[social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jun 24, 2014 11:49 pm

Really enjoying the unrated cut of World War Z on Netflix -- the sanitization was a big tonal flaw in the original, I think, because the raw ritual of man devouring man is un-rate-able, something not even Eli Roth can sufficiently sanitize and monetize for Hollywood to be comfortable with it. Yet.

Still, the political themes that bothered me about the R-rated cut seemed far more honest in this version.

I am appending this comment to an otherwise excellent thread because The Zombie is such a purified expression of The Other -- the Communist/Fascist other which can even overtake people we know and love! -- and I feel like this version of the film lets the metaphor really shine. (Or at least: "exist at all." The original was pretty bad.)

I am also encouraged by two points: 1) World War Z was made in the first place -- licensed and authorized based on very incendiary and smart source material and that 2) this got made with Brad Pitt. That means indie directors will be able to expand off this in the future and horror cinema will keep on getting better.

Also, for an overdose of NATO subtext, check out "Frankenstein's Army."
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby justdrew » Wed Jun 25, 2014 12:56 am

By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Sep 25, 2014 8:44 am

Kansas Governor to Sign 'Zombie Preparedness Month' Proclamation
It’s never too early to start preparing for the zombie apocalypse — at least if you’re in Kansas. The Kansas Division of Emergency Management is rolling out a campaign asking residents to be ready for just that possibility, with Gov. Sam Brownback set to sign a proclamation Friday designating October as Zombie Preparedness Month. While the idea of an actual zombie attack is just in jest, being ready for any disaster situation isn’t.

“If you’re equipped to handle the zombie apocalypse then you’re prepared for tornadoes, severe storms, fire and any other natural disaster Kansas usually faces,” Devan Tucking, of the Division of Emergency Management, said in a statement. “This is a fun and low-stress way to get families involved, and past turnouts have proven it to be effective.” State officials said preparing for a zombie disaster involves coming up with an emergency plan and gathering adequate survival supplies.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:05 pm

700-year-old ‘zombie’ virus shows climate change could unleash ancient diseases

David Ferguson
29 Oct 2014 at 09:59 ET

Image

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco were able to reanimate a virus found in a 700-year-old sample of frozen caribou feces and infect a living plant with it.

According to New Scientist, this raises concerns about the dangers of climate change, when plant and animal matter that have been frozen for centuries begin to thaw, making it possible for long-dormant diseases to re-enter the biosphere as “new” organisms.

In Canada, the Selwyn Mountains in the Yukon and Northern Territories have been a habitat for caribou for centuries. The caribou roll on the region’s expansive ice sheets to rid their pelts of ticks, fleas and other parasites.

Generations of freezes and thaws and waves of caribou have left striated formations in the ice over time that contain the animals’ droppings. Researcher Eric Delwart and his team drilled to a depth that was on the surface 700 years ago and retrieved a feces specimen that they then studied in the lab.

The team isolated a plant virus that resembles modern day viruses called geminiviruses, copied it and found that it could easily infect a modern tobacco plant.

“We saw evidence of replication in the leaves,” said Delwart.

Jean-Michel Claverie of the Aix-Marseille University School of Medicine in France told New Scientist, “The find confirms that virus particles are very good ‘time capsules’ that preserve their core genomic material, making it likely that many prehistoric viruses are still infectious to plants, animals or humans.”

In addition to warnings about global climate change, Claverie said that this discovery should also give pause to those who are hoping to capitalize on arctic warming to travel further and further north in the quest for oil.

“This again calls for some caution before starting to drill and mine Arctic regions at industrial scales,” he said. Some microbes in arctic ice have been frozen and dormant for so long that modern organisms will have no resistance to them.

Delwart cautioned, however, that the competition among modern viruses is already pretty intense. Ancient infectious diseases have missed out on hundreds, possibly thousands of years of evolution.

“There’s a theoretical risk of this, and we know that the nucleic acid of the virus was in great shape in our sample,” says Delwart. “But old viruses could only re-emerge if they have significant advantages over the countless perfect viruses we have at present.”

Uncover California said that the current record for the oldest recovered virus belongs to a 30,000-year-old organism discovered frozen in the Siberian tundra by a pair of French researchers. A full 60 percent of that virus’ genetic material doesn’t match anything currently on Earth.

Claverie told New Scientist, “Even if 700 years may not seem much compared with 30,000 years, it corresponds to a period when many diseases assumed to be ‘eradicated’ today were still in full bloom,” diseases like the Black Death (bubonic plague) and other illnesses.

According to the World Health Organization, climate change is already a public health risk due to an increased incidence of tropical diseases, potential mass migrations and other factors. Now scientists are adding to that the risk that old diseases will return to haunt us again.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:16 pm

:D



Rick Wiles: Obama Will Threaten Veterans With Ebola, Set Up Ebola 'Re-Education Camps'
SUBMITTED BY Brian Tashman on Tuesday, 10/28/2014 1:55 pm
End Times broadcaster Rick Wiles was initially excited that “Ebola could solve America’s problems with atheism, homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, pornography and abortion,” but now he is predicting that the virus will lead to extreme government oppression.

Yesterday, the “Trunews” host said that “‘Ebola Obama’ will place West African Ebola victims in Veterans Affairs hospitals throughout the United States of America. He’ll contaminate the VA hospitals with the Ebola virus.”
Wiles also warned last week that “Ebola Obama’s swat teams” will force people into “Ebola Barry’s Ebola Recovery and Re-Education Camps,” fearing that “when you are released from the Obama Ebola Recovery and Re-Education Camp you’ll be a zombie, a walking dead.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:39 pm

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Image

He's coming to get you!!!

Image
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security."
-Jim Garrison 1967
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:44 pm

well at least now I have insurance to cover my ebola...thanks Obama

give with one hand take with the other :D


I just was approved yesterday after 30 years...4 children with NO coverage for any of us
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby elfismiles » Tue Nov 18, 2014 10:20 am

Holy Shiite batman! More popular than football... ?

‘The Walking Dead’ Ratings Thrash ‘Sunday Night Football’ For Third Week In A Row
by Dominic Patten
November 17, 2014 11:32am
http://deadline.com/2014/11/walking-dea ... 201286783/
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby elfismiles » Thu Feb 05, 2015 12:38 pm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GH_qW6RzAY

... and unrelated but recently viewed ... Zombies in the tv show FRASIER circa 2002:

FRASIER: Season 10 : Episode 5 (2002)
21 minutes

Tales From the Crypt

Bulldog plays the ultimate Halloween prank on Frasier by towing his BMW, replacing it with a smashed up vehicle ... and catching his reaction on tape.
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby elfismiles » Thu Feb 05, 2015 5:34 pm

Antipsychotic meds prompt zombie-like state among patients
by Rob Payne
Image
Disturbingly, researchers found participants often exhibited 'a culture of hopelessness' where acceptance was dominant, which they warn can destroy an individual's will to recover.
...
"It is difficult for an outsider to appreciate what this means to individual consumers, and how it impacts on their self-image and ability to cope."

Side-effects can include Parkinsonism, akathisia (restlessness) and tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movements), as well as weight gain, hypersomnia, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, dry mouth, constipation and dizziness.

The most profound side-effect is extreme fatigue, which leaves many in a 'zombie state'.
...
"Without this guilt and shame, would mental health consumers and their loved ones be so ready to accept that a life of zombie-like consciousness and physical discomfort is preferable to hearing voices, or would they be demanding more intensive efforts to develop 'cleaner' medications?"

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-02-a ... state.html




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1I4DR3kFCw


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-NVs68X_S4
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby semper occultus » Fri Sep 04, 2015 9:34 am

The danger of Devil's Breath: How women criminals are using new trick of blowing drug powder in victim's faces, leaving them like zombie's who'll do ANYTHING

A gang suspected of using a powerful Colombian drug has been arrested
The women were blowing the powder into the faces' of their victims in Paris
Known as Devil's Breath, the drug puts its victims into a compliant trance
It was used by the CIA as a truth serum and the Nazis in cruel experiments

By ANDREW MALONE FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 23:59, 2 September 2015 | UPDATED: 00:40, 3 September 2015

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3220379/The-danger-Devil-s-Breath-women-criminals-using-new-trick-blowing-drug-powder-victim-s-faces-leaving-like-zombie-s-ll-ANYTHING.html

Walking through the cosmopolitan streets of Paris’s 20th arrondissement, not far from rock star Jim Morrison’s tomb, a respectable, elderly lady is approached by a Chinese woman asking for directions.
As the pair bend over a map, the Chinese woman blows a tiny dust cloud of white powder into the face of the helpful Parisian. What happens next is like something from a horror film.

For, unbeknown to the victim, this white powder is Devil’s Breath, a substance so toxic and powerful that it turns everyone who ingests it into what investigators call ‘zombies’, devoid of their own free will.

Indeed, so suggestible does it make its victims that South American tribes used to administer the drug to the wives of dead chiefs, who, under tribal tradition, had to be buried alive with their husbands after they died.
Taken from the seeds of a plant which grows wild in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela — related to deadly nightshade — the drug meant these women could be persuaded to walk happily into the graves to their gruesome deaths.
Now, in a series of cases that have horrified police, the drug is being used by criminal gangs in Europe to drug unsuspecting victims who are then easily persuaded to hand over their most valuable possessions.

Among those recently robbed using Devil’s Breath was the elderly lady in Paris, one of at least 20 people targeted in recent days by a criminal gang in the French capital.
The gang’s modus operandi seems almost too easy — they blow the drug into the faces of their victims, leaving them physically functioning, but mentally unable to resist orders. According to sources close to the French investigation, victims fell into a ‘hypnotic state under the total sway of their handlers’ after this powder was blown into their faces.
A police source added: ‘They got the victims to take them to their home, where they asked them to put all their jewellery and money into a bag and hand it over to them.’
Two Chinese women and a European man who belong to the gang are now under arrest, but the fear is that hundreds of others across Europe could already have fallen victim to such criminals, or will be attacked in the near future.

In a recent TV documentary, Devil’s Breath was dubbed by law enforcement officers as the ‘most terrifying drug in the world’. Miriam Gutierrez, a toxicology expert in Bogota, Colombia, explained: ‘From a medical point of view, it’s the perfect substance to commit criminal acts, because the victim won’t remember anything.’

It was once used as a ‘truth serum’ by America’s CIA, and even administered by Joseph Mengele, the Nazi’s so-called Angel of Death, during experiments on Jewish prisoners.
Because of the amnesia brought on by Devil’s Breath, investigating this new crimewave has proved problematic. Police smashed the ring only after a handful of victims contacted them, having vaguely remembered what happened. Victims admitted they had co-operated with thieves — and even handed over passwords and pins for bank accounts — in ‘dream-like’ states.

While one of the Chinese women in the gang blew the dust in her victims’ faces, the other told passers-by that she had a mixture of plants which had powerful medicinal qualities — and persuaded people to have a sniff.
‘They managed to isolate their victims, then got them to breathe in a mixture of plants, saying they had powerful curative qualities — even protecting them from misfortune,’ a police source told Le Parisien.
During a police investigation into the gang’s activities, detectives discovered the Chinese women had been operating from a hotel room in a drab suburb in the north of the French capital, where powder believed to be Devil’s Breath, along with weighing scales and surgical gloves, were discovered.
The gang is thought to be part of a much bigger criminal network operating across Europe and the U.S.
There are reports that millions of euros have been stolen as a result of the drug’s use, and sent back to gangmasters in China.
Chinese authorities confirm that those arrested in Paris are part of a notorious criminal network, ‘which acts around the world and specialises in mental submission (of victims) with the aid of unknown products’.
The lethal qualities of Devil’s Breath should not be under-estimated: medical experts say that even a gram of powder is enough to kill, while lower quantities can result in hallucinations and a hypnotised state.

The drug, which is known by the scientific name Scopolamine, comes from the seeds of a tree called the Borrachero, which means ‘the drunkard’, and which grows throughout northern parts of South America, including in city parks.

With a beautiful white flower akin to an orchid or lily, every child in areas where the trees grow is warned not to go near them, for fear they will be poisoned. The seeds are contained in pods that hang from the branches.
As far back as 1676, the drug was said to have been used against British soldiers in early colonial America during the so-called Bacon’s Rebellion when Virginia settlers revolted against their Governor, Sir William Berkeley.
The soldiers were tricked into eating food secretly laced with Devil’s Breath shortly before they were due to fight. The result was that they spent ‘several days making monkey faces and generally acting like lunatics’. One soldier was found ‘stark naked, sitting in a corner like a monkey, grimacing at his comrades’.
Robert Beverley, in his 1705 book on the history of Virginia, wrote how the British troops were in such a ‘frantic condition they were confined, lest they should, in their folly, destroy themselves — for they would have wallowed in their own excrement, if they had not been prevented. And then after 11 days returned themselves again, not remembering anything that had passed.’

Throughout South American history, the seeds have been used by shamans or witch doctors. Brewed into a tea, it was used to discipline children, who experienced terrifying hallucinations after a tiny dose of the poison, in the hope that they would see terrifying visions of their dead ancestors telling them to behave.
Murderer Hawley Harvey Crippen, infamously known as Dr Crippen, was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London in 1910 after killing his wife with Devil’s Breath and burying her body, then fleeing with his lover.
The drug has also been used for mainstream medical purposes, with doctors administering it to mothers in labour to induce a ‘twilight sleep’ to ease the pain of childbirth. Doctors also noticed that these women answered questions accurately and with rare candour.
Dr Robert House, a Texas obstetrician, was so astonished by this side-effect that he managed in the 1920s to persuade the authorities to let him use the drug on two prisoners in Dallas County Jail. On questioning them he discovered their protestations of innocence had not changed and, since they were unable to lie, his experiments led to the acquittal of both men.
A local newspaper covering the case coined the term ‘truth serum’.
Use of the drug for medical reasons and in courts was abandoned in the 1930s after users reported horrifying hallucinations and depression.

After the war — during which the Nazis used this ‘truth serum’ in interrogations — it was tested in America as part of a secretive CIA-run operation to test mind-control drugs for the interrogation of Cold War prisoners — a programme that was only finally halted in 1973.

Now, with the first cases of the drug being used by criminal gangs in Europe, there are fears that its use will rocket. In Colombia, some 50,000 people a year already reportedly fall victim to the Devil’s Breath gangs.
Usually, the poison — also used as a date-rape drug — is slipped into the victim’s drink. One U.S. resident in the country told how he woke up in the morning, having met some locals in a bar the night before, to find his expensive apartment had been emptied of everything he owned.
When he asked the doorman on his apartment block what had happened, the American was told that he had himself helped a group of men load up a van with all his possessions — all the while under the influence of the drug. The victim had no recollection of this whatsoever.
Others have not escaped so lightly. One man in Colombia was reportedly coerced into giving up his kidney after Devil’s Breath was blown in his face. And scores of women there are said to have been raped after their drinks have been spiked with Devil’s Breath, while another victim told how she was persuaded to hand over her baby to people smugglers.
The drug has also now been used in popular holiday destinations in Spain. A woman was raped last year in the tourist resort of Benalmadena having lost her memory after just one drink with a local man — and woke up 12 hours later, under a bridge and naked from the waist down.
Initial blood and urine tests showed no traces of any substances, leading police to believe she was lying. Hair samples taken a month later, however, proved she had been drugged with Devil’s Breath.
With its use in Spain and now Paris, the terrifying question is: how long will it be before we see a victim of Devil’s Breath on our shores?
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Sep 04, 2015 10:20 am

4th line of the article above posted by semper:
It was used by the CIA as a truth serum and the Nazis in cruel experiments


:rofl2 - Of course! - when the Americans use this substance, it's for truthful purposes, but when the nazis (boo, hiss) use it, it's for cruel experiments.

Those Daily Mail scriptwriters sure know how to get a crowd going.
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby semper occultus » Fri Sep 04, 2015 11:31 am

...certainly a slight lack of dot-joining...

...am pondering any connection between this and the spate of reported sleeping-gas robberies in France...

Unlikely' that sleeping gas was used in Jenson Button robbery, experts say

The Royal College of Anaesthetists has debunked claims the F1 star was knocked out by sleeping gas before burglary

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... s-say.html
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby coffin_dodger » Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:12 pm

Bearing in mind the role of The Daily Mail in our society - could it be seen as a primer?

A new, scientific and guilt-free 'get out of jail free' card to be played when those who enjoy the fruits of public limelight are caught somewhat red-handed.

"It wasn't me, M'lud, it was the Devil's Breath that made me do it."
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Re: [social studies] The Zombie fascination in century 20.1

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Fri Sep 04, 2015 12:35 pm

I wish they'd name the damn drug rather than breathlessly repeating the sensationalistic street name.

Scopolamine. The tree is a brugmanisia/datura species. It's in a lot of gardens where the temps don't reach freezing in the winter.

The flowers are sweet but you feel loopy for sniffing them. I grow a couple of their little cousins. Their bloom is a once a year treat for the eyes.

The flowers are also a folk cancer cure, although the two days of mania tends to temper enthusiasm to experiment. I think if I was dying and could find a shaman to guide me, it would be interesting...

on edit, I do agree about the 'primer'. Perhaps not naming the plant gives them plausable deniability.
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