Ramblings & ephemera
photo credit: State Library of New South Wales collection
From Peter Stark’s “As Freezing Persons Recollect the Snow–First Chill–Then Stupor–Then the Letting Go” (Outside: January 1997):
There is no precise core temperature at which the human body perishes from cold. At Dachau’s cold-water immersion baths, Nazi doctors calculated death to arrive at around 77 degrees Fahrenheit. [...]
Posted on June 30th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: education, science | No Comments »
From Roger Ebert’s “Go gentle into that good night” (Roger Ebert’s Journal: 2 May 2009):
What I expect will most probably happen [when I die] is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function, and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. Perhaps I [...]
Posted on May 5th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, commonplace book, language & literature, religion, science | No Comments »
From Allen Abel and Madeleine Czigler’s “Scandal, communism, blood” (National Post: 27 June 2008):
The blood-red allure of lipstick is a gift of a parasitic insect that infests cactus plants, principally in Mexico and Peru. It has been known since Aztec and Mayan times that, when boiled, the body of the cochineal insect dissolves into a [...]
Posted on March 8th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, history, religion, science | No Comments »
From THE MATHEMATICS OF LOVE: A Talk with John Gottman (Edge: 14 April 2004):
So far, his surmise is that “respect and affection are essential to all relationships working and contempt destroys them. It may differ from culture to culture how to communicate respect, and how to communicate affection, and how not to do it, but [...]
Posted on February 6th, 2009 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science | No Comments »
From Anna Gosline’s “Death special: How does it feel to die?” (New Scientist: 13 October 2007):
Death comes in many guises, but one way or another it is usually a lack of oxygen to the brain that delivers the coup de grâce. Whether as a result of a heart attack, drowning or suffocation, for example, people [...]
Posted on December 8th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, science, weird | No Comments »
From Federico Biancuzzi’s interview with security researchers Greg Hoglund & Gary McGraw, authors of Exploiting Online Games, in “Real Flaws in Virtual Worlds” (SecurityFocus: 20 December 2007):
The more I dug into online game security, the more interesting things became. There are multiple threads intersecting in our book: hackers who cheat in online games and are [...]
Posted on November 21st, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, law, security, social software, tech in changing society, technology | No Comments »
From Wade Davis’ “Wade Davis: an Inuit elder and his shit knife” (Boing Boing: 26 September 2008):
The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. [...]
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history | No Comments »
From Lauren Davis’ “Delusion or Alien Invasion? Disorders That Make Life Seem Like Scifi” (io9: 27 September 2008):
Capgras Delusion: You believe a loved one has been replaced with an exact duplicate.
…
Reduplicative Paramnesia: You believe that a place or location has been moved to another site, or has been duplicated and exists in two places simultaneously.
…
Alien [...]
Posted on September 28th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science, weird | No Comments »
From Timothy Noah’s “Bush’s Fart-Joke Legacy” (Slate: 2 October 2006):
Legend has it that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, once farted in the presence of Queen Elizabeth I, whereupon he went into exile for seven years. On his return, the queen reputedly greeted, “My lord, we had quite forgot the fart.”
Related posts
Ulysses Grant [...]
Posted on November 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, politics | Comments Off
From Daniel Brook’s “The Problem of Prison Rape” (Legal Affairs: March/April 2004):
In his 18 months at [the maximum-security Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Tex.], [Roderick Johnson, a 35-year-old African-American who is suing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice] did time as the property of the Bloods, the Crips, the Mandingo Warriors, and the Mexican Mafia, [...]
Posted on June 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, politics, security | Comments Off
From Emily Bazelon’s “Grave Offense” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2002):
In December 1882, hundreds of black Philadelphians gathered at the city morgue. They feared that family members whom they had recently buried were, as a reporter put it, “amongst the staring corpses” that lay inside. Six bodies that had been taken from their graves at Lebanon Cemetery, [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, language & literature, law, science | Comments Off
From Brendan I. Koerner’s “Under the Microscope” (Legal Affairs: July/August 2002):
The mantra of forensic evidence examination is “ACE-V.” The acronym stands for Analysis, Comparison, Evaluation, and Verification, which forensic scientists compare with the step-by-step method drilled into countless chemistry students. “Instead of hypothesis, data collection, conclusion, we have ACE-V,” says Elaine Pagliaro, an expert at [...]
Posted on May 21st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, law, science, security | Comments Off
From The New York Times Magazine’s “Skin Literature“:
Most artists spend their careers trying to create something that will live forever. But the writer Shelley Jackson is creating a work of literature that is intentionally and indisputably mortal. Jackson is publishing her latest short story by recruiting 2,095 people, each of whom will have one word [...]
Posted on April 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, cool stuff, fiction, language & literature, on writing, weird | Comments Off
From “Mummified woman died naturally“:
A woman whose mummified body was dressed in a white gown and placed in front of a television for 2½ years died from heart disease. …
Officials never suspected abuse or foul play after finding Johannas Pope, 61, in her Madisonville home Jan. 4.
Pope told her caretaker, Kathy Painter, she didn’t want [...]
Posted on February 9th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: commonplace book, weird | Comments Off
From CNN’s “World without pain is hell, parent says“:
Roberto is one of 17 people in the United States with “congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis,” referred to as CIPA by the few people who know about it. …
Other abnormalities quickly surfaced. Roberto was severely susceptible to heatstroke on hot summer days. His parents soon noticed [...]
Posted on January 29th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science, weird | Comments Off
From Ben Jones’ Benblog, in February 2003:
My friend Ben Jones talks about his feet, back when he was a waiter: “My feet are my lifeblood. Even after I’m done waiting, I don’t think I’ll ever think of my feet the same way. They have been my best friends over the last year, suffering through miles [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off
GranneBlog is proudly powered by WordPress and WPDesigner.
