November 2010
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WatchA Murder of Crows | Nature
A full hour of Corvids on PBS. This is what I’m doing tonight.
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October 2010
53 posts
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Words, plants and places wholly related, sort of:...
Gin and juniper: how could those words not be related? It seemed like a no-brainer since gin comes from juniper berries. But the OED led me astray uncharacteristically: in the definition of “juniper” there is no explication of a relation to “gin”, that most important and potent of juniper by-products. Weird.
Juniper’s scientific name, from the original Latin, is...
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Recently, in cruel ironies of speech language...
1. Handing your aphasic client a 10-page diagnostic and treatment report detailing the assessments administered, the subtleties of the therapy provided and the outcomes thereof, when you know very well that the assessments administered demonstrate that this person cannot read, because this person has aphasia.
2. Attempting to administer LSVT (Loudness-recalibration therapy for people with...
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The patron saint of those who others find...
The Adult Neurological Disorders Diagnostic team, of which I am a part, has been having a rough time of it this semester. Being a saucily sacrilegious bunch, we’ve taken to calling on the saints to lift our spirits.
It started, like many good laughs, with the hagiography of Saint Rocco. Since he’s already the patron of a plethora of silly things (diseased cattle, gravediggers,...
Bread-buying game changer
When you go to buy bread in the grocery store, have you ever wondered which is the freshest, so you “squeeze” for freshness or softness? Did you know that bread is delivered fresh to the stores five days a week? Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has a different color twist tie. They are: Monday = Blue, Tuesday = Green, Thursday = Red, Friday =...
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“once upon a time Cinderella
and he died stepmother
really mean
the cats...”
– Cinderella Story, as told by a person with aphasia; put into stanzas by me.
It’s hard to read these transcriptions without inserting my own pattern of stresses and pauses. My mind is aching to find the rhythm under the printed words. I think here I’ve channeled the poetic love-child...
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The Cinderella Story, or why I'll be slaving away...
People with aphasia have widespread, multimodal communication impairments. One of the best ways to assess their overall communicative abilities is to collect a connected speech sample. Connected speech is what it sounds like: a string of uninterrupted speech. It’s not a conversation, or the clinician asking a bunch of questions and the client responding; it’s just the client...
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The National, “Slow Show”
Shani and...
my world, unraveling
loscheiner: what if she's an Ok Cupid Turing machine?
loscheiner: and like, her answers are programmed for maximal teej response
tristn: me and her already talked about that
tristn: wait
tristn: she has to be a turing-test machine if we talked about whether she's a robot
loscheiner: WHAT IF I'M A TURING MACHINE???
loscheiner: fffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu
tristn: that's precisely the thing that a robot meant to talk to me would talk about
loscheiner: i don't think im a robot
loscheiner: but then why did i bring it up?
loscheiner: ....questioning my existence teej
loscheiner: uncool
tristn: quit it
tristn: i don't like what just happened
loscheiner: you haven't convinced me that i'm not a robot.
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Military blood test may detect mild brain injuries... →
” … researchers have been able to detect at least two proteins that are normally found in brain cells and are released when the cells break open after somebody suffers a brain injury … the level of proteins released from the injured cells are high enough, that they cross the blood-brain barrier and therefore can be detected in measurable quantities.”
For people who work...
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Sparklehorse, “It’s a wonderful...
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What does the creek bring tonight?
In my mind, the question was settled: great blue herons are enormous. This one was big enough to cause me to stall my bike alongside the path and stare out into the marsh. Even from this distance he was impressively large, dominating the shallow pool. I looked at him skeptically: it seemed improbable that so much bird could be supported on so little leg. I thought, we’d be about evenly...
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“Your personality gives you at least five inches in my book.”
– Tristan
Apparently, he and Eush were discussing my height and both assumed I was substantially taller than I actually am. If my personality gains me 5 inches, that makes me a sweet 5’4 … Apparently, I don’t come off short on the internet.
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“When I see Bin Laden with his AK-47, I got nervous. But what can I do,...”
– Mikhail Kalashnikov on his most famous invention, the AK-47 (via wikipedia). Unexpectedly, I’m looking forward to the Fresh Air segment on the history of the AK-47.
I always hated guns, but man did Ethan love them. He had himself an SKS, which is a lot like an AK-47 but with a bayonet, and...
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Denver International
Sitting in a deserted wing of DIA: Waiting for James to land, chatting with Tristan. Makes me wonder, if it weren’t for my blog, where would I be tonight? Some bar in downtown Boulder, probably. Thanks tumblr, for letting me keep on touch with my friends back home and giving me the opportunity to meet so many wonderful new people. I would sit here on the floor of DIA and eat late-night...
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Maté Latté
After “plantain plantation”, my second favorite string of words is “maté latté”. Every once in a while you’ll be sitting at a coffee shop in Boulder and some yuppie orders a maté latté. When the barista sets down their beverage and calls it out, I have a little inward giggle. I just love to say those words, “maté latté”. The phonotactics feel exotic. I...
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Plantain Plantation
I’m sure this happens to you, too. Random thoughts swirl around your head just as you’e dozing off. Sometimes these are ungrammatical strings of word soup, which makes them hard to remember. Sometimes they are sensical, but have no obvious association to your life. One I recall was, “Sally never did learn to tango dance.”
More recently, I was drifting off thinking of a...
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Potential Genetic Factors in Parkinson's Disease →
Researchers have found about 10 gene sets that are implicated in the electron transport chain in the neurons of people with Parkinson’s disease. You’ll have to ask baseln and taf for an explanation of “gene sets”; I have no idea what those are. What I do understand is that something screwy is going on with how neuronal mitochondria are producing energy. If the...
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Tumblr, stop publishing my queued posts.
Thanks.
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In other news, sort of
NPR this morning was ridiculous: somehow, instead of news I wound up listening to a facebookified version of Hamlet. Trying to make up for the news I didn’t hear, I returned to NPR thinking I’d stream All Things Considered. An article on the main page caught my eye and I clicked through to read it. I was then redirected to a site telling me that the page was lost, but that I should...
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In which I make up for lost time
I lost my wallet last week, in a fit of an Indian food craving. Biking along the Creek Path it must’ve fallen out of my back pocket. The nice folks at the Indian restaurant let me keep my take out, anyway; I wrote them an IOU.
I searched everywhere on the path, all the way back home, but never did find it. I imagine a homeless man has been using my bus pass, and I’m comfortable...
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Adult neurogenic communication diagnostic: severe...
Today in my neurogenic communication disorders diagnostic we are working with a man who has a history of strokes and seizures. He presents with severe nonfluent aphasia as well as early-stage Parkinsonian symptoms and potentially dementia. He has virtually no spoken output. When he did speak, his voice was quiet, mumbly and breathy- typical of Parkinson’s.
After an interview (his wife...
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The King, the Queen and Hamlet are now zombies. →
Thanks NPR. The facebook-status-update version of Hamlet is probably much better than anything that’s actually going on in the world.
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