Mike the Headless Chicken

No, it’s not the latest eye-popping item from the always entertaining Weekly World News. Instead, it’s an actual headline from the October 22, 1945, issue of LIFE magazine, above an article about … well, a headless chicken: “Beheaded Chicken Lives Normally After Freak Decapitation by Ax.”

“Ever since Sept. 10,” LIFE informed its readers, “a rangy Wyandotte rooster named Mike has been living a normal chicken’s life though he has no head.” Mike, it seems, “lost his head in the usual rooster way. Mrs. L.A. Olson, wife of a farmer in Fruita, Colo., 200 miles west of Denver, decided to have chicken for dinner. Mrs. Olson took Mike to the chopping block and axed off his head. Thereupon Mike got up and soon began to strut around…. What Mrs. Olson’s ax had done was to clip off most of the skull but leave intact one ear, the jugular vein and the base of the brain, which controls motor function.”

The rest is poultry history. Mike lived for 18 months after losing his head, finally succumbing at a motel in the Arizona desert in 1946 during one of his many appearances as a sideshow attraction in the American southwest.



Read more: http://life.time.com/curiosities/photos-mike-the-headless-chicken-beyond-belief/#ixzz2RuGejEtw


http://life.time.com/curiosities/photos-mike-the-headless-chicken-beyond-belief/#1

Lucid Decapitation

For thousands of years, the forceful removal of the human head has been used as a form of capital punishment. In fact, the word "capital" in the context of punishment was coined to describe execution by decapitation, derived from the Latin word caput, which means "head." Since the very beginnings of the practice, there has been much speculation and debate regarding the length of time that the head can remain conscious after its removal. Many argue that a beheaded person will almost instantly lose consciousness due to a massive drop in blood pressure in the brain, and/or the heavy impact of the decapitation device. But there are countless eyewitness reports in history describing a few moments of apparent awareness in the victim.
Beheading has been discontinued as a form of execution in much of the world due to the suspicion that a severed head remains conscious and able to experience pain, so there have been no recent scientific observations of human decapitation. However studies of decapitated animals has lent some credibility to the massive number of stories regarding a head's brief consciousness after being separated from the body. Under certain circumstances, it is very possible that a head so removed may remain lucid long enough to know its fate.

In many cases, the anecdotal evidence describes blinking eyes, wandering gaze, and moving lips on a freshly amputated head. As grotesque and troubling as these movements may be to the witnesses, such muscular spasms are not surprising under the circumstances. It is not uncommon for any separated limb to twitch briefly due to reflex nerve action. More difficult to attribute to nerve reflexes are the stories of specific facial expressions sometimes seen on the faces of the beheaded as they died. Some were said to change expressions several times in the last few moments, ranging from pain and confusion to grief and fear.

In the heyday of the guillotine during the French Revolution, it is said that many of the condemned were asked to blink for as long as possible after decapitation. While many reportedly did not blink at all, some complied for as long as thirty seconds. Still other observations describe much more specific reactions to stimuli following beheading. Consider the case of Languille, a convicted murderer who was guillotined in France. He was observed by Dr. Beaurieux during his execution at 5:30am on June 28th, 1905. As written in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, here are the doctor's observations:

Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds ... I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased.The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead.It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!' I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions ... Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves ... After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. Then there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.
I have just recounted to you with rigorous exactness what I was able to observe. The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds.

In the book Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry, a story is related where the unnamed servant of chemist Antoine Lavoisier was beheaded by guillotine. According to the writer, Lavoisier immediately picked up the head and asked the servant to blink if he understood. Reportedly, the man blinked. There is also an oft-repeated anecdote involving Antoine Lavoisier's own later experience on the guillotine in 1794. The story is dubious considering that it does not appear in any of his biographies, but reportedly he told his assistant that he would blink for as long as he was able after execution, and successfully did so for fifteen to twenty seconds.

A more recent account tells of an accidental decapitation in an automobile. In 1989, a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Korean war was riding in a taxi with a friend when it collided with a truck. The witness was pinned to his seat, and the friend was decapitated by the collision:

My friend's head came to rest face up, and (from my angle) upside-down. As I watched, his mouth opened and closed no less than two times. The facial expressions he displayed were first of shock or confusion, followed by terror or grief. I cannot exaggerate and say that he was looking all around, but he did display ocular movement in that his eyes moved from me, to his body, and back to me. He had direct eye contact with me when his eyes took on a hazy, absent expression . . . and he was dead.
Judith Beheading Holofernes
Not all attempts to observe consciousness in decapitated heads has been successful. In 1836, a murderer named Lacenaire agreed to wink after execution, but he did not do so. Another murderer named Prunier in 1879 also failed to respond to stimuli. But it is likely that some individuals will lose consciousness immediately upon decapitation, while others might experience a few horrifying moments of lucidity as one's head parts ways with the rest of one's person. It is also very possible that most beheaded persons are too disoriented and/or distracted by pain and grief to trouble themselves with such trivial tasks.
Can it be concluded that a separated head is capable of consciousness and awareness following the event? Not with any certainty. Further scientific observation of human decapitation is highly unlikely, so it is a question that may remain unanswered indefinitely. But there is much evidence to indicate that for some, death is not instantaneous, which probably offers a truly surreal experience for those few, brief moments. It goes without saying that there are no first-hand accounts to shed further light on the subject.
http://www.damninteresting.com/lucid-decapitation/

• Beheadings are discontinued as a form of punishment (in western world)
• Animals and humans may be alive initially following the beheading

Beheading and Marie Antoinette

Decapitation or beheading, is the removal of the head from a living body, inevitably causing death. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, such as a means of murderor execution. It may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, or knife, or by means of a guillotine. Beheading has been used as the standard method of capital punishment in manycultures around the world throughout history. For some, it was considered the honorable way to die, and reserved for the nobility; for others, the mutilation of the body was considered disrespectful and was used as a most severe punishment. As humankind has progressed, gaining a greater awareness of the value of life and respect for the human rights of all, beheading has become less common—numerous countries have abolished the death penalty while those retaining it seek to impose it by more humane methods, such as hanging, gas chamber, or lethal injection. Ultimately, indeed, intentional beheading has no place in a peaceful, harmonious world.
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Beheading

On the morning of October 16, 1793, a guard arrived to cut her hair and bind her hands behind her back. She was forced into a tumbrel and paraded through the streets of Paris for over an hour before reaching the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood. She stepped down from the cart and stared up at the guillotine. The priest who had accompanied her whispered, "This is the moment, Madame, to arm yourself with courage." Marie Antoinette turned to look at him and smiled, "Courage? The moment when my troubles are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me."

At 12:15, Marie Antoinette was executed. The bodies of Marie, Louis XVI and Madame Elisabeth (Louis' sister) were buried in a mass grave near the location of today's La Madeleine church. Following the restoration of the Bourbons, a search was conducted for the bodies. On January 21, 1815, more than twenty years after her death, her corpse was exhumed—a lady's garter helped with identification—and Marie Antoinette was buried at the side of her spouse in the crypt of St. Denis Basilica just outside of Paris, the traditional final resting place of French monarchs.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Marie_Antoinette

Aristocratic Revolt in France led to aristocratic beheadings

The French Revolution

On July 15th 1789 a mob stormed the Bastille in Paris, and the French Revolution was born. The early days were triumphant: the ideals of the Enlightenment were dominant, a Declaration of the Rights of Man was proclaimed on the American model, and the King remained nominally in power. But gradually the revolution began to go wrong. In 1792 the king was dethroned and in the following January he was actually beheaded, soon to be followed by his wife, Marie Antoinette. By 1793 the reign of terror was in full swing; guillotines were set up throughout France and thousands were beheaded. These were not just the aristocrats, but ordinary people – the Third Estate – were hunted down; indeed it is said that more bakers were beheaded than aristocrats. In 1794 Robespierre, the architect of the terror was himself beheaded which seemed to mark the beginning of the end of the worst excess. Gradually the terror abated, and in 1796 a young general called Napoleon began winning victories in the south, and 3 years later he came to power as First Consul. Any semblance of democracy was snuffed out and the ideals of the Revolution were forgotten, but a sort of normality returned. There followed a decade of triumph when Napoleon extended French domination over much of Europe.
But what had gone wrong? Why did revolution lead to terror in this way? This question reverberated through much of the 19th century, when the revolutions were seen as the inevitable harbinger of terror and revolutionaries in their turn thought they ought to bring terror in their wake. But the answer to the problem of the French Revolution is very simple and can be boiled down to a single word: inflation. Inflation is the hidden ingredient in the French revolution, yet it is one that is tossed aside or ignored by virtually all historians of the period. Yet the French revolution is one of the classic cases where a monetary analysis is the vital hidden ingredient and makes sense of the whole phenomenon.
The French revolution began from an economic crisis. Louis XVI mismanaged the economy, and his extravagances drove him to near bankruptcy. At the beginning of 1789, he was forced to call together the Estates General to vote him more money. The Estates General proved obstinate, an impasse developed, and the Parisian mob supported the Estates General. On July 14, they stormed the Bastille.
From the first, financial matters predominated: there was not enough money to go round, and what should be done about it? There was one obvious solution – create more money. There was however one serious objection - the memory of John Law, whose inflationary schemes had ruined many Frenchmen a generation before. John Law (1671-1729) was a Scottish gambler and financier, half genius, half crook who fled from Scotland having killed a man in a duel over a girl. Having arrived in France, he set up a scheme to finance the French colony in Louisiana. His financial schemes were ingenious and at first they succeeded brilliantly, establishing a Banque Royale which issued its own bank notes. The scheme ballooned into Companie Perpetuelle des Indes encompassing both the West and East Indies. More and more paper money was issued, till in 1720 it all collapsed. Law fled from France and many of the French middle classes, and indeed of the aristocracy, were ruined.

http://www.civilisation.org.uk/Later/french_revolution.htm

Aristocracy

In theory, an aristocracy is very different from the way historic practice has described it. Two famous Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato, were responsible for coming up with the idea of aristocracy. In their concept, it was meant to be a government where the most capable people were put in direct charge of everything, and it was meant to be a direct contradiction of the Greek democracy system of the time. In practice, there were some difficulties in implementing an aristocratic form of government, mainly due to an inability to determine who was most suited, and it eventually became directly associated with the idea of monarchy.

The idea of aristocracy spread far and wide throughout the world, but most governments decided that the only way to determine if people where capable was to look at their ancestry. If someone’s parents were successful, rich, and prominent, that person would generally be given more privileges and leadership responsibilities, and this continued for generations, regardless of performance. Eventually, this led to a bunch of royal families, and the term aristocracy became more directly related to the idea of monarchs
 There were also other aristocracies that didn’t base things on genetics. In some countries, status was directly based on things like land ownership or wealth, regardless of heritage. In others, it might be related to religious elements. Sometimes there might be a combination of elements that would eventually allow a person to climb into the aristocracy, and some countries had different classes of aristocrats with statuses based on different things.

Many countries eventually decided they didn’t really like the idea of aristocracy. This was mainly because there was generally no fair way to choose worthy leaders to make sure that the very best people were always put in charge. Some people argue that the eventual development ofrepresentative democracy is really a kind of aristocracy, only with the people choosing who the most capable leaders are.

In theory, an aristocracy with unlimited power might be able to work, at least for a little while. If the people in charge were truly capable and were working in the best interests of the masses, many experts believe that such a government would be extremely efficient. In practice, many people suggest that corruption often leaks into systems where individuals have too much power without the proper checks and balances, and this might negate many of the potential benefits.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-aristocracy.htm#did-you-know

Tracey Emin YBA

A consummate storyteller, Tracey Emin engages the viewer with her candid exploration of universal emotions. Well-known for her confessional art, Tracey Emin reveals intimate details from her life to engage the viewer with her expressions of universal emotions. Her ability to integrate her work and personal life enables Emin to establish an intimacy with the viewer.

Tracey shows us her own bed, in all its embarrassing glory. Empty booze bottles, fag butts, stained sheets, worn panties: the bloody aftermath of a nervous breakdown. By presenting her bed as art, Tracey Emin shares her most personal space, revealing she’s as insecure and imperfect as the rest of the world.
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/tracey_emin.htm

Gillian Wearing YBA

When most people are stopped in the street they expect to be asked questions usually concerned with either a product, money, a survey, a personality test or directions.To be asked only to wnte something, anything, presents a challenge and creates a totally different relationship to the person posing the question. The bizarre request to be 'captured' on film by a complete stranger is compounded by a non-specific space; the blank piece of paper, which almost replicates an unexposed film.
Perhaps the fascination in the relationship between the person and their slogan is in the confidence or diffidence of the people being 'imaged' in the first place.
This image interrupts the logic of photo-documentary and snapshot photography by the subjects clear collusion and engineering of their own representation.
Gillian Wearing Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say
BJ: In Signs I was surprised at how willing people were to allow such an invasion of their own privacy to occur. It made me feel uncomfortable, but maybe this was an acknowledgement of our fascination with people who are 'on the edge'. There is perhaps a fine line between that fascination, and actually finding it funny.
GW: As a series, I don't find it humorous at all, that's just the one that covers everything. What might make it uncomfortable is people being so honest. Especially within the art world, you can get very guarded. That's why I ask strangers, because people are much more honest to someone they're not going to see again.

BJ: Signs has such a wide breadth, from homelessness to homosexuality to insanity, and it is this scope that separates it from social commentary.

GW: It leaves a lot to the imagination, that's what art should do. It leaves you something to go away with, something to think about. It doesn't say: this is a story, completely, and this is my take on it.


BJ: So it's that gap between what we expect from something, and what you deliver. 

GW: I actually like to think there's something left of that person. Who wants to know every little thing that's going on in someone's brain? There's got to be some sort of editing going on.

BJ: We were talking earlier, in relation to your I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing video, about Coke as a big corporate power. It could lead us back to ideas about mass observation, or of us being watched or controlled in some way.

GW: Yeah, there's no idea of free will; that's ridiculous. This idea of humanism, which was initially about knowledge giving you power and giving you access to freedom. Now we feel we have access to all these things, but they're completely all controlled, because they have to be.

BJ: Like the Internet.

GW: Yeah, the Internet. People think that all of a sudden they're going to be ten times more powerful or knowledgeable. We're much less free. Even with the cowboys [appreciation society in Western Security], they've notched up something that to a certain extent society would frown upon, and yet they've done it. I like people who go outside of what we perceive to be normal. Because we've all got an opinion now of what we should and shouldn't do. We all control each other in a way, we all control each other's patterns and we all have ideas of ethics and morals and PC. But then that gets exploited, and everyone exploits each other, and that creates limitations to what we feel we can do. So it goes across everything, really.

BJ: It takes away that paranoia, to think that there's not one controlling force or body.

GW: Which makes it harder to chip away at. When a person does have an individual opinion they then look mad, because we've all been so softened. Those people are usually the most interesting. I always have been interested in people, even when I was a young kid. So it seems for me quite a natural thing that I'm interested in. I'd like to find out as many facets as possible about people. I'm interested in people more than I am in myself, maybe that's what it is. 

Ben Judd for "Untitled"