…or rather, the visual system. Cause you can’t really talk about the optic nerve unless you talk about the rest of the eye along with it. We humans rely pretty heavily on vision as a species. At least, being able to see is a lot more important to our daily lives than, say, being able […]
Today’s is the first in a series of posts on the CRANIAL NERVES, the nerves that innervate a good chunk of your body, and which emerge DIRECTLY from your brain. We’re going in order from the “front” of the brain, “brackward”. So today’s post is about the cranial nerve that’s the closest to your face, […]
I’ve been waiting for a while to take on another multi-part project (ok, I needed to recover from EB first), and now I think it is TIME. Time for a series SO LARGE that it’s going to take me probably more than three weeks, or even four to finish (with breaks for Friday Weird Science, […]
Sci has been intending to do one of these posts for a while. I seem to spend ages talking about neurons, synapses, action potentials, connections, neurotransmitters, and different brain areas. But for all that, a lot of people don’t really know what a neuron looks like and where the connections are taking place. So it’s […]
Today’s post is dedicated to Mr. S. My sad, sniffly Mr. S, who has welcomed the advent of spring with raucous sternutation. We don’t understand it. There’s no grass yet, the tree pollen is low. But the poor guy is a mess. And over the weekend, as his playing of Black Ops was continually interrupted […]
Perhaps some of you have heard of the fictional baby X (that’s a PDF), a children’s story piece which appeared in Ms. Magazine in 1975. I know that when I read it, I was amused, fascinated, and intrigued. The story is about a baby who is raised not as a girl, not as a boy, […]
I thought that I had wavy hair Until I shaved. Instead, I find that I have STRAIGHT hair And a very wavy head. -Shel Silverstein The poem above is something I think of whenever I think of phrenology (also it’s just awesome, because Shel Silverstein is always awesome). Phrenology was (and is!) a pseudoscientific practice […]
…who is the fairest/funniest/raises the most for charity/has the cutest child/dog/cat/hamster/is best foodie/goes to the coolest places/the most popular of ALL? Duh! ME! (Hat tip to DNLee, who introduced me to this song. I LOVE this song.) Gonzales and Hancock. “Mirror, Mirror on my Facebook Wall: Effects of Exposure to Facebook on Self-Esteem” CYBERPSYCHOLOGY, BEHAVIOR, […]
I for one welcome our new amoeba overlords… Sci is aware that the world freakin covered this paper last week. I don’t get access to press releases and so couldn’t get the paper until Friday, and well, time. But I really wanted to read it myself (yes, sometimes I read scientific papers for fun. What?!?!). […]
The other night, Sci was drifting slowly off to sleep. Suddenly, I sneezed. It woke me up completely again, and left me wondering, with some irritation, whether it couldn’t have waited til I was asleep and didn’t care. And then I thought: CAN you sneeze in your sleep? I asked the Twitterverse and looked around […]