Thu, Apr 26, 2001 10:55AM -0600

A little addendum to my trip about space.... Check out this Slashdot posting about how a server on the International Space Station crashed, disrupting communications. Guess what OS they were running. Where do you want to burn up in re-entry today? The story is also on CNN, Space.com, and NASA Shuttle Status.

Finally, a little tidbit regarding Klüver-Bucy syndrome, which is a bizarre running joke among a few of us sick med students here (who are convinced that some of our colleagues are probably afflicted....) Klüver-Bucy syndrome is most memorable for the complete loss of fear and for hypersexuality. It happens when you damage the medial temporal lobe, specifically, the amygdala. Well, I read a humorous passage about one of the discoverers of this syndrome that I thought I would share:

Heinrich [Klüver] had been experimenting with mescaline. He had...taken it himself and had experienced hallucinations. He had written a book about mescaline and its effects. Later Heinrich gave mescaline to this monkeys. He gave everything to his monkeys, even his lunch!
-- Excerpt from an interview of Paul Bucy by K. E. Livingston in 1981. K.E. Livingston (1986) Epilogue: Reflections on James Wencelas Papez, According to Four of his Colleagues. In The Limbic System: Funcitonal Organization and Clinical Disorders. B. K. Doane and K. E. Livingston (eds.). New York: Raven Press.

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