Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn’t lost blood. All that’s happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of “clinical death”—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?

As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller “How We Die,” the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn’t be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn’t receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can’t be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “After one hour,” he says, “we couldn’t see evidence the cells had died. We thought we’d done something wrong.” In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.

But if the cells are still alive, why can’t doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that “astounding” discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine’s newest frontiers: treating the dead.

Newsweek.com

Honestly, it’d be very nice if we all collectively decided that it’s ‘ok’ to view things like this during prime-time TV. Do we think ‘the children’ are going to NOT see this online/in-magazines/at-school???

Seriously now, you have to chuckle… Oh, and because I can’t resist: “Nice Pussy (cat)”

I was reading through my most recent Make magazine and came across an article about people who are having magnets implanted into their fingertips. Apparently the way in which the nerves grow around the magnetic implants allows these people to be able to sense electrical fields. The article claimed that 100% of the people tested were able to tell the difference between a live and in-active 110VAC cable. I’m not quite sure of the testing criteria, and the review that I just read seems to indicate that there’s some updates that need to be done to the technology before it’s safe for general use - but it sounds pretty interesting.

I wonder if it makes metal detectors go off? Given the zippers/etc on normal clothing - I’d guess those implants wouldn’t set off anything. The concept of using magnetic dust has potential too. Note that earlier story - I’d guess you’ll exempt yourself from MRI’s.

My wife’s starting to exhibit more symptoms of her pregnancy. The newest development is that she cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke.

I’ve long since stopped smoking around her at all; however, the residual smell tends to linger for a while following my now infrequent cigarette breaks out in the garage.

I just found out on Tuesday; my initial reaction was the cliche “my boys can swim!”

I think the shock’s worn off, although I wasn’t paticularly surprised. Wife’s doing well so far, and I guess I’ll update in 8 months or so if I have any witty anecdotes to share.

Looks like Alamoure’s kids will have someone younger than them to impart their words of wisdom (”No, no, crying doesn’t get you another Elmo, you gotta convince mommy that it’s educational, that’s the key”).

So - Jason and I both hit the Potomac River Running store on Friday. We went in and they have you jog on a treadmill while they watch your gait and then recommend shoes for you.

I’ve actually gotten to the point where I enjoy jogging now. My legs don’t enjoy it as much - first week it was my calves hurting, now it’s the ankles and shins catching up.

I’m doing about 2 miles, 2-3 times a week depending on weather and how recovered I am from the last time. This morning was actually the best - generally I jog a mile, walk a block, jog a half, walk a block, then jog the final half. Today I did the whole thing with one break in the middle.

One thing that helps a lot is having music - I picked up an IRiver flash mp3 player and a set of Sony headphones off Ebay.

Everlast’s Eat At Whitey’s was the jogging music for today, Children’s story had a great beat.

Last night the most recent step machine began bleeding graphite. I’m impressed - it’s lasted a week. Also, the weld where it hold in a little pully in the center is starting to come apart. I give it one more day tops.

She did it again. This time the poor step machine only lasted a day. Guess I’ll try taking it back again. There really is something very frighteningly wrong here. Maybe I need to put her in the Guinness Book of records or something.

As previously mentioned, I’ve been on an exercise kick. One of the reasons that we got the step machine was because Steph had already killed three of the little mini-steppers.