Body parts

Haven taken human anatomy, I have learned a whole bunch of impractical information. Here are some great terms I learned: 

Caruncle: This is the little red thingy in the corner of your eye. It contains oil and sweat glands.

 

Philtrum: This is the little cleft or groove that connects your upper lip to your nose

 

 

Patrick:  Just kidding, this isn't the technical term. But it is the term used by my TA's to teach me the pons, medulla oblangata, and cerebral and cerebellar peduncles in the brain. Because it looks like Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants. Can you see him?

 Well, this is actually a terrible picture. But imagine Patrick being upside down where the pons and medulla are (with his belly being the pons) and his invisible arms reaching back to the cerebellum. I think you have to see it in real life to appreciate it.

Don't gamble

I came across a gambling simulator and tried to win the Mega Million Lottery. It didn't work. The simulator had me play 1040 times (which is the equivalent of twice a week for 10 years) at one dollar a bet, costing me $1,040 to play. How much did I win? Only $64. Sad day.

Try it out yourself. Don't gamble. It doesn't work.

Cloth diapers

Katie and I recently switched from using disposable diapers for Olivia to reusable diapers. I used to think that using cloth diapers was better for the environment, but that was until I wrote this a couple of months ago. Cloth diapers actually leave a larger carbon footprint than disposable diapers. I guess we can see that washing machines and dryers are worse for the environment than filling landfills with disposable diapers.

So we're switching purely for monetary reasons. I kind of feel like a bad guy from Captain Planet, wearing a monocle and stroking my cat and laughing while a forest gets cut down. However, we just got a drying rack to use in place of a dryer. So maybe I'm at the level of an eco-villain who wears a monocle and strokes a cat while laughing over a piece of litter on the ground.

100 days

If you look at that little blue box on the right hand side of my blog, it says that I have 100 days left to post. Whoo hoo! There is a light at the end of the tunnel! I thought I would take this time to thank you, loyal readers, for reading and following this blog. I hope you enjoy the next 99 days.

Lux et Veritas

This is Latin for "light and truth." It is also the motto for the Southern College of Optometry. It also just so happens to be the motto for Yale University. And I'm pretty sure that Yale copied SCO...

So you know what else is interesting? "Light and truth" in Hebrew is אורים ותמי, which is "urim and thummim." This is actually on Yale's coat of arms.

Anyway, that was your random fact of the day. And I was accepted at SCO this week. Woo hoo! I'm still interviewing at other schools, but SCO looks pretty promising because they're not going to make me take biochemistry.

Gut Sliding

Have you ever looked at a caterpillar crawling? They kind of look like waves, with the caterpillar moving its back legs first and then the rest of its body following. But this isn't true. I read an article about this in Smithsonian magazine. Some scientists at Tufts University used x-rays to look at hawkmoth caterpillars while they crawl. The actually throw their insides forward, and then the rest of the caterpillar follows. They call this mechanism "gut sliding." It's pretty interesting.

Pococurante Dawn

Last week I was in the airport in the early early morning. The sun hadn't even risen yet. I sat by the big window looking over the landing and takeoff strip and each minute the sky got a little bit lighter.There was a woman standing in front of the big window looking intently at the spot where the sun would rise at any moment. A minute passed by. Five minutes. Ten minutes. She was still standing there, waiting to see the sun peak over the horizon. Finally, the top edge of the sun poked up and brilliant sunlight immediately flooded the entire terminal. It was actually pretty impressive. I quickly looked over at the woman who had been standing there for such a long time to see what her reaction would be.

This is what she said:

"Meh..."


And then she walked away.