Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: Blinded by science
The heart of things
Interesting article in the October 12 issue of Science: Matters of the Heart, by A. J. Wells:
Is there any truth in the long-standing association of emotions with the heart, or is it merely the stuff of superstition and myth? “Heartfelt Emotions,” a symposium that brought to a close a program of events supporting The Heart exhibition at the Wellcome Collection’s recently refurbished building in London, explored this question. The symposium included contributions from the exhibition’s curators, heart scientists, poets, writers, historians, psychologists, and a keenly interested audience.
It must have been a delightful symposium, but we can only guess; Wells provides few details of the proceedings. We’ll have to speculate.
Thirteen cool microorganisms
I’m tired of fretting over macroscopic creatures. If it’s not the humans in my lives (agents, those ornery creatures!), it’s disappearing ferrets or reappearing rats. Let’s take a break from vertebrates and consider life on the nano scale.
A real Chi Weenie
Not this kind of Chi Weenie.
For this morning’s procrastination, I’ve been drinking up the posts at Neurotopia, a ScienceBlog authored by The Evil Monkey, a neuroscience postdoc. The Evil Monkey has eclectic interests (not unlike yours truly), and has recently written about the Marry Our Daughter website, the effects of bisphenol A exposure, more Intelligent Design idiocy, and the use of statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs) to treat Alzheimer’s.
In the linked post, The E-M posts a YouTube video of a Filipino martial arts expert who demonstrates how an ancient ritual makes him invulnerable to injury. Not.
The E-M’s conclusion?
I think we can consider Chi and the like one more debunked philosophical construct. Just because you believe something, that doesn’t make it so. Any nice sharp sword will demonstrate that concept.
Enjoy.
Live blogging tonight, beginning no later than 8 PM PST. See you all there!
D.
Evening coolness
I’ve made it to round four of the Samhain contest. Cooler still, my pick for winner has also advanced to the next round: Amme’s entry (see comment #16). Go Amme!
But, here you go, some linguistic coolness:
The Interpreter
Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of language?
by John Colapinto
The people, members of a hunter-gatherer tribe called the Pirahã, responded to the sight of Everett—a solidly built man of fifty-five with a red beard and the booming voice of a former evangelical minister—with a greeting that sounded like a profusion of exotic songbirds, a melodic chattering scarcely discernible, to the uninitiated, as human speech. Unrelated to any other extant tongue, and based on just eight consonants and three vowels, Pirahã has one of the simplest sound systems known. Yet it possesses such a complex array of tones, stresses, and syllable lengths that its speakers can dispense with their vowels and consonants altogether and sing, hum, or whistle conversations.
Check it out. The photo alone (atop the article) is worth a click.
D.
Thirteen numbers: FINISHED!
I should have stopped with the number list and borne the brunt of your insults.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
Because sometimes, that’s all I gots.
If there’s a hell, mice will eat my balls
While writing to a friend this evening, I realized that the high point of my research career was growing mouse ears in a petri dish. No, I wasn’t the guy who grew a human ear on a mouse’s back — not even close. Growing recognizable mouse ears in tissue culture was good enough for me.
Mouse fanciers, please read no farther. Even you gerbil fans might give this a second thought. Those of you who consider mice to be vermin and snake food may read on.
Follow me below the cut for mouse ear pix, plus a bonus pic I found while rifling through my slides.
About the new frogs
I may be a thief, but I’m not a dick. UC Berkeley News credits this great photo to Prof. Miguel Vences. It was used to illustrate their story, “Clutch piracy revealed as novel mating strategy in European Common Frog,” which is every bit as captivating as it sounds. Don’t believe me? Snip:
In high-altitude ponds in the Pyrenees, on the border between Spain and France, so many males are vying for fatherhood that they pirate the egg clutches after they’re laid. Grasping them as they would a female, they release sperm in the floating clutches, often successfully fertilizing the eggs left unfertilized after the initial encounter. In one pond studied, 84 percent of all clutches had been fertilized by more than one male.
Ejaculating right on top of a clutch of eggs. It doesn’t get much more Darwinian than that.
I’d like to change the blog’s subtitle, too*, but I’m feeling post-fast-food queasy and can’t figure out which template to modify. Maybe tomorrow.
D.
*For example, I could paraphrase Bette Davis: “Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Can’t leave you on such a glum note.
I love Harper’s Magazine. Love it! Every issue makes me laugh, makes me think. Those effing ultra-tough crossword puzzles piss me off, but hey, that’s just one page. I can ignore it.
That Harper’s website has articles going back to June, 1850. Don’t know about you, but the idea of being able to view old issues back to 1850 blows me away. I’ve just been reading Aubrey De Vere’s “Adventure in a Turkish Harem.” Rather tame by 21st Century standards.
Oh — you’ll have to subscribe to Harper’s to view the old stuff, but it’s well worth it.
One of my favorite regular features is “Findings,” a compilation of scientific and biomedical discoveries reported in the preceding month. The May issue’s “Findings” yields this gem:
Genetic analysis of public lice suggested that the vermin jumped to humans from gorillas about 3.3 million years ago; since the lice do not have wings and cannot jump very far, a rather close encounter would have been necessary to facilitate the transfer.
And this gem.
Captive female koalas frequently engage in lesbian orgies, possibly as a result of some hormonal imbalance, or to attract males, or to relieve stress.
Now I know what I want to be post-reincarnation.
D.
Cat o’ nine
Today’s Random Flickr Blogging image is slightly unsafe for work, so I’ve buried it below the fold. Tom has links to this week’s other participants.
Tonight’s post should satisfy a few of your demands — pix! Flickr Follies! Sex! Blinded by Science (well, kinda science . . . um, health science. I suppose. If you really stretch the point). Maybe even Writer’s Life, if you would like to believe that this is what goes on in the dark recesses of my imagination.
Come along. You know you want to.
Reruns again?
After a crappy night’s sleep, I saw 32 patients today (if not a record, it’s close), and when I got home, I had two hours worth of catch-up charting to do. My brain is a blancmange, and when that happens, you get reruns. Kwitcher bitchin — I don’t do this all that often.
Kate and Anduin might remember this one, but I suspect it will be new material for many of you.
Historical note: this post first aired July 31, 2005. Somehow, the Smart Bitches caught wind of it, shouted it on their blog, and suddenly I had me scads of romance readers/writers. Speaking of the Bitches, did you catch their April Fool’s Day front page? Bloody brilliant. It rices my kishkes from jealousy, it’s so brilliant.
Without further ado:
Everything I know about sex I learned from my tarantula
Yeah. Keep readin’.