Brain as walnut
Posted on October 27, 2006
Filed Under All, Technology |
Bruce Sterling’s brain/walnut analogy would seem quite apt, given the appearance of the MRI below. It really does look like a walnut in this particular image slice. Some of the other slices look very different…
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3 Responses to “Brain as walnut”
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Ya know, Chris, this walnut analogy is starting to wear — I look out my windows and see god-damned squirrels all over the place and there is a walnut tree at the end of the alley. It’s not really right to conflate an essential organ of so many years that has so much value with a nut that lasts barely a year under the onslaught of god-damned hungry and greedy squirrels with only some random overlooked example that may root.
So - it’s a brain section image - your brain’s section - and in its fullness, it’s value is incalculable. Its future contribution is similarly incalculable and its wholeness worthy of salvation for the purpose of contribution. How can its salvation be secured in the face of possible -otomy? Keep fighting, Chris, for your full brain.
> “a nut that lasts barely a year under the onslaught of god-damned hungry and greedy squirrels with only some random overlooked example that may root.”
But walnuts and walnut trees are still around, aren’t they? The humble walnut must be doing something right.
Yes, Paul, and not to wholey divorce or deny the connections, whatever they may be, between brains and walnuts (and to be fair, let’s not leave out hickory- and hazelnuts etc), let’s also not overly connect the two - one’s a vehicle of regeneration that separates from its source to achieve its usually-one-year purpose, and one’s a decades-long organ of control and imagination wholey dependent on its connection to the rest of the body and to many outside and beyond a particular brain’s system in order to achieve.
The image of a ‘walnut-looking’ brain scan section perhaps understandably provides some familiar and see-able analog for a normally hidden object - innocent in its way - but I hope I will be pardoned if I am occasionally repelled, (even in the face of the wonder of these creatures), by seeing so many god-damned squirrels digging up bulbs, chewing holes in the eaves to nest in the roof, climbing into the engine compartments and nibbling on tasty rubber components, and, yes, gnawing on walnuts. Care of the brain - Chris’s brain in particular - is something that I’ve become a bit uncomfortable associating with seasonal ravenousness of arboreal rodents - less than affectionately called ‘tree rats’ hereabouts.
. . . and, I’m trying to inject a bit of levity . . . we need a laugh now and again