Is The Zombie Apocalypse Starting In Florida?

Police forced to shoot naked man found chewing on a homeless man's face
Over the holiday weekend in Florida (where all truly weird things happen) police officers arrived at a grisly scene: a naked man was eating another man's face. To which the internet responds, "THAT'S HOW IT STARTS."
 
The assailant has been identified as Rudy Eugene, a 31 year-old man with a history of violence, drug abuse, and arrests. His ex-wife spoke to local news, explaining that she ended their marriage in the face of his escalating violence. 

Eugene's house was foreclosed on last year, and he was frequently seen wandering areas more often trafficked by homeless people. Homeless people interviewed in the aftermath of the attack said that Eugene often "looked confused."
 
On that fateful Saturday afternoon, a man riding his bicycle along the causeway spotted the incident and phoned police. "The guy was, like, tearing him to pieces with his mouth," the witness said. When police officers yelled at Eugene to back away, Eugene "merely raised his head with pieces of flesh in his mouth, growled, and began chewing again."
 
I believe that rumors of the zombie apocalypse are greatly exaggerated. If the attacker had been found to be an otherwise upstanding citizen, a gainfully employed family man with no record of untoward behavior, that would be a different matter. But instead, all joking aside, this is simply another tragic story of a fellow human being who needed help that, for whatever reason, he didn't get.
 
We know little about the victim at this point, except that he is homeless, and had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Homeless people are often victims of the criminally insane, for a lot of reasons. The victim of the attacks is currently in serious condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital, and has lost 70-80% of the flesh on his face.
 
As for Eugene, the police are currently asking anyone with information to come forth. Based on Eugene's naked state, they suspect that he was suffering from a drug-induced psychosis, because this condition often causes the body to heat up. Which in turn leads the delirious sufferer to remove their clothes in response.
 
Although the police are referring to "cocaine psychosis," several experts suspect that Eugene may have been under the influence of bath salts. "Bath salts" is the slang term for a cheap, easily available street drug which is similar to LSD, and which is blamed for many recent cases of drug-induced psychosis in the Florida area.
 

The Navy's Super Sonar

Sonar testing harms marine life, but the Navy won't stop
There were a few factual things blended into Animal Planet's "Mermaids: The Body Found" mock-umentary that aired this weekend. One of these is the existence of Navy testing their so-called "super sonar" underwater, to the detriment of marine life. I worry that the mermaids special has done this issue a disservice, and that a lot of people will write it off as being as fictional as the rest of the show.
 
But super sonar is real, and the Navy refuses to stop it.
 
Super sonar is just like regular sonar, but a lot louder. Imagine you are standing blindfolded in an empty room. Even without special training, if you clap your hands loudly, you can hear about how big the room is. For example, you would be able to tell if the room is closer in size to a supply closet or an auditorium. Your brain automatically calculates the information, based on how and how fast the echo of the sound returns to your ears.

That's how sonar works: a sound (typically called a "ping") is made, and then its echo is analyzed to create an image of the surrounding objects. Sonar is usually only used underwater, because water communicates sound better than air does. Sound is just a compression wave, exactly like the kind of wave you create when you push at the water in your bath tub.
 
If regular sonar is like clapping in an empty room, super sonar is like setting off a detonation. It is orders of magnitude louder than regular sonar, which is why the Navy likes it. Super sonar travels farther. It can "see" everything in the ocean for miles around.
 
Unsurprisingly, marine life is not a fan of the Navy's super sonar. Sound, being a compression wave, ricochets through the body of an animal like a dolphin or a whale, and can cause first-order damage including burst eardrums and hemorrhaging. The noise can also frighten diving whales, who are startled into surfacing too quickly. Whales get "the bends" just like people, and a whale frightened into surfacing in a panic can easily die - or suffer excruciating pain - from the nitrogen bubbles forming in its flesh. 
 
The mermaids special included a real-world event: in 2004 there was a mass beaching on Washington shores, which coincided with one of the Navy's first sonar tests. Other beachings and deaths have been reported coinciding with Navy sonar tests, but the Navy continues to insist that it's just coincidence - and they continue to use their catastrophic sonar.
 
This is something that has to stop, and I wish Animal Planet had talked about it, instead of using these real-world events to pretend that mermaids exist. 
 

"Mermaids, The Body Found" As Entertaining As It Is Ridiculous (And Fake)

One thing the show got right: All scientists are hotties.
Let's just get this out of the way up front: there are no mermaids. It was all fake. Which you wouldn't necessarily know unless you stuck it out to the very end, when they showed a pair of gray-on-black paragraphs to the effect that "We pretty much made it all up."
 
Until that fleeting moment, the two hour special ostensibly about the discovery of mermaids plays it completely straight. One might be tipped off, of course, by the bad special effects, the fact that it's about mermaids, the dubious acting skills, or the way that everyone on the show had a Canadian accent.

(One thing the show got right, though: All scientists are hotties.)
 
If you know up front that you're watching a mocumentary, "Mermaids" is a pretty entertaining ride. From what I saw on Twitter as the show aired, a lot of people were pretty irate when they finally realized that it was all fake. But one thing is for sure: these weren't your pretty, sexy mermaids: these things are scary, alien-looking creatures with gray skin and eyes that are far too big, and blink wrong.
 
The show has two basic plot lines. In the first, we see interviews with present-day NOAA scientists who apparently discovered mermaid remains. In the second, we are treated to a CGI mockumentary-within-a-mockumentary about the mermaids: how they split off from humanity six million years ago and took to the seas. We see mermaids hunting with dolphins, giving birth (the camera cuts away at all the interesting bits), and even performing the ultimate sacrifice to save the pod from a megalodon.
 
This self-sacrifice scene was genuinely touching. It's a bad sign when your CGI mermaids are better actors than the live-action humans.
 
I was distracted during the CGI bits by the fact that I recognized most of the footage the CGI had been laid over. If you have seen every episode of "Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth," then you will probably recognize it, too.
 
Overall, the show is ridiculous (if fun). But it features two things that are real, and I worry that this show has done them a disservice. That the general viewing public, realizing that the show is fake, will toss the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
 
The first of those is the Bloop. Which, okay, whatever, it's just a weird noise, no big deal.
 
The second is the Navy's sonar testing. The Navy really has developed a super sonar, and they really are setting it off in our oceans, and it really is (probably) damaging and even killing real-world animals like whales and dolphins. 
 
Stay tuned tomorrow for more about the Navy's sonar testing! 

Problems With The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis

Tonight Animal Planet will be airing a special on mermaids which promises to be about as accurate as the 1990s classic "Alien Autopsy" video. But one thing the faux-cumentary mentions is the "aquatic ape" hypothesis, which is a pseudoscientific theory that just won't quite die.
 
According to this theory of evolution, humankind went through an aquatic phase. This phase is said to explain several mysteries, including our diving reflex, our hairlessness, the pattern of hair on our bodies, and our lack of a "missing link." Fossil evidence would be missing, according to this theory, because we were living in the water at the time.
 
This isn't entirely without precedent. Whales famously came ashore, lived as land animals for a while, then returned to the water. However, the evidence against the Aquatic Ape Hypothesis is both voluminous and convincing.

 
Problem 1: We found the missing link
This "missing link" was a big deal back in the day. For a long time, archaeologists were unable to find fossil evidence of the bridge between homo sapiens and earlier forms of primate. These forms have since been unearthed, and the continuum of fossil evidence is complete. There are no missing links.
 
Problem 2: Our hair pattern isn't that strange
Granted, it is odd that we are hairless but for the tops of our heads. But as for the contention that our hair pattern would make us more streamlined, it just isn't so. First of all, if you compare our hair pattern to other animals, it's pretty much the same. Our hair grows from our shoulders down and out, for the most part. Just like most animals.
 
Problem 3: Our hair pattern isn't aquadynamic
The only place where our hair pattern differs is on our forearms and calves, where it grows sideways. Not so unusual for primates - the same pattern is found on orangutans and other apes. And it's only "streamlined" if you can figure out how aquatic apes propelled themselves face-first through the water, with their arms out at their sides like airplane wings.
 
Problem 4: Subcutaneous fat is actually pretty common
Many proponents claim that we share the property of subcutaneous fat with other aquatic mammals (like whales and seals) but not land animals. I have an overweight cat sitting on the desk beside me who is ample proof to the contrary.
 
Problem 5: It wasn't long enough to evolve this way, anyway
It took whales millions of years to evolve away from their land-based forms. However long we theoretically spent in the water, it wasn't nearly long enough to account for all these changes.
 

Haunted, abandoned hospital to become a senior home

Who better to frighten in the middle of the night than a bunch of really old people?

The former Linda Vista Hospital, a 107-year-old building which was abandoned some 25 years ago, is "so well known for its creepy atmosphere and alleged hauntings" that it has become the go-to location for both ghost hunters and Hollywood productions looking for a spooky filming location - including Rob Zombie and the film "Se7evn."
Fascinating, to be sure… but would you want your grandmother to live there?
 
That's the plan according to Amcal Multi-Housing, a housing group which is leading the $40 million conversion of the old hospital from "creep-o-matic factory" to "senior living home."

When questioned on the topic, Amcal Multi-Housing's Vice President is quoted as dismissing the concerns about the former hospital being "the subject of a little urban folklore." And well he might; I imagine that Amcal Multi-Housing is getting Linda Vista Community Hospital at a song, given its long abandonment combined with "a little urban folklore." And I imagine the purchase and potential renovation is going to be cause for not a few boardroom arguments on the topic. 

Even if you brush away any issues (and I respect those who don't believe in the paranormal, that's their right), what about your customers? You would think it might be a tough sell, trying to get Great Aunt Edna to move into one of the most (allegedly) haunted locations in California. 
 
And really, who better to frighten in the middle of the night than a bunch of really old people? Heck, Amcal Multi-Housing could end up with a class action lawsuit on its hands. If Grandpa Herbert gets spooked on his way to the toilet in the middle of the night and drops dead of a heart attack, could Amcal Multi-Housing be considered to be at fault? I mean, if you set up an old folks home atop a former uranium mine and all your clients died of radiation poisoning, you would get sued from here to Timbuktu. Is the same true of paranormal activity?
 
As for said activity, Linda Vista has a long documented history of ghostly apparitions and manipulations. The property's caretaker claims to have seen a sink turn itself on and off before his eyes, and to have felt a child's hand take his own. The property's Yelp entry has tons of reviews from people who visited the property, some of whom had experiences and some who did not. (I love that people gave Linda Vista fewer stars because they didn't see a ghost. What a hilarious rating system!)
 

Are you a Tetrachromat?

And what would it mean, to see colors no one else can?

I recently listened to a fascinating Radiolab episode all about color. I was particularly struck by the section on tetrachromacy, which is the possibility that there are superhumans among us who can see more colors than the rest of us.
 
As you may remember from biology class, we get color vision thanks to the cone cells in our eyes. Humans are trichromats, meaning that we have three types of cone cells: red, green, and blue. These cells allow us to see all the colors that we do. They respond to light within a particular section of the spectrum. 

Other animals have more types of cone cells. Many birds and insects, for example, have a fourth type of cone which allows them to see ultraviolet. Other animals have even more cones, and can see an even wider spectrum. (Some animals have fewer - like dogs, who have only two kinds of cone cells, and can only see blue and yellow.)

But as with everything biological, there is always an exception to the rule. In this case, the exception is - so far - mostly hypothetical. In theory, there could be people with a mutation that allows a fourth type of cone cell. For genetic reasons, these people would almost certainly be female. And more likely to be women who have men in their family who have red-green color blindness.
 
A DNA blood test would show if this person had the right genetic characteristics to be a tetrachromat. In the Radiolab episode they managed to find and interview one of the two people in the world who is known to have tetrachromacy. But their tests were inconclusive in a fascinating way: a trained artist (a landscape painter) who does NOT have tetrachromacy was also able to pass the same color recognition tests.
 
It seems that, from a practical standpoint, it is quite possible to improve your "color IQ" just by training your eye, over the year, to recognize and discern differences in color.
 
I had an experience with this recently, myself. I was at a yarn store picking out balls of yarn. I picked out four balls of what I thought were the same shade of red. But the store clerk quickly noted that one of them was not like the other: I had actually chosen two different colors. When she pointed it out, I could see the difference, but only just barely. Clearly she had a much more highly-trained eye, when it came to yarn colors!
 

Top Three JFK Conspiracy Theories

There are so many, it's hard to choose the best one!

The body of conspiracy theory evidence in John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death is overwhelming, if not outright mind-boggling. A wealth of data can be turned up to support almost any theory about what happened that fateful day in Dealey Plaza. But time and again, a small number of theories keep floating to the top of any discussion of Kennedy's assassination.
 
According to a 2003 poll, "70% of Americans believe Kennedy's death was the result of a broader plot." Is that the "Wisdom of the Crowd" speaking, or just our ever-present need to see order in chaos? You be the judge!
 
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
 
1. The CIA 
Not long after the infamously failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy told one of his confidantes that "Something very bad is going on within the CIA, and I want to know what it is. I want to shred the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the four winds."
 
Coincidentally, Kennedy's assassination marks an era when the CIA was heavily involved in the attempted assassination of various world leaders (including Castro). According to this theory, the CIA may have gotten a little assassination-happy, in an effort to protect itself. You can see how a shadowy CIA figurehead could justify the assassination of Kennedy as an effort to maintain the preserve the greater good which the CIA would be able to do, if it was not dismantled.
 
One item bolstering this theory is that the CIA did, unquestionably, continue to exist after Kennedy's death. 
 
The CIA theory is linked to the "Three Tramps," three men who were questioned by police in the aftermath of Kennedy's assassination. These three men (E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, and Chauncey Holt) all had CIA connections, and were all present at Dealey Plaza without - according to some - reasonable explanations for attending.
 
Image courtesy Flickr/aturkus
 
2. The Mafia 
The Mafia would have had good reason to want Kennedy dead, and no doubt was relieved when he was gone. Robert Kennedy had put a tremendous amount of pressure on Mafia interests, and at least one Mafia  bigwig (Carlos Marcello) threatened to kill JFK in order to get to Bobby Kennedy, who was positioned to become Attorney General, and who was also openly working to quash the Mafia.
 
Out of all the organizations said to be gunning for JFK, the Mafia is perhaps the most plausible suspect. The Mafia is an organization which is literally dedicated to criminal acts, and which practically considers homicide just another day-to-day event.
 
(This theory merges with the theory in the #1 slot in a particularly baroque and unlikely way, combining to form a sub-theory in which the CIA hired the Mafia to assassinate Kennedy.)
 
Image courtesy Flickr/Radio Rover
 
3. Castro 
It has been well established that, in the years before Kennedy's assassination, the CIA made several assassination attempts against Castro. (Each, seemingly, more asinine and bizarre than the last.) No surprise, then, that the Cuban leader should try to retaliate. It might be more surprising if he didn't, frankly.
 
This theory also has the benefit of leveraging one of the few things we know for sure about Lee Harvey Oswald, which is that he was a Communist sympathizer who suddenly came into a (for him) large sum of money not long before Kennedy's death. He set up his own branch of a pro-Castro organization in New Orleans, and could often be seen handing out pro-Castro leaflets around town. 
 
On the down side, there is little evidence tying Castro directly to Oswald. If Kennedy's assassination was Castro-related, it seems most likely only in the sense of being the work of an insane, self-aggrandizing man who was desperate to curry the favor of any government (be it his own or another country's). 
 

Man Caught Smuggling Roasted, Gold-Plated Human Fetuses

These tiny dried bodies are used in the Animist practice Kuman Thong
Hot on the heels of news that there is apparently a thriving trade in China for powdering up fetal tissue and selling it in capsules comes this story about a British man who was busted in Bangkok for carrying "six roasted fetuses covered with gold for black magic rituals." The man, Chow Hok Kuen, is of Taiwanese descent, and was apparently involved in a website which offered the gold-dusted roasted fetuses for sale.
 
Each such fetus is, in addition to being gruesomely blinged out, worth up to 200,000 Thai baht (the equivalent of $6,300 in U.S. Dollars). That's 50% more than the average per capita income in Thailand, a very significant chunk of money. Kuen was reportedly planning to smuggle the fetuses into Taiwan, where he could resell them for up to a 600% mark-up.

According to the Telegraph, the fetuses are used in "a Buddhist-animist practice known as Kuman Thong that is described in ancient Thai manuscripts." The dried fetuses, decorated with gold leaf, are "kept in shrines within homes or businesses." The practice requires the fetuses of baby boys (snarky comment about how baby girls aren't worth anything in Asia even dead), which have been surgically removed from the womb. They are "dried as black magic incantations were said over the body."  
 
Traditionally, before being roasted in a graveyard in the moonlight by a mage, the fetus would be soaked in a substance "which has the extract of a dead child or a person who died in violent circumstances or an unnatural death." However, this practice has largely been abandoned in the creation of necromantic effigies, due to laws against rendering human fat.
 
Most people who practice Kuman Thong (which means "golden baby boy") use a small wooden figurine. Adherents believe that if you revere the fetus correctly, it will warn you of danger. 
 
In a kinder, less gruesome spin-off of the practice, the mages adopted the stillborn babies as their own children. (In an animist culture, the spirits of the dead are highly revered.)
 
Human flesh and dead babies are one of the greatest taboos worldwide. Even cultures which have ritually practiced cannibalism rarely consume the flesh of babies. And as you might expect from the greatest taboo, it is one which holds the greatest power in black magic. Black magic often operates on a sliding scale of taboos, the greater the violation, the greater the effect of the magic.

"Ring of Fire" Solar Eclipse This Sunday, May 20

This unusual phenomenon will put on a good show for West Coasters!

Residents of the West Coast of the United States will be treated to a rare event this Sunday at 5:24PM: a "ring of fire" solar eclipse. Technically called an annular solar eclipse, the "ring of fire" effect happens because of the moon's position between the sun and the Earth.
 
In a typical solar eclipse, the moon completely obscures the sun, from our perspective. Although the moon is considerably smaller than the sun, it is also a lot closer to us. It's the same reason why you can hold up your thumb, and (seemingly) completely obscure a distant skyscraper.

However, this Sunday the moon will be near apogee, which is the point in its orbit when it is farthest away from the Earth. (In contrast with the recent "Supermoon," when the full moon was in perigee - or at its closest point to the Earth.) It is not much of a difference in celestial terms, but from the perspective of a person on Earth, the added distance will be enough that the moon will not quite cover the sun as it slides past. This leaves a rim of the sun poking out all around - thus, the "ring of fire."
 
Needless to say, you should not look directly at it, because it is the sun, and you are not THAT stupid, right?
 
A total or near-total solar eclipse is a fascinating event to witness in person, and something that I hope everyone gets to experience at least once in their lifetimes. It's difficult to describe how strange the lighting looks, and how bizarre it feels at an instinctual level. Animals seem to find it unnerving as well, and it's easy to understand why civilizations have held the eclipse in reverence.
 
One of the most famous occurrences of an eclipse is thought to have coincided with the crucifixion of Christ. According to the synoptic gospels, on the day Christ was crucified, "darkness covered the land for hours." 
 
This is called the "crucifixion eclipse," and literalists believe it describes an actual solar eclipse. However, the mystical tradition holds that it was a work of Christian miracle, blocking out the sun in mourning for the passage of Jesus. And still others feel it was a literary device, similar to the way it always seems to be raining during a fictional funeral. It could also be simply meant metaphorically. 
 

Human Flesh Pills Confiscated At South Korean Border

The latest trend in illegal trafficking: fetal tissue

South Korean officials today released information on a gruesome new trend in illegal trafficking: human flesh, powdered and sold in gelatin capsules. 35 smuggling attempts have been intercepted at Incheon Airport in Seoul (for obvious reasons, there is no estimate on how many smuggling attempts were successful) since last August.
 
So far, according to the BBC, no one has been arrested in any of these smuggling intercepts. The amounts confiscated have been deemed "small" and "not for resale." Apparently South Korean drug tourists are visiting China in order to buy human tissue capsules, and bringing them home in their luggage. 

 
The pills are being smuggled in from China, and the Chinese government has announced that it will take steps to investigate this trade. Most of the human flesh used in the pills is reportedly from fetuses and placentas. An investigation last August was unable to turn up proof that the capsules were being manufactured in China. 
 
Aside from being revolting and violating one of most societies' ultimate taboos, the capsules can cause dangerous illness as well. The remains have apparently been dried on stoves and turned into powder, but this will certainly not kill prion diseases like Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease. Additionally, lab scientists report having detected measurable levels of bacterial contamination in the capsules.
 
The human flesh capsules are reportedly being taken as "stamina boosters," which is to say as an impotence cure. Some people also regard them as an all-purpose miracle cure, useful against a broad spectrum of illnesses and diseases.
 
According to the Chinese government, no such human flesh pills or trafficking has been uncovered in China. But according to rumor, corrupt Chinese doctors are being bribed to supply the bodies of still-born or aborted babies to the illegal medicine trade. 
 
And according to the SUPER RELIABLE Daily Mail, "there have been disturbing reports that some babies were those who had perished in China's "dying rooms," where youngsters are deliberately left to die because they were born into families that already had the limit of one child in country areas."
 
The existence of "dying rooms," long denied by the Chinese government, was proven in a 1995 documentary. Filmmakers documented a room in a rural orphanage where the children (mainly girls, who are abandoned by their families at a much higher rate due to Chinese cultural norms which favor boys) deemed least likely to survive and be adopted were locked up and left to die. 
 

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