Steve the Zombie

Here’s an interesting post from The Economist. They had interviewed random people in New York and New England where they had presented them with a few short stories about a guy named ‘David’. Well, David, being a horrible driver, gets into a car accident. In one scenario David lives, another, he dies, and the third, he recovers but is in a ‘Persistent Vegetative State’ -aka zombie.

So the people they surveyed rated David’s hypothetical mental acuity after each scenario from 3 to -3.
Alive David = 1.77
Dead David = -0.29
Zombie David = -1.73

Which concludes that people think the David that actually DIED has more brainpower than Zombie David. Peculiar…..

This was equally true, regardless of how religious a participant said he was. However, ratings of the dead David’s mind in the story in which his corpse was embalmed and buried varied with the participant’s religiosity.

Irreligious participants gave the buried corpse about the same mental ratings as the vegetative patient (-1.51 and -1.64 respectively). Religious participants, however, continued to ascribe less mind to the irretrievably unconscious David than they did to his buried corpse (-1.57 and 0.59).

That those who believe in an afterlife ascribe mental acuity to the dead is hardly surprising. That those who do not are inclined to do so unless heavily prompted not to is curious indeed.

Read the full report on cnn.com

When swimming in freshwater, a certain amoeba can get lodged up the nose, and then starts looking for food. It works its way up to the brain and causes some pretty nasty symptoms.

Some of which sound strangely familiar…

But when an amoeba gets lodged into a person’s nose, it starts looking for food. It ends up in the brain and starts eating neurons.

“It causes a great deal of trauma and a great deal of damage,” Yoder said. “It’s a tragic infection. It’s right at the frontal lobe. It affects behavior and the core of who they are — their emotions, their ability to reason — it’s very difficult.”

Early symptoms include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting and neck stiffness. Later symptoms include confusion, lack of attention to people and surroundings, loss of balance, seizures and hallucinations.

The amoeba multiplies, and the body mounts a defense against the infection. This, combined with the rapidly increasing amoebas, cause the brain to swell, creating immense pressure. At some point, the brain stops working.

Death typically occurs three to seven days after the symptoms start.

Then on the 8th day….

I recently called some of my good mindless zombie buddies in tech support and they help me put up this site. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

It’s pretty difficult to type with only 8.5 fingers but I think I’m starting to get used to it.

This site will provide an outlet of my social commentary of zombies in American culture:

• The origination of zombies and Hatian Voodoo
• Zombies in consumer culture- How we become zombies and how companies use the zombie fad
• Workforce zombies – How uninspired workers become mindless drones
• The zombie movement  – How the zombie fad is taking over