Thursday Things: Thanksgiving Edition
28 November 2019. Vol 1 No 16. By Dan McGirt. #16
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Happy Thanksgiving from Thursday Things! Most of our Happy Subscribers are in the United States, where today is our annual Thanksgiving Day, a national holiday often observed by eating too much turkey and dressing (or stuffing, if you live in the benighted North) and cranberry sauce, watching football games on television, and taking a long nap.
More seriously, Thanksgiving is a time to gather with family and friends and give thanks for our many blessings. So I want to thank you for reading Thursday Things. I hope you have enjoyed the little items I gather for you each week.
My aim is to entertain, inform, and uplift with fun, funny, quirky, and positive bits of news, “cool things from the internet”, and other material I gather in my restless reading and browsing, online and off. I know there are a many other things competing for your attention each day — even on Thursdays! I appreciate that you choose to spend a few minutes reading my little newsletter. I hope you will continue to find it time well spent.
This is the 16th edition of Thursday Things. I launched the newsletter as an experiment, in part to make myself meet a weekly deadline and also to have the satisfaction of getting something published and out the door on a regular basis. So far, so good! I haven’t missed an issue yet. In large part, that is because I have heard from several Happy Subscribers who tell me you look forward to reading the newsletter each week. So even when I might be having an off week, I have to shake it off and get Thursday Things out the door, because I know you’re waiting! Now, let’s get to it!
A big Thanksgiving dinner can easily put you in a too-much-turkey coma. Fortunately, scientists have developed a more reliable method of putting a human patient in suspended animation for the first time:
The technique is officially called "emergency preservation and resuscitation" (EPR) and is being tested at the University of Maryland Medical Center on patients that arrive with acute trauma, such as a stab wound or gunshot. Given the nature of their injuries, these patients would normally have a survival rate of less than five percent.
With EPR, the patient is cooled rapidly by replacing their blood with ice-cold saline -- the heart stops beating and brain activity almost completely stops. At normal body temperatures, cells need a constant supply of oxygen to remain alive, but the cold temperature slows or stops the chemical reactions in cells, which need less oxygen as a result.
Normally, the brain can survive about five minutes without oxygen before damage starts. With EPR, doctors have up to two hours to work on a patients before it is time to warm them up and restart their heart. You can read more at New Scientist. This is a medical advance to be thankful for because it will certainly save lives as the technique is perfected. Also - we’re one step closer to suspended animation in SPAAAAAACE! Alpha Centauri, here we come.
Thanksgiving is also a day when some of us — not naming names — may discover new dimensions added to our waistlines. Physicists say there are at least ten different dimensions in the universe. I’ve heard that before, and I get the first four dimensions - the first three define physical space as we experience it: length, width, and height (or latitude, longitude, altitude). The fourth dimension is time. “Meet me at location X, Y, Z at 5:00.” Easy!
But then it gets weird. I’d never seen an explanation of the other six dimensions. This article tries to describe them — with illustrations! — and I’ve read it several times. I’m still confused. But here is the summary:
5th dimension: Able to move backwards and forwards in time, and see the differences between our world and other possible worlds. All is knew is this is where Mr. Mxyzptlk lives.
Also Bat-Mite. But who ever remembers Bat-Mite?
6th dimension: Here you can move along a plane of possibilities and “witness every possible permutation of what can occur past, present, and future.” Okay, then.
7th dimension: You can see every possibility for other universes with different physical laws, where gravity operates differently and the speed of light is different. Whoa.
8th dimension: This is the plane of all possible histories and futures for each universe. Also has a fresh lemon scent. I assume there are pink bunny rabbits.
9th dimension: But wait! There’s more! Here “all universal laws of physics and the conditions in each universe become apparent.” I don’t even know what that means. But remember to pack a sweater.
10th dimension: Everything become possible and imaginable. Which, I assume, includes all possible puns in all possible languages.
So there you have it, the ten dimensions of reality. Hope that’s as clear to you as it is to me. Pass the pumpkin pie please!
Let’s bring it back down to Earth with some 25 Thanksgiving facts from Good Housekeeping. Here is a sample:
President George H.W. Bush pardoned the first turkey in 1989 after he noticed the 50-pound bird at his official Thanksgiving proclamation looked a little antsy. Every president since then has upheld the tradition.
About 46 million turkeys are cooked for Thanksgiving each year. Not counting the ones that get a pardon.
Thomas Jefferson refused to declare Thanksgiving a holiday when he was president (back then, it had to be declared by the president each year) because he was a stickler for the whole “separation of church and state” thing. Lighten up, Tom! Or no dessert for you.
I leave you with the hilarious yet underrated “Sexy Pilgrim” video from 2010. Yes, it was a ad for Muscle Milk, but that’s only a brief mention at the end. Happy Thanksgiving! And … you’re welcome.
