I’m not sure precisely where the line falls between well-adjusted individual and crazy cat lady (or cat person, to be gender-neutral), but I want to say for the record that the quantity of cats in my home is within the legal limit. I have a deep appreciation of felines on both an aesthetic and a scientific level. I’m not one of your run-of-the-mill cat lovers who will squee over every cat video on YouTube–except maybe this one, and possibly this one, and well, maybe I do […]
There’s a human being behind that brain, people
When Henry Molaison was 7 or 8 years old he collided with a bicycle and hit his head, an incident that many scientists believe was the cause of his subsequent epileptic seizures. By the time he turned 27, Henry and his parents were desperate for relief from what had become a debilitating condition, so much so that they agreed to let Dr. William Scoville, a neurosurgeon at Hartford Hospital, perform a lobotomy. This would be a new type of lobotomy that would specifically target the medial temporal lobes. While […]
Some Books Can’t Be Read Too Many Times
I don’t recall exactly how old I was the first time I read A Christmas Carol, but I was in grade school, and I knew enough to know that this Dickens fellow was an author adults read. Still, the volume was thin enough to be un-intimidating, and the illustrations were friendly, so I checked it out of the library (with the encouragement of the local librarian, I should say!). I remember being a bit taken aback when Dickens spent the better part of the first […]
Religion, Identity, and Flossing
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour is a story of contradictions, which perhaps explains why I’ve been having trouble getting started on this review. I liked this novel, but I’m sort of at a loss to explain what I liked about it. Maybe it’s the darkly comic tone of the novel, or the interplay of characters. But mostly I think it’s because it raises a bunch of philosophical questions that it doesn’t really ever answer, and I’m a sucker for that. (Note, if that […]