INTERESTING TIMES

I’m reminded of a case study that describes an individual who had come to associate sexual arousal with being covered in insects. As a child, that individual had been locked into closets for unimaginable amounts of time, and during those times, bugs would frequently fill the space and crawl on him. The child, trying to seek some sort of escape from the reality of his experience, found comfort only in sexual release—even though he was too young to even know what sex was or meant. His body knew only that it felt good, and it provided the only possible escape available to him. In his mind, those associations became, quite literally, wired together.
--Roger Thompson | The Atlantic | December 19, 2014
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/times-up-for-timeout/383897/

*new tag: "kink"

The difference between the right word
and the almost right word
is like the difference between lightning
and the lightning bug.
--Mark Twain

Sleeping sickness aka African trypanosomiasis
--parasitic disease in people and animals
--caused by protozoa of genus Trypanosoma
--transmitted by the tsetse fly
--endemic in certain regions of Sub-Saharan Africa (36 countries and 60 million people)
--estimated 50,000 to 70,000 current infx
--3 major epidemics: 1896–1906, 1920 and 1970.
--tse tse flies mainly found by rivers and lakes, in gallery-forests and in wooded savannah
--Sleeping sickness occurs only in sub-Saharan Africa in regions where there are tsetse flies that can transmit the disease.
--For reasons that are so far unexplained, there are many regions where tsetse flies are found, but sleeping sickness is not.
--Worldwide, 25,000 new cases of both East and West African trypanosomiasis are reported each year
--World Health Organization says it is vastly underreported.
--Human African trypanosomiasis (HAT)
--caused by flagellate protozoan, Trypanosoma brucei, which exists in 2 morphologically identical subspecies: Trypanosoma brucei rhodesiense (East African or Rhodesian African trypanosomiasis) and Trypanosoma brucei gambiense (West African or Gambian African trypanosomiasis)
--Both parasites transmitted to human hosts by bites of infected tsetse flies (Glossina species)
--tse tse flies are found only in Africa
( more )

not to be confused with African trypanosomiasis which is caused by T. brucei gambiense and T. brucei rhodesiense and transmitted by Tse Tse flise
( notes )

including: AMOEBAE, FLAGELLATED PROTOZOA and SPOROZOA
( these notes integrated June 2012 )

Kitten just pulled another tack off my corkboard, causing important things to do lists to fall into the dark behind my desk. She loves to play with tacks, and leaves them lurking in the carpet when she is done. But her very favorite thing is a desk drawer just slightly open, with a hair tie in there. She'll play and play with the desk drawer, and when she finds the hair tie she will snatch it up as if it were a live bird, and run off to play with it on the slippery livingroom floor. That's where she is now, batting a hair tie around and pawing at the walls.
( more )