The profits were astronomical at every step. In 1978 each kilo probably cost Escobar $2,000 but sold to Lehder and Jung for $22,000, clearing Escobar $20,000 per kilo. In the next stage they transported an average of 400 kilos to south Florida (incurring some additional expenses in hush money for local airport authorities) where mid-level dealers paid a wholesale price of $60,000 per kilo; thus in 1978 each 400-kilo load earned Escobar $8 million and Lehder, Ochoa, and Jung $5 million each in profits. Of course the mid-level dealers did just fine: after cutting the drug with baking soda each shipment retailed on the street for $210 million, almost ten times what they paid for it.

Soon Lehder was hiring American pilots to fly a steady stream of cocaine into the U.S., paying them $400,000 per trip. At one trip per week, in 1978 this translated into wholesale revenues of $1.3 billion and profits of $1 billion.

The profits and risks soared after that. The Jung in the quote is American George Jung, whose story was told in the 2001 film Blow. Read the rest of Escobar’s astonishing biography at mental_floss. Link

Officers who raided the home found a small meth lab, 19 grams of marijuana, 10 grams of heroin, 190 pills and $4,143 in cash, police say. They also seized a shotgun.

Police began looking into the home more than a year ago because of numerous neighborhood complaints. At one point, an unidentified neighbor gave police the “Heroin for sale” flier, which also had the address and names of the suspected drug dealers.

In addition, there were a number of public safety meetings where neighbors complained about the drug problem in their neighborhood, and they asked for something to be done, police say.

Six adults were arrested. There was also a teenager in the home at the time of the raid. Link -via Arbroath

You probably know that Socrates was forced to die by drinking poison, but did you know that he was made to drink hemlock, which essentially shuts down the body and allows the mind to continue functioning until death finally sets in?

For more interesting information about poisons and the people who used them, enjoy this great Mental Floss article by Miss C.

Link

When you think about it, Winnie the Pooh makes a lot more sense when you consider all of the characters simply live inside of a mental institution. Dan Meth hit the nail on the head with this great medication chart.

Link via Laughing Squid

Tripping Elephants On Parade

Image via http2007 [Flickr]

While many test animals are killed in the name of research, many of them are at least being used to investigate potentially life-saving drugs. Perhaps the saddest and most spectacular failure of any animal-based experiment occurred in 1962, when Tusko the elephant (not the one pictured) was given LSD simply for the sake of seeing how the magnificent beast would react to such a substance.

Unfortunately, the researchers, Louis Jolyon West and Chester M. Pierce, had no idea how much LSD it would take to dose an elephant. Rather than erroring on the side of safety, the doctors decided that they didn’t want to have to do the experiment again just because they underdosed the elephant the first time. They ended up deciding to give Tusko 297 milligrams, which is about 3000 times the dosage a human takes, despite the fact that an elephant weighs about 90 times more than the average human.

After being dosed, Tusko immediately started running around in his pen and soon lost control of his movements, eventually collapsing to the ground and going into seizures. To counteract the LSD, the doctors gave the elephant 2,800 milligrams of an antipsychotic. The drug reduced his seizures slightly, but didn’t stop them. After another hours, the doctors decided to give Tusko a barbiturate to calm him down, but it didn’t help. He died a few minutes later.

Two other elephants were later dosed with the drug and suffered no ill effects. Ultimately, the doctors that dosed Tusko summed up their experiment in Science by saying, simply, “It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD.” Even so, it is still unclear whether or not Tusko died from the acid or a combination of the three drugs given to him that day.

The Monster Study

The effects of positive vs. negative reinforcement have fascinated scientists and parents for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, testing on a group of unsuspecting orphans isn’t the best way to find out. In 1939, Doctor Wendell Johnson of the University of Iowa and his assistant, Mary Tudor, selected 22 children from an orphanage in Iowa. Ten of the children had stutters and the rest spoke just fine.

The stutterers were put in two groups, group IA that was to use positive reinforcement and other, group IB, that was to receive negative reinforcement. The non-stutterers were also broken into two groups, group IIB, that was told they spoke fine, and group IIA, who were told they were starting to stutter and needed to avoid making mistakes at any cost. The goal was to get those in group IA to stop stuttering and those in group IIA to start stuttering.

The impact on group IIA was exactly what the doctor had hoped for. The entire group started falling behind on their school work. The children started to second-guess their speech abilities and many stopped talking at all. One girl ran away shortly after the experiment ended. While Mary Tudor visited the orphanage three times after the experiment was over, attempting to convince the children that they didn’t have any speech problems, the damage was already done. Although none of the kids became stutterers, many of the children retained speech problems their entire life and most were reluctant to speak. In 2007, six of these children were awarded $925,000 in a lawsuit against the state for the university’s role in the experiment.

The study has since been dubbed “The Monster Study” by the public and scientists alike who were disgusted with the doctor’s methods.

The Baby Born A Chimp

Image via BoingBoing

There have been ample stories of human children being raised by other species and eventually becoming more like that animal than an actual human. If the process could go one way, Winthrop Kellogg was sure that it could also go the other, particularly if the animal involved was one of our closest genetic cousins.

In 1931, Kellogg received a grant for his experiment and the timing couldn’t be better –his wife just had a baby boy, David. This would give them the unique opportunity to raise a baby chimp, named Gua, right along side a human baby. It didn’t take long for the babes to bond and become best friends.

Kellogg and his wife took impeccable notes on their two “children” noting their physical changes, emotions and how they scored on small intelligence tests. The chimp scored notably higher on the intelligence tests due the fact that the species matures faster than human babies.

Gua picked up quite a few human behaviors, such as walking upright and eating with a spoon, but she failed to learn how to speak and learn simple repetition games, like patty cake. Her emotions were also much less predictable and inclined to change at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately, the experiment really started to go wrong when little David started to become more chimplike than Gua became humanlike. He only learned a few simple words and often took to making chimp howls when he wanted something.

After only nine months, the Kelloggs gave up on Gua, concerned that David would fail to grow up like a normal human child. In the years since this project, plenty of people have adopted chimps as babies, proving beyond a doubt that the animals can never act completely human –even if they are adorable in overalls.

Yellow Fever Fever

Doctor Stubbins Ffirth observed that yellow fever was prominent during the summer, but receded as winter approached and made the mistaken conclusion that this meant the disease was not contagious. The fact that he never caught the disease after constant exposure to patients with the malady further inspired him. In order to prove the disease was non-contagious, Ffirth decided he needed to expose himself to all types of bodily fluids secreted by yellow fever victims. He drank the vomit of the victims, he injected it into his veins, he dripped it into his eyes and he inhaled the fumes from the vomit. Through it all, he never did manage to contract the disease.

Rather than admitting that he made his point or moving on to testing on other people, Ffirth realized there were far more body fluids for him to experiment with. He used blood, urine, saliva and perspiration. Even after all of these tests, his still managed to resist the disease. Unfortunately, Ffirth failed to take into account the different stages of the disease. His samples all came from persons who were in the late stages of the malady, and were, thus, no longer contagious. Had he experimented with samples from people who only recently contracted the disease, his results likely would have been a whole lot different.

As for the observation that the disease disappeared during the winter months? He was right about that, just wrong about the cause. Yellow fever is caused by a RNA virus that is spread by mosquitoes. That’s why it was so much more common during the humid summers on the East Coast. Fortunately, before word of Ffirth’s research spread, locals believed the disease was spreading through the waterways and Philadelphia introduced a closed water system that helped eliminate cisterns and barrels full of water that served as mosquito breeding grounds during the summer.

A Baby In A Box

Image via Silly Rabbit [Wikipedia]

This is perhaps the only science experiment in this list that went totally right –up until the idea was released to the public. Doctor Fredric Skinner had a lot of trouble bending down into his baby’s crib to pick her up. When his wife became pregnant with a second child, he worked hard to develop a more comfortable and elegant solution. What he came up with was a “baby box.”

The box was about six feet tall and lifted the baby up about three feet high. The sleeping area was a shallow bin with a safety glass window that allowed it to see the outside world while keeping it safe. The box provided the baby with a heater, humidifier and an air filter so the baby always had fresh, warm air. It was also well-insulated to help keep out loud noises. Parents could lift the baby out of the device without back strain. The baby stayed warm, so it didn’t need clothes or blankets that could get tangled up and become a hazard. Plus, this also meant less laundry for the parents. The mattress was made of a sheet of canvas held in place by two rollers, so when it got dirty, they just had to roll it to reveal a new, clean section. All in all, the device had tons of benefits and the doctor’s baby responded to the device quite well.

Unfortunately, Skinner decided to bypass academic journals and send an announcement of his achievement through Ladies’ Home Journal. While the title of the piece he sent was “Baby Care Can Be Modernized,” editors decided to change it to “Baby In A Box.” This one little change was largely responsible for the public backlash against Skinner’s revolutionary idea. People accused the doctor of caging his child up like an animal, raising a child like a vegetable garden and gaining inspiration for his idea from a grocery freezer case.

While Skinner did want to run formal experiments comparing ten children who were raised with the box and ten children who were raised in a crib to see if either group had any disadvantages long term, the public outrage against his work led him to back off on his project. His own daughter did seem to come out just fine in the end, becoming a successful artist in London. Eventually, Skinner did get a manufacturing deal, selling a few hundred units of “The Air Crib,” but the head of the manufacturing company soon passed away, leaving the idea to die in the process.

Now, obviously, there are far more science projects gone wrong than just these. If you’ve heard any stories, feel free to share them in the comments. Or let us know what you think about the projects. Personally, I think the baby box is a great idea and I would love to have had one when I have a kid.

Sources: Elephants On Acid And Other Bizarre Experiments, Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Listverse

Loniesh Veasey told Tacoma police she was high on crack cocaine when she argued with a friend, slashed her to death with a razor and swapped shoes with the woman before heading to the hospital to get stitches in her hand. [...]

Veasey told police she was high on crack cocaine and Thomas was using heroin just before “an argument erupted over the types of drugs each used,” according to court documents.

She said Thomas stuck her in the palm with a syringe, sparking the fight, and then cut the back of Veasey’s hand with a razor.

Link – via News of the Weird. Next up, meth vs. crack, who do you think will win?

That’s exactly what Bryan Lewis Saunders did for his art project. He took a lot of different drugs and then try to draw self-portraits. Here are the results:

Self portraits by Bryan Lewis Saunders (L) Xanax (R) PCP

dinosaurcity Blog interviewed Bryan about the best and worst drugs he took while doing the project:

The PCP was just as bad. Any drugs that detach your mind from your body I don’t care for too much. The PCP day I ate a ham sandwich with tomatoes in it and people kept knocking on my door asking if they could look at my Appalachian Trail self-portraits and I’d get to telling about 20 people at a time all of my hiking stories and showing them all of my drawings and then all of sudden someone would whisper, "Bryan, these people aren’t real." And I would flip the hell out! Because even the person that whispered that wasn’t real. And then there would be another knock at the door and more people would come in wanting to see my pictures and they too weren’t real.

What’s crazy is, my friend Audra said that she really did knock on my door and could hear me talking in there but I wouldn’t answer it. It was all I could do to draw myself vomiting on PCP, and each time I heaved my face shifted off in stages and red clumpy chunky stuff kept coming out of my nose. I thought my brain was hemorrhaging, but it turned out it was just tomato from my sandwich. Thankfully.

But don’t try this at home. Bryan suffered lethargy and even mild brain damage: Link

An estimated 500 to 600 drug traffickers were hiding in the Complexo do Alemão area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Over several days last week, shootouts between police and gang members left at least 42 people dead and residents terrified. The Big Picture Blog has 40 photographs from the raids. Some may be disturbing. Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: REUTERS/Sergio Moraes)

Link – Via Book Of Joe

A brother and sister had their wisdom teeth removed on the same day. Lucky for us, mom was armed with a camera for the ride home! -via Bits and Pieces

The study included 12 patients who took a small dose of psilocybin — the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms” — while under the supervision of trained therapists. In a separate session, the participants took a placebo pill, which had little effect on their symptoms.

By contrast, one to three months after taking psilocybin the patients reported feeling less anxious and their overall mood had improved. By the six-month mark, the group’s average score on a common scale used to measure depression had declined by 30 percent, according to the study, which was published in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

In follow-up interviews with the researchers, some patients said their experience with psilocybin gave them a new perspective on their illness and brought them closer to family and friends.

“We were pleased with the results,” says the lead researcher, Charles Grob, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, in Torrance, Calif.

Another study using larger doses of the drug is planned. Link -via reddit

"After scrutinizing the powdery substance, questioning the two vehicle occupants and checking with the vehicle owner," who was not in the car, "it turned out that the small Baggie contained the cremated ashes of the vehicle owner’s grandmother."

The vehicle’s owner told police that she was "very close" to her deceased grandma and "she always keeps her nearby in the console," the release said.

State police said storing ashes in bags inside a car console is unusual, but not criminal. "It’s a little different, you don’t come across it everyday," said Sgt. Stephen Townsend.

Indeed. From The Denver Post: Link – via Obscure Store

Comic publishers had to submit their comics and get approval from the CCA. The requirements were pretty strict (for example "in every instance good shall triumph over evil." Zombies, werewolves, and vampires were a no-no).

In 1971, Spider-Man creator Stan Lee was approached by the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare to do a comic book tale of the dangers of drug abuse. But even though drug abuse was portrayed as a bad thing, the inflexible CCA didn’t allow it (after all, the rules prohibit the mention of "drugs," period.)

What happened next made comic book history. Here’s Stan Lee telling us in an interview with Comics Alliance about how he went against the CCA and published the comic book anyway: Link [embedded Flash video clip] – Thanks Brian!

The police have only two signs, and when they use them at a location, it’ll likely only be for a day, and only during daytime hours. However, the sign will be up again on West H Street today because police used
it for only part of Wednesday. The signs are heavily weighted, which police expect will deter people from stealing them.

When asked whether he thinks the signs will advertise where people can buy drugs, Sax said that those buying the drugs probably already knew to get them there in the first place.

Link

The Opium Museum is, at the heart, about the trade in rare antiques, since opium smoking paraphernalia was outlawed. Still, there are pages and pages of the history of opium and its use in countries all over the world, with many historical photographs.

Beginning in the 18th century, opium accompanied the Chinese diaspora: first to the Chinese quarters of Asian cities, and later to the Chinatowns of the West, particularly North America, where opium smoking in the Chinese manner and with Chinese-made paraphernalia became fashionable among non-Chinese.

Once the drug was banned and its paraphernalia outlawed, these illicit items were heaped into piles and burned in public bonfires. From Shanghai to Saigon to San Francisco, the means to smoke opium were destroyed along with the drug itself. So few examples of these relics remain that most experts on Chinese art are blithely unaware of just how sumptuous and opulent this art form had become during its heyday.

For serious collectors, there is information on how to identify genuine opium tools and have them appraised. Link -via Metafilter

WebMD recently consulted with experts to determine the most important drugs from throughout history.  They were looking for drugs that changed the medical landscape by either treating a large number of people with a range of problems or by showing that it is possible to treat a disease.

You might be able to guess that penicillin or the smallpox vaccine are included in the list, but others such as aspirin might surprise you.  The link below includes a graphic that shows the drugs that made the list and provide information on the hottest selling drugs today and the likely hot one of tomorrow.  The original WebMD story discusses the rationale behind choosing each drug. 

Link – via digg

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by OddNumber.

The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn’s disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an “unusually high” response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It’s not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests.

Wired takes a look at how the placebo effect works, and the various reasons newer drugs don’t compete as well with the mind’s ability to affect our bodies. Link -via Boing Boing

Previously at Neatorama: Prozac: No Better Than Placebo?

Songs About Drugs:

“Got To Get You Into My Life” by The Beatles
This track really sounds like a love song written for a love interest with lyrics like, “Ooh, I suddenly see you/Ooh, did I need you/Every single day of my life.” Despite how it sounds though, this one is about the first time Paul tried marijuana and his instant love affair with the drug. What more would you expect from soneone who also named a romantic love song (Martha My Dear) after his dog?
Source Image Via Gonzalo Barrientos [Flickr]

“Motorhead” by Hawkwind and Motorhead
Even a lot of Motorhead fans don’t actually know that the name is a slang for a speedfreak. Lemmy wrote the song for the group Hawkwind first and then took it to be the title song for his post-Hawkwind group. Here’s some of the song’s lyrics that really give it away, “Motorhead, you can call me Motorhead, alright/ Brain dead, total amnesia/ Get some mental anesthesia.”
Source

“Hey Mr. Tambourine Man” by Bob Dylan
This one’s a little less certain. You see, although it is widely accepted that this song is about a man looking to score from his dealer, Bob claims none of his songs are about drug use. While I’m usually inclined to accept the artist’s word on his own songs, Mr. Dylan also claims that “Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35” A.K.A. “Everybody Gets Stoned” is especially not about drugs. I may be able to concede that he may have meant the song to be more about stonings and social outcasting, I have a hard time accepting a poet as prolific and intelligent as Bob Dylan didn’t realize and fully intend the double meaning of the chorus.
Source Image Via MarkyBon [Flickr]

Songs Not About Drugs:

“Hotel California” by The Eagles
With lyrics like “you can check out anytime, but you can never leave,” it’s easy to see why so many people associated the song with drug use. The reality is that the song is more about the hedonism of the Southern California lifestyle the group was exposed to in the seventies, which, to be fair, did include heavy drug use. Still, the drugs would be no more than a minor part of the song’s deeper meaning. Eagles drummer and writer Don Henley, said it was “basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about.”
Source Image Via Saguayo [Flickr]

“Mirror in the Bathroom” by The English Beat
While many people assume any songs involving mirrors, particularly when the mirror is in a bathroom, must be references to cocaine, this one is actually about narcissism. The writer, Dave Wakeling, said he was inspired to write the song while he was looking in the mirror at himself debating whether or not he could skip work that day. He then started thinking about the self-involvement and narcissism. The line about “a restaurant that’s got glass tables” was actually a direct reference to a fancy restaurant that opened near him that, would you guess it, had glass tables. Funny enough, the success of the song may have helped lead the band into cocaine addictions; Dave later remarked about it that, “songs can become sort of strangely prophetic.”
Source

“Puff the Magic Dragon” by Peter, Paul and Mary
This song really is about a growing up and abandoning an imaginary friend who happens to be a dragon. Although it’s merely a tale of lost childhood innocence, the release of the song in the drug-fueled sixties led to many people assuming that anything with the word “puff” was actually a reference to marijuana. Co-writer Leonard Lipton once said, “I can tell you that at Cornell in 1959 [when the song was written], no one smoked grass.” So, if you were hoping for the song to actually have been about drugs, you almost certainly have already lost that childhood innocence referenced in the song.
Source Image Via CelestialSpirit13 [Flickr]

Recent advances in both laser and fibre optic technology now make it possible to detect tiny particles of different substances. The EPSRC-funded project team is developing sensors which incorporate these technologies and that are small enough to be carried on the 30cm-long robot, in order to detect the specific ‘fingerprint’ of illegal substances at much lower concentrations than is now possible.

When placed inside a steel freight container, the ferret will attach itself magnetically to the top, then automatically move around and seek out contraband, sending a steady stream of information back to its controller.

Link

The post includes such gems PSAs by Hanna-Barbera, Pee Wee Herman (I half expected him to giggle by the end), and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Link – via Rue The Day!

Here’s what the country learned:

In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.

Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.

Brian Vastag of Scientific American has more on the story: Link

Sex, Drugs and Science

If this first group of studies show us anything, it’s that scientists are as drugged up and crazy as the junkies up the street from me.

Elephants on Acid:

If you were going to see the effects of LSD on an elephant, wouldn’t you start with smaller doses and progressively increase the dosage until there was a noticeable change in their behavior? I sure would. But the researchers on this one aren’t like you and me.

Instead the researchers working on this one started off by injecting the poor beast with 3000 times the dosage needed for an average human, despite the fact that elephants weigh around 50 times what the average human weighs. Within two hours, the animal died. The scientists defended their actions by saying they had used LSD plenty of times and were sure it was safe. They then concluded, “elephants are highly sensitive to LSD.”

Apparently another scientist found their results to be suspicious, so he gave elephants LSD in their water. In his study, the elephants acted a little funny, but were totally fine.

Source

Turkey Arousal:

We’ve all heard stories detailing how stupid turkeys are -like the one that says they’ll drown if you leave them in the rain. Well, some of those turkey stories may be bogus, but two Penn State researchers discovered that turkeys are so stupid they can be trained to be aroused by little more than sticks.

Their experiment consisted of creating a model female turkey that could be progressively deconstructed. The scientists would then gauge the turkey’s interest in the “female” and then remove some parts of her body and try again. They were expecting the birds would lose interest after is was stripped down enough. Surprisingly, the turkeys were aroused even when the model became little more than a stick with a head. I guess this not only shows how stupid turkeys are, but how perverse they are too.

Source | Photo Via Vicki’s Nature [Flickr]

Semen As an Anti-depressant?

I always thought scientists were supposed to be unbiased. I mean, if you’re hoping for certain results, might that affect your research? Obviously these researchers bypassed that concept, by attempting to prove that semen works as an antidepressant. They decided to study this theory by interviewing college women who were sexually active. Their conclusions proved that women who had sex without condoms were less depressed than women who used them.

Of course, their research was extremely preliminary and they didn’t even bother to take into account additional factors, like the fact that women not using condoms are more likely to be in serious

relationships. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that this might play into someone’s relative level of happiness. But like I said, this study was about as unbiased as all those tobacco company ones that couldn’t connect smoking with cancer.

Source | Photo Via Zen [Flickr]

Paging Dr. Obvious

The rest of these studies are amazing -in that someone actually bothered to research things so obvious:

Head Banging is Bad For You:

Who would have ever thought that aggressively and repeatedly throwing your head up and down would be bad for you? Gee, I never would have imagined that spinal damage and brain trauma could have resulted from head banging. Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. After years of dating a metal head, I can assure you that head banging can certainly make you retarded…or at least, it doesn’t help your intelligence at all.

The only good thing researchers found was that head banging is unlikely to leave you unconscious. What is really funny is the researcher’s suggestions for the metal genre. They suggest metal bands play more

mellow tunes and less “beat oriented” music. They also urged label to place anti-head banging warnings on their cds. Oh, and listeners were advised to start listening to “adult-oriented rock” instead of heavy metal. Yeah, that’s gonna happen real soon.

Source | Photo Via Cayusa [Flickr]

Male science nerds likely to be virgins:

Hmmm, who is most likely to be a virgin, a party-girl, a jock, or a nerd? Think about it. No surprise here; male science nerds between 16 and 25 are the most likely to not have had sex.

At least the study provided some legitimate reasons for this statistic, rather than the typical “nerds are pimply and boring” theories of popular media. The study reasoned that these nerds were the population segment least likely to be in situations where they would meet potential lovers. Apparently, doing homework and going to the library doesn’t help you meet chicks. Hey, at least they’re being productive. Interestingly, female art students were the most sexually active.

Source | Photo Via Miss604 [Flickr]

Bullies Like Seeing Pain:

If bullies were compassionate they would sit around crying whenever they picked on people. The fact that they don’t do so might just indicate that they are mean. Why did anyone need to set up a study to confirm that bullies enjoy seeing other people in pain?

An interesting thing about this study is that it was the first time anyone used fMRI to evaluate how respondents reacted to different emotions. Instead of being empathetic like the brain of a normal person, bullies mind’s activate their reward centers when they see videos of other people being picked on.

Source | Photo Via ZZClef [Flickr]

Television Viewers Are Unhappy:

It’s common knowledge that television and other forms of entertainment are a way for people to escape their problems. If you run home to watch tv instead rather than hanging out with friends, you might be unhappy. Did we really need a scientist to tell us that people who socialize are generally more happy than people who sit at home watching tv all day? What’s more crazy is that they needed over 30 years of data to back up their claims. The only unique thing the study discovered was that many viewers are actually addicted. (Marx was right about television, is this evidence that the scientists are commies?):

“Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret,” said Steven Martin, co-author of the study. “People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged. For this kind of person, TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It’s habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out.”

Funny, I’ve was using the audio/visual equivalent of heroin the whole time I was researching this. I swear I could quit any time.

Source

Now that I’ve written this, I think I’ve got a couple of ideas I could get funded. For example, are people happier when they’re warm at home or cold in the middle of nowhere? Or maybe I could find out if donkeys really die when they take a bunch of cocaine and other drugs at a bachelor party. Do you guys have any ideas for awesome studies?

Boston.com has a very cool chart detailing how to mess with your mind’s perceptions, naturally. I think the most interesting one is definitely the first one. It tells you how to hallucinate with ping pong balls and a radio. If you’ll excuse me, I need to go cut some ping pong balls in half and listen to static for the next hour or so.

Link

The FDA has just approved a drug that will help lengthen your eyelashes. Hopefully they won’t get quite as long as the ones in this photo, but who knows the long term effects of eyelash medication overdoses?

The drug, Allergan, contains an active ingredient that was originally created to treat glaucoma, but found to have this pleasant side effect. The drug should be available in May and will cost $120 per each month’s supply. It will take about two to four months for the effect to start to show.

Link Photo By Asobitsuchiya [Flickr]

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.

The attorney was handcuffed and later released when eleven KopBuster detectives arrived with the media in tow to question the illegal raid. The police refused to give KopBusters the search warrant affidavit which is suspected to contain the lies regarding the probable cause.

Link – via reddit