Posts Tagged: ‘brains’
If you were born a baby spider, things would have turned out much differently for you. You’d have been mostly brain, for example. Researchers have long suspected that tiny spiders — the young of which are routinely born deformed yet grow into normally proportioned adults — are born with very large brains. Now they know it, thanks to what I imagine is research that amounted to dissecting deformed spider babies carried out by arachnid specialists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, down Panama way.
Albert Einstein was a genius deserving of our respect, so just how did his brain wind up on a cross-country road trip to hang with the author of “Naked Lunch?”
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Julie and I give Einstein’s head cheese a serious poking to discuss the secrets of all the gray and white matter inside that skull of yours.
Check your stereotypes at the door, gentle reader, because not every zombie is an indiscriminate brain gobbler. When there’s no more room in Hell (or Whole Foods), zombie foodies will walk the Earth and you better believe they won’t be caught dead munching on fast-food grey matter.
To satisfy their unholy cravings, many of the world’s more food conscious undead cultivate their own premium, local-grown human brains in backyard nurseries, cranium cellars or Brooklyn rooftop gardens. But just how long does a ravenous zombie have to wait for a full-grown brain?
There are a few ways an organic object can become preserved way beyond the normal time it takes for similar material to normally decompose. For a bone surrounded by sediment, the marrow and other organic material within the bone decomposes and is replaced by microscopic minerals. The structure of the bone holds its shape, but the bone essentially turns into a fossil rock from the inside out.
Separating Neuroscience from Neurosexism
by Cristen Conger | September 30, 2010
I might have to even trade out my current book for Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender*, if only because it deals with something that Molly and I regularly run into while researching for Stuff Mom Never Told You. Since we spend so much time dissecting the wonderful and confusing differences between boys and girls, men and women, we probably have a lot of lessons to learn from Fine’s reexamination of the academic studies that we often pull from.
In movies and stories, zombies are undead menaces that lurch around mindlessly, in search of flesh — and braaaaaains! Where did the idea for zombies originate? Do they exist outside of fiction? Tune in to this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com to find out.
When it comes to gender differences, there’s no subject more fraught than our brains. Are men really better at reading maps? Are women wired to gab? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to get to the heart of the matter (brain matter, that is).
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Sailing, Takes Me Away…To The Seychelles
- Cute Animal Tuesday: Black Vulture
- Traveling on the Orient Express
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- The Seven Deadlies: Pride Cometh Before the Brain
- Warhammer 40K: 25 Years of Orks in Space
- A Visit to the Tellus Science Museum
Stuff You Should Know
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
- Amazing Medical Conditions: Maple Syrup Urine Disorder
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
- Why is NASA studying car safety?
- Tips for in-car Navigation Systems
How-to Stuff
- How to Make the Most of a Gallery Crawl (When You’re on a Shoestring Budget)
- How to Swim with Dolphins (When Deep Water Terrifies You)
- How to Cure a Homemade Cookie Craving Without Turning on the Oven
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 43: Drag Queens: You Better Work!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 42: Road Trip!
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 41: Celebrity Couples
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics

