Category Archives: Lists

We Are All Made Of… Memories

My editor, lover, lifesaver and cat-claw-clipper noted that Monday’s post was particularly dense. I chose to interpret this as a mostly good thing, and this turned out to be the correct call when she added that it probably contained enough material for a couple of weeks’ worth of posts.

Fortunately, there’s a lot going on in the world, of strokey and not-so-strokey natures. From my introduction to Vilayanur S. Ramachandran’s Phantoms In The Brain to the ongoing NSA surveillance revelations (and how Wang Dong will react); from how non-invasive brain stimulation is being used to help patients with walking impairments to the maleficent spread of the craft beer plague around the world.

Tactical Nuclear Penguin gets a pass

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Great Scottish Strokes #3

People love lists, right?  Well, according to Rob Fleming, Nick Hornby’s representative in High Fidelity, a certain type of bloke does, anyway.  So much so, that Hornby himself was able to get 31 Songs published.  That’s a list of 31 songs, natch, with each chapter being a fairly lengthy entry  about one of the songs; either why it’s good, its personal resonance, or some other facet of the particular song.  It’s pretty good.

These days, list shows are ubiquitous.  For example, consider the cheap-o, low-brow filler populated by talking heads with no particular knowledge of their subject, like BBC America’s execrable The Brit List.  We saw their 20 sexiest Brits show.  Which, as Beth pointed out, had to be filled out by a car.  And a candy bar.  Amusing middle-aged yet skinny men with good hair from the ’90s didn’t get a look-in, oddly enough.  I’m talking about the Guardian’s head music writer, Alexis Petridis, of course.  (See blogs passim.)

Alexis Petridis
A specimen of the sexy British man, yesterday

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[Almost] 30 Things I Can Do Today That I Couldn’t Do Until Relatively Recently

Although life continues to return to something at least outwardly resembling normality, it continues to retain aspects of strokiness.  Tonight, I’m going to a presentation giving an “overview of the latest interventions and approaches in stroke rehabilitation, like e-stimulation [and] other robotic devices for arms and legs, etc.” [thanks, Avi], and a number of you will probably know how excited I get about e-stim.  Hopefully, blog fodder will be forthcoming.

Oo-er, missus. E-stim? Sounds naughty.

Continue reading [Almost] 30 Things I Can Do Today That I Couldn’t Do Until Relatively Recently

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