Wednesday's Cool Things

[tamaranth]

1. Does anyone know if low temperatures make one sleepier?

2. From ellen_kushner: The Testament of Solomon (74. And the second said: "I am called Barsafael, and I cause those who are subject to my hour to feel the pain of migraine. If only I hear the words, 'Gabriel, imprison Barsafael,' at once I retreat.")

3. Interviewing fastfwd this evening (trains permitting) at the BSFA open evening.

4. My tenants were going to move out. Now they've changed their minds. Yay!

5. Medieval people didn't look like us -- marked differences in skull shape and prominence of features. (Now can someone model what they're on about?)

Comments

[reddragdiva]

Better nutrition and health care would be enough. The human body is an evolved machine designed to cope adequately with crappy input; modern nutrition recommendations take it way outside what it was evolved to cope with. There isn't an ideal of nutrition per se that we were designed for.

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

But why would poor nutrition or health care make for bigger chins?

[reddragdiva]

Dunno! But organisms will grow in all sorts of ways differently with good nutrition than living on scraps.

Wisdom teeth are a good example. They used to be a good idea, because by adolescence you could really do with some spares. Now they're a problem because more people have full jaws.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

is this a random example? 'cause if not, it would explain the chinlessness of the upper classes ...

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Not entirely random - I picked the most prominent of the prominent features highlighted on the article's photo of the skull. It's just that it's opposite to what my first guess would have been - poor nutrition / health / etc would mean less nutrients like calcium (or cause calcium to be leeched), so bones like the jaw would be smaller, not bigger. Maybe the chinless upper classes drank too much gin and tea and not enough milk.