Dreamachine
An interesting way to give yourself a headche, or a portal to new ways of thinking.
Inventor Ian Sommerville using a Dreamachine
The dreamachine (or dream machine) is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain. [...read more]
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Vladimir Demikhov
A bit of a grim one today, but interesting nonetheless. A Russian scientist who transplanted dog's heads for a laugh.
See? It's easy really
Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov (Kulini Farm, July 18, 1916 – Moscow, November 22, 1998) was a Soviet scientist and organ transplant pioneer, who did several transplantations in the 1930s and 1950s, such as the transplantation of a heart into an animal and a lung-heart replacement in an animal. He is also well known for his transplantation of the heads of dogs. He conducted his dog head transplants during the 1950s, resulting in two-headed dogs, and this ultimately led to the head transplants in monkeys by Dr. Robert White, who was inspired by Demikhov's work.
The first head transplant was actually done by Professor A. G. Konevskiy of the Operative Surgery and Topographical Anatomy Department of Volgograd State Medical University. The head transplant was not planned. Konevskiy had planned an experimental heart transplant but the puppy was involved in an automobile accident. Not wanting to "waste the sterilized operating table", the surgeon proceeded with the head transplant.
Demikhov coined the word transplantology, and his 1960 monograph "Experimental transplantation of vital organs", for which he received his doctoral degree, later published in 1962 in New York, Berlin and Madrid, became the world's first monograph on transplantology, and was for a long time the only monograph in the field of transplantation of organs and tissues. Christiaan Barnard, who performed the world's first heart transplant operation from one person to another person in 1967, twice visited the Demikhov's laboratory in 1960 and 1963. Barnard through all his life considered Demikhov as his teacher.
Demikhov died in obscurity in 1998, but he was awarded the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd class, shortly before his death. He had also received a USSR State Prize. [...read more]
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Tree That Owns Itself
Not to be confused with the one that blew itself up with a grenade. That was the The Tree That Pwns Itself.
Really needs to branch out
The Tree That Owns Itself is a white oak tree, widely assumed to have legal ownership of itself and of all land within eight feet (2.4 m) of its base. The tree, also called the Jackson Oak, is located at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens, Georgia, United States. The original tree fell in 1942, but a new tree was grown from one of its acorns, and planted in the same location. The current tree is sometimes referred to as the Son of The Tree That Owns Itself. Both trees have appeared in numerous national publications, and the site is a local landmark. [...read more]
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Buttered cat paradox
Could this be the secret to "free energy"? Anybody got a cat and some Lurpak?
No cats were harmed in this experiment
The buttered cat paradox is a paradox based on the tongue-in-cheek combination of two adages:
- Cats always land on their feet.
- Buttered toast always lands buttered side down.
The paradox arises when one considers what would happen if one attached a piece of buttered toast (butter side up) to the back of a cat, then dropped the cat from a large height. The buttered cat paradox, submitted by artist John Frazee of Kingston, New York, won a 1993 OMNI magazine competition about paradoxes. [...read more]
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Cattle mutilation
Today's update doesn't have a picture accompanying it. You can thank me later.
Cattle mutilation (also known as bovine excision) is the apparent killing and mutilation of cattle under unusual or anomalous circumstances. Sheep and horses have allegedly been mutilated under similar circumstances.
A hallmark of these incidents is the surgical nature of the mutilation, and unexplained phenomena such as the complete draining of the animal's blood, loss of internal organs with no obvious point of entry, and surgically precise removal of the reproductive organs and anal coring. Another reported event is that the animal is found dumped in an area where there are no marks or tracks leading to or from the carcass, even when it is found in soft ground or mud. The surgical-type wounds tend to be cauterized by an intense heat and made by very sharp/precise instruments, with no bleeding evident. Often flesh will be removed to the bone in an exact manner, consistent across cases, such as removal of flesh from around the jaw exposing the mandible.
Since the time that reports of purported animal mutilations began, the causes have been attributed variously to natural decomposition, normal predators, cryptid predators (like the Chupacabra), extraterrestrials, secretive governmental or military agencies, and cults. "Mutilations" have been the subject of two independent federal investigations in the United States [...read more]
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