Cafe Einstein: LPTP Triskaidekaphenia

Good to see non-commutation being recognised as important for some activities in daily life. :-)

Here's another example :

*a full and notable day, well remembered for perpetuity*
*has a Flaming B-52*

versus :

*has a Flaming B-52*
*err .... ummm*

There is a piece of vacuum inside everyone's head, so you've haven't narrowed the field at all David. A very safe comment indeed. :-)

Cheers, Mike.

[Boring Neurophysiological Interlude]

In the olden & golden days b/4 this modern fad for scanning and such, the insides of heads were only inspected closely if things were going badly. The vast number of brains out there were quite un-inspected either during life or after demise. So one could in blind certainty refer to Gray's Anatomy feeling secure in obtaining The Structural Truth.

Fast forward to now, where seriously detailed anatomical descriptions are available in generality and with negligible risk* to the patient. Now the Gray's Anatomy Brain Plan is in significant minority some thirty years into our scanning era. Opinions vary, but estimates are around at least 1/3 of people are missing an entire bit of brain if compared to the old standard. That might be an entire lobe, or sub-lobe, or merely a fold or two of the really brocolli-cabbagey areas. On functional testing almost all of those have either no problems in life and/or are undifferentiable from norms ( even bearing in mind that 'the norm' is clearly now quite polluted with respect to traditional analyses ).

Partly this is thought to be due to 'neuroplasticity', a rather over-stated effect, allowing in early childhood some re-application of functions to other areas. For the rest it is probably also habit, training and experience producing 'workarounds'. In any event variation is the rule. In my view this is to be celebrated, not decried. So the question is :

.... have you looked in/at your brain recently ?? :-)

[\Boring Neurophysiological Interlude]

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Parliamentary Lemma : your average local representative is not the full quid nor likely ever was. But you all knew this beforehand ....

* Difficulties with injected contrast materials and the like, if used. Thanks to very sensitive solid state detector design X-radiation dose from a modern CT scanner is rather less than increased cosmic ray impacts encountered during a long commercial plane flight. But don't tell the lawyers : they still would like to construct a decent revenue stream from this 'problem' eg. cell phones and/or power lines and/or YourLocalCorporateBigBagOfMoney causing cancers. But heck, don't let truth - especially lack of correlation when properly studied in the long term - get in the way of a profitable franchise. See The Erin Brockovich Institute Of Biochemistry. It's right next to The Jane Fonda University Of Nuclear Engineering.

Goodnight everyone. :-)

Bill04