5 Seemingly Random Factors That Control Your Memory We have all experienced zone-out moments when we know we totally should remember something that has apparently been deleted from our brain's hard drive against our will. That's because the human brain is a haphazard, messy machine that glitches at the slightest, strangest provocation. However, our old friend science has tracked down some of the completely random things that decide whether or not your memory will choose to function at that particular moment. Things like ... #5. Photos.com You're standing in a room, looking around, confused. You try to decide if this is the sign of a cripplingly short attention span or early onset Alzheimer's. Photos.comIt's corn dogs, isn't it? It's doorways. Your brain uses a very similar directory system to that of your computer. Photos.com"Son? And the effect of doorways is so strong that you don't even have to physically move for those bastards to put the kibosh on your memory. Photos.com"Hey there, Jerry! #4. What the hell? #3. Imagine Morgan Freeman.
5 Random Factors That Determine Whether You Succeed in Life You've stayed in school, stayed off drugs and made the right friends. Dollar bills should be raining down on you like a ticker tape parade, right? Not if you've got these completely arbitrary factors working against you. Studies show that ... #5. A Baby Face Earns More Money (If It's Black) Photos.com If given the chance, Science will jump over mountains to point out that we're more superficial than we think. But that study mostly involved white CEOs. Photos.com"Give this man a pacifier and make him our new CFO!" Here's how they figured out the correlation: Whiteys were shown 40 headshots of black men, white women and white men who were current or former CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. So then things took a turn for the oddly specific. To function effectively as an African-American male in the U.S. it helps to have a disarming mechanism. Photos.com"No, sir, his face is pretty square. GettyPlus, you know he was only in one little fight before his mom stepped in and rewarded him with luxury.
The 5 Weirdest Things That Control the Global Economy The global economy is an insanely complex system of labor, money and goods all governed by laws to keep each facet in check. So it'd be pretty depressing if researchers discovered that the whole thing was actually the end result of a bunch of seemingly random bullshit, wouldn't it? Answer: Yes it would be, and they did. Getty It's widely believed that fraudulent practices like mortgage underwriting and predatory lending were some of the main causes of the 2000s credit crunch, which raises some terrifying concerns: If the state of the economy is so dependent on a handful of people promising not to be greedy, what's really stopping the economy from collapsing all over again as soon as those assholes decide more is better? Surprisingly, it might be their belief in hell. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. "I hate it when naked men try to swamp my boat. Interestingly, believing in God alone didn't cut it. Luckily there already is a name for it: psychopathy. GettyThe sun: The tequila of Wall Street.
5 Mind-Blowing Academic Theories as Taught by Classic Movies #2. Quantum Immortality Getty Movie protagonists tend to be improbably lucky. "The disease is B. And it's not just the superhuman action heroes. As it happens, there's a thought experiment in quantum physics called quantum suicide that might explain why every one of those movies is illustrating how reality actually works. "If you keep pulling, we'll turn into hydrogen! To understand why that should be impossible, imagine that you balanced a perfectly sharpened pencil on a tip occupied by one of these particles that spins left and right at the same moment. Now imagine if, instead of a pencil balanced on one of these particles, there are 10 of these particles connected to a contraption that fires a gun at your head if they move right and lets you live if they move left. In 999 universes, McClane was gunned down while picking glass out of his feet. GettySomewhere, a version of you has won the lottery, and that asshole won't give you a dime. #1. No. "Yer a wizard, Harry.
5 Absurd (But Mind Blowing) Pop Culture Conspiracy Theories Conspiracies are a lot like orgies -- they take careful planning, involve a lot of people putting themselves in compromising positions, and never end up working as well as movies promised they would. And even though we just created an image of a sloppy gang bang in your head, we're not just talking about politics, here -- pop culture is just as full of "secret symbols" and "hidden messages" that make it seem like there's a shadowy genius secretly manipulating the puppet strings from behind a vast curtain. But there's not. As this Cracked Classic shows, even the most convincing arguments about secret messages turn out to be even dumber than the ending of How I Met Your Mother (and as a side note, we apologize for so thoroughly driving home the point that no one in any position of authority has any idea what they're doing -- we admit that's not, ya know, super comforting). The Fox Network Predicted the 9/11 Attacks ...this is pretty freaking creepy: Holy shit! Why it's Bullshit:
6 Famous Movies With Mind-Blowing Hidden Meanings Most of us are familiar with movie metaphors. We all know that the Narnia movies are full of Christian allegories, that Alien is bursting with rape symbolism, and so on. But it's easy to forget that almost every movie has some kind of subtext. Writers love that shit, so they work it in wherever they can -- even if they're writing about a cyborg that punches people. As a result, these half-coded messages turn up in movies you'd never expect. Spider-Man: Peter Parker's Man Juice What You Think You're Watching Another superhero movie. The Subtext We have jokingly alluded to this before, but Spider-Man really is all about semen. We tend to find Spider-Man easier to identify with than other superheroes. Those were dark years. At the beginning of the 2002 Spider-Man movie, Peter Parker is timid, puny and closer to his aunt and uncle than to girls his age. The next day, Peter's body has changed, and he has developed muscles in new places. This movie defines subtlety. No shit. Not convinced?
The Top 25 Cracked Articles of 2012 The views have been tallied. The critics have been ignored. Nothing but the hits: The 25 most crazy popular articles we put up this year. #25. A live stand-up comedy show audience is the closest real life gets to the Internet mentality. So, I collect YouTube videos of comics giving hecklers a verbal beat-down. Full Article #24. 5 Actors Who Do the Exact Same Thing in Every Movie Everyone assumes that directors and writers decide what happens in a movie, but many times the movie star is the most powerful person involved with the project. Full Article #23. 6 Fictional Places You Didn't Know Actually Existed Part of what makes fantasy and sci-fi appealing is that it's not just a bunch of characters -- it's a whole world. That's true even if it's an objectively bad place -- Gotham City looks like a shithole, but who wouldn't trade their current life with a chance to go there and fight supercriminals with Batman? Full Article #22. 8 Ordinary Photos Hiding Mind-Blowing Details Full Article #17.
The 6 Most Mind-Blowing (and Pointless) Gaming Achievements #3. Playing the Same Civilization II Session for 10 Straight Years Via Scorerpg Sid Meier's Civilization II is a strategy game where you start out with a small, primitive tribe and slowly build it into a massive modern-day empire. You see, the game stops keeping track of the score when you reach the year 2020 and declares a winner, because that's as long as the programmers assumed anyone would care to play, but it also gives you the option to continue playing without points for as long as you want (which, in Lycerius' case, meant forever). So what does his futuristic utopia look like? Via Imgur.comThose skull icons do not mean "utopia." By the year 3998, huge chunks of the world were covered by irradiated swampland, the ice caps had melted 20 times over, 90 percent of the world population had died from famine or nuclear attacks and the entire planet was locked in a perpetual war between three super-nations that lasted 1,700 years. #2. Via Gamespot "OK, who's up for some God-Jenga?" #1.
7 Creepy Urban Legends That Happen to be True (Part 4) The Legend: The legend has been floating around for a while that the drug PCP doesn't merely inspire regular garden variety hallucinatory freak-outs, it actually has the ability to turn somebody into a flesh hungry maniac. Surely this is merely Reefer Madness-style propaganda though -- something dreamt up by Nancy Reagan in one of her more creative moods? Not pictured: an appealing alternative to getting high. The Truth: The story of Antron Singleton, a rapper with the appropriately creepy sounding handle "Big Lurch" says otherwise. Rapper Big Lurch in his more innocent pre-human flesh ingesting days. There they found his roommate brutally slain, with her lungs torn from her torso, and her body and face covered with...bite marks. They moved a few words around when teenage focus groups called it "Awesome." Of course we don't want to be alarmists -- we're sure there are plenty of fine upstanding PCP addicts out there. Sometimes things go further. The Killer in Cop's Clothing The other 10%.
6 MORE Creepy Urban Legends (That Happen to be True) The Legend: A pregnant woman tells her spouse the baby's not his and, in a rational and well-considered move, the husband chops off her lover's head and brings it to her in the maternity ward. It comes in many forms but the moral of the story is always clear; stay the hell away from that Brazilian pool boy, ladies. The Truth: Sgt. On a cold December day the pregnant Diane lay in a hospital bed talking on the phone to Gregory when the line, and for that matter Gregory himself, suddenly went dead. "Look, Diane - Glover's here! The Not-So-Death Defying Escapist Demonstrating why guidance counselors rarely recommend this line of work, an escape artist fails to follow through on his name and dies in front of a live audience. Despite the illusion of danger, escape artists rarely die or even get injured performing a stunt. Ironically, given what would take place, Burrus' stunt was to involve him escaping from his own grave. The Living Severed Head
8 Creepy Video Game Urban Legends (That Happen to Be True) EarthBound -- All About Abortion For most people, their only experience with EarthBound (also known as Mother 2 in Japan) is the characters and levels that also appear in the Super Smash Bros. games: little kids with bats and yo-yos in bright, colorful environments. And that's a pretty accurate representation of about 95 percent of the game, where you run around with four little kids who are trying to save the world by fighting things like bugs and robots and taxicabs. Via WikipediaIt's like Pokemon, but less flashy. But the last hour of the game is something really different from everything that comes before it. First the kids have their souls ripped from their bodies and put into robots. Via screwattack.comTake a look at Giygas' lair, The Devil Machine. The middle part looks remarkably like an endoscopic image of a woman's cervix. Via earthbound.wikia.com And ends up looking like this: First a cervix and now something that looks like an Andy Warhol painting of a fetus. What the hell?