Does anyone else remember the Man from Atlantis? Patrick Duffy (Bobby Ewing fromDallas) played the last man from the legendary underwater city of Atlantis. He had webbed feet and hands and gills instead of lungs. This fantastic show only lasted for one season, but it inspired a TV junkie to ask if people could really have webbed hands and feet.
The answer is yes! People can have webbed hands and feet. Actually, it is more common than you may think, occurring anywhere from one in one thousand to one in two thousand births. There are two types of webbing: syndactyly is when two fingers or toes are fused or webbed; polydactyly involves the webbing of more than two fingers or toes. We all start life with hands and feet that resemble a duck, and between the sixth and eighth week of development, our fingers and toes separate. The failure of this separation is what leaves you looking like the Man from Atlantis.
It always happened to Wile E. Coyote. The Road Runner drops an anvil on his head and then the poor coyote sees stars circling his head. Not only does this happen in cartoons but it is actually a sign of a concussion. A concussion is simply when an injury to the head causes your brain to move around inside your skull.
As for the stars, what probably happens is that the portion of your brain that is responsible for visual information, the occipital lobe, bangs up against the side of the skull.
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THE BOY IN THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE?
In 1976, one year before John Travolta was dancing his way throughSaturday Night Fever, he was inThe Boy in the Plastic Bubble. The film was based on a true story of a boy suffering from a rare inherited disease called Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease (SCID). SCID is now often referred to as “bubble boy” disease, thanks to this cinematic tour de force.
Severe Combined Immunodeficiency is a life-threatening syndrome in which there is a defect in the white blood cells that protect us from infection. This lack of a functioning immune system leads to frequent severe infections. Patients are usually diagnosed before they are three months old and if untreated the syndrome can be fatal. New treatments such as stem cell or bone marrow transplantation can save many patients. Gene therapy now also shows promise as a treatment for one type of this syndrome.
After some of his more recent movies, John Travolta has been rumored to be photographed by paparazzi attempting to re-enter the bubble. Good idea.
CHAPTER 8. OLD WIVES’ TALES
It’snow 4A.M. and people are drunk, bloated, and exhausted. Leyner is recovering from his Academy Award performance and has his tongue inside the tequila bottle, trying to extract every last drop. He removes his mouth from the bottle and says, “The tongue is God’s gift to the human race… the ultimate organ of poetry and pleasuring.”
Leyner goes on to say, “The lingua, blessed instrument of storytelling that allows me to continue the tradition of the oral urban legend.”
Jeremy, still stinging from his loss in charades, confronts Leyner and says, “I’m so sick of all your stories, my tongue tells me that you should kiss my ass.”
Although it’s late for most, nothing motivates Leyner more than verbal provocation. He responds with glee. “Ah Jeremy, in medieval times, kissing the ass of a fool’s sister was said to cure acne. Have you noticed how clear my skin is lately? Thank your sister for me.”
Jeremy leaps at Leyner and the two of them tumble around the floor in a grunting, adolescent flurry of fists and fury. They roll toward the living room and Leyner, although in a seemingly suffocating headlock, is still able to continue his grand historical survey of old wives’ tales. “The Visigoths believed that eating juniper berries would make them strong for battle.”
Jeremy tries to silence Leyner with a jab to the throat, but in a hoarse voice Leyner adds, “All it did was cause excessive flatulence.”
Urban legends and folklore can be the cause of tremendous uncertainty. People often desperately want the record set straight on some of these common myths. So, here you go.
As a child, no time seemed longer than the time spent waiting to jump back in the water after a meal. This half hour in hell is not based on science but rather on the minds of nervous parents. There is absolutely no medical evidence that supports waiting thirty minutes before getting back in the pool. Digestion begins immediately when you put food in your mouth, but once the food arrives in your stomach it takes about four hours to process there completely. Food then passes into the small intestine, where it spends another two hours, and then on to the large intestine for another fourteen. These times vary widely depending on what you eat, so don’t set your watch by it.
This doesn’t mean that it is safe to eat twelve hamburgers and then try to swim the English Channel. Use your head and listen to signals from your body. If you feel pain, cramping, or severe fatigue when swimming, get out, and please don’t puke in the pool.
Things to avoid staring at:
a woman’s cleavage
a large facial mole
a couple making out in public
the sun
The answer to this question is that you probably will not go blind, but staring at an eclipse can indeed cause harm.
The eclipse of the sun on August 11, 1999, put many people at risk of solar retinopathy. Solar retinopathy is the fancy name for damage to the back of the eye caused when radiation from the sun is concentrated by the lens onto the retina. This radiation causes a burn. Solar retinopathy has been studied in medical literature, and surprisingly the damage it causes is not as severe as previously thought. A group of researchers in the United Kingdom studied forty people who experienced eye problems after the August 11, 1999, solar eclipse. It was found that only half suffered from eye discomfort. Only 20 percent of the group of forty reported some damage seven months after the eclipse. These were people who looked directly at the eclipse. It is unclear if these same patients were also staring at cleavage, moles, or amorous couples.
Or is it feed a fever and starve a cold? Or should you just curl up on the couch, whine like a baby, and call your mommy?
Either way, the answer is no, but there may be some science behind this old wives’ tale.
In a study inClinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, cell biologists in the Netherlands found that starving and feeding affect the immune system in different ways. Scientists looked at healthy volunteers and measured certain chemical messengers in their blood. After a meal, the average level of the chemical that stimulates the body’s defense against infections increased by 450 percent. So you should feed a cold and a fever, right?