TIL: Today I Learned

When my twin brother and I were around 12 we'd take the train and go into downtown Chicago without the authorities going nuts.

 

TIL citrus fruits can be grown cost-effectively in snowy areas:

 

TIL that they have changed the standard for where your hands should be on the steering wheel. I grew up with 10 and 2 but saw they changed the handbook in Illinois to 9-3

 

Was unpowered steering more common when you grew up? Maybe they decided that now you can get away with less mechanical leverage and should focus more on tighter control, enabled by a closer grip?

I had to drive without power steering for a few months once and my forearms got buff. But I don't know if that was a common thing beyond like the 40's or whatever. (my car was just falling apart, it came with power steering originally)

 

My dad had to plow a field using a tractor without power steering when he was a teenager. Now That's how you get buffed.

 

The reason for switching to 9 and 3 is to avoid having the airbag smash your arms into the roof.

I learned to drive a huge station wagon without power steering or power brakes. Cranking the wheel was always good exercise. (When my dad would let someone else drive, they'd typically miss turns and drive into ditches.) We got even more exercise the summer the car quit going in reverse and my brother and I had to push the car every time it needed to go backward. My dad wouldn't get it fixed until the forward gears died, too.

 

TIL that there are so-called Schwann cells that are wrapped around the ends of pain-sensing nerve cells.
This new insight could possibly help explain pain disorders and treatment/medication.

 

Tell me about it!! I recently got diagnosed with a schwannoma (in my neck) - so basically a tumour over the nerve sheath. Thankfully benign, but 3 months after the operation to remove it I still suffer facial pain from the 'jangled' nerves

 

TIL selfie sticks were invented to take selfies from 5 feet away instead of 1 foot away.
That is because a picture from 1 foot away makes your nose 20% bigger!

 

TIL that in 1946 Walt Disney made a cartoon short called The Whale Who Wanted to Sing at the Met about a singing whale that's killed by humans

 

Today I learned about exploding head syndrome. It's less violent than the name implies.

 

Doctor 1: Y'know, some people, a few anyway, as they are going off to sleep can sometimes, once in a great while, have a synaptic response that occurs for them like a loud noise, or even a flash of light. Maybe even both.
Doctor 2: Well, since one of the main purposes of sleep is to let the accumulated charges that have built up in the brain ground out into the outer layer of the brain where the high concentrations of melatonin dissipate them, the passage of those charges through different neural paths can produce all sorts of effects...like dream images and such. It's just normal. And if every once in a while they fire down a path associated with sensory input that's not really surprising either.
Doctor 1: Well, I know all that, but this particular aspect has never been studied.
Doctor 2: What makes you think it would be worth studying?
Doctor 1: Ummm, research grant money?
Doctor 2: Oh, yeah, good point.
Doctor 1: We need a catchy name though. Something with disorder in it is always good.
Doctor 2: Or syndrome.
Doctor 1: Yeah. Optic Flash Disorder?
Doctor 2: Not bad, but EXPLODING HEAD SYNDROME!!!
Doctor 1: We have a winner!
Doctor 2: Where are those forms?

 

Why do I get the horrible feeling this is exactly how the DSM was originally created.

 

Today I learned that Filter's "Hey Man Nice Shot" was about R. Budd Dwyer, a Pennsylvania state treasurer who'd been convicted of bribery charges and committed suicide during a press conference.

 

Doctor 1: Wait....Wat? Where did you learn that?
Doctor 2: mystical medical school.
Doctor 1: are they accredited?

I don't think a mental health professional worth a lick would treat someone based on DSM. It would be like asking a professional chef to follow a basic cookbook

 

TIL that Patty Smyth, singer for '80s band Scandal, was married to Richard Hell back in the day, and is now married to John McEnroe. Hunh.

Patty Smyth is not to be confused with Patti Smith, who was married to Fred Smith of the MC5. Patti & Fred Smith's son Jackson is married to Meg White, of The White Stripes. Meg White is Patti Smith's daughter-in-law. That's kinda cool.

 

When you posted that video in the 80s thread I did momentarily confuse the 2.
Clicking on the video soon corrected that

 

What if the two of them got married to each other? It would probably be very confusing.

 

TIL opiates are derived from opium whereas opioids are synthetics. I never understood why the media switched the terms all of a sudden in the last few years but it turns out to be because fentanyl and its analogues are opioids. With the latest headlines from the front lines of the drug war being about fentanyl, journalists eventually got lazy and started calling all painkiller narcotics opioids even where that's not correct.

Apparently West Virginia has largely been spared of the fentanyl plague going on elsewhere due to their preference for and drug culture built around endless supplies of opiate pills proscribed by crooked pharmacies. The guy on NPR said that WV is going to be the next fentanyl ground zero as its a matter of time now that the pill mills and suppliers are being targeted.

Also I learned fentanyl is starting to show up in lots more drugs than just heroin - it's begun to make its way into cocaine and ecstasy.

 

This might be controversial but I think something that would help with the drug problem is for there to be a safer supply for those hard drugs. I don't know how this would happen though. Legalizing it would be one way but I doubt that will happen for a long long time.