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Mad science is decadent and depraved
I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading Monitor on Psychology. There happens to be a reason for this. Fortunately, there is an equally obvious solution: the APA should just publish more articles about planaria:
These results led McConnell to think more seriously about the chemical nature of memory. To test this notion, he needed to find a way to transfer the putative molecules from a trained to an untrained animal. But how? They tried to graft the head of a trained worm onto the tail of a naïve worm—but the head kept falling off.
Next, they tried grinding up trained worms and injecting them into naïve recipients, but that didn't work, either. The hypodermic needles were too big—getting one inside a flatworm was like trying to impale a prune with a javelin—and if, by chance, the needle was positioned well enough to inject the planarian-puree, it either oozed out or caused the worm to explode.
At Tea on Sunday, I got asked if I was a scientist or if I had been trained as one; the answer to both was no, unless you count messing around with slime mold and radio telescopes (not in the same high school project), but I could so go for some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know right now. Unfortunately, I have an early-morning non-mad doctor's appointment, so mostly I think I am going to go to bed.
These results led McConnell to think more seriously about the chemical nature of memory. To test this notion, he needed to find a way to transfer the putative molecules from a trained to an untrained animal. But how? They tried to graft the head of a trained worm onto the tail of a naïve worm—but the head kept falling off.
Next, they tried grinding up trained worms and injecting them into naïve recipients, but that didn't work, either. The hypodermic needles were too big—getting one inside a flatworm was like trying to impale a prune with a javelin—and if, by chance, the needle was positioned well enough to inject the planarian-puree, it either oozed out or caused the worm to explode.
At Tea on Sunday, I got asked if I was a scientist or if I had been trained as one; the answer to both was no, unless you count messing around with slime mold and radio telescopes (not in the same high school project), but I could so go for some Things Man Was Not Meant to Know right now. Unfortunately, I have an early-morning non-mad doctor's appointment, so mostly I think I am going to go to bed.
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It really makes me wish I could draw. The natural next step from this sentence—"During the period from 1959 through 1964, he received more than $150,000 (in 1960s dollars) from the Atomic Energy Commission and the National Institute of Mental Health designated specifically for the planarian work"—is obviously a webcomic about telepathic radioactive flatworms that share information by eating one another's brains.
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But only certain kinds of information, predominantly tactical and analytical skill sets of a more aggressive nature; in order to share other kinds of information, let's say the intuitive arts, they must regurgitate their own brains and gently share then with those with whom they wish to interlocute. Of course! That's how the mysterious dispatcher of monster zombies in Manhattan restored the zombie's minds, thereby making them ex-zombies before rather than after killing them! But what nefarious revelations did the mysterious monster-killer glean from the restored brains of its victims that then caused her/him/it to flip out and rip apart all the briefly remindful monsters and scatter their corpses across the City's epic (or otherwise overpriced) rooftops? Or was it simply a matter of the mysterious monster-killer itself becoming a zombie by innocently sharing its brains with zombified monsters? Most important of all: What is the ex-secret of the excess ex-zombies? Stay tuned! Greater minds than mine may have the answers!
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Never mind; it really makes me wish I had a radio show.
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