Thursday, May 16, 2013

Top 10 Horse Songs

1. Horses – Patti Smith
2. Wild Horses – Rolling Stones
3. New Pony – Bob Dylan
4. Judy and the Dream of Horses* – Belle & Sebastian
5. One Trick Pony – Paul Simon
6. Horse with no Name – America
7. Horses in my Dreams* – PJ Harvey
8. Heavy Horses – Jethro Tull
9. Bring on the Dancing Horses – Echo and the Bunnymen
10. Pony Boy – Bruce Springsteen

*Freud asserted that horse dreams signified the human sex drive; Jung linked them to fertility. In general they seem to symbolise power, strength, endurance, virility and sexual prowess. If you're a Muslim, however, a horse dream apparently signifies prosperity or victory over one's enemy.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Lookalikes #33: Murderer's brain and teddy bear

Left: a teddy bear; right: brain scan of murderer Antonio Bustamante, spared the death penalty after a jury saw this image, feeling sympathy for the teddy bear-like image. Bustamante was deprived of a teddy bear as a child; clearly the motivation for his later crimes.

Though 'neurocriminology' still has connotations with the outmoded 19th century practice of phrenology, where criminals were judged by the shape of their head, it is slowly becoming more widely accepted. Read a Guardian article here.