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DNova posted:People used to use mercury as an orally administered laxative. There is not much evidence of symptoms of mercury toxicity as a result. Antimony was also used in laxative pills. Re-usable laxative pills 
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Jan 4, 2013 19:22
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No discussion of Paris corpses is complete without the infamous Sergent Bertrand, about whom there is oddly no English Wikipedia page, but have this fine link in its stead. This is also informative; for even more detail, Krafft-Ebing comes through as usual. AlbieQuirky has a new favorite as of 14:38 on Jan 8, 2013 |
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Jan 8, 2013 14:35
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RCarr posted:Pretty much. I think the whole hoax about never finding a survivor of the colony was made up by a news anchor on one of the local English TV stations. Nah, it's an old thing, popular as a scary story in US newspapers as early as the 19th century. The play about it has been put on on Roanoke since before World War II. lovely play, too, even worse than the Hatfields and McCoys play they put on in West Virginia.
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Jan 25, 2013 21:58
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Wildeyes posted:I'm amazed I'd never even heard of this (or I did, and I just didn't realize it happened in my state. "New London" doesn't exactly scream Texas). I can only imagine how much attention something like this would receive if it happened today, given how much Newtown was covered. Constant radio, newspaper, and magazine coverage. Kathy Fiscus's death is a good example of how blanket coverage of certain tragedies and crises used to work. Also  as gently caress.
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Jan 31, 2013 06:38
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MrMidnight posted:This poo poo is way more common than I was expecting. Huge populations in both countries, though. Colombia seems to be doing worst per capita (having two eight-year-old girls give birth in successive months in 2011, Jesus wept).
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Feb 7, 2013 20:14
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Religious Man posted:One bit of history that has creeped me out since elementary school is the Lost Colony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Colony No real signs of relocation except for the name they called the Native settlement on the next island over.  except not.You know the guy carving the second "Croatoan" was all "No, no, it's better if we make two signs in case Sir Walter comes back and---okay, okay, I'll get in the loving boat, Jesus Christ, some people." AlbieQuirky has a new favorite as of 02:31 on Feb 20, 2013 |
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Feb 20, 2013 02:28
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TunaSpleen posted:Speaking of microbiology, let's learn about Toxoplasma gondii! It's a behavior-altering protist that mostly goes between cats and rodents but sometimes gets caught up in humans as well. It's been linked to all sorts of mental disorders that lend credence to the "crazy cat lady" stereotype and can kill your baby if you clean the catbox while pregnant. An estimated ONE THIRD of all humans on earth harbor this parasite (usually in an inactive form in healthy adults), with higher prevalence in poor countries due to contaminated soil and water, or undercooked red meat. According to the Center for Disease Control, you can find it in 22.5% of the US population. That's over one in five. It's not me, because I was tested for it. Which surprised me, because I grew up in the country with outdoor cats and all (toddlers not being the best judges of when not to pick up poop and when to wash hands before eating).
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Feb 24, 2013 04:37
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Ota Benga reminded me of Minik Wallace. Keeping people in museums is horrific.
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Apr 9, 2013 05:39
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Kimmalah posted:Also more frightening is that she has doctors who are apparently encouraging this or at least not trying to stop her. Just doing surgery to fix the damage and feeding her some bullshit about her lymph system being clogged from the alleged cancer. Her real doctors in the US are doing as much palliative surgery as she'll allow---her cancer has metastasized, so they can't cure her even if she were compliant with treatment. The people going on about the lymph stuff are quacks who may not actually be doctors.
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Apr 25, 2013 19:46
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bamhand posted:I've always wondered what purpose a false scrotum would serve. Is it an evolutionary adaptation or just a side-effect of unusual (for mammals) hormone balances?
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May 8, 2013 20:17
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Occam's Razor certainly suggests Lizzie Borden killed her father and stepmother, as nobody else had anything to gain by their deaths and it would be odd for a random stranger-murderer to kill only the Bordens and not their maid, and then never to kill again. But the actual evidence against her was scanty, and she had good lawyers, so. If she did it, she wouldn't have gotten away with it today, because her argument that blood spatter on her nightdress was menstrual blood could be easily disproven. Now I want there to be a CSI: 1892 show, with dudes looking at a magnifying glass and shouting "Enhance! Enhance!"
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May 13, 2013 18:00
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Pick posted:How do you know [the murder of the Bordens] was random? How do you know this person never killed again? Nothing was stolen, including money that was visible on a table in the room where Mr. Borden was killed. So the chances that it was a burglary gone wrong are minuscule. No unsolved murders with a similar MO happened anywhere in the US for decades afterward (I think the 1930s in Minnesota or Wisconsin). And the murderer went upstairs to kill Mrs. Borden, but not to the kitchen to kill the maid. So "passing spree killer" seems vanishingly unlikely. Lizzie's extremely good lawyers couldn't make a case that anyone else would have motive or opportunity to kill either of the elder Bordens. So I don't know what happened, but the most parsimonious explanation given the facts is that Lizzie killed them.
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May 14, 2013 02:11
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fonzie scheme posted:I think dirty needles from the trials had a whole lot to do with it too, though. What happened to your trust in science? Because you seem to believe a lot of unscientific nonsense.
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Jun 4, 2013 20:03
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The LA Police tried to frame a guilty man. And failed.
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Jun 27, 2013 07:57
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Khisareth posted:Yes, but with what evidence? "I kinda remember this from when I was 7 but I don't know if it was true because my family is loopy" I have seriously no evidence other than what my mother told me You could send an email to the FBI Chicago field office saying what you've said here and giving as much info on your grandfather as you know. They'd decide whether to follow it up or not; worst case scenario, a low-level agent would waste an hour or two looking into something that didn't pan out.
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Jul 7, 2013 06:24
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The US boarding schools for Native children were also terrible; this documentary is as hell. Australia has a lovely record of abusing indigenous children by forced relocation, too.
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Aug 4, 2013 18:58
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Zombie Raptor posted:I know it's not really on par with the other stories of mistreatment of natives, but my great grandfather was a Catawba shaman on a reservation, and upon leaving the reservation, they made sure to anglicize his name from John Greenarrow to James Orr. Not really sure why they chose that name, honestly, especially since it's not even the same first name. Anyway, I mention it because he had a really hard time coping with life after they changed his name entirely. That is terrible. And yet, because I am 99% composed of gallows humor, it also reminded me of the scene in the novel An Beal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) by Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O' Brien/Brian O'Nolan where the schoolmaster changes the Irish names of all his students to "Jams O'Donnell".
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Aug 5, 2013 22:04
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Mousepractice posted:Whattup THE PLAIN PEOPLE OF IRELAND: Sure and it is at that. The most unnerving literature to me is books like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet, because being immobile while your mind still functions perfectly is my worst nightmare.
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Aug 6, 2013 03:36
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StrangersInTheNight posted:It couldn't possibly be that efforts to integrate the Romani are patronizing and strive to erase their cultural heritage, which makes them hesitant to try an join, and leaves them a marginalized culture that has the same survival behaviors as any poor, lower class peoples. You can't call efforts to basically fold them into your culture and erase theirs sincere integration efforts, and it's no wonder they resist. If their culture is being treated as something that needs to be taught 'out' of them, then of course you're having trouble; that's a basic lack of respect that's going to turn anyone away. And it is their fear, as well; that by assimilating they will lose themselves. It's like there wasn't even a bunch of posts earlier in the thread about the horrors of residential schools/"Indian schools"/the Stolen Generations/English-only schools in Wales and Ireland/somehow we missed the English-only schools for Maori, but them too. "Oh, but the Rromani really are different, you don't understand!" is an unbelievably threadbare argument. Every single argument people in Europe make about the Rromani has been made/is made about ethnic/cultural/racial minority groups in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand---arguments the same Europeans will rightly call ridiculously racist when applied to indigenous Australians or First Nations Canadians or Latino immigrants in the US. AlbieQuirky has a new favorite as of 16:30 on Aug 7, 2013 |
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Aug 7, 2013 16:25
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V. S. Ramachandran discussed Capgras delusion in his books and TV series. The TV series includes an interview with one person who developed Capgras delusion after a car accident, and with his
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Aug 30, 2013 19:14
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A Pinball Wizard posted:It doesn't justify dumping her off on somebody, but what the hell *do* you do? The whole situation is just There are formal programs for disrupting adoptions, though. "Go on Internet and foist them on strangers" is a poo poo way to approach the issue.
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Sep 19, 2013 03:01
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Crow Jane posted:Not sure where else to post this, but I saw another Toynbee tile in the wilds of Baltimore today. This one is right by my work and I'm certain it's really recent: Oh, yikes, that's unpleasant.
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Nov 21, 2013 06:43
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:Plus IIRC the 'original' Toynbee Tile layer is dead now. Nah, he's still alive. Someone else with his unusual name died, so people assumed it was him.
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Nov 21, 2013 20:32
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There's even an opera about Crowshurst. It's pretty intense.
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Feb 1, 2014 02:40
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Vindolanda posted:Showing Threads to children is proof that we have a better sense of humour than Americans. We had to watch The Day After, but at least there was the satisfaction of Steve Guttenberg dying in that.
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Feb 22, 2014 06:49
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ARE THOSE MY SPERMS posted:Yeah but then your kid looks like a fuckin nerd wearing a stupid helmet It's a baby. It's not like the other babies are going to mock him.
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Mar 5, 2014 16:36
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Howard Dully's memoir is excellent. Depressing at the beginning, but it gets more 
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Mar 24, 2014 05:55
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chthonic bell posted:Here's a more cheerful example of weird memory poo poo: This guy! He reportedly had synesthesia encompassing all five senses and that helped him remember things perfectly. A.R. Luria, that Dr Oliver Sacks mentions a lot in his essays, wrote a whole book on him. The impression I got from the Luria book was that Sherevskii's life was kind of hosed up by his prodigious memory and synesthesia, though.
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Mar 24, 2014 23:11
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LivesInGrey posted:This memory talk might be why I checked out I Forgot to Remember at the library. It's about a woman named Su Meck who had a ceiling fan fall on her head in 1988 and ended up with complete retrograde amnesia of the first 22 years of her life and a degree of anteretrograde as well. Remarkably, her MRIs near the time of the accident don't show much brain trauma at all. She says that more modern ones might notice more, but she hasn't undergone tests recently. Her husband and family have told her most of her pre-injury life, yet she feels like those happened to a different person. It's a really new ook, and I'm not that far into it, but it might also be interesting to others here. It's a scary and unnerving book for lots of reasons that have nothing to do with her brain injury.
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Mar 26, 2014 18:34
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Rabbit Hill posted:Is that the same blizzard that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in The Long Winter? The Long Winter is set about ten years earlier. Edit: 1880-1881.
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Apr 5, 2014 05:39
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