In Paul's Brain

Well, it's been a busy week. My meeting with Dan Franc at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the U. was great fun. I got a little tour of the place, and then I got put into the machine. This was a 3 Tesla MRI I believe- about twice as strong as what you'd find in a hospital. We did a full scan of around 20 minutes, and then went over how one goes about analyzing the retrieved data. It's really quite amazing what it's possible to know about the structure and chemical composition of the brain without actually opening up the skull. The software we were using, for example, can discriminate between a number of different organic compounds, so one can determine their relative amounts. And it can be done with a fair degree of localization. This is, perhaps, not news to those familiar with MRI, but it's clever and amazing nevertheless. Here are some samples:

One through the eyes














One through the ears- I think that vertical white streak is one of my carotids














And, of course, my nose. Who would ever get an MRI of their nose?







I should get back to work I suppose. Just a quick book/author recommendation first though. Eric, a fellow Kenpo dude, suggested Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver to me last week, and though I haven't snooped into that just yet, I did pick up a copy of another of Stephenson's books titled Cryptonomicon, and it's pretty decent so far. It deals, not too surprisingly, with cryptography, both during the second world war and the present. No mention of Shannon yet (if you don't know who Claude Shannon is, a quick Google search will reveal just how central his work is to the field), but hopefully he'll make an appearance. Thanks, Eric!

Also, SEE SWEETLAND. Caralyn and I went to see it at the Grandview last week, and it is just amazing. It was produced, in part, by Alan Cummings, who also plays a role in it, and it gets all those words great works deserve: charming, haunting, poignant, sad, funny, joyful...a must see.

o.k. I go.

Take it easy,

Paul