Popular Culture
sb admin | November 30, 2007Anaesthetist's Hymn performed by the comedy duo Amateur Transplants, set to the music of Total Eclipse of the Heart.
[P.S. What's this got to do with the brain? Consciousness.]
sb admin | November 23, 2007This Friday is a holiday (in America, at least) and what's better on a holiday than a rerun? Yay for reruns. So, I've written about the Amygdaloids before, but here's an introduction video in case you didn't see it (or want to enjoy it again). Also, this band of rockin' cognitive scientists has a CD available now.
The Amygdaloids: Live concert at Union Hall
Preview their new CD here (buy it here) alongside descriptions of each brain-based song.
"Past lovers often leave strong and enduring memories. 'A Trace' tells a story about this. Memory researchers in the know will figure out that the…
sb admin | November 19, 2007I couldn't wait for Multimedia Friday to post this video, it's just too funny.
I Am the Very Model of a Psychopharmacologist is set to Gilbert and Sullivan's classic song with animation. Created by Stephen M Stahl, MD, PhD, of the Neurosciences Education Institute, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, author of Essential Psychopharmacology. Credentials for neuropsychopharmacological hilarity.
sb admin | November 16, 2007
Anti-drug ad parody that's also an anti-drug ad itself. This is Your Brain on Heroin: Any Questions?.
omnibrain | November 14, 2007David Ng from The World's Fair has decided to start another meme.... Here's the lowdown:
Anyway, this meme asks that you come up with your own scientific eponym. What's that exactly? Well, first read this excellent primer by Samuel Arbesman, which basically provides a step by step description of how to do this effectively. Then have a go at your own blog. If all goes well, I'd like to create a page at the Science Creative Quarterly, that collects (and links to) the good ones.
So onto the Higgins-Levinthal Dictum:
Also known as "the why fat smoking republicans are responsible for 9/11 number…
sb admin | November 9, 2007The Onion News Network brings us In The Know: Is The Government Spying On Paranoid Schizophrenics Enough? Satire of a talk show with pundits who promote more and better spying on people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Note: It's "people diagnosed with" (or just "people with") and not "schizophrenics" as people are more than their differences and labels. But that's not as funny, is it?
omnibrain | November 7, 2007If you had control of the crowd behind a free throw shooter at a basketball game and you wanted him to miss what would you do?
Here's one highly entertaining way:
Help us come up with some others!
sb admin | October 31, 2007Another in the hilarious vintage BBC Look Around You series, this is 4 - Ghosts. Bwa-ha-ha.
sb admin | October 29, 2007
You lol'ed at science education spoof Look Around You: Brain, and now for Halloween here's Look Around You: Ghosts. In this nine minute pseudoscience mockumentary you'll learn things like, "Ectoplasm is perfectly safe to eat, and tastes like pig's milk." Spooky!
oracknows | October 28, 2007These days, pretty much everyone, smokers included, knows that smoking is bad for you. It promotes lung cancer (and several other varieties of cancer as well), heart disease, emphysema, and a number of other health problems. If you ask most smokers, they will tell you that they'd like to quit but have found it very difficult. Indeed, we are now starting to appreciate that secondhand smoke is a health hazard, leading some states and localities to ban smoking in public spaces.
This is a huge change in the 43 years since the original Surgeon General's report on the danger of smoking was released…
sb admin | October 26, 2007
Dave Kellet jokes about a visual illusion the visual pop-out phenomenon, in his webcomic Sheldon. Click the cropped image to see the full comic strip. Thanks Dave!
[Thanks, T.N. for the correction. Two blog posts about it here and here.]
sb admin | October 26, 2007In time for Halloween:
Trailer for Central State: Asylum for the Insane. A filmmaker prowls a closed mental institution to "...uncover the mysteries left behind when the facilities closed in 1994." There's lots of shaky handheld camerawork in poorly lit tunnels, and shakier rumours of ghosts, but no exploration into the disappearance of former patients. Homelessness and prisons, that's scary, not the supposed ghosts that a supposed psychic says are "like a tornado" in the building.
What's actually "menacing and still threatening" is not an old hospital but the stigma attached to mental…
sb admin | October 19, 2007
Look Around You: Brain. "The brain is basically a wrinkled bag of skin filled with warm water, veins, and thought muscles. ... The opposite of the brain is probably the bum." Brief vintage BBC parody of science education films about the brain. Watch through to the end, when a brain in a jar is rewarded with a special treat for performing a task.
oracknows | October 10, 2007One of the most important responsibilities of health care workers and hospitals is to protect the privacy of the patients for whom they care. Unfortunately, in the case of George Clooney's recent hospitalization for injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash, a consequence of electronic medical records was revealed when dozens of employees, some of whom apparently leaked the information to the press, accessed Clooney's medical records. Of course, these employees didn't seem to realize that EMRs allow the tracking and identification of anyone who logs on to the system. Anyone who logs on leaves…
omnibrain | October 5, 2007It's that time of year again when the most exciting set of awards for us here at Omni Brain are announced. If you don't know what the Ig Nobels are you're missing out on a very important part of science! According to some article at MSNBC "The annual no-rules awards ceremony, where flying paper airplanes and interrupting honored speakers are commonplace, pokes fun at bizarre and improbable achievements in real-life scientific research."
This year some of my favorite prizes were:
NUTRITION: Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings,…
sb admin | October 5, 2007
Via The Center for Narcolepsy at Stanford School of Medicine], this video explains:
Various narcoleptic episodes in dogs. Sporadic cases of narcolepsy in dogs is due to hypocretin peptide deficiency while the familial form is due to mutations in one of the two hypocretin receptor genes (hcrtr2). Various dogs are shown here in a clip narrated by Dr. Emmanuel Mignot.
Or for the tabloid take, watch Skeeter the Narcoleptic Poodle from Inside Edition. "Skeeter's troubles staying awake are heartbreaking..."
Visit the Sleep Foundation to learn more.
sb admin | September 28, 2007
YT parody of an ad for HeadOn, a homeopathic topical analgesic for headaches that's smeared on the forehead.
The official HeadOn site (I won't link since "the site is for the use of US residents only;" sorry I inadvertently looked and I'm not American, I didn't know I wasn't supposed to) states, "The active ingredients in HeadOn are diluted much more than the minimum required dilution dictated by the monograph of the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States and therefore represent no health risk whatsoever." Yes, and likely no health benefit whatsoever either.
The video HeadOn…
oracknows | September 22, 2007I have to tip my hat to Kevin Leitch. I really do. He's done something that I couldn't manage to force myself to do, at least not completely.
He's subjected himself to the entire episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show in which Jenny McCarthy showed up to plug her new book about her fight to "save" her child from autism, Louder Than Words: A Mother's Journey in Healing Autism.
Far be it from me to attack Jenny McCarthy for wanting to help her autistic son. Her devotion is admirable, and virtually all parents, other than crappy parents, want to help their children. The problem is that, in seeking to…