Go Ahead ... You Won't Harm Anyone's Profit Margin.

While the first thing I thought of is the book I'm currently reading, this also brought to mind Blueberry's notification of the new Anti-Oprahism law against peaceful activism if such activity costs the company being protested some of its profits. It's a rediculous piece of legislation which fits quite nicely in line with last week's other gutting of the Constitution.

As for The Three-Pound Enigma by Shannon Moffett, I can only add to the Bookslut review that this work is reading very much like an extended series of blog posts. It's that much fun to read. Moffett takes a Med student's wonder at one aspect of her career choice - the human brain and the mind which it houses, and does a fine job explaining in brief the stages of brain development from conception to death.

Her interviews are with several expert doctors in fields of research on the brain and its activities. Her writing is casual and personal and manages to give me a good sense of both the research and practice being done on the human brain as well as a little understanding of the personalities and motivations of the people doing this groundbreaking and practical work.

The CSF keeps the brain floating inside your head. As the brain is about 80% water, it is both fragile and heavy; the CSF decreases its effective weight from over three pounds - which is what is would be just sitting on a table, where, like soft Jell-O, its own weight might tear it - to just under two ounces, allowing it to stay plump and preventing its collapse onto the floor of your skull.*

Not that such isn't occasionally just what I wish would happen, but, of course, that's just a termporary and habitualized way of thinking. Reading stuff like this is interesting to me because I'm totally sick of such habits. {cough}{cough} A pack and a half a day is the most I've smoked, and I'm back at that disgusting (and expensive!) milestone again. I don't know. I just switched back to non-menthol after reading some other research on how much more difficult it is for people who smoke menthol cigarettes to quit them than it is for non-menthol smokers.

Fingers crossed . . . {sighhh} Not that that's gonna gimme any leg up on quitting. Since it's all in my head - all three pounds of it - I'll use anything I can to try an' change my internal thinking on the whole damned subject of my addictions and depressively self-annihilating habits.

On a more buoyant note, I am soooo glad to have access to the Lakewood Public Library again. It's kinda hard to explain, but this has been my favorite place to find new reading material since back 'round 1991, which was soon after I first moved to "the city" from sub-rural Lorain county.

It doesn't matter what I go into this library building looking for, or if I've anything particular in mind at all. I've always come out of this particular library with something good to keep my wee brain occupied and the mind which it composes expanding.

Now if I can just keep it from collapsing, blowing up or gettin' me thrown in the klink for protesting the concentration of power into a single branch of government, regardless of which political party or ideological gang controls it.



* From The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock its Mysteries; Chapter One, Page 20.