Essay of the Day: Broca's Brain-Carl Sagan

 This is the first essay in the book, also called Broca's Brain. It's about Sagan's trip to a museum in France. One of the, I'm not certain if exhibit's is the right word since it was no longer on display, was the preserved brain of Paul Broca. Who was a 19th century French neuro-anatomist most famous for discovering Broca's Area a part of the brain responsible for speech.

I read the book originally a couple of decades ago, and re-reading this essay now I remember having a similar reaction to it. That is I enjoyed it, but I heartily disagree with some of Sagan's conclusions. Some of the essay was about the fact that Broca's study of the brain was fueled, in part, by the belief that brain structures would be different between criminals and non-criminals. Sagab was confident that society "created" it's criminals.

IOW, it's nature vs. nurture. This is a short post so I don't want to go into all of my problems with that argument, but to put it briefly, I disagree with both. And that's because at the core of it both sides disregard free will and a human being's responsibility for their own actions. Obviously both nature and nurture play their part in the decisions we make, but they don't dictate them. The responsibility for the decisions are our own.

Story of the Day: The Monkey's Paw-W.W. Jacobs

 Is a synopsis even necessary? A friend of the family (a retired soldier) comes by to tell stories about his travels and ends up discussing the eponymous fetish. The father ends up buying it, even though the soldier thinks it should be destroyed. 

The father wishes for some money; nothing happens. The son goes off to work, and later that day a visitor comes by to tell them their son died in an accident at work. And though the company declaims all responsibility, they do offer compensation. In the exact amount the father had wished for. There's a funeral, and days pass, and eventually the mother insists the father wish for their son to come back to life. He does, and for a while it seems like nothings going to happen, but then there's a knock on the door. The mother goes to answer it, but the father has a foreboding of what will be on the other side and makes his final wish. When the mother opens the door only a terrible moaning is on the other side.

The biggest difference between the story as written and how it usually gets portrayed is the timing of events. The son doesn't go off to work until the next day and the mother doesn't even think of wishing him back until several days after the funeral. The story has a very British feel, unsurprising since the author was British. One thing I did learn from the introduction was that in his lifetime he was most famous as a humorist writing stories about the sea and sailors. 

The atmosphere in the story is spot on. Which is very important since it's a short story that doesn't have gore or anything of the sort, the atmosphere is what has to do the work.

W.W. Jacobs

Poem of the Day: This is my letter to the World-Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the world, That never wrote to me, — The simple news that Nature told, With tender majesty. Her message is committed To hands I cannot see; For love of her, sweet countrymen, Judge tenderly of me!

I don't know much about poetry, but I like this poem. But it feels lonely.