{"id":262438,"date":"2024-07-16T09:29:44","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T14:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=262438"},"modified":"2024-07-16T09:29:52","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T14:29:52","slug":"why-a-princeton-doctor-decided-to-steal-einsteins-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2024\/07\/16\/why-a-princeton-doctor-decided-to-steal-einsteins-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a Princeton doctor decided to steal Einstein’s brain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From the CBC<\/a>: “It’s a call Carolyn Abraham won’t soon forget. In the spring of 1999, while working as the senior medical reporter for the Globe and Mail, Abraham received a tip from McMaster University \u2014 the office of Sandra Witelson, to be exact, a professor of neuroscience. They said that they had received Einstein’s brain. When Einstein died, his body was sent for a routine autopsy. Dr. Thomas Harvey, chief pathologist at the Princeton Hospital, was assigned to the job. But before Harvey would pronounce the official cause of death, he cut out Einstein’s brain and preserved it for future research.\u00a0Mere days later, Harvey’s actions were hailed in the headlines, but it turned out that he had acted before consulting with Einstein’s surviving family, and the scientist’s own wishes didn’t jibe with what transpired. (Einstein had told his biographer Abraham Pais: “I want to be cremated so people don’t come worship at my bones”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hunt to identify a girl in a thrift-shop photo turns into a story of love and loss<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Flashbak<\/a>: “In 2015,\u00a0Meagan Abell\u00a0was shopping in Richmond, Virginia when she spotted four sets of medium-format negatives protected in plastic sleeves in a box of vintage photographs. Abell bought the negatives, scanned them and saw the beautiful pictures of two young women standing on a seashore bathed in light. She set about finding out who the women were, and where and when the pictures were taken. She posted the photos on Facebook and asked for help. The woman in red was identified as Claudia Thompson, a jazz singer signed to Edison International, a small record label founded in Hollywood, California, in the late 1950s. The label lasted a few yers before the rights to the Edison catalog were transferred to Sundazed Music \u2013 including the jazz album\u00a0Goodbye Love<\/em>\u00a0by Thompson and jazz guitarist\u00a0Barney Kessel\u00a0released in 1959.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note<\/strong>: This is a version of my personal newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can\u00a0see other issues\u00a0and sign up here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Climate change is making the days a little longer researchers say<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From The Guardian<\/a>: “The climate crisis is causing the length of each day to get longer, analysis shows, as the mass melting of polar ice reshapes the planet. The phenomenon is a striking demonstration of how humanity\u2019s actions are transforming the Earth, scientists said, rivalling natural processes that have existed for billions of years. The change in the length of the day is on the scale of milliseconds but this is enough to potentially disrupt internet traffic, financial transactions and GPS navigation, all of which rely on precise timekeeping. The length of the Earth\u2019s day has been steadily increasing over geological time due to the gravitational drag of the moon on the planet\u2019s oceans and land. However, the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets due to human-caused global heating has been redistributing water stored at high latitudes into the world\u2019s oceans, leading to more water in the seas nearer the equator.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Editor’s note<\/strong><\/em>: If you like this newsletter, please share it with someone else. And if you <\/em>really <\/strong><\/em>like it, perhaps you could subscribe, or contribute something via <\/em>my Patreon<\/em><\/a>. Thanks for being a reader!)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How a 1920s cartel re-engineered the lightbulb to have a shorter lifespan<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From IEEE Spectrum<\/a>: “In December of 1924, a group of leading international businessmen gathered in Geneva for a meeting that would alter the world for decades to come. Present were top representatives from all the major lightbulb manufacturers, including Germany\u2019s Osram, the Netherlands\u2019 Philips, France\u2019s Compagnie des Lampes, and the United States\u2019 General Electric. The group founded the Phoebus cartel, a supervisory body that would carve up the worldwide incandescent lightbulb market, with each national and regional zone assigned its own manufacturers and production quotas. The cartel\u2019s grip on the lightbulb market lasted only into the 1930s. Its far more enduring legacy was to engineer a shorter life span for the incandescent lightbulb. By early 1925, this became codified at 1,000 hours for a pear-shaped household bulb, a marked reduction from the 1,500 to 2,000 hours that had previously been common.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This voice actor and ventriloquist also invented the first implantable mechanical heart<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From Davison.com<\/a>: “In addition to being a ventriloquist, Paul Winchell was a very successful voice actor who did a lot of work for Disney and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Perhaps his best remembered role was as the voice of \u2018Tigger\u2019 in the Walt Disney movie \u201cWinnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day,\u201d which earned an Academy Award for best animated short film. But Winchell was also a very successful inventor. Over the course of his life, he held patents on over 30 devices, including a disposable razor, a flameless cigarette lighter, an illuminated ballpoint pen, a retractable fountain pen, an inverted novelty mask, battery-operated heated gloves, an indicator to show when frozen food had gone bad after a power outage \u2013 and the first artificial human heart, which he developed with Dr. Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a unique species of sea-wolf that swims and primarily eats seafood<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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From National Geographic<\/a>: “Unlike their inland cousins, coastal island wolves are entirely dedicated to the sea. Their genes prove it; collectively, coastal island wolves have distinct DNA that sets them apart from interior wolves. People usually associate wolf meals with elk or deer, but these guys are practically pescatarians, with salmon accounting for nearly a quarter of their diet. Beyond that, they forage on barnacles, clams, herring eggs, seals, river otters, and whale carcasses. When hunting for food, sea wolves can swim miles between islands and rocky outcrops to feast on seals and animal carcasses found on the rocks. Scientists who study them say he farthest record of their swimming abilities is to an archipelago 7.5 miles from the nearest landmass. They\u2019re smaller in stature than gray wolves in other parts of the country, and are often reddish brown in color.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watch what happens when a gummy bear hits potassium chlorate<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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This is what happens when a gummy bear comes into contact with potassium chlorate pic.twitter.com\/ipSYgYW2AY<\/a><\/p>— Interesting As Fuck (@interesting_aIl) July 15, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote>