Wiki never heard of it, so maybe it wasn't the 13th, maybe it was some other number. Does anybody here know what I'm talking about?
I've not heard of that monkey study but it piqued my interest and it was time to check with Mr. Google. I used the search string "monkey behavior separate islands" and Bingo! Up popped a Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect
This may be the research Mr. Beagles was talking about but it seems that some of the conclusions lack academic rigor and relied on second- and third-hand interpretations of the data. I think the original study was done by Japanese scholars in the early fifties, so something may have gotten lost in the translation. Although interesting, it isn't the kind of thing I'll be pursuing for the time being.
So, what about studies in human behavior? Psychologists and head shrinkers have been hard at work for a long time and yet we don't seem to be any closer to understanding the goofballs and crazies. Maybe it's the media coverage (or how I'm interpreting it) but the US seems to have a unique type of craziness in its citizens. It took that guy in Vegas a lot of time and money to plan and execute his operation, and to what end? Just to kill some random strangers? There are some things I can't wrap my brain around, and this is another one of them.
But lest we conclude that the US has a monopoly in generating crazy people we should consider what a fun duo has been up to for the last twenty years. Ask Mr. Google about "Russian cannibal couple" for some grisly details.
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I should take comfort in the fact that things could be a lot worse; there could many more mass murders than there are now, firearms or not. Nowadays it's trivial to find the information needed to create explosives, poisons, or any other killing tool. To humanity's credit, most folks just aren't into that kind of thing. Sadly, I don't think anything can be done to prevent highly motivated nutjobs from exerting their will, same as it's ever been.
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