POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Matters of the heart : Re: Matters of the heart Server Time
3 Sep 2024 23:30:04 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Matters of the heart  
From: Invisible
Date: 7 Jul 2010 04:17:05
Message: <4c343801$1@news.povray.org>
>> Heh. I don't know if it's a rule of the Internet, but it probably 
>> should be: For any conceivable topic, somebody else will know way, way 
>> more about it than you. :-}
> 
> except that in this case you knew I would be such a somebody.

Well, perhaps. But if I posted something about, say, iambic pentamiter, 
somebody here would probably turn out to be an expert on the subject.

> IIRC the first catheter insertion was via the arm, so that would have 
> been the superior side. Aside, I think that you as a programmer would be 
> more careful in selecting an apparently arbitrary choice of two. 
> Especially if you know they are not interchangeable. Why didn't you go 
> for e.g. the vena cava without mentioning wither inf. or sup.?

Well, I was going for comic effect rather than technical accuracy. A 
long technical term sounds more impressive.

>> Yeah, the heart is a double-pump, so there ought to be *two* entrances 
>> in theory. (There are apparently more because humans have two lungs, 
> 
> with in most cases two venes entering from each lung (indeed an inferior 
> and a superior).

OK, I didn't read that far.

>> On a completely unrelated note, apparently in some animals the heart 
>> is a single pump, and in yet others it's just a tube that sort of 
>> squirts,
> 
> In humans (and mammals and birds and probably also the reptiles and 
> fishes) it starts out as a tube with peristaltic contractions only later 
> the two separate circulations are formed. E.g. crocodiles have a single 
> chamber, but don't make the assumption that therefore their heart is 
> more primitive. For them that functions better than any 4 chambered 
> heart would do.

Well, the word "primitive" means "simpler", and it's sometimes taken to 
mean "less evolved". And people seem to think that simpler is worse, and 
more complex is better. Then agian, people think that worms are "less 
evolved" than humans - but they severely out-number us, so they can't be 
doing it that badly wrong...

> Pity that given your interest in this topic (and in e.g. MathML) that 
> you seem to be stuck in MK.

Heh. I'm "interested" in many, many topics. Fractals, data compression, 
encryption, statistics, artificial intelligence, digital signal 
processing, sound synthesis, logic design, biology, evolotion... the 
list goes on.

The GHC User Manual has a section "for over-interested souls". I think 
this is possibly the term that describes me...

>> In other news, I spent a really absurd amount of time on Wikipedia. o_O
> 
> I think we noticed, and on WA.

Ah WA... Very cool, but not especially useful. Like the data glove, it 
seems to be a solution in search of a problem.


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