The function of evil laughter in popular culture (new study)

One of the very few (perhaps the only) peer-reviewed scholarly studies devoted to investigating the function of evil laughter in popular culture has been recently been penned by Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, who is a doctoral researcher at the School of Communication and Culture, Department of English of Aarhus University, Denmark. In his new paper for The Journal […]

Their machine will tell if you’re friend or foe, they say

Veritas Scientific Corporation is — well, it must be — the rare company with technology that surpasses the limitations of what scientists understand. Veritas is all about deception. In the promotional video here, Veritas Scientific’s founder and CEO Eric Fenn Elbot says that he “started reading incredible research about how to detect brain waves to detect deception, and how to […]

Machiavellian romance shrouded in the Veil of Darkness

You suspect you’re in for a jolly read —a jolly ride, really, through the realm of romantic evil! — when a scholarly report begins with the words: When are women drawn to shady, self-centered, sly, cunning, and manipulative men? … In this work, we postulate in our novel Veil of Darkness hypothesis that men with “dark” personality […]

Lacan meets Austin Powers (comedic skin eruptions)

If you’re interested in Lacanian ‘drives’, the philosophical aspects of skin, and Austin Powers, then you can do no better than consult chapter two of  ‘Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) which explores connections between all three. The chapter, entitled ‘Comedic skin eruptions: A Psychoanalytic reading of Austin Powers’ is authored by Sheila Kunkle, who […]