Creutzman Belling Syndrome

Creutzman Belling Syndrome is an incredibly rare condition that is caused by a head injury and subsequent oedema to the left pre-frontal lobe of the brain. It causes a profound inability to lie or even repress thoughts. Information on this condition is very rare and I have been unable to find any more information on this extremely rare but fascinating condition. If anyone has any more information please post a comment and I will get back to you.

Word Warriors

A friend of mine sent me a list of words that have fallen into disrepute. There have been attempts to bring these words into the public eye once more.


Concupiscence-  /kɒnˈkyupɪsəns, kɒŋ-/ Show Spelled[kon-kyoo-pi-suhns]

noun

1. 

ardent, usually sensuous longing. 

Evanescent- [ev-uh-nes-uhnt]

adjective

1.

vanishing;fading away; fleeting.

2.

tending to become imperceptable; scarcely perceptable.

Ossify- /ˈɒsəˌfaɪ/ Show Spelled [os-uh-fahy] 

verb (used with object)

1.

to convert into or cause to harden like bone.

Paroxysm- [par-uhk-siz-uhm] 

noun

1.

any sudden, violent outburst; a fit of violent action or emotion: paroxysms of rage.

2.

Pathology . a severe attack or a sudden increase in intensity of a disease, usually recurring periodically.
Schadenfreude- /ˈʃɑdnˌfrɔɪdə/ Show Spelled[shahd-n-froi-duh]

 

noun

1. 

satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

Sibilant- [sib-uh-luhnt] 

adjective

1.

hissing.

Hornswoggle- [hawrn-swog-uhl] 

verb 

Slang.

1.

To swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax.

Draconian- [drey-koh-nee-uhn]

adjective

1.

of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Draco  or his code of laws.

2.

( often lowercase ) rigorous; unusually severe or cruel: Draconian forms of punishment.

Also, Draconic.

Penurious- [puh-nyoor-ee-uhs]  

adjective

1.

extremely stingy; parsimonious; miserly.

2.

extremely poor; destitute; indigent.

3.

poorly or inadequately supplied; lacking in means or resources.

These are just a few, I am sure, words that are being ignored or replaced with such words as "LOL," "ROFL," "sup" and "wazzup." As you can probably see there are very few of us who actually care about the preservation of our more archaic words.

Modern Day Bards

A bard is someone like the Brothers Grimm, they tell fairy tales and sometimes sing and dance. Today we don't really have bards, nowadays we have CNN, Fox news, 9 news, 7 news, and every other news station in the world. The difference of course being that a bards story was at least based on truth. Todays news stations tell an incredibly stylised version of reality one that has been spun from a true event but it has been so warped it is unrecognisable from the truth. Media Watch is a show on ABC that points out the various errors that is so often spewed from news networks. It is ironic therefore that Media Watch has made its fair share of mistakes. So this begs the question is any news station reliable? Short answer: no. The long answer involves a rather long rant about todays ethics and modern consumerism and ultimately ends with this answer: no. In short it seems that we have no completely and undeniably reliable news network that relays the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Oh well. We're living in a miraculous time I suppose. Food for thought.

Schrödinger's Cat

In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger proposed an experiment to explain the Coopenhagen interpretation of Quantam Mechanics, in which a cat is placed in a box with a sealed vile of poison that would break open when radiation was detected by a Geiger counter. Since no one could tell whether the cat is alive or dead it can be thought of as both alive and dead.

As this is a thought experiment I felt that it should be on my thoughts blog.

One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges, and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts. It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself, it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

—Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger

Each of these three rows is a wavefunction which satisfies the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a harmonic oscillator. Left: The real part (blue) and imaginary part (red) of the wavefunction. Right: The probability distribution of finding the particle with this wavefunction at a given position. The top two rows are examples of stationary states, which correspond to standing waves. The bottom row an example of a state which is not a stationary state. The right column illustrates why stationary states are called "stationary".

Pedantics Anonymous

Pedanticism is pointing out and correcting people who state details that are wrong in often the smallest detail. I am rather pedantic and am often told to look at the big picture. The big picture is made up of lots of tiny, seemingly insignificant pictures that are required for the big picture to be gazed upon.

On the other hand having pointless facts pointed out to you all the time must be tedious and so it would seem necessary for one who is pedantic to look upon the infamous big picture, that I have spoken of so much, and not focus on the tiny incorrect details.

Time

If we accept the Doctors theory (Blink season 3) that time is not, contrary to popular belief, a strict progression of cause to affect but rather a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. Admittedly this is not very understandable. Imagine a race track with all runners starting at the same point and finishing at the same point, in a straight line therefore a strict proggression of cause to affect. Now imagine a fish bowl containing several types of fish all going a different direction in different ways or if you like wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. This then means that we are in a metaphorical fish. A fish being an era in time we are but a scale on a very small fish in an endless flowing orb of time. This makes us seem very small and insignificant but quite to the contrary we are a a very small thing that makes up a far bigger thing much like how atoms make up everything around us we are part of a far bigger universe which may in fact be a speck in a far bigger multiverse this can theoretically go on for ever however this is bringing me off my point. I am not saying that anything I have mentioned above is correct but merely it is a theory. One of a milion, million theories only few of which have any merrit at all. This is simply an interesting thought that I decided to discuss.

Steampunk

Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction. It is generally set in a Victorian era, post-apocalyptic wold or an alternate world. There are quite a few novels and movies to do with Steampunk most people have seen or read one. It incorporates technology that runs on steam power and technology that works with gears and cogs. It is not well known but it is very interesting.

These are an example of Steampunk technology.







For a list of Steampunk works please see the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_steampunk_works