“Lord” Timothy Dexter (1748 – 1806) was an eccentric American businessman noted for a series of lucky transactions and his writing. (…)

He made his fortune by investing in Continental Dollars during the Revolutionary War, when they could be purchased for a tiny percentage of their face value. After the war was over, and the U.S. government made good on the dollars, he became wealthy. (…)

His 1802 memoir A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress is entirely misspelled and contains no punctuation. At first he handed his book out for free, but it became popular and was re-printed in eight editions. In the second edition Dexter added an extra page which consisted of 13 lines of punctuation marks. Dexter instructed readers to “peper and solt it as they plese.”

Dexter announced his death and urged people to prepare for his burial. About 3,000 people attended his mock wake. The crowd was disappointed when they heard a still-living Dexter screaming at his wife that she was not grieving enough.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Literary historian Paul Collins discusses Lord Timothy’s lasting appeal | NPR | Life of Lord Timothy Dexter }

Robotics is a game-changer in national security. We now find military robots in just about every environment: land, sea, air, and even outer space. They have a full range of form-factors from tiny robots that look like insects to aerial drones with wingspans greater than a Boeing 737 airliner. Some are fixed onto battleships, while others patrol borders in Israel and South Korea; these have fully-auto modes and can make their own targeting and attack decisions. There’s interesting work going on now with micro robots, swarm robots, humanoids, chemical bots, and biological-machine integrations. As you’d expect, military robots have fierce names like: TALON SWORDS, Crusher, BEAR, Big Dog, Predator, Reaper, Harpy, Raven, Global Hawk, Vulture, Switchblade, and so on. But not all are weapons–for instance, BEAR is designed to retrieve wounded soldiers on an active battlefield.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

Out-of-body experiences are just part of Ehrsson’s repertoire. He has convinced people that they have swapped bodies with another person, gained a third arm, shrunk to the size of a doll or grown to giant proportions. The storeroom in his lab is stuffed with mannequins of various sizes, disembodied dolls’ heads, fake hands, cameras, knives and hammers. It looks like a serial killer’s basement. “The other neuroscientists think we’re a little crazy,” Ehrsson admits.

But Ehrsson’s unorthodox apparatus amount to more than cheap trickery. They are part of his quest to understand how people come to experience a sense of self, located within their own bodies. The feeling of body ownership is so ingrained that few people ever think about it — and those scientists and philosophers who do have assumed that it was unassailable.

“Descartes said that if there’s something you can be certain of in this world, it’s that your hand is your hand,” says Ehrsson. Yet Ehrsson’s illusions have shown that such certainties, built on a lifetime of experience, can be disrupted with just ten seconds of visual and tactile deception. This surprising malleability suggests that the brain continuously constructs its feeling of body ownership using information from the senses — a finding that has earned Ehrsson publications in Science and other top journals, along with the attention of other neuroscientists.

{ Nature | Continue reading }

photo { Jesse Marlow }

The most extreme proponent of anti-natalism is probably David Benatar, author of Better Never to Have Been, which maintains that:

(1) Coming into existence is always a serious harm. (2) It is always wrong to have children. (3) It is wrong not to abort fetuses at the earlier stages of gestation. (4) It would be better if, as a result of there being no new people, humanity became extinct.

{ EconLib | Continue reading }

{ 1 | 2 }

{ Thanks Glenn }

Cannibal Holocaust is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Ruggero Deodato.

The film tells the story of a missing documentary film crew who had gone to the Amazon to film indigenous tribes. A rescue mission, led by the New York University anthropologist Harold Monroe, recovers their lost cans of film, which an American television station wishes to broadcast. Upon viewing the reels, Monroe is appalled by the team’s actions, and after learning their fate, he objects to the station’s intent to air the documentary. Much of Cannibal Holocaust is the portrayal of the recovered film’s content, which functions similarly to a flashback and grows increasingly disturbing as the film progresses.

Cannibal Holocaust achieved notoriety because its graphic violence aroused a great deal of controversy. After its premiere in Italy, it was seized by a local magistrate, and Deodato was arrested on obscenity charges. He was charged with making a snuff film due to rumors that claimed some actors were killed on camera. Although Deodato was later cleared, the film was banned in Italy, the UK, Australia, and several other countries due to its graphic depiction of violence, sexual assault, and the actual slaughter of seven animals.

After seeing the film, director Sergio Leone wrote a letter to Deodato, which stated, [translated] “Dear Ruggero, what a movie! The second part is a masterpiece of cinematographic realism, but everything seems so real that I think you will get in trouble with all the world.” […]

The courts believed that the actors who portrayed the missing film crew and the native actress featured in the impalement scene were killed for the camera. Compounding matters was the fact that the supposedly deceased actors had signed contracts with the production which ensured that they would not appear in any type of media, motion pictures, or commercials for one year following the film’s release. This was done in order to promote the idea that Cannibal Holocaust was truly the recovered footage of missing documentarians.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Francesca Ciardi was one of four actors whom the Italian police believed had been murdered in the making of the 1980 horror film Cannibal Holocaust. So realistic was the film that shortly after it was released its director Ruggero Deodato was arrested for murder. The actors had signed contracts to stay out of the media for a year in order to fuel rumours that the film was a snuff movie. The court was only convinced that they were alive when the contracts were cancelled and the actors appeared on a television show as proof.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Public restrooms are a great place to find bacteria, as the authors of the new study euphemistically put it, “because of the activities that take place there and the high frequency of use by individuals with different hygienic routines.” Furthermore, different neighborhoods within bathrooms probably house different communities of bacteria. To perform a census on these hidden but lively communities, researchers sampled surfaces in six men’s rooms and six women’s rooms at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Genetic sequencing of these samples told them which species of bacteria were present. Out of all the bacterial types that turned up, there were 19 phyla of bacteria present in every bathroom.

{ inkfish | Continue reading }

illustration { Wendy MacNaughton, Meanwhile, The San Francisco Public Library }

“Did you know that 95% the universe is dark matter?” (…) “What about dark energy?” (…)

It is true that most of the universe is made up of things that can’t be seen, and whose presence is inferred by its effects on the things that can be seen. But what effects do we see? And how does that translate to a percentage of the universe that remains a mystery?

Galaxies rotate, and when we use gravitational laws to predict what that rotation should look like, we find that they should behave like the solar system–the farther away something is from the central mass (in the case of the solar system, the sun, and in the case of a galaxy, the supermassive black hole at the center), the slower it should orbit; the gravitational force on Pluto, for instance, is much smaller than the gravitational force on Mercury, because it’s much farther away from the sun. A star at the fingertip of an arm of the galaxy should orbit more slowly than we do. However, that’s not really what happens: galaxies have flat rotation curves, meaning that objects farther away from the supermassive black hole don’t really orbit more slowly than things closer to it.

What this implies is that there is lots of mass spread throughout the galaxy–that most of the mass isn’t just at the center–and that the spread-out mass has a large gravitational effect on the galaxy’s rotation.

{ Smaller Questions | Continue reading }

photos { 1. Pearly | 2. Natalia Arias }

related { Computer simulations suggest that a giant planet was kicked out of our solar system billions of years ago, saving Earth in the process. But how solid are those simulations? }

{ Tim Geoghegan | Right now on the Amazon page for the pepper spray used by Lt. John Pike… }

related { Pepper spray and cocaine, a little known lethal combination }

bonus [thanks Tobias]:

Always ‘God bless’ a sneeze. In most English-speaking countries, it is polite to respond to another person’s sneeze by saying “God bless you.” Though incantations of good luck have accompanied sneezes across disparate cultures for thousands of years (all largely tied to the belief that sneezes expelled evil spirits), our particular custom began in the sixth century A.D. by explicit order of Pope Gregory the Great. A terrible pestilence was spreading through Italy at the time. The first symptom was severe, chronic sneezing, and this was often quickly followed by death. Pope Gregory urged the healthy to pray for the sick.

It’s bad luck to walk under a leaning ladder. This superstition really does originate 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. A ladder leaning against a wall forms a triangle, and Egyptians regarded this shape as sacred (as exhibited, for example, by their pyramids). To them, triangles represented the trinity of the gods, and to pass through a triangle was to desecrate them. (…)

Knock on wood to prevent disappointment. Though historians say this may be one of the most prevalent superstitious customs in the United States, its origin is very much in doubt. “Some attribute it to the ancient religious rite of touching a crucifix when taking an oath,” Goldsmith wrote. Alternatively, “among the ignorant peasants of Europe it may have had its beginning in the habit of knocking loudly to keep out evil spirits.”

{ Origins of 9 Common Superstitions | Continue reading }

photo { Loublanc }

Two men have been arrested for installing “skimmers” on 11 separate Chase ATMs near Union Square in January. They stole $300K altogether. Maybe some was yours!

{ Gawker | Continue reading }

related { Using a credit card induces euphoria, new research shows. }

The drop in street crime in New York City after 1990 is not only the largest decline ever documented in a major city but also a major test of the conventional wisdom that has dominated crime policy in the United States for a generation. (…)

Part of New York’s good fortune was the tailwind of a national crime decline during the 1990s, but the New York decline was twice as large and almost twice as long as the national drop. Why was that? What can we learn from this experience to help other cities?

{ NY Post | Continue reading | More: How New York Became Safe | City Journal }

We’re not always aware of how we are making a decision. Unconscious feelings or perceptions may influence us. Another important source of information—even if we’re unaware of it—is the body itself. (…)

In a new study, Eerland and colleagues Tulio Guadalupe and Rolf Zwaan found that surreptitiously manipulating the tilt of the body influences people’s estimates of quantities, such as sizes, numbers, or percentages. (…)

How many Number 1 hits did Michael Jackson have in the Netherlands? The answers were all between 1 and 10. As expected, participants gave smaller estimations when leaning left than when either leaning right or standing upright. There was no difference in their estimates between right-leaning and upright postures.

The researchers point out that body posture won’t make you answer incorrectly if you know the answer.

{ APS | Continue reading }

What’s the deal with witches and broomsticks? (…)

Harner notes that since antiquity many hallucinogenic plants have been known throughout the world, including some species of the potato family such as jimsonweed, devil’s-weed, mad apple, etc., as well as potato cousins like mandrake, henbane, and belladonna.

Trolling through the works of medieval and Renaissance writers, Harner finds a number of instances in which witchy hallucinations follow a potent hit of drugs. How were these drugs administered? Typically in the form of an ointment. Where was this ointment applied? To the skin, of course, but more effectively to the mucous membranes. Where can one find mucous membranes? In the vagina, among other places. How would one apply ointment to one’s vagina? Well, one can always count on one’s fingers, I suppose. But you could also use, uh, a pole. And where might one find a pole in the average peasant household? A broomstick.

Harner buttresses his thesis with some choice quotes. From a witchcraft investigation in 1324: “In rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a Pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon the which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin.” Also this from around 1470: “But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places.”

{ The Straight Dope | Continue reading }

Bento de Spinoza was born on November 24, 1632, to a promi­ nent merchant family among Amsterdam’s Portuguese Jews. This Sephardic community was founded by former New Christians, or conversos—Jews who had been forced to convert to Catholicism in Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centu­ ries—and their descendants. After fleeing harassment by the Iberian Inquisitions, which doubted the sincerity of the conversions, many New Christians eventually settled in Amsterdam and a few other northern cities by the early seventeenth century. With its generally tolerant environment and greater concern for economic prosperity than religious uniformity, the newly independent Dutch Republic (and especially Holland, its largest province) offered these refugees an opportunity to return to the religion of their ancestors and re­ establish themselves in Jewish life. There were always conservative sectors of Dutch society clamoring for the expulsion of the “Por­tuguese merchants” in their midst.8 But the more liberal regents of Amsterdam, not to mention the more enlightened elements in Dutch society at large, were unwilling to make the same mistake that Spain had made a century earlier and drive out an economi­ cally important part of its population, one whose productivity and mercantile network would make a substantial contribution to the flourishing of the Dutch Golden Age.

The Spinoza family was not among the wealthiest of the city’s Sephardim, whose wealth was in turn dwarfed by the fortunes of the wealthiest Dutch. They were, however, comfortably well-off. Spinoza’s father, Miguel, was an importer of dried fruit and nuts, mainly from Spanish and Portuguese colonies. (…)

mainly from Spanish and Portuguese colonies. To judge both by his accounts and by the respect he earned from his peers, he seems for a time to have been a fairly successful businessman. (…)

Spinoza may have excelled in school, but, contrary to the story long told, he did not study to be a rabbi. In fact, he never made it into the upper levels of the educational program, which involved advanced work in Talmud. In 1649, his older brother Isaac, who had been helping his father run the family business, died, and Spinoza had to cease his formal studies to take his place. When Miguel died in 1654, Spinoza found himself, along with his other brother, Gabriel, a full-time merchant, running the firm Bento y Gabriel de Spinoza. He seems not to have been a very shrewd merchant, however, and the company, burdened by the debts left behind by his father, floundered under their direction. Spinoza did not have much of a taste for the life of commerce anyway. Financial success, which led to status and respect within the Portuguese Jewish community, held very little attraction for him. (…)

By the early to mid-1650s, Spinoza had decided that his future lay in philosophy, the search for knowledge and true happiness, not in the importing of dried fruit.

Around the time of his disenchantment with the mercantile life, Spinoza began studies in Latin and the classics. (…) Although distracted from business affairs by his studies and undoubtedly experiencing a serious weakening of his Jewish faith as he delved ever more deeply into the world of pagan and gentile letters, Spinoza kept up appearances and continued to be a mem­ ber in good standing of the Talmud Torah congregation through­ out the early 1650s. He paid his dues and communal taxes, and even made the contributions to the charitable funds that were ex­ pected of congregants.

And then, on July 27, 1656, the following proclamation was read in Hebrew before the ark of the Torah in the crowded syna­gogue on the Houtgracht: “The gentlemen of the ma’amad [the congregation’s lay governing board] hereby proclaim that they have long known of the evil opin­ ions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza. (…) Spinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse, and damn Baruch de Espinoza. (…) No one is to com­municate with him, orally or in writing, or show him any favor, or stay with him under the same roof, or come within four cubits of his vicinity, or read any treatise composed or written by him.”

We do not know for certain why Spinoza was punished with such extreme prejudice. That the punishment came from his own community—from the congregation that had nurtured and edu­ cated him, and that held his family in high esteem—only adds to the enigma. Neither the herem itself nor any document from the period tells us exactly what his “evil opinions and acts” were sup­ posed to have been, or what “abominable heresies” or “monstrous deeds” he is alleged to have practiced and taught. He had not yet published anything, or even composed any treatise. Spinoza never refers to this period of his life in his extant letters and thus does not offer his correspondents (or us) any clues as to why he was expelled.

{ Steven Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age, Chapter 1 | Continue reading }

painting { Baruch Spinoza by Samuel van Hoogstraten, 1670 }

It’s weird to think that tens of thousands of years ago, humans were mating with different species—but they were. That’s what DNA analyses tell us. When the Neanderthal genome was sequenced in 2010, it showed that as much as 1 to 4 percent of the DNA of non-Africans might have been inherited from Neanderthals.

Scientists also announced last year that our ancestors had mated with another extinct species, and this week, more evidence is showing how widespread that interbreeding was.

We know little about this extinct species. In fact, we don’t even have a scientific name for it; for now, the group is simply known as the Denisovans.

{ Smithsonian Magazine | Continue reading }

In the 1950s, in the midst of what came to be known as the Economic Miracle, West Germany was positively deluged with other wonders: mysterious healings, mystical visions, rumors of the end of the world, and stories of divine and devilish interventions in ordinary lives. Scores of citizens of the Federal Republic (as well as Swiss, Austrians, and others from neighboring countries) set off on pilgrimages to see the Virgin Mary, Jesus, and hosts of angels, after they began appearing to a group of children in the southern German village of Heroldsbach in late 1949. Hundreds of thousands more journeyed from one end of the Republic to the other in the hopes of meeting a wildly popular faith healer, Bruno Gröning, who, some said, healed illness by banishing demons. Still others availed themselves of the skills of local exorcists in an effort to remove evil spirits from their bodies and minds. There also appears to have been an eruption of witchcraft accusations—neighbor accusing neighbor of being in league with the devil—accompanied by a corresponding upsurge in demand for the services of un-bewitchers (Hexenbanner). In short, the 1950s was a time palpably suffused with the presence of good and evil, the divine and the demonic, and in which the supernatural played a considerable role in the lives of many people.

Scholars across a variety of disciplines have raised important questions about the epistemological and methodological capacities of the social sciences to capture the lived reality of otherworldly encounters, past and present. (…)

Why do supernatural experiences matter for history?

{ Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture | Continue reading }

artwork { Andy Warhol, One multicolored Marylin, 1979 | acrylic and silkscreen on canvas }

Your therapist is probably giving you multiple personality disorder.

Oh sure, he’s going to deny it. He will say you obviously had some problems to begin with, and that he just uncovered the form they’re taking and their source. And there you will be, disassociated into several different personalities. People you don’t know will greet you with names you don’t recognize. You’ll find notes around your apartment written in unfamiliar handwriting. You’ll walk into hotel rooms without pants (every person who has ever had multiple personality disorder has always had one who was a slut).



And maybe by the end of it you will remember seeing your father drink the blood of a newborn baby. So strange that you had forgotten something like that for the last twenty years, you think it would be a pretty memorable event. Or being raped by your brother. Never mind the fact that you never had a brother, you are sure it happened. And your therapist will say, Aha! That is why you are such a mess, can’t keep a boyfriend or a job for more than six weeks, that is why you dread going home for Christmas. It’s because you remember your parents donning black robes and smearing the blood of a virgin all over your face before they let their friends have their way with you on a Satanic altar. That must be it.



Oh, and that will be $250, sweetie. You can leave the check with the receptionist.



Back in the 1980s, multiple personality disorder was a thing. The thing. You don’t hear so much about it today; it’s like we all woke up one day and thought, right, probably not possible after all, let’s move on. But when MPD was hot, it wasn’t just something to be burdened with, a problem to be overcome: It was something to be proud of. (…)

At the base of this disorder was abuse. Abuse so intense and dramatic that it was wiped from victims’ memory but still shattered their psyches. (…) And so here we have a collection of strange girls who had been through some shit.

{ The Smart Set | Continue reading }

photo { Miss Aniela }