The Top 20 Most Bizarre Experiments Of All Time

This is a very interesting and at times very frightening list of some of the strangest scientific experiments ever conducted. While some of them seem like things dreamed up by people who are flat out nuts, quite a few of them offer up a not always flattering glimpse into how the human mind works.

#7: The Stanford Prison Experiment

Philip Zimbardo was curious about why prisons are such violent places. Is it because of the character of their inhabitants, or is it due to the corrosive effect of the power structure of the prisons themselves?

To find out, Zimbardo created a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology department. He recruited clean-cut young men as volunteers — none had criminal records and all rated “normal” on psychological tests — and he randomly assigned half of them to play the role of prisoners and the other half to play guards. His plan was that he would step back for two weeks and observe how these model citizens interacted with each other in their new roles.

What happened next has become the stuff of legend.

Social conditions in the mock prison deteriorated with stunning rapidity. On the first night the prisoners staged a revolt, and the guards, feeling threatened by the insubordination of the prisoners, cracked down hard. They began devising creative ways to discipline the prisoners, using methods such as random strip-searches, curtailed bathroom privileges, verbal abuse, sleep deprivation, and the withholding of food.

Under this pressure, prisoners began to crack. The first one left after only thirty-six hours, screaming that he felt like he was “burning up inside.” Within six days, four more prisoners had followed his lead, one of whom had broken out in a full-body stress-related rash. It was clear that for everyone involved the new roles had quickly become more than just a game.

Even Zimbardo himself felt seduced by the corrosive psychology of the situation. He began entertaining paranoid fears that his prisoners were planning a break-out, and he tried to contact the real police for help. Luckily, at this point Zimbardo realized things had gone too far. Only six days had passed, but already the happy college kids who had begun the experiment had transformed into sullen prisoners and sadistic guards.

Zimbardo called a meeting the next morning and told everyone they could go home. The remaining prisoners were relieved, but tellingly, the guards were upset. They had been quite enjoying their new-found power and had no desire to give it up.

The full article is here, and it’s a great read if you’ve got some time to kill.

You were attacked bya what?

This is just weird. Nancy Campbell and her eight-year-old daughter were walking around in their Oregon neighbourhood when they were attacked by a…Llama? Yep, it was a llama. What’s even weirder is it didn’t escape from a petting zoo. It was someone’s private pet! Wanna know something even weirder? It was diagnosed with the strangest name for a syndrome ever. Berserk Llama Syndrome. Yup, that’s the technical veterinary name for the disorder. And here’s the kicker. Four other llamas have been euthenized in Oregon for having this disease. Um, don’t move to Oregon.

What is Wrong With This Judge?

This is another one of those cases where I have no words.

Mitchell Pask was convicted by a jury of felony child-enticement because he tried to lure a nine-year-old child to a park shelter for sex, but then the judge dismissed the case, saying the shelter wasn’t secluded enough!

Yup. You heard me right. The jury saw the shelter, deemed it secluded, and convicted accordingly. he did try to lure her there, talking about sexy girls and offering her candy. He even gestured towards the shelter’s bathroom, asking her to follow. Thankfully, she refused. He is also up on charges of disorderly conduct involving touching a woman’s breast, and he has previously molested a 12-year-old girl. Yeah, that’s the case where you want to dismiss over a fucking stupid technicality.

Why do we try by jury if a judge can just overturn the whole fucking thing? Is this judge related to this guy? Why else would he quibble over whether a place was secluded enough? Thankfully, he is still being held because of that case involving him touching that woman’s breast, so he’s not going anywhere, and the prosecutors are appealing. Hopefully, he won’t be so lucky the second time.

Warning! This Blog Contains Words!

Wow. I had to shake my head after reading this article.

Police in Hertfordshire, who are obviously not Scotland Yard material, decided that a fine way to decrease crime in their area would be to post signs everywhere telling people not to commit crime. They also posted signs at gas stations saying that all fuel must be paid for. But they say they’re not going to put signs at the banks telling people not to rob them. At this point, they might as well.

I join the plain English campaign spokespeople in saying, “duh!” Anyone who would actually read those signs and be dissuaded by them wouldn’t commit crimes. As for the ones still committing the crimes, they aren’t going to care. So the signs just make the police look desperate and laughable.

I love this article. The plain English campaign spokespeople, as well as some others, do a fine job of mentioning all the wacky warning labels we’ve talked about here, and here, and wrap up in a nice little package what we’ve been saying! For! Years! Maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for a few of us.

The Service Dog Debate Rages ON

I saw this in the comments under my post about the no longer guide dogs still guiding, and felt it needed answering up here, because it makes some good points, and I think they need to be heard. I’m going to throw my comments within her comment.

Hi Carin

In response to the issues about people lying about their dogs being service dogs…

My disability is not obvious. In fact, I occasionally have days when my dog doesn’t have much to do. That does not mean that she isn’t a service dog. Yet I’ve been challenged by people ever since those articles started coming out.

That sucks. But I figure as long as you can generally say what she does, without resorting to, “she’s a service dog and I’ll sue ya if you ask one more time!” and she’s not chewing on passers-by, you’re fine.

If a person has a seizure once every three months, does that mean their seizure alert dog is not a service dog and should not accompany them into stores?

Hell no. All it takes is one seizure and they’ve done their job.

Also, my dog is self-trained. I could not afford the price of a service dog and I used to be a dog trainer. I also didn’t want to wait 2 years on a waiting list to be charged $15,000 US dollars for a dog.

And I think that’s awesome. So we have to figure out some kind of compromise where you can have some kind of ID that proves that your dog has the right to be by your side. I’m not mad at the sentiment that the law doesn’t allow people to ask what your dog does. I’m mad at what that leaves wide open for the selfish among us to take advantage of. I’m mad that the law becomes unenforceable.

You got your guide dog for beans compared to that.

I absolutely agree, and I think it isn’t fair that so many have to pay so much for their dogs. I feel lucky, and then sad when I see families of Autistic children struggling to get the money together to get a dog to help with their kid, or people with all different kinds of disabilities having to wait so long and pay so much. It isn’t fair, and I don’t understand it.

The people pushing for national certification of service dogs are the same people who run the service dog schools that have been popping up all over the place since the veterans of Iraq have been incurring such drastic injuries.

Who will they promote to certify the dogs? Themselves, of course. What chance do I have that they will certify my self-trained dog?

and that isn’t fair either. We need to find a third party body made up of representatives from the schools as well as private trainers that the schools have to answer to. That’s the only way this can work at all.

I trained my dog for my specific needs. I don’t need a dog that helps me balance or that can pull a wheelchair. Why wait for one of those? Why pay for one of those?

Again, I think that is awesome. I admire you for having the skills to do that. That takes one hell of a lot of patience and persistence, and I take my hat off to you.

Who will decide what disabilities NEED to be mitigated by a service dog. The schools that charge an arm and a leg (pun intended) for the dogs they’ve trained, of course.

That’s why we need a system overseeing all of this so the schools don’t hold all the power.

I don’t understand why guide dogs for the blind can be procured for less than $500. when other service dogs cost more than $15,000. Guide dogs for the
blind are literally life savers. They don’t serve like other types of service dogs; they lead. They practice intelligent disobedience. All that for $500?
And you have to pay $15,000 for a dog that simply follows commands?

I don’t understand it either. Like I said, sometimes I feel guilty when I hear how much other service dogs cost. The whole system makes no sense.

Anyway, the purpose of my rant is to question the motives of these people who want to regulate the business of training and certifying service dogs.

Maybe when they are also charging a minimal fee for the placement of their dogs, I will trust their motives.

In the meantime, people are people. They will lie and cheat as often as they can. I remember seeing sighted people wearing sunglasses on the buses in New York city in the 1980s so they could get their dogs onto the buses.

And that’s where I get mad. Some of these dogs have been known to attack legitimate service dogs and fellow passengers! Is that safe for anyone? I wish this law had some teeth, so I didn’t have to fear the teeth of other supposed service animals who are riding the bus with me. I don’t want to stipulate who should have them. I just don’t want Roofis the doberman getting on the bus because someone wants to bring him with him to show him off. If Roofis isn’t trained to be social and behave in a civil manner on the bus, he shouldn’t get on, and there should be laws that people aren’t afraid to use to get him off. But if someone needs Roofis and he’s a fine dog, then there should be proof that they can show from a third party, not a school, that says he’s registered as a service dog. We shouldn’t be afraid to ask for proof, and there should be standardized proof, not the kind you can buy from a random store.

My dog is as much a service dog as any that have been “professionally” trained.

absolutely. I would never stand here and question that. I know of privately-trained service dogs. They’re still service dogs.

I’m tired of people threatening to take her away.

That would be exhausting. Some days I’m exhausted and all I get is the standard “can I pet your dog? …How does she do that? … Is that a new dog?” I would be completely worn down if I had to confront people all the time everywhere I went. Part of me is afraid we’ll all be in that place if we don’t strengthen this law somehow. If we can figure out a solution, I think it would benefit all of us. There is so much ambiguity in this whole dog thing. If we actually have to involve the police, they deal with this so rarely that they don’t know what to do and would rather shift us to the backburner.

Thanks for the platform!

Jill

No problem. Thanks for writing so eloquently and bringing some of these thorny points to light. I’ve noticed that this subject is something that will raise the hackles of dog-users everywhere, and so it should. I just wish we could work out a system where all service dogs could prove their right to have their place and people who tried to squiggle through loopholes could be caught and dealt with.

Should I Send Them A Dime?

I got the strangest piece of junk mail the other day. It had two windows in it, one of which was around something hard and round. I showed it to Steve and we both wondered why someone was sending us coins in the mail. We opened the envelope, and the note inside, which was a solicitation for donations to the MS society, said “This nickel can help end MS.” Then why are you, the ones trying to bring an end to MS, sending the nickel to me? Shouldn’t you keep it? Wouldn’t it be better spent in your hands?

Then I wondered how many end-to-MS-bringing nickels were sent out through the mail. Did they send a million? That means $50000 and that’s just the nickels! Then there are the notes, and someone has to put those notes in the mail! I know you have to spend money to make money, but….nickels in the mail when you’re asking for money back? I don’t even get the significance of the symbolism. Was their symbolism? What exactly was the message? Maybe it was that before people donate, they should look into the MS society’s level of administrative costs. I think they’re heading down Madd Canada way.

What A Shitty Beginning

When I heard about the guy who, uh, left a donation in one of the toilets at the Toilet Museum, so many questions came to mind. My first reaction was, what the hell was he thinking? Would you go into a war museum and test fire a gun on display? If you were a pilot, would you try to fly a plane out of the aviation museum? I don’t think so! But then again, maybe he thought it was one of those interactive deals like Science North where you get to walk over the bendy bridge, pet the flying squirrels, lie on the bed of nails and find out your blood type. Somehow, I think not. Taking a crap doesn’t seem like something you’d want to make into a public and interactive occurrence. Then I wondered which exhibit he chose to use. Was he feeling adventurous and left the log in one of the holes in the ground representing the early history of the toilet? Or maybe he was hoping it wouldn’t be found, so he left it in one of the exhibits representing the toilets of the future.

But the biggest question I had revolves around something he said when he apologized to the staff. He said that they told him that visitors were expected to use the public washrooms on the street. Street? So, in a museum dedicated to using the john, there were no actual facilities to use? Isn’t that, well, an oversight? Wouldn’t it be smart to think that maybe someone might have the urge to visit the little boys’ or little girls’ room after looking at so many implements of said room?

Now the staff at the museum have put “not for use” signs on all the exhibits. The museum has only been open for a week. I’m waiting for the next person who uses one of the johns to say he couldn’t read the signs. Then they’ll really have to consider putting public washrooms in the building.

It’s a Dangerous School, But Not In The Way You’d Think

Wow. You know your school sucks when this shit starts happening.

Apparently, Jamaica High School has such a bad record, being called a dangerous school, that staff were sent a memmo instructing them not to call 911. It stated that only the principal or assistant principal were allowed to do this. Fifteen days later, fourteen-year-old Mariya Fatima took a stroke and no help was called for 94 minutes!

Nope, your brain isn’t having a meltdown. That is the correct number. Everybody knows that if someone is having a stroke, you don’t screw around. hell, if someone passes out for no apparent reason, you don’t screw around. You get them help, policies be damned.

Now she has no use of one hand and one leg, had to relearn how to speak, has to receive home instruction, and is reading at a fifth-grade level. The genius who wrote the memmo, as well as his higher up have since transferred schools, no shit. Great job, fellas. Instead of having to worry about high crime stats, you can leave the school to worry about lawsuits, and it sounds like one is coming.

Add New Hardware Now!

This audio-playing vibrator is way too fancy. Let’s count all the accessories.

  • full-function silicone vibrator with interchangeable shafts

    • interchangeable? Ok then.

  • 64 megabytes of Ram with built-in USB port

    • ram? I don’t wanna talk about ram with vibrators. And ports? Oh dear.

  • built-in microphone for voice and sound recording

    • What in the blue christ are they wanting girls to record? And…where is this microphone? I hope it’s nowhere near the, um, essential parts.

  • two pre-recorded audio fantasies

    • Oh boy. This is getting weird. What am I saying? It got weird when they started talking about ram and ports.

  • PC and Mac compatibility

    • I didn’t know there were PC and Mac vaginas.

  • headphones and USB cable

That is way too much technology for a little fun. And it’s way too much money. $99.95? You could probably buy a few pornos for a lot less, and they won’t ever give you the blue screen of death.

Asalt with a Deadly Burger

Before our good friend Joe Clark gets all up in arms about my misspelling in the title, I did do it on purpose. I figured I should mention it since he tends to pipe up when homosexuality is discussed, and it’s a stretch, but this story does involve meat between two buns.

This definitely smacks of abuse of power, and what an abuse it was. A McDonalds employee spilled some salt on some hamburger meat. She let her supervisor know, and she and some others tried to get it off. She even ate a salty burger, and it wasn’t that bad. All probably would have been fine until a police officer, Wendell Adams, decided he wanted a burger and got one of the salty ones. Instead of doing the sensible thing of coming back, saying the burger didn’t taste right, and getting another one, he chose to throw the salt-spilling employee in jail for the night on charges of misdemeanor reckless conduct because he says the burger made him sick. He even sent samples of the salty meat away to the state crime lab for testing.

What? So our streets are so safe and we have so little to worry about that we can waste everyone’s time and the state’s valuable resources fussing over a salty burger. If somebody jacked off on the burger, that would be a different thing. But it was a fucking accident! Not a fucking accident…you know what I mean. It was a mistake! And now this poor girl may have a criminal record. I hope to hell not, but if people can go to jail for having prescription drugs that they’ve legally obtained, anything is possible.