Monday, November 26, 2007

A Down's Syndrome Angel

I came across this post from a blog I subscribe to. Thought it was worth sharing...


As Medgadget reports, "Several years ago, psychiatrist Andrew Levitas and geneticist Cheryl Reid made an interesting discovery:

[They] identified a 16th-century Flemish Nativity painting in which one angelic figure appears distinctly different from other individuals in the painting with an appearance of Down syndrome. . . . This may be one of the earliest European representations of Down syndrome.

The British Medical Journal elaborates:

The 1515 Flemish painting, by an unknown artist, . . . shows an angel (next to Mary) and possibly one other figure, the shepherd in the centre of the background with the syndrome.

"If our diagnosis is correct, this implies that Down’s syndrome is not a modern disease," say [Levitas and Reid] (American Journal of Medical Genetics 2003;116:399-405).

The diagnosis of Down’s syndrome in the angel was based on a number of features: a flattened mid-face, epicanthal folds, upslanted palpebral fissures, a small and upturned tip of the nose, and downward curving of the corners of the mouth. The hands, crossed over the breast, have short fingers, especially on the left.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Rated G?

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Despite my murderous description of what would happen to the next person to call me "bud", my blog still managed to land a G rating! I saw this feature on Vanessa's blog and thought it was fun. Beware when clicking the link to her blog though. Hers is rated pg13 because it uses extremely offensive words like p*nch, h*rt, de*th, and cr*ppy (I've edited them out here, because they're much too offensive for my pure*ss blog).

What's your blog rated?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Dear Cell Phone User...

As a public service, the ingenious design & marketing company, Coudal, and the incomparable Aaron Draplin have teamed up to introduce the reasonably polite SHHH, the Society for HandHeld Hushing. This was too good not to share...

You can visit Coudal's website to print out your own cards and use them at will! Enjoy!

Thursday, November 08, 2007

The Autumn of the Multitaskers

To do two things at once is to do neither.
—Publilius Syrus, Roman slave, first century B.C.
Reaching for his cell phone with a newly delivered picture message, the author Walter Kirn swerved off a snowy two-lane highway and landed in a steep embankment. It was then that he began to rethink the usefulness of technology like the refrigerator-TV set and the camera-phone. In this November's Atlantic Monthly, Kirn writes about how multi-tasking is dumbing us down and driving us crazy.

I heard of this article when driving home from work a couple nights ago listening to an interview between Walter Kirn and Doug Fabrizio. I think he made some really valid points on how mindless we are becoming as we try to divide our brain power into performing several tasks at once. He vouches that the mind can really only do one thing at a time, and that by splitting our resources we are actually less efficient than we would be had we been focusing on the task at hand.

You can download an mp3 of the interview here, and read the article here.

So what's your opinion? Are we becoming multi-tasking zombies or are we just adapting to a fast paced lifestyle?

Monday, November 05, 2007

Don't call me bud!

Alright, I know, I know, I look like I'm 17 years old. I've always had a baby face, but cut me some slack here people! I'm so tired of people calling me "bud"!

Let me give you one example (it's happened multiple times this week)... I went to the Home Depot on Saturday to prove my manliness. While renting a power tool, the employee called me bud not once, but twice. Don't call me bud! I'm not you're little friend that you take fishing and buy ice cream. I'm not tiger, or sport, or champ, or scout, or anything like unto those names! I'm a man! I can grow facial hair! I have a degree! I'm a responsible adult with a career and a family. So please, if you don't know what my name is, just call me dude, or man, or even sir, but I swear, if someone calls me buddy one more time I will hang them by their own intestines.