Photo Via Brennheit Bakst [Flickr]

M.J. was just found dead at the age of fifty, apparently from a cardiac arrest.He was scheduled to perform a number of comeback concerts next year.

“We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back,” the entertainment website [TMZ] said.

Regardless of how you feel about his personal “issues” this is a sad day for pop music fans and weird art enthusiasts everywhere.

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Feeling sad or depressed?  Cross off shopping from your list. Researchers have just proven that sad people are big spenders:

In a recent experiment one group of people was shown a sad video clip about the death of a boy’s mentor, while another group viewed a non-emotional clip about the Great Barrier Reef.

Researchers then produced an insulated water bottle and asked how much of the $10 the participants were getting paid they’d be willing to give up in exchange for the bottle.

People who had seen the Great Barrier Reef video agreed to pay on average about 50 cents. People in the group that had been primed to feel sad offered up four times that price, more than $2 on average — but were unaware that the video had any impact on their spending.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Geekazoid.

My sister suffers from seasonal affective disorder, also known as winter depression. A commonly prescribed therapy is light therapy – about thirty minutes of bright light in the morning. Bright in this context means more than 10 000 Lumens. You can of course buy commercial light-boxes, but I wanted to construct one by myself…

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Bettie was a beautiful woman and a wonderful icon, her work was influential to pin up girl pictures, art and women in general. She will be missed, but her legacy will not be forgotten.

The LA Times has a great biography with more information on her life and her influence on society.

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