project, with the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency providing another $1 million in funding. His comments, made at the Long Now Foundation’s “Long Conversation” event on Oct. 16 in San Francisco, were reported by KurzweilAI’s Amara D. Angelica.

Worden said NASA and DARPA have “just started” the project. “We also hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund,” he was quoted as saying.

If they get the money, the next step is recruiting. Who wants to go on a possible suicide mission into outer space?

Count me in! It’ll be like Oregon Trail meets Battlestar Galactica.