Johnny Got His Gun

"He was a dead man with a mind that could still think. He knew all the answers that the dead knew and couldn't think about. He could speak for the dead because he was one of them. He was the first of all the soldiers who had died since the beginning of time who still had a brain left to think with."

Dalton Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel titled "Johnny Got His Gun" tells the story of a soldier who gets hit by a mortar shell during battle. The soldier wakes up in a hospital bed and realizes that he has lost both arms, both legs, his entire face and jaw, and both ears.

In anatomy class today we discussed the three general functions of the nervous system: sensation, integration, and response. In this story, the protagonist has retained the integration (thinking, feeling, learning, perceiving) function, but is limited in the other two. Because of this, he is trapped in his own body and has to learn new ways to sense and respond to what's going on around him.

This novel was made into a movie (never seen it, sorry). It was also the inspiration for Metallica's song One.

Bronze Medal School

U.S. News and World Reports has published their annual ranking of America's "best" schools. In those rankings, they have recognized Eudora High School as a bronze medal school.

While I continue to be very skeptical of these ratings, I don't think a little recognition is ever a bad thing. So congratulations to the faculty, staff, students, and community on making our little school one of the best in the state.

How Much DNA?

Here's a question for you: How much DNA is in a human cell? How much is in the whole human body? To figure this out, we need to do a little math.

One base pair of DNA is about .34 nm long (.00000000034 m). There are about 6 billion base pairs (6,000,000,000) in the human genome. By multiplying these two numbers, we can figure that there is about 2 meters of DNA in a single human cell. By multiplying this number by the 10 trillion (10,000,000,000,000) cells in the human body, we can figure that there is about 20 trillion (20,000,000,000,000) meters of DNA in the human body.

By dividing this very large number by 1000, we get 20 billion kilometers of DNA. (Remember, this is DNA at it's regular microscopic size. We haven't enlarged it at all.) For the sake of comparison, the distance from the Earth to the sun is 150 million (150,000,000) kilometers. This means that each of us is carrying around enough DNA in our bodies to stretch the the sun and back over 65 times!

Pretty cool, huh?

One of my all time favorites:




In honor of today's Great American Smokeout. Almost 50 million Americans smoke. Half of all adult smokers were regular smokers by the time they turned 18. Every day, 4000 adolescents aged 12-17 smoke their first cigarette. 1300 of these will become lifetime smokers, and half of those will die from a smoking related condition. (Do the math, that's 650 adolescents per day who are taking their first steps down a road that will eventually kill them.)

If you haven't started, use today as a reminder of why you haven't. If you have started, today is a great day to stop.

We Can Dance

I need to thank my 4th period anatomy and physiology class for reminding me of that sometime you just need to stop what you're doing and dance.