Thassophobia is the fear of sitting.
Papyrophobia is the fear of paper.
Ecophobia is the fear of home.
Euphobia is the fear of hearing good news.
Brontophobia is the fear of storms.
Deipnophobia is the fear of dinner party conversations.
The name of the Hehe tribe of Tanzania comes from their feared ‘hee-hee’ battle cry.
Huli Wigman from the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive. A phobia which sounds surprisingly natural. The great 18th century clown Grimaldi was so frightened of being buried alive that he specified his head must be cut off first, which his family duly arranged.
Both dogs and horses can smell fear in humans.
When Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was asked what he feared most he said: “Events, dear boy, events…”
In several areas in Papua New Guinea, women can be punished by public gang rape, often sanctioned by elders.
Firearms instructor and writer Colonel Jeff Cooper claimed to have coined the word hoplophobia in 1962 to describe a “mental disturbance characterized by irrational aversion to weapons”.
Model 29 .44 magnum
Cooper attributed this behaviour to an irrational fear of firearms and other forms of weaponry. He stated that “the most common manifestation of hoplophobia is the idea that instruments possess a will of their own, apart from that of their user.”
The meaning and usage ascribed by Cooper falls outside of the medical definitions of true specific phobias. For example, specific phobias require that the person be aware and acknowledge that their fear is irrational, and usually causes some kind of functional impairment. True medical phobias of firearms and other weapons can exist, but are unusual.
When looked at objectively, it could be argued that a phobia of firearms – even though it is hard to diagnose a true medical fear such as hoplophobia – is not that irrational especially when compared to, say, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth (known as Arachibutyrophobia). Since almost all, if not all firearms have the potential to be lethal, the irrationality of the fear of those instruments diminishes enormously.
“Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Obviously. If you believe guns kill people out of their own volition you should see a specialist in mental health. People kill people. There’s the clue. It turns out to be quite obvious that people can’t be trusted with those instruments – so why are firearms still legal? How many children a year are killed by their father’s stash of arsenic or stick of gelignite?”
- anonymous source from the bloggersphere
Human beings are born with only two inbuilt fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. All other fears are abnormal and have to be learned.
The upper part of the stela of Hammurapis’ code of laws
The Code of Hammurabi written around 1700 BC is widely considered to be the earliest known mention of lesbians in surviving historical documents. The code makes reference to women called the salzikrum literally translated as ‘daughter-men’ who were allowed to marry other women. Coincidentally, the code also contains the earliest mention of a transgender person.
In a 17th century law code for the Puritan colony of New Haven in present-day Connecticut so-called “blasphemers, homosexuals and masturbators” were eligible for the death penalty.
Bell, Broomstick, Bubble, Cargo, Circle, Dirndl, Hobble, Rah-Rah and Scooter are all different kinds of skirts.
Ten yards of cloth were used for the white ruffs around the neck and hands on a dress made for Queen Elizabeth in 1565.
Dyspraxia is a hard condition to explain to people who are not acquainted with it. There are so many aspects to it which make it very difficult to explain it and many dyspraxics have a variety of symptoms that other dyspraxics do not have.
However it can be said that developmental dyspraxia is a chronic neurological disorder beginning in childhood that can affect planning of movements and co-ordination as a result of brain messages not being accurately transmitted to the body.
For example, one dyspraxic may be able to tying shoe laces without difficulty, whereas another dyspraxic may not. Dyspraxia is different in every single individual although there is a general list of problems many dyspraxics face every day.
Dyspraxia is a neurological condition which affects the brain. It prevents messages to and from the brain being transmitted properly. It affects all or any areas of development in children which are mainly these six areas: intellectual; emotional; physical; language; social; sensory.
It may also impair a person’s learning ability. Dyspraxia mainly affects people’s fine and/or gross motor co-ordination as well as many other things.
Dyspraxia causing some many problems, some more common than other but here is a general list of problems dyspraxics face every day:
The mirror box is a box with two mirrors in the centre (one facing each way), invented by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran to help alleviate phantom limb pain, in which patients feel they still have a limb after having it amputated.
The patient places the good limb into one side of the box (in this case the right hand) and the amputated limb into the other side. Due to the mirror, the patient sees a reflection of the good hand where the missing limb would be. The patient thus receives artificial visual feedback that the “resurrected” limb is now moving when they move the good hand.
Their hypothesis was that every time the patient attempted to move the paralysed limb, they received sensory feedback (through vision and proprioception) that the limb did not move.
This feedback stamped itself into the brain circuitry so that, even when the limb was no longer present, the brain had learned that the limb (and subsequent phantom) was paralysed.
To retrain the brain, and thereby eliminate the learned paralysis, Ramachandran created the mirror box. The patient places the good limb into one side, and the stump into the other.
The patient then looks into the mirror on the side with good limb and makes mirror symmetric movements, as a symphony conductor might, or as we do when we clap our hands.
Because the subject is seeing the reflected image of the good hand moving, it appears as if the phantom limb is also moving. Through the use of this artificial visual feedback it becomes possible for the patient to “move” the phantom limb, and to unclench it from potentially painful positions.
The enteric nervous system is a subdivision of the autonomic nervous system that directly controls the gastrointestinal system in vertebrates.
The enteric nervous system is embedded in the lining of the gastrointestinal system
The nervous system exerts a profound influence on all digestive processes, namely motility, ion transport associated with secretion and absorption, and gastrointestinal blood flow. Some of this control emanates from connections between the digestive system and central nervous system, but just as importantly, the digestive system is endowed with its own, local nervous system referred to as the enteric or intrinsic nervous system.
The magnitude and complexity of the enteric nervous system is immense – it contains as many neurons as the spinal cord. The enteric nervous system, along with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, constitute the autonomic nervous system.
The principal components of the enteric nervous system are two networks or plexuses of neurons, both of which are embedded in the wall of the digestive tract and extend from esophagus to anus:
The Malay word bongking means ‘sprawling face down with one’s bottom in the air’; jeremak means ‘suddenly face to face’; and jeremus means ‘to sprawl on one’s face’.
Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I of England, portraying different angles from which Bernini could produce a sculpture.
When the sculptor Bernini saw the sad expression in Van Dyck’s portrait Charles I in Three Positions, he described the King’s face as ‘doomed’. ‘Never, never’, he wrote, ‘have I beheld features more unfortunate’.
There are 44 muscles in the human face, enabling us to make more than 250,000 different expressions.
Almost half the weight of the earth’s crust is accounted for by oxygen.
More than half the earth is at least 3000 metres under the sea.
An okapi can wash its own ears inside and out with its tongue.
An Okapia Johnstoni or Okapi
The praying mantis has only one ear, which is located between its legs.
Human ears contain the smallest muscles and the smallest bones in the human body.
A golden eagle is seven and a half feet wide but weighs less than nine pounds.
The bioluminescent Giant Siphonophore can grow 40 metres long – almost twice as long as a blue whale – but its body is only as thick as a broomstick.
