Freethinker's Asylum

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

After reading Bonk, I was curious about Mary Roach’s other books, so I reserved them at the library. I chose to read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers first. Basically, Mary was exploring the options of what to do with your body when you die.

Burial is certainly the most common choice, but for those that donate their body for research, there are a myriad of options, not just being a cadaver in an anatomy lab. She went to the University of Tennessee’s Body Farm to find out exactly what happens to a human body after death, when left to its own devices. Some can end up in the embalming lab at mortician school, or as practice heads for plastic surgeons, or as crash test dummies. She found others in the Harvard Brain Bank, and thought that might be a possibility:

My reasons for becoming a brain donor aren’t very good at all. My reasons boil down to a Harvard Brain Bank donor wallet card,which enables me to say “I’m going to Harvard” and not be lying. You do not need brains to go to the Harvard Brain Bank — only a brain.

What she wanted was to be a brain in jar, a la Abby Normal in Young Frankenstein. She was disappointed to discover the brains sliced and stored in rubbermaid containers in a lab refrigerator.

While this book is not for the squeamish, it’s definitely an interesting read, and gives the reader plenty to think about. Instead of embalming, how about compost?

It’s that time of year again.  The Union of Concerned Scientists is hosting the annual Science Idol Cartoon Contest to raise public awareness of political interference in science in the US.

Independent investigations have documented the suppression,
manipulation, and distortion of federal government science
before it ever enters the policy arena. Censorship of scientists
has become pervasive, public access to scientific information
has been curtailed, and subtle yet dangerous systemic changes
have sidelined science from the policy-making process.

These are real issues with serious consequences. We have been
successful in raising awareness about the abuse of science,
holding those who misuse science accountable for their actions,
and pushing for widespread changes that will restore scientific
integrity to federal policy making.

This year’s cartoons have less of an evolutionary focus, examining government policy and the effects of politics on the scientific enterprise instead.  I’ve already cast my vote, now it’s your turn.

I’m in the process of presenting my dissertation proposal to my committee, taking my oral comprehensive examination, and becoming an official PhD candidate.  The last few days, trying to find a time when everyone can get together in the same room for an hour, have been a bit like this:

This was one of my Half-Price Books finds that had been gathering dust in my to be read pile for several years. I had tried reading it once, got bored, and put it away. But when I picked it up at the end of the semester, I really couldn’t put it down.

The Lost King of France tells the story of the son of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, Louis-Charles, who was imprisoned in the Temple along with his parents and older sister during the Revolution. The tale is similar to what happened to the Romanovs in Russia at the turn of the 20th Century, but was one I had never heard. I knew, of course, that King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette had been beheaded by Robspierre’s government, but not that their children remained imprisoned for years after their parents’ deaths.

Their daughter, Marie-Therese, was released (and exiled) in 1795, but her brother had been secluded years before, and rumors ran riot that he had been smuggled safely out of the Temple. As with the Romanovs, there were pretenders to the throne, which Marie-Therese never openly acknowledged, due in part to the official record stating that the dauphin had died in the Temple in 1795. But no one was really sure what had happened to him. That is, until 2000, when geneticists analyzed a tissue sample from a child’s heart, reportedly taken from the Orphan in the Tower during the autopsy by the attending physician.

This was a great read, engaging, and combining two of my favorite subjects, history and genetics. Better still, it demonstrates how genetic analysis can be used to answer historical questions, unequivocally.