Tinnitus

Tinnitus is that symptom you get when you hear stuff that's not actually there, as in a ringing in one or both ears. This isn't a disease, however; it's not the little Irish man telling you to burn a building.

Shoptalk

Shoptalk is "the specialized vocabulary having to do with work or a field of work."

How did the filibuster start?

Too good to try to paraphrase Ezra Klein's paraphrase of Sarah Binder, so I'll link here. But as a kind of spoiler, the filibuster wasn't invented to protect the rights of the minority party. Blame Aaron Burr.

Haplogroups

Skip to 32:29. Click here for more info.

Watch the magnificent series Faces of America. This was Part 4, the final installment. If you haven't already, go watch the whole thing, NOW!!

Capybara

The capybara is the world's largest rodent. It lives primarily in Brazil and weighs up to 140 pounds.



They're also the favorite food of anacondas.

Qat

Freshwater mussels help clean up the water

According to Green Guide, the mussels "suck water in, filter out bits of algae, bacteria and other tiny particles, and then release it back to the river cleaner than before. One mussel alone can cleanse as much as a gallon of water per hour."

The U.S. has by far the most species of freshwater mussels in the world, but we're losing them quickly. Sixty-nine percent of the species here are extinct or at risk of being extinct.

Oliver the humanzee

Oliver is a chimpanzee born in 1958 who does things that other chimps don't: he walks upright all the time, looks kinda like a cross between a human and a chimpanzee, and tries to mate with female humans. He was introduced to the world in 1976 and people had been making money off him for decades, until he finally found his happy place in a sanctuary outside San Antonio, TX. Even with years of medical research and overreacting idiots who wanted to show that there was a "missing link" (which makes no scientific sense), Oliver was proven to be a chimp. Just a really cool chimp.

Here's a documentary on him. I haven't watched it yet so I can't give it my seal of approval.

Discalced

Discalced means "without shoes."

Art handlers and their Olympics

Art handlers are people who lift and hang up art on the walls of bored rich people who can afford it. I didn't even know there was a certain group for this. I just assumed the rich got the four strongest Mexicans from the nearest train station. The art handlers often aspire to be artists, but are even poorer than artists, and some even have college degrees in fine arts.

They just had their first ever Art Handling Olympics, in which teams of art handlers competed in events that involved... handling art. Pretty straightforward and self-explanatory.

Pictures.

310(g) point of order

A 310(g) point of order is something the Republicans might just use to continue trying to obstruct progress. They'll probably claim that they can block reconciliation by throwing out this card, which "prohibits consideration of reconciliation legislation that contains recommendations with respect to Social Security." Of course, the health bill doesn't touch Social Security. You read it here first. (Well, actually Ezra Klein.)

Cranial nerves mnemonics

I had to learn all the names of the cranial nerves for a test this semester, and I used the mnemonic the teacher gave us:

On Old Olympus' Towering Top, A French And German Viewed And Hopped

That turned out to be a pretty lame mnemonic, because here was another one:

One Of Our Teachers Touched And Felt Virgin Girl's Vagina And Hymen

And to determine if the nerve is sensory (S), motor (M), or both (B), a student in our class gave us this mnemonic:

Some Say Marry Money, But My Brother Says Big Boobs Matter More

Ah, pre-med students. Too sexually repressed so they make up shit like this.

Should we be worried about food coming from the microwave?

Nope. The issue was brought up to me by a concerned family member a few days ago. Another one already believed the nonsense that microwave ovens can cause food to be "dangerous" in some way. I told them that was silly, and even if microwave ovens did do anything at all it would be an extremely small amount.

In fact, as I found out today, the only real concern is standing beside a leaky microwave. That can cause you to be exposed to radiation that may cause skin cancer and everything associated with summertime.

Green with envy

Where does that phrase come from? Here's where:

Judith S. Neaman and Carole G. Silver report that 'green' and 'pale' were alternate meanings of the same Greek word. In the seventh century B.C., the poetess Sappho, used the word 'green' to describe the complexion of a stricken lover. The Greeks believed that jealousy was accompanied by an overproduction of bile, lending a pallid green cast to the victim.

Henrietta Lacks

Henrietta Lacks was a black tobacco farmer in Virginia who got cervical cancer at the age of 30. In 1951, a Johns Hopkins doctor removed her tumor without her knowledge and sent it to scientists who had been trying to grow tissues in culture. And it turned out that Lacks' cells actually never died thereafter, making them the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture, much to the bewilderment of scientists even today. These are called HeLa cells, which are the first two letters taken from her first and last name. Among some landmarks associated with HeLa cells: they were used for the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization, and they were taken up to the moon to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity.

Lacks' story is told in a new book called The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by debut author Rebecca Skloot.

Ben Franklin first thought of the idea of daylight savings time...

...in 1784 in his waning years as an American delegate in Paris. He was trying to think of a way to save lamp oil.

Obscurantism

Obscurantism means "opposition to the spread of knowledge" or "being deliberately vague or obscure."

Trichotillomania

Trichotillomania, or TTM, is the compulsion to pull out one's hair. This can include scalp, eyelashes, facial, nose, pubic, eyebrows, or any other hair on the body. It usually results from anxiety, depression, PTSD, or OCD. The best treatment known so far is talk therapy.

Stick hand in warm water, pee

I got confused and didn't get the joke when Jon Stewart did this a few weeks ago. He pretends to stick Charlie Rangel's hand in a bowl of warm water while he's sleeping (skip to 5:00).

Actually, when I was watching it as I copied the video's embed code, I just noticed for the first time that the graphic shows Rangel peeing himself. I probably would have still not understood it had I paid attention to this fact before, but now I know the meaning of the little clip.

Supposedly, if you stick someone's hand in warm water while they're asleep, they piss themselves. This is really debated, though, and some urologists dismiss the idea. Any stimulus that represents running water can help you pee if you have the urge.

Red Bull Flugtag

Red Bull has these events they hold several times a year all around the world in which participants try to fly human-powered flying machines as far as they can over a body of water. It's called the Flugtag, which is German for "flying day."

Here's the one from August 25, 2007 in Austin, TX.

What does whale taste like?

Of course, reindeer or moose. Not exactly sure what that would taste like (I don't know why anyone wouldn't know)? Whale steak tastes exactly like regular steak but with a little bit of fish at the very end.

Eric Brewer

Eric Brewer is a former East Cleveland mayor who lost his re-election bid late last year after photos of him cross-dressing were leaked. Way too funny.

How does flossing help increase life expectancy?

I was somewhat skeptical of it at first but I guess it's true. Here's how flossing protects against heart disease:

When you floss, you help prevent your gums from becoming inflamed. That's a good thing. What is happening when your gums are inflamed is that you have a chronic bacterial infection in your mouth. This harms your arteries through two mechanisms: the bacteria find their way in to your arteries and hang out (causing plaques), and your body mounts an immune response to the bacteria in your mouth, causing inflammation (which in turn can cause your arteries to narrow). This makes it hard for your heart to do its job and can lead to heart disease.

No one knows for sure how many years that adds to life. Estimates range from 1.5 to 6.

Google Video without the videos

Google Video no longer lets users upload their videos. This happened last year. I hadn't gone to my GVideo account in a little over a year, and today I tried to upload but couldn't find the damn link to do it.

A stitch in time saves nine

Meaning: Doing the proper work now will save much more work in the future.

The phrase comes from 1700s Britain, when people said that sewing up a small hole in a piece of cloth will prevent the hole from becoming bigger, and thus having to sew it again.

Grandparent scam

A grandparent scam occurs when a scammer, usually in Canada, phones a senior citizen and pretends to be their grandchild. The scammer makes up a story of going to jail in Canada after getting drunk, and needs a couple thousand dollars for bail. But the "grandchild" doesn't want the grandparent to tell the child's parents. So the grandparent wires the money. A lot of times, the scammer has personal or family information on the real grandchild, probably from reading the local obituary in which family member names were listed, through a close contact, or from a social networking site.

According to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, in 2009 "grandchild" scammers pulled $4.5 million from the pockets of unsuspecting seniors this way. And most victims don't report the crime because they're too embarrassed to admit they got robbed.

And yes, I read AARP, 28 years before I'm eligible to join.

Hemianopia

Hemianopia is a condition where the patient experiences a loss of vision on one side of the visual field. There are also types of hemianopia when the defect occurs with both eyes: binasal, where the inner half of both the right and left visual fields are missing; and bitemporal, where the outer half of both fields are not present. Homonymous hemianopia happens when the same visual field is not there for both eyes.

Diners and restaurants

A restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner at set hours. A diner serves any of the three meals at anytime of the day.

Give me back my 1.26 microseconds

The recent earthquake in Chile caused the day to be shortened by 0.00000126 seconds. Here's why.

"The Earth is not a perfect sphere. It is pinched in slightly at the poles and bulges at the equator. As such, it rotates with a wobble just like a spinning top. However, changes in the distribution of mass can affect this spin."

"In the same way a skater speeds up a spin by pulling in their limbs, a quake can make the Earth rotate faster by nudging some of its mass closer to the planet's axis. Movements in atmosphere and oceans can have a similar effect."

Fibula mandibles

Since the fibula bears a negligible amount of body weight, it can be used for fixing a person's broken or diseased mandible.

(Yes, the source is WikiAnswers, but we learned about it in school.)

Technocracy

A technocracy is a hypothetical form of governance where the experts of particular fields rule those fields. This idea opposes a system in which politicians and businessmen, most of whom seek higher approval ratings or bigger profits without necessarily being thoroughly knowledgeable in some (or any) areas, get to make the decisions. This form of rule would more or less decentralize the daily activities of Congress (and Wall Street) and concentrate them more to the experts. So the economists would have their leaders, the engineers theirs, and the scientists theirs. They would probably all have to report to a central figure (the president).

The technocratic movement made big waves at the beginning of FDR's presidency in 1933, when a quarter of the nation was unemployed, but had died out by the end of the decade.

I guess I would consider myself a technocrat. I've certainly believed that a small group of elites should help form the social agenda -- I call them the intelligentsia. As an example, I'll take the issue of climate change and green energy. The scientists who have published peer-reviewed papers and won a Nobel Prize (Secretary of Energy Steven Chu) would explain what it is we're facing; the economists who have won a Nobel and write the most popular and most intelligent op-ed pieces in The New York Times (of course, Paul Krugman) would calculate how many new jobs we need to gain back a vibrant economy; and the engineers would create the best equipment for our infrastructure. And all this would be approved by a smart president.

But therein lies the problem. A president would still look at his or her approval ratings and political capital. And if we don't have a leader at the top, there would be no one to cull the ideas and suggestions of all the members of the fields in order to devise a plan. That's why I think this whole thing is for idealists -- it's something to ponder but not to lose any sleep over.

But you could also make the argument that once a country sees the good reaped from the social policies of the technocrats, the people will continue voting for the president in power. That's what happened in the case of FDR, who with the elites of certain professions helped shape the New Deal. FDR went on to get elected and re-elected four times. A lot of that went to dust, however, as Ronald Reagan took the reins and anti-intellectualism started to creep into the public discourse.

Now you have senior citizens shouting at their government leaders to get their government hands off their Medicare. Then you have other idiots who sincerely believe that the only thing the federal government should do is to protect us from foreign enemies and deliver our mail. I think there exists another class of elites -- the ones who consciously manipulate the public by proclaiming that government can do almost no good. Hence, the general population isn't as attracted to intelligent conversations that deal more with objective truth as much as they are to a bloviating has-been on a once-important weekly news show. Those elites are damn good. I call them the ones with conscious intent.

But has it always been like this? Have we always fell back on on our amygdala instead of disciplining ourselves to use our prefrontal cortex? Would the desire for something like a technocracy right now lead us right back to where we currently are, simply because there is an equal (lots of times stronger) and opposite force on the other side, and also because most members of the dabble-dabble (my made-up term for the little man, the group that includes me, though I hope I'm not like many of them) just don't feel like picking up an intellectually honest and valid book?

That's it for my free association rant. That's a lot for one concept.