Freaky Phenomena

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Washington have created an amazing game that relies on brain waves for communication. It takes three people to play the game, and while it wasn't good for delivering complex thoughts or actual mind-reading, it did allow people to commuicate telepathically to decide whether or not to rotate a block. It's pretty simple but it's a start at seeing how humans might be able to nonverbally communicate with one another by thought alone. 

The researchers even gave the participants false information to see whether or not they were communicating effectively only to discover that the subjects were able to tell which thoughts were real or not most of the time. It's a very interesting experiment that points a step closer to actual mind-reading, if that will ever truly be possible, and it would be interesting to see where these researchers take their findings.

What weird or freaky news have you come across this week? Share your findings in the chat.

If Halloween means nothing more than candy, pumpkin carving and cute costumes of super heroes and princesses to you, you might want to skip this nightmare-inducing list of scary makeup ideas for the big night. If Halloween is your excuse to buy as much fake blood as possible and scare anyone who lives in the double digits, it might be just what you are looking for! If you've always wanted to look like your're inside-out, that you could unzipper your flesh or that chunks of you were missing a la The Walking Dead, welcome to the idea list of your dreams.

One of the best things about the Internet is the plethora of ideas at your fingertips, many of them on Pinterest. There's no shortage of Pinterest boards dedicated only to scary costumes so if you're out of ideas, just check it out. Don't be discouraged if you need something special, like colored contact lenses or a wig; you can often make do with whatever you've got.

The creepiest costumes I've ever pulled off include a zombie mime, a dead clown and a half-demon, half-human look, although there have been some other fun ones over the years, too. Are you going as something even scarier this year, or have you been anything scarier in the past? If you have tutorials or photo links we'd love to see them in the chat! 

Saying that UFOs aren't real based on no evidence is like people claiming that oxygen, narwhals and love itself aren't real because they can't see it. Most consipiracy theories hold a little truth to them at the very least, and it would make much more sense for other life to exist in a universe as large as ours, so when the former manager of the Department of Defense Aerospace Threat program confirmed that they are real, it seems pretty legit. 

Even so, sightings have been greatly reduced in recent years, prompting us to wonder why people aren't seeing--or merely aren't reporting--as many incidents. Perhaps they are and they just aren't getting media attention. Perhaps alien life saw who the United States elected as president and thought, "Aw, heck no," and turned tail back to their own planets, or maybe they finished researching on us and decided we weren't worth it to begin with! Perhaps some of our alien movies were too over-the-top for them to stomach and they gave up on us at that point.

Whatever the reason, sightings are down and many claim that it's simply that people don't care anymore. More people believe in aliens than ever and they seem bored with the news. What do you think? 

What would you do if someone you knew enjoyed dressing up like a dog all the time? What if it went beyond that? Human pups are people who enjoy not only dressing up as accurately like dogs as possible, but also playing and behaving like dogs.

It's mostly men who do this and they say it goes beyond a sexual fetish. Those who become human pups say that they enjoy having no outside worries and use it as a form of escapism from reality, bills and the harshness of life.

What do you think of human pups? Would it be the lifestyle for you?

photo courtesy of Wikipedia