White space.

so here's something cool I did:
Took a random sheet of paper out of me bag whilst on the train this thursday.
The random sheet of paper was the last page of a whole bunch of notes that my psych professor had emailed me to help in studying for the exam she was giving.
The words were in a typewriter font; they formed a pretty shape on the page; a sweet square on this white eight-and-a-half by eleven.
I folded the empty white space on the bottom to equalize the margins.
These are the words I was looking at:

SECOND AND THIRD TRIMESTERS- HIGHER THAN normal death rate in the first weeks of life

-continued to climb until age 3 months

-lower rates of resistence- succumbed to local infections

-if they survived to one year, risk was over.

AGE 19- all boys called to draft. Measurements taken

Height showed usual SES factors- re family size and diet

-manual workers an inch shorter than sons of wealthier men

- chldrn from large families shorter

-later born shorter than first borns

EG kids with <>

But at age 19, postnatal nutrition was > important than prenatal nutrition in those up for the draft

Tests of mental function followed SES lines and not those related to prenatal nutrition

(but remember testing only survivors and those competent for draft)

Those who didn't make it to the draft -]

Fetus starved in the first trimester

-2X > likely to have spinal bifida -spine fails to close properly) and hydrocephalus

- lack of folic acid

Female Babies who were starved in the famine tended to have lighter BW babies themselves

(first trimester starvation) These starved babies were born normal BW yet had lighter babies

Those starved in 3^rd trimester were lighter BW yet had normal BW babies

The effect on first trimester carries over to next generation

Choice made by nature

-early starvation takes from the mother rather than the child

-as starvation continues, mother and child share the brunt of starvation

-prolonged starvation acts to sacrifice the child because if mother dies, so will child

I challenged myself kacha: Write a poem using whichever of these arbitrary words I choose, sticking to the order in which they appear on the page. The poem has to have a consistent mood and be somewhat meaningful.
T'was cool. Try it if ya want. Try it with these words so I can see. with my eyes. show me. tx. :')
Here's what I wrote.

Second, third- higher!
Death in the first weeks of life.
Continue to climb, lower resistance,
Succumb, survive.

Risk takers, manual workers
Short sons of men-
Test of manual function follow those,
Those, who didn't make it over.

Choice, starvation
Mother and child share the brunt of sacrifice,
Because,
if mother dies, so will child.

because she Shares...

Discovering Nirvana. OR When a brain scientist suffers a stroke...

dear dotted world: I miss you.

If people come from monkeys, are we locking up potential humans in the zoo?

How is it possible to have a civil war?

and why am i even thinking about this stuff when i should be thinking about social loafing, self-help groups, and the federal reserves...?

Intelligence

Are our understandings first internal or external?
Do words cause our understanding of concepts, or do new understandings come to be expressed in words?
Does grammar help us form concepts in an organized manner? Or do we have thoughts organized in our brain and only use grammar to express those to others?

And why is every single professor using the word indigenous today?

Define Psych

Sesory issues- invented by OT's (NOT the kind that go to school on EP), because they just had nothing to do.

--------
Instead of A group of developmental disabilities defined by significant impariments in social interaction and communication and the presence of unusual behaviors and interests Dr. Psych calls Autism "Oh, just a garbage can term for people with funky social quirks." Talk about formalities.

Virgil

Do we see with our eyes?

If our brains never grasped the concepts of volume, depth, shape, distance, height and context, would we be living in a huge flat picture? And if we were, then what would photos be?

bits I picked of:
To See and Not To See
by Oliver Sacks
The New Yorker (like a hundred yrs ago)

...who told me about his daughter's fiance, a fifty-year-old man named Virgil, who had been virtually blind since early childhood.
Forward to a surgery that enables him to see with his right eye.

"Virgil can SEE!... entire office in tears, first time Virgil has sight for forty years..."
But the following day she (his fiance, Amy) remarks, "Trying to adjust to being sighted, tough to go from blindness to sighted. Has to think faster, not able to trust vision yet...Like baby just learning to see, everything new, exciting, scary, unsure of what seeing means." (and no, she doesnt' speak in note form:) this is from her diary.)

So what would vision be like in such a patient? Would it be "normal" from the moment vision was restored? This is the commonsensical notion- that the eyes will be opened, the scales will fall from them, and (in the words of the New Testament, and why nit the old, freg mir nit, I'm pretty sure it's in there somewhere too) the blind man will "receive" sight.

But could it be that simple? Was not experience necessary to see? Did one not have to learn to see? ... the bandage on his eye was finally removed, and Virgil's eye was finally exposed, without cover, to the world. The moment of truth had finally come.

Or had it? The truth of the matter was infinitely stranger. The dramatic moment stayed vacant, grew longer, sagged. No cry, "I CAN SEE!" burst from Virgil's lips. He seemed to be staring blankly at the surgeon, who stood before him, still holding the bandages. Only when the surgeon spoke- saying "Well?"- did a look of recognition cross Virgil's face.

Virgil later said that int his first moment he had no idea what he was seeing. There was light, there was movement, there was color, all mixed up, all meaningless, a blur. Then out of the blur came a voice that said, "Well?" Then, and only then, he said, did he finally realize that this chaos of light and shadow was a face- and the face of his surgeon.

When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not given the world: we make the world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection. But when Virgil opened his eye, after being blind for 45 years- having little more than an infant's visual experience, and this long forgotten- there were no visual memories to support a perception, there was no world of experience and meaning awaiting him. He saw, but what he saw had no coherence.

And blah blah blah, it goes on for 20 more pages, giving examples and little stories...and he ends up losing his sight at the end. wala! how's that for a spoiler?!:)

I love school. I love to learn. I love to know.
and duh, I love to spoil good stories:-p

Lokshen's Evolution

along with our worlds conception of him. Check this:
First it was The Great Pump ---> the great machine ---> the great telegraph ---> the great switchboard ---> the great computer ---> ??
Maybe one day, some smart brain will call it just that. hmm...problee not, but.
--------
So how come lil kids put everything into their mouths?
Prize for the best answer.
--------
Agnes de Mille was a dancer who lost sensation in her right hand all the way up to her shoulder. She was so in tune with her body's every muscle that if a person picked her hand up, even though she couldn't feel anything in the actual arm or hand... she was able to know her hand was raised from the slight increase in tension in her shoulder muscle. Gosh! And you gotta see this woman--- she must be older than 90, and she's all pritzed up in a velvet gown and tight bun with a bow. Duh she could do that.

in and of itself

= in itself + of itself.
ahh.