Ramblings & ephemera
From Steven Pinker’s “What the F***?” (The New Republic: 9 Octobert 2007):
The mammalian brain contains, among other things, the limbic system, an ancient network that regulates motivation and emotion, and the neocortex, the crinkled surface of the brain that ballooned in human evolution and which is the seat of perception, knowledge, reason, and planning. The [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science | No Comments »
From William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part 1 (III: 1):
GLOUCESTER:
… such is thy audacious wickedness,
Thy lewd, pestiferous and dissentious pranks,
As very infants prattle of thy pride.
pestiferous: 1. Producing or breeding infectious disease.
2. Infected with or contaminated by an epidemic disease.
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Talbot describes his son’s valiant death
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1 Henry VI: Talbot threatens Bourdeaux [...]
Posted on January 15th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Word of the day | Comments Off
So a bunch of us are talking at the Central West End Linux User Group meeting. Somehow the topic of surgery during World War I comes up.
Robert: What was really bad was that those guys were operated on without any anaesthetic.
Me: Huh? Doctors had anaesthetic then.
Robert: They did? What?
Me: Ether.
Robert: Huh. How’d they deliver [...]
Posted on December 10th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
From Robyn Williams’s “How to Keep Your Brain Young” (The Science Show: 24 September 2005):
Ian Robertson: Seven steps for keeping your brain functioning optimally when you’re older, but not just when you’re older but throughout life are: One, Aerobic fitness – amazing effects on the brain. Mental stimulation, both general mental stimulation and there are [...]
Posted on July 18th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, science | Comments Off
From Alan Wolfe’s “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” (The Washington Monthly: July/August 2006):
If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government–indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government–is the [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: politics | Comments Off
From Daniel Engber’s “How Much of Me Is Burned?” (Slate: 11 July 2006):
In the 1950s, doctors developed an easy way to estimate the ratio of the area of a patient’s burns to the total area of his skin. The system works by assigning standard percentages to major body parts. (Most of these happen to [...]
Posted on July 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, science | Comments Off
From James Wolcott’s “Debbie Does Barnes & Noble” (Vanity Fair: 22 August 2005):
In terms of production techniques, two years mark key inflection points in porn. The first was 1982, when X-rated producers abandoned celluloid for videotape. The other pivotal year was 1998, when Viagra was introduced. Performance anxiety, begone!
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When newspapers began to cover trials
The [...]
Posted on July 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business, history | Comments Off
From Carolyn Kleiner’s “The Demon of Andersonville” (Legal Affairs: September/October 2002):
During the last 14 months of the Civil War, nearly 13,000 Union prisoners of war died at the Confederate prison camp in Andersonville, Georgiaâ€â€more than at Antietam, one of the war’s bloodiest battles, and more than at any of the other hundred or so Civil [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | Comments Off
From Emily Bazelon’s “Grave Offense” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2002):
In 1810, there were five medical schools in the United States, in 1860 there were 65, and by 1890 that number had doubled.
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Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, science | Comments Off
From Emily Bazelon’s “Grave Offense” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2002):
In December 1882, hundreds of black Philadelphians gathered at the city morgue. They feared that family members whom they had recently buried were, as a reporter put it, “amongst the staring corpses” that lay inside. Six bodies that had been taken from their graves at Lebanon Cemetery, [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, history, law, science | Comments Off
From Jessica Sachs’s “Expiration Date” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
More than two centuries of earnest scientific research have tried to forge better clocks based on rigor, algor, and livor mortis - the progressive phenomena of postmortem muscle stiffening, body cooling, and blood pooling. But instead of honing time-of-death estimates, this research has revealed their vagaries. Two [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, law, science | Comments Off
A few weeks ago I had my eyes fixed with LASIK eye surgery. So far I’ve been completely happy with the results - it works! In preparing for the surgery, you receive lots of printed materials to read, including a booklet titled “Patient Information”. Inside that booklet is an explanation of the surgery which contains [...]
Posted on May 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, overheard | Comments Off
From Salon’s “Religious belief itself is an adaptation“, an interview with Edward O. Wilson:
Religious belief itself is an adaptation that has evolved because we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions. Religion is intensely tribalistic. A devout Christian or Muslim doesn’t say one religion is as good as another. It gives them faith in the particular group [...]
Posted on April 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Religion, science | Comments Off
From “New form of superior memory syndrome found“:
Scientists at the University of California-Irvine have identified the first known case of a new, superior memory syndrome.
Researchers Elizabeth Parker, Larry Cahill and James McGaugh spent more than five years studying the case of “AJ,” a 40-year-old woman with incredibly strong memories of her personal past.
Given a date, [...]
Posted on March 28th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, science | Comments Off
From “Mental Health Association of Portland“:
Over 3,500 copper canisters like these hold the cremated remains of patients of the Oregon State Hospital that went unclaimed by their families and friends. They sit on shelves in an abandoned building on the grounds of the Oregon State Hospital. They symbolize the loneliness, isolation, shame and despair [...]
Posted on March 25th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Writing Ideas, weird | Comments Off
From BBC News’ “Europe’s chill linked to disease“:
Europe’s “Little Ice Age” may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.
Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This would have had the [...]
Posted on March 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, science | Comments Off
From “Vietnam man handles three decades without sleep“:
Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc, known as Hai Ngoc, said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and has counted infinite numbers of sheep during more than 11,700 consecutive sleepless nights.
“I don’t know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not. But I’m still [...]
Posted on February 20th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, science | Comments Off
From CNN’s “World without pain is hell, parent says“:
Roberto is one of 17 people in the United States with “congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis,” referred to as CIPA by the few people who know about it. …
Other abnormalities quickly surfaced. Roberto was severely susceptible to heatstroke on hot summer days. His parents soon noticed [...]
Posted on January 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science, weird | Comments Off
From Ask Yahoo!:
According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That’s about a 155,000 a [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book | Comments Off
From The Honolulu Advertiser:
Health experts are not sure what is causing Mantis Shrimp found in the muck of the Ala Wai Canal to grow larger than their normal size, but one thing is clear, they say: You shouldn’t eat anything out of the canal.
State Department of Health signs posted along the canal warn people [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: weird | Comments Off
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