13 days of Hallowe'en: day 2

I don't know that this image really worked. I like the idea of connecting Hallowe'en with knives and blood remover but maybe the text is too small.

13 days of Hallowe'en: day 3: Stross's Laundry Files

I have emphasized how much I like fun and comedy in my horror, to the point of the genre not really being horror any more. As I have aged, my tastes have moved toward more 'scary' horror and Stross's story has shifted in a similar way.
A skilled computer programmer learns that electronic intelligences - computers - are attractive of other supernatural intelligences. At least some of the intelligences are similar to the Elder Gods of Lovecraft's writing. The spy agency involved first met above a laundry.  The first few books are an introduction to the problem and characters and are Cthulhu meets James Bond meets The Office. Later, the bureaucracy snafus fade and the horror digs in.

I post on the subject today because tomorrow, another book in the series is being released!

Stross's website
Wikipedia on The Laundry Files
A reading order or timeline
Book launches for the Labyrinth Index

The Labyrinth Index on Kindle, available August 30!

13 days of Hallowe'en: day 4

My wife is skilled at the Korean art of Hanji, or papercraft. This jack-o-lantern is made of thick paper, heavier but similar to cardboard but with no corrugations, and thin orange paper. And hours of careful cutting.

13 days of Hallowe'en: day 5, mind control!

I have a few good hallowe'en posts still up my sleeve. "Good" meaning some sort of spooky fun or humourous takes on horror themes. So I may double up in the future. To be sure of Hallowe'en content now, let me compare science and some science fiction regarding mind control.

Parasite that control the minds of their hosts:

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that normally infects cats and rats. Among other things, it seems to make rats less sensitive to the scent of cat urine, meaning that if they smell it, they don't immediately run away. This makes them easier targets for cats. The thing is, lots of people have cats. And this means that lots of people have also been infected by T gondii. From Wikipedia:

Looking at humans, studies using the Cattell’s 16 Personality Factor questionnaire found that infected men scored lower on Factor G (superego strength/rule consciousness) and higher on Factor L (vigilance) while the opposite pattern was observed for infected women.[75] This means that men were more likely to disregard rule and were more expedient, suspicious and jealous. On the other hand, women were more warm hearted, outgoing, conscientious and moralistic.[75] Mice infected with T. gondii have a worse motor performance than non-infected mice.[76][77] Thus, a computerized simple reaction test was given to both infected and non-infected adults. It was found that the infected adults performed much more poorly and lost their concentration more quickly than the control group. But, the effect of the infection only explains less than 10% of the variability in performance[75] (i.e., there could be other confounding factors). Correlation has also been observed between seroprevalence of T. gondii in humans and increased risk of traffic accidents. Infected subjects have a 2.65 times higher risk of getting into a traffic accident.[78] A similar study done in Turkey showed that there is a higher incidence of Toxoplasma gondii antibodies among drivers who have been involved in traffic accidents.[79] Furthermore, this parasite has been associated with many neurological disorders such as schizophrenia. In a meta-analysis of 23 studies that met inclusion criteria, the seroprevalence of antibodies to T. gondii in people with schizophrenia is significantly higher than in control populations (OR=2.73, P<0 .000001="" a="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-TorreyMeta-80">[80]

More recent studies found that suicide attempters has significantly higher IgG antibody levels to T. gondii than patients without a suicide attempt.[81] Infection was also shown to be associated with suicide in women over the age of 60. (P<0 .005="" a="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii#cite_note-Ling2011-82">[82]So crazy cat ladies? The behaviors may be caused by parasites.
-
There are a lot of tabloid-esce posts on the subject of parasites that affect human behavior. Here is a relatively measured post from Discovery Magazine that looks at a few parasites, including rabies.

Wikipedia has a good introduction to a wide range of parasites that affect the behavior of their normal hosts. One they describe is the horse hair worm that, after eating the insides of their insect prey, cause it to leap into water and drown. I have personally seen such parasites in South Korea and in Canada. Both photos below were taken in Korea:

I sure made the ten-year-old boys who carried this worm in their bare hands wash their hands repeatedly and thoroughly! 

-

One science-based comic I read often offered this comparison of how a parasitic fungus of ants might similarly affect humans:

Follow the link to see the end -not really punchline - of this comic. Click on the red dot below the comic for an extra panel.

---

This is probably my most horrific post based on Hallowe'en. Lighter fare coming!

13 days of Hallowe'en, day 6, Halloween photo editting

I really like Photofunia.

fotor is okay, too.

Funny.pho.to is good. A strange effect with my glasses, though.

13 days of Hallowe'en. Day 7, Jonathan Coulton

With only 13 days to manage, I have still managed to mess up my scheduled posts. There will be 13 posts, I, uh, hope. But we are going to have two today.

I know Coulton as a novelty song musician. Here is his Wikipedia page. He has at least one heartfelt song about how having a daughter has changed him and I like it. I mostly know him for the x-rated First of May and for his many horror-themed songs that fit this time of year.

Brett J Talley agrees and has JC included in his dyslexic version of my theme, 31 days of Hallowe'en. Ah, I might have independently chosen the same songs at BJT; he has three videos in his post as I do.

13 days of Hallowe'en: Day 8, Louisa May Alcott!

I am actually uncertain how horrific this story is, but I will soon read it. The book caught my eye as I normally think of Little Women, not Egyptian Pyramids when I hear of Alcott.
Curse of the Mummy on Amazon - $1.36 Canadian

Or from Gutenberg, free but without special formatting.