From the annals of bipolar disorder behaviours, a classic symptom of which is hypersexuality or increased sexuality and flirtatiousness during mania and hypomania. One former hockey cheerleader is now in a court battle against other Disney-on-Ice-type skaters accusing her of being "a mentally ill pervert by [Madison Square] Garden attorneys who claimed her sex-obsessed behavior upset fellow skaters."

The skaters claim Prince pretended to simulate sex on the ice during one practice and regularly coached skaters to appear more "f---able." She also grabbed other skaters' breasts and used explicit terms to describe their anatomy, the skaters said.

Prince's "crass sexual behavior" sowed discontent among the troupe of performers, including the former lead in "Disney on Ice," according to the court papers. Prince used language more likely heard in an NHL locker room to impress upon fellow skaters that looks were more important than skating, they said.

"She said that we needed to make the audience feel like they want to be in your pants," skater Heather Gornall said in her affidavit.

Read more or even more interesting [but unrelated], read more about bipolar disorder and hypersexuality in children with mania (no word on whether or not they are figure skaters).

Growing up I used to read Omni magazine and would always see all sorts of devices that supposedly could induce lucid dreams or tapes that had subliminal messages recorded along with Bach to create special brain states where you'd be particularly receptive to messages like - "you will be psychic... you can lift objects with your mind...you will be rich and successful... you will quit smoking crack...etc etc etc" Let me tell you - I'm not psychic or rich! Although...I never did take up smoking crack so maybe the tapes did work! I eventually forgot about these tapes and devices for many years until recently. Now they seem to be making a comeback - but in respectable media sources not obsessed with alien abduction. It's even more exciting now though...this time though you can build your own!

In Make magazine this month you can get instructions for building a hallucinating machine!

According to Make Magazine:

The brain produces varying proportions of brain wave types, depending on its current levels of relaxation, focus, and other mental states.
...
Many people's brain waves will synchronize to lights and sounds pulsing at brain wave frequencies, and this makes the brain change its state - a process called "entrainment."

So what does this device end up looking like?

The Onion strikes at neuroethics and the slow legal system.

"If it were just us sitting around having a few beers and shooting the breeze, it would have been, like, yeah, sure, execute the mentally ill, they should have known what they had coming to them that far into the legal process," Justice Clarence Thomas said. "But we don't want to set some huge precedent or something. So how about this: How about if mentally ill people just stop killing people altogether? That would certainly make our jobs a whole lot easier."

A source close to one of the associate justices said the deliberations were marked not only by vacillation and ambivalence, but also by a sense of frustration. ...

"Both attorneys were super smart and well prepared and made a lot of really good points," Justice Samuel Alito said. "When Mr. Hampton was presenting his case, I was thinking, 'Yeah, this is totally right,' and I was prepared to side with him. But then Ms. Bunn got up and sounded just as convincing, but argued the exact opposite point. It's like, who do you believe?"

Hundreds of "seriously legal-looking" documents such as amicus briefs and depositions from mental health experts only served to further confuse members of the high court.

More.

Hat tip: Milligram.

[Pictured above is Liz Spikol of the excellent blog The Trouble with Spikol, in a restaurant with a huge stuffed fish. Perhaps she's having trouble deciding what to order?]

• Medical experiments to be done without patients' consent | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
  The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients' permission. The $50 million, fi