Post like a Champion

Here's another Friday post (at least it was when I started it) for all you interested folks! Yep, things are a little different now that the semester is drawing to a close and I think it would be safe to expect these posts on Fridays now.
First off, the picture for today's post is my very own BYU-Idaho Rec. Sports Champion T-Shirt! You get one if you win the championships in a particular sport. My shirt comes due to the great success of my ward ultimate frisbee team. Yes indeed, you are reading an ultimate frisbee champion's blog, aren't you special! You know, I could just refer to myself as "the champion" or something to that effect, like how John the Beloved never directly refers to himself as John, but as "the one whom Jesus loved" and the like. Earning this shirt hasn't gone to my head...Seriously, though, it hasn't. I'm just jazzed about finally getting a much-coveted Champion Shirt and I couldn't have done it without a great ward team! Anyway, that's enough of that.
There has been quite a bit of "the usual" going on around here. Chemistry quizzes, my muscle lab exam, hours of homework, analyzing copper solutions in chemistry lab, etc. A good quote from my chemistry teacher when talking about ions, charges, and the like: "This is not California, not New York; this is Idaho and a positive will always attract a negative." Another one from today when talking about electronegativity (attractiveness of ions): "Once you're married (which would be a Noble Gas, atomically speaking), nobody likes you except your spouse. They think you're a '10', everyone else thinks you're a dork." My chemistry teacher is quite a character.
Anatomy and Physiology tidbit time! My A&P teacher gives out a lot of random knowledge and fyi's to go along with what we're learning and I love it. Two things I've learned this last week is something called a "death wave" in brain activity and "waking paralysis". First, the death wave. It all started when scientists were talking about alternative, humane ways to kill lab rats. They normally pump the heart full of a solution that makes it contract and then be done (like Dr. Kevorkian), but they discussed the possibility of using a guillotine. That brought up the accounts during the French Revolution of disembodied heads still blinking or mouths still moving and an experiment was devised. They hooked a rat up with a bunch of electrodes that measure brain waves and chopped off its head (it was at the point of being euthanized anyway) and measured the waves. They found that it took about 4 seconds for the waves to completely die down and then there appeared to be no activity afterwards. One scientist left the electrodes on long and after about 50 seconds, there was a huge wave and then flat-line. After doing the same thing with several other rats with the same results, they made a trip to the hospital to dying patients and measured their brain waves at death. They found the same results in these deceased patients, complete with the one giant wave roughly 50 seconds after death. At this point they don't know what causes it, what happens during it; all they know is that it happens at about 50 seconds after death. Strange, isn't it?
I won't say much about waking paralysis, except that it involves a part of your brain stem called the "reticulum formation" found in the brain stem. It regulates sleep-wake patterns, cyclical patterns (like swinging your arms while walking), and alertness. It's highly sensitive to emotion since it's so close to the portion of the brain that deals with emotion. A mutation in the reticulum formation can actually cause complete paralysis in the body, triggered by emotion, and leaves the person completely aware of his/her surroundings without being able to do anything about it. We were then shown a video clip of a woman who, back in the 1950s, went into waking paralysis while laughing at an Abbott and Costello movie. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. After being put on a slab in the morgue, she regained control of her body, at up, and saw a morgue attendant. As soon as he saw her, he took off running and she never saw him again. Nowadays we have more sensitive instruments so that we can tell if somebody's actually dead or just in waking paralysis, but can you imagine back in the days when there really were no instruments at all? Although the condition is rare, one has to figure there were a few people who weren't as lucky as the lady in our video clip.
Moving on, it's the 4th of July Weekend! Happy Independence Day everyone! Granted, not everyone who reads these posts celebrates the holiday, but a Happy 4th to you just the same. It's a fun weekend that's planned up here in the Burgiverse; with hiking (maybe), barbequing, going down to Idaho Falls to watch the fireworks on Monday, and things of that nature. Yessir, I love the Fourth of July. We've already kicked off the weekend last night (which means Friday night now) with a bonfire out in the St. Anthony Sand Dunes. It's a fantastic spot to go out and gaze at the stars. For all you avid star-gazers, make sure you get out of sight of the road that goes through there to avoid the headlights of passing cars and occasional lights of a police officer pulling someone over and thereby achieve optimal gazing. At any rate, I'm going to close this post out for another week. Until then, have a great week!