There was an article in one of our local newspapers yesterday about brains. It wasn’t about the nutritional value of brains as a food or anything like that. It was about the development of the human brain during various stages of life. One of the major points of the article was that teenage brains are wired differently than smaller children or adults. Well, duh! If that isn’t the most obvious conclusion in the history of medical science then I don’t know what is. They spent thousands and thousands of research dollars to come up with a fact that anyone who has been the parent of a teenager could tell you in ten seconds.
According to the article, when a teenager is faced with a decision – let’s say to drink that beer with his friends, or not – the teenager will not be guided by a logical sequence of thought. He or she will not think “I’m under-age, my parents have warned me about drinking, I’ll get in trouble, and therefore I won’t drink”. No, the kid will think “beer, friends, get drunk, fall down, cool”. Scientists have actually observed the electrical impulses in teenage brains which reflect this kind of thinking, or non-thinking, as it were. My question is, if they can observe this behavior then why can’t they fiddle with the circuitry and fix it? I’m sure it would just be a matter of sticking some ultra thin jumper cables in there somewhere. Every teenager could go into a brain wiring shop when they hit age thirteen and get the upgrade done, just like they all get braces for their teeth. Maybe they could do it at the same time. One small step for mankind, I’d say.
On a different page in the same newspaper there was an article about the blues. It wasn’t about “The Blues” music, it was about blue moods. Once again the article was based on a bunch of scientific research done by psychologists. Basically the research concluded that just about everyone gets into a blue mood once in a while and the causes are extremely varied. Once again I say, well duh! Who in the hell comes up with this stuff?
I read the article with some difficulty because my head was shaking at the preposterousness of every line. Of course, based on the “findings” of this extensive and expensive research the author offered several practical suggestions for “beating the blues”. Some of the suggestions proffered were “take in a movie”, “go out dancing”, “attend a concert” and my favorite “treat yourself to a nice glass of wine”. Can this be the reason people don’t read newspapers anymore?
The other day I cut my finger. You don’t need to know how I cut my finger. Accidents happen, even to smart and careful people. Those of us who aren’t so bright and are somewhat careless have a few more incidents with sharp objects than other folks. But I digress. After cleaning the little wound and putting some antibiotic cream on it I attempted to apply a bandage. The bandage was a Band-Aid brand strip which is usually a good choice. But for some reason this one was acting like the cheap substitutes you find at the dollar stores. So I tossed that one and grabbed another with the same result. I knew the box was pretty fresh because we have two grandsons who go through bandages very quickly, usually because they want some decorative items on their most minor scratches. It was possible that the first aid cream was messing things up so I took one of the largest bandages in the box and applied it to the finger. This one stuck really well. In fact I had put it on a little too tight. When I tried to make it looser it got all messed up and I actually made the cut a little bigger. So then I applied a little more of the cream and put some pressure on the wound to stop the bleeding which had started again. There was only one of the large bandages left in the box so I knew I had to make this one work. The bleeding slowed to a slight oozing and I carefully applied the bandage. It was perfect. So I went back to the chore that I was working on when I got cut. I plunged my hands back into the soapy water to finish washing the dishes. The Band-Aid promptly slid off. Sometimes I amaze myself with my own stupidity. You don’t have to agree, you know.
Have a fine day.
2 comments:
Sometimes you pose the question and answer it all in one. By the way, in a recent study it was determined by a huge conglomerate of scientific minds that indeed knives are sharp.
That is why I never put sharp instruments in the dish water.
I guess even at my age I can finally learn to do something right.
I like the tiny jumper cables idea.
Of course that opens up the idea to put a set of cables on some of these weird older folks. Hey I resemble that remark.
I will continue on with my fine day.
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