It sounds eerily like the Ebola virus: dying victims ooze blood, and anyone who comes into contact with them is immediately — and fatally — infected. It all began when a group of adventurers encountered a deadly virus while exploring a labyrinth of caves. When surviving infected explorers made it back to civilization, they initiated the outbreak. Travelers spread the word, and the disease, only boosting the carnage and the outbreak to epidemic scale. In the busiest towns, bodies piled high.

Luckily, the virus is virtual, and the world is that of Warcraft — the immensely popular massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft, that is. Known as the “Blood Plague” to more than four million devotees of the game, it was unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and, by no design of the game’s creators, quickly spread through the game’s many realms. Like rats during the Black Plague, computer-controlled characters could not themselves succumb to the disease, but acted as carriers and infected human-controlled characters, who died en masse. Online discussion sites were buzzing with reports from the disaster zones with some describing seeing “hundreds” of bodies lying in the virtual streets of the online towns and cities.

Game developer Blizzard has started resetting its servers in an attempt to fix the problem, but it hasn’t been solved completely. It’s a frightening digital simulation with details that sound like they’re straight out of a nightmare — and if it happened in the real, rather than virtual, world, you can bet that resetting our servers wouldn’t do anything to help.

We’ve brought it up before, but let’s loop back around the cul-de-sac. I’m in San Francisco casting Silicon Valley types, and inevitably I encounter a theoretical physicist dressed as Rosie the Robot who claims she discovered that the speed of light is slowing down.

Sound familiar? Sorry, Rosie, but it’s a loophole physicians (and creationists) have been massaging for years.

In 1999, Dr. João Magueijo published a paper proposing that Einstein’s relativity might be less fixed and more like the nature of light itself (perhaps ~ vs. =). Putting his theory to test, University of New Wales physicist Dr. John Webb and PhD student Michael Murphy measured the fine structure constant (i.e. fingerprints from gas cloud electrons) of light arrived from 12 billion year-old quasars.

When the constant was smaller than it should have been, the only possible reasons were that either the electrons’ electric charge had increased or that the speed of light had slowed. Since it was unfeasible that the electron’s charge would rise (a la the 2nd law of thermodynamics–energy only flows from hot to cold spots), they concluded there were forces at work retarding the speed of light–an entirely quantum conundrum.

Of course, NASA has a kick-back:

If the particles were moving slower than the accepted speed of light — 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second — they wouldn’t have enough energy to annihilate each other.

Director James Cameron (Alien, Titanic) has a knack for hyperbole (like his famous “I’m king of the world!” Oscar acceptance speech a few years back). But this may just take the cake: in a new documentary he is producing, he claims to have found Jesus’ tomb, and that of his wife, Mary Magdalene and their son, Judah. No, it’s not a mockumentary follow-up to The Da Vinci Code. According to the BBC:

Construction workers building an apartment complex in east Talpiot, Jerusalem, first uncovered 10 2,000-year-old ossuaries – or limestone coffins – in a tomb in March 1980. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority, six of those coffins were marked with the names Mary; Matthew; Jesua son of Joseph; Mary; Jofa (Joseph, Jesus’ brother); and Judah son of Jesua. The documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus, produced by Mr Cameron, claims tests on samples from two of the coffins show Jesus and Mary Magdalene were likely to have been buried in them and were a couple.

Of course, there are some archaeologists out there who have a problem with this — after all, the tomb was found more than 20 years ago, so this isn’t exactly breaking news. Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner said “I don’t accept the news that it was used by Jesus or his family,” adding that the names found on the coffins were very common 2,000 years ago. Debate is sure to rage for some time, and we here at the _floss will be following the developments with the same gusto that we enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark. In typical fashion, the hyperbolic director who started it all said “It doesn’t get any bigger than this!”

I’ve always been a fan of the ads for The Economist. Here are a few smart – but in some cases, maddeningly simple – executions that anyone in advertising will be angry they didn’t think of first.

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Lucid dreaming is a state in which you know you are dreaming, and can control the dream. While it’s difficult to get started (I’m still working on it), the notion of influencing your own dreams is tantalizing. There are plenty of resources on the web to get you started: How to Have a Lucid Dream is a good overview. Dream Views is a well-designed source of information and tutorials. Wikipedia has a page on lucid dreaming as well.

If you’re not interested in working on your own lucid dreams, you might watch The Science of Sleep for Michel Gondry’s take on dreaming.

The first thing you think when you see the earthquake simulator is: I want one! These small, prefab houses sit on top of a motorized, mechanical platform called a “shake table,” which is controlled by a dial inside the house. The whole rig costs about $500,000 — or about the cost of a small, prefab house in Southern California (albeit without the shake table). They were developed by British and Turkish researchers looking for ways to help earthquake victims deal with post-traumatic stress, and apparently, they really work. The strange thing is, though, that they work after the fact; rather than helping potential earthquake victims get used to the shake, rattle and roll of a Big One, it helps those who’ve already lived through the nightmare to conquer their fears.

Participants determine the speed and intensity of the shakes. “This treatment is based on an old technique called progressive desensitization,” said psychologist Leslie Carrick-Smith, “where you gradually reintroduce someone to a situation they are uncomfortable with.” Before they started the treatment, a number of the researchers’ test subjects had trouble simply being inside a building, or being asleep at the same time as the rest of their family, lest no one be awake to watch for quakes and other problems. But whether it’s a revolutionary new technique or a new twist on an old psychological standby, I still think it looks like great fun!

THE WHITE-BONED DEMON: MAO’S MAIN SQUEEZE Jiang Qing, better known as Madame Mao, was Communist China’s answer to Lady Macbeth. A beautiful and ambitious actress, she seduced Mao Zedong when his first wife fell ill. Then, as the leader of the notorious Gang of Four (the political group, not the band), Madame Mao helped spearhead the Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966, during which all Chinese schools were shut down, intellectuals were beaten or murdered, and anyone expressing “bourgeois” attitudes was eliminated. More moderate elements of the government plotted against her, and she became known as the “White-Boned Demon.” After Mao died, her enemies arrested her and the other three Gang members. Her death sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, but she took her own life when she was on release for medical reasons in 1991.

POL POT-STICKER: KHIEU PONNARY You don’t get to be the wife of a mass-murdering Cambodian dictator by acting like a timid homemaker. Khieu Ponnary was a revolutionary Communist firebrand for decades in Cambodia before her husband’s Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. As Party Secretary of Khampong Thom province, she oversaw the brutal enforcement of party policies that led to countless executions. But like any great tyrant, she began showing signs of insanity. Pol Pot left her for a much younger woman (don’t they always?) in 1979, and she spent the remaining years of her life in the care of family members and various mental institutions. She passed away in 2003.

LADY MACBETH: BEHIND THE STORY (CA. 1007-1060 C.E.) Don’t believe the hype. The real Lady Macbeth (the wife of Macbeth, an 11th-century Scottish king) was nothing like the power-hungry she-devil that Shakespeare made her out to be. But it’s not all Will’s fault. You can blame that on James I, the king of England and Scotland and a friend of the Bard’s. In the play, Macbeth is the villain who kills rival king Duncan, but it was really Duncan who should have played the bad guy. By all historical accounts, Duncan was not only an awful king, but also a real jerk. Being a descendent of Duncan, however, James I wanted to preserve the image of his lineage, so he “encouraged” Shakespeare to make Macbeth the villain. If that weren’t enough, he also suggested that Will make Lady Macbeth equally evil by depicting her as the scheming mastermind behind Duncan’s death. Why? It was just James’ way of saying “screw thee” to his wife, Anne of Denmark, with whom he had long been unhappy.

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FAMILY TIES (That Really Bind) Spending time with family can feel like torture, especially if you’ve got a tyrant for a dad.

SAVE THE MUSIC Sometimes a son deserves a slap on the wrist. Saddam Hussein once placed his boy, Uday, in solitary confinement after he’d beaten someone to death for (you guessed it) playing music too loudly. Of course, this wasn’t the only time Uday made a murderous mistake. He also “accidentally” took Saddam’s valet’s life during a late night brawl. The furious Saddam first sentenced his son to death, but later decided instead to exile him to Switzerland for a year after Jordan’s King Hussein calmed him down.
THIS BEEF IS MAKING ME THIRSTY Placed terrifyingly close to the cliff’s edge in Wick, Scotland, Girnigoe Castle is definitely worth the visit. While it’s mainly in ruins today, it still showcases a secret chamber and dungeon, where the 4th Earl of Caithness kept his son imprisoned. And just how strong was this father’s love? Clearly, not very. The Earl kept his heir apparent on a strict diet of salted beef, so he’d die mad with thirst.
BAD SEEDS AND THE FAMILY TREE While it’s common for tyrants to imprison activists (and their immediate relatives) for being critical of the regime, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il takes it a few steps further—three generations further to be exact. According to Kim, it’s important to imprison a dissident’s next three generations in order to root out any bad blood or seeds of dissent.

More bully-licious factoids flow from the pen of Christopher A. Smith in mental_floss volume 3, issue 4.

The 27th Annual Golden Raspberry Awards were handed down this weekend, celebrating the worst of cinema. Basic Instinct 2 was the big winner, taking home Worst Picture, Worst Screenplay, Worst Prequel/Sequel and Worst Actress for Sharon Stone.

So if you’re tired of all the water-cooler Oscar buzz and like being negative, arm yourself with a little Razzie trivia.

• In 1998, Brian Helgeland won the Oscar for Best Screenplay (L.A. Confidential) and the Razzie for Worst Screenplay (The Postman). This never happened before or since.
• James Coco (Only When I Laugh, 1982) and Amy Irving (Yentl, 1984) were both nominated for an Oscar and a Razzie for the same performance.
• Sylvester Stallone has been nominated thirty times, winning ten. Both are records.
• Showgirls and Battlefield Earth are tied atop the all-time rankings, each earning seven Razzies.
• Demi Moore, Pauly Shore and Sly Stallone have all won back-to-back Worst Actor/Actress honors.

By the way, if you’re looking for the perfect gift for a movie snob, how about a Voting Razzie Membership?

And while we’re trashing bad movies, what’s your all-time least favorite? I’ll need to think about this one.

While every Tom, Dick and Oscar is busy Academy-chatting around the water cooler today, I thought I’d arm you with some ammo from past years that’ll have all your cohorts thinking you really know your trivia.

1) Composer/conductor John Williams has been nominated for 45 Academy Awards, the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person.

2) Walt Disney, who picked up 26 Oscars out of 64 nominations (some say 59), holds the record for the most wins.
3) The youngest winner of the Best Actor Oscar went to Adrien Brody at only 29 years old for his role in The Pianist.

4) The youngest winner of the Best Actress Oscar went to Marlee Matlin at 21 for Children Of A Lesser God.

5) But even Tatum O’Neal has her beat. She won Best Supporting Actress for Paper Moon at the staggeringly young age of 10.

6) Now then, the youngest ever, ever, ever, was, of course, Shirley Temple, who was still wet behind the ears at 6 (how could she even lift the 8.5-pound award?) when she won a Special Award for her contribution to film in 1934.

7) At the other end of the spectrum, we have the 80-year-old Jessica Tandy winning the Best Actress Award for Driving Miss Daisy in 1989.

8) The oldest Best Actor Award went to Henry Fonda at 76 when he won for On Golden Pond.

9) The only sequel to win Best Picture was The Godfather Part 2, which took the Oscar in 1974.

10) Lastly, and poignantly: A woman has never won Best Director, ever! And the only women to have been nominated are Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation, Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties and Jane Campion for The Piano. High time that changed, wouldn’t you say?