Confessions Of A Serial Killer Groupie
A look at the strange boundaries of love from First Person, a briefly ran, ten-year-old television series created by documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, featuring interviews with notorious and strange people. Sandra London describes her idyllic days spent in high school and going steady with a serial sex killer, which lead to several decades of similar romantic obsession:
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Is a microscopic, mind-altering parasite spread by cats responsible for car accidents, hoarding behaviors, and schizophrenia? Respected scientists are now saying that “crazy cat lady” disease is real and millions of people are infected. Shocker from Kathleen McAuliffe in the Atlantic:
Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia?
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis — the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease…
Color Preferences Of The Insane
Does a shift towards favoring yellow, and then orange, occur among the mentally disturbed? This was the finding of an admittedly questionable 1931 study on the link between aesthetic preference and insanity. (Purple must be beyond all reason.) Via Neatorama:
The year 1931 stands out in the history of research about insane people’s favorite colors. That summer, Siegfried E. Katz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Hospital published a study called “Color Preference in the Insane.” The full citation is:
“Color Preference in the Insane,” Siegfried E. Katz, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 26, no. 2, July 1931, pp. 203–11.
Assisted by a Dr. Cheney, Dr. Katz tested 134 hospitalized mental patients. For simplicity’s sake, he limited the testing to six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. No black. No white. No shades of gray.
“These colors,” he wrote, “rectangular in shape, one and one-half inches square, cut from…
Woman Mauls Elderly Man In Another Gulf Coast Vampire Attack
In a brutal incident reminiscent of one in Houston three weeks ago, a wheelchair-bound Florida man taking shelter from a storm had part of his face eaten off at an abandoned Hooters restaurant by a young woman claiming to be a vampire. Someone once told me that Pensacola is one of the worst places on Earth, and I’m starting to understand why. Via ABC Action News:
A St. Petersburg man who had dozed off in his motorized wheelchair woke up to find himself being attacked by a woman, according to police. Morton Ellis, 69, said he fell asleep after parking his wheelchair on the porch of a vacant Hooters to escape the rain.
He said the woman, 22-year-old Josephine Rebecca Smith, told him she was a vampire as she bit off chunks of his face and part of his lip.
Ellis managed to fend her off and called police. Officers found Smith at…
40 Percent Of Europeans Have Mental Illness
The percentage will only increase, with an aging population, the stresses of modern life, et cetera, which leads to the question: What happens when the majority of the public across an entire continent are classified as ‘mentally ill’? Via Reuters:
Europeans are plagued by mental and neurological illnesses, with almost 165 million people or 38 percent of the population suffering each year from a brain disorder such as depression, anxiety, insomnia or dementia, according to a large new study.
With only about a third of cases receiving the therapy or medication needed, mental illnesses cause a huge economic and social burden — measured in the hundreds of billions of euros — as sufferers become too unwell to work and personal relationships break down.
“The immense treatment gap … for mental disorders has to be closed,” said Hans Ulrich Wittchen, director of the institute of clinical psychology and psychotherapy at Germany’s Dresden University and…
The Mad Scientist: A History
Beginning with Faustus of Milevis, covering the historical association between genius and mental illness, mad alchemists of the Renaissance, grave robbing and organ snatching, io9 has a rollicking look at the mad scientist in Western culture:
The mad scientist can be usefully defined as an individual who conducts scientific experiments, invents something scientific, or does original scientific research, all while suffering from both psychological and moral insanity.
Historically the mad scientist has fallen into one of two modes. The first, what literary critics have variously labelled as “Promethean” or “utopian,” roughly follows the model of the figure of Prometheus from Greek mythology: the scientist is not inherently evil, and in fact is usually portrayed as either a self-sacrificing idealist or a deluded comic figure. The scientist’s mad science is morally ambivalent and ultimately degrades the moral sensibilities of the humans it comes in contact with. The Promethean/utopian mad scientist has noble goals but…
Russian Cannibal Who Ate Victim’s Liver Arrested
“He was always different,” says his mother. Moscow resident Nikolai Shadrin murdered and ate a stranger and scattered body parts in various locations across the city. When the police arrived at his apartment to arrest him, they found Shadrin eating his victim’s liver with potatoes. Also, he has a very sunny demeanor and says he can’t remember the whole episode because he was very drunk when it happened.
Arrest For Pakistani Brothers Who Made Curry From Corpses
Ever acquire a habit and get totally carried away? For years a pair of brothers dug up fresh graves in search of corpses to make into curry dishes, after the cuisine “became an addiction.” Via Guardian:
Police in Pakistan have arrested two men for allegedly digging up a newly buried corpse and eating its flesh in a curry.
The two brothers are said to have cut the legs from the body of a 24-year-old woman and cooked the flesh in a steel pot. Some of the gruesome dish had already been eaten when police raided the brothers’ home in a remote part of Punjab province.
A senior police officer, Malik Abdul Rehman, told the Guardian the brothers had been eating corpses for at least a year, but some local media reports alleged that they had been human flesh eaters for a decade.
Rehman said that the brothers, Muhammad Arif, 40, and Farman Ali, 37,…
Texas Man Fires Gun, Engages In Motel-Room Police Standoff Over Taco Bell Price Increase
In all seriousness, what is it about chain-restaurant fast food that so often drives Americans into insane, violent rages? San Antonio Express-News reports on local mayhem:
The price of the Beefy Crunch Burrito had gone up from 99 cents to $1.49 and the man at the Rigsby Road Taco Bell drive-thru had just ordered seven.
The fast food customer was so disgruntled by the price hike he shot an air gun at the manager, displayed an assault rifle and pistol while in the restaurant’s parking lot, fled as police were called, and pointed one of his weapons at three officers who pulled him over. Fleeing when they opened fire, he barricaded himself in his hotel room — all over $3.50 plus additional tax. All three of his weapons were found to be air-powered and not firearms.
The final incident in the burrito-triggered spree happened Sunday afternoon at the Rodeway Inn on North W.W. White…
Man Charged With Attempting To Cut Off Neighbor’s Toes And Scalp To “Collect His Soul”
In the dead of winter, strange things happen up north. Minnesota’s Fergus Falls Journal reports on an attempt at shamanism gone terrifyingly awry:
The man who allegedly stabbed former Fergus Falls mayoral candidate Ivan “Skip” Mallas early Sunday morning was charged on Tuesday with second degree attempted murder.
Mallas had been approached by Timothy Eugene Peterson while working in his garage. Peterson allegedly began chanting and called himself a “soul collector” and a “medicine man” while trying first to cut off some of Mallas’ toes. Mallas said that Peterson then tried to slit his throat, scalp him and stab him in the chest, all the while telling Mallas that he needed to kill him and “collect his soul.”
During the struggle, the complaint stated, Mallas allegedly had to grab the knife several times to keep it from mortally wounding him. These actions caused deep cuts to both hands, and his attempt to keep Peterson from…
South Carolina Woman Tortures, Kills ‘Devil’ Puppy For Chewing Her Bible
Insanity is alive and well in America. South Carolina’s GoUpstate reports on local faith-based crime:
A 65-year-old Pacolet Mills woman is accused of hanging and burning a 1-year-old pit bull after the animal chewed her Bible.
Miriam Fowler Smith, of 410 John Worthy Road, Pacolet Mills, is charged with ill treatment of animals in general, torture, according to an arrest warrant. Smith’s nephew told officers he left the animal at the home he shared with his aunt during the recent winter weather. After returning, he could not find the dog, named Diamond, and he assumed she had broken the chain that kept her on the home’s front porch, according to a report filed by a Spartanburg County environmental enforcement officer.
The man later told officers his aunt admitted to killing the animal, calling it a “devil” dog, and authorities were called to investigate.
After officers responded to the home, the woman told them she killed…
Florida Gunman Spraypaints Red ‘V’ On Wall, Opens Fire At School Board Meeting
Another day, another revolution nipped in the bud. MSNBC reports on an agrieved lunatic whose comic-book-esque showdown with a Florida school board ended with his being shot to death by authorities. Tape below:
Is Schizophrenia Caused By An ‘Insanity Virus’?
It’s a novel and chilling theory: we are all born with a brain-ravaging virus that invaded the human DNA millions of years ago. Our bodies work to contain it, but childhood infections such as the flu can allow HERV-W to become temporarily unleashed — the cause of schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis. Discovery reports:
Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus that lives entwined in every person’s DNA.
Schizophrenia is usually diagnosed between the ages of 15 and 25, but the person who becomes schizophrenic is sometimes recalled to have been different as a child or a toddler—more forgetful or shy or clumsy. Even more puzzling is the so-called birth-month effect: People born in winter or early spring are more likely than others to become schizophrenic later in life. It is a small increase,…
Man Pens 2,000-Page Suicide Note, Kills Himself
A Massachusetts man shot himself to death with a silver bullet in Harvard Yard after penning what may go down as one of history’s great suicide notes, published online at SuicideNote.info. The New York Post reports:
New York native shot himself to death in Harvard Yard last week — after penning an epic 1,905-page suicide note.
Mitchell Heisman, 35, quoted Thomas Jefferson, Friedrich Nietzsche and Albert Einstein as he attempted to explain his motives in the rambling missive, which included a lengthy preface and 1,433 footnotes.
Heisman put the encyclopedia-sized note online and asked that the Web page be kept up after his death, so that everyone could know his feelings about life and the universe.“I propose opening your mind towards the liberation of death; towards exposing the blind faith in life as a myth, a bias, and an error,” he wrote.
The massive document contains little information about his life, but includes many long…
Computerized ‘Typo’ Causes Largest Stock Market Plunge Ever
This is really insane, really does make it seems like these traders are just playing with Monopoly money. If only actual working people’s pensions and savings were not tied to this grand casino, we could laugh it off. See the line in bold print below, it’s priceless. Tim Paradis writes on the AP via HuffPo:
A computerized selloff possibly caused by a simple typographical error triggered one of the most turbulent days in Wall Street history Thursday and sent the Dow Jones industrials to a loss of almost 1,000 points, nearly a tenth of their value, in less than half an hour. It was the biggest drop ever during a trading day.
No one was sure what happened, other than automated orders were activated by erroneous trades. One possibilility being investigated was that a trader accidentally placed an order to sell $16 billion, instead of $16 million, worth of futures, and that was enough to trigger sell orders across the market.
The Dow recovered two-thirds of the loss before the closing bell, but that was still the biggest point loss since February of last year. The lightning-fast plummet temporarily knocked normally stable stocks such as Procter & Gamble to a tiny fraction of their former value and sent chills down investors’ spines.
“Today … caused me to fall out of my chair at one point. It felt like we lost control,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago.
Defense Contractors Sponsor Sesame Street Programming Special
If you fill out and send in this form, you can remove you or your ward’s name from a list of prospective American military recruits. Its completion moves a name into a “suppression file” in the Department of Defense’s Joint Advertising and Marketing Research & Studies. This makes it much harder for military recruiters to reach out to a prospective recruit whose contact information they may have acquired in various ways. Federal law actually requires that they have as much access to high school students as any other prospective employer.
Sesame Street has become loved and reviled for its socially-conscious programming; in one famous example from 1983, after an actor on the show died, Sesame Street took the chance to impart to very young children the temporal nature of human existence by marking his character’s death on the show. The forward-thinking episode invited some degree of opposition because even adults 
themselves continue to find death very uncomfortable or even impossible to psychologically confront.
Premiering tonight on PBS at 8 p.m. EDT is a program, “When Families Grieve,” that features four families, two of which features fathers from the American military…
