Monthly Archives: July 2006

Due to absurd high temperatures, our web hosting provider in California has been experiencing some power outages, generator fires, and other electrical misadventures today. As a consequence, Damn Interesting has about as reachable as an ex-husband on payday. I know that’s a lame metaphor, but I had to choose between that and “up and down more than a five-dollar hooker,” which just didn’t seem as family-friendly.

Hopefully things will settle down soon… thanks for your patience.

Beginning as early as 1916, and continuing well into the 1920s, an unusual and disturbing illness devastated millions of people throughout the world. It arrived in the shadow of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic– which killed an estimated fifty million people worldwide– so it has been largely overlooked by history despite the fact that it took the lives of over a million people, and left countless others frozen inside unresponsive bodies.

Young people, particularly women, were the most vulnerable to the disease, though it affected people of all ages. When an individual was stricken, the first signs were typically a sore throat and fever accompanied by a headache; but these discomforts soon developed into more alarming problems such as double-vision and severe weakness. Within hours, most of the victims were gripped by episodes of tremors, strange bodily movements, intense muscle pains, and delayed mental response. Symptoms rapidly increased in severity, and in spite of medical attention, most patients worsened dramatically. Behavioral changes often appeared– including psychosis and hallucinations– followed by steadily increasing drowsiness and lethargy. Many became comatose and completely unresponsive.

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In South America, in the swamps of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, lives a very unusual bird.

The hoatzin is a pheasant-sized enigma. The official national bird of Guyana, the hoatzin has defied attempts of ornithologists to place it in its proper place among the families of birds. No matter where it is placed, the hoatzin simply does not appear to fit. The hoatzin was given its own family (Opisthocomidae), but since the original designation it has been moved around from being grouped with the game birds (the source of its other name, the Canje pheasant), to grouping it with the cuckoos, to its current, though still speculative placement with the seriema family (most closely related to rails and bustards).

The difficulty is the hoatzin itself. While bearing superficial resemblance to all of these other species in some way, it has many peculiarities that sets it apart from them all. These oddities Include some very primitive traits not seen in most birds since the Jurassic period, coexisting with characteristics which are otherwise unheard of among birds.

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If your fancy is tickled by the thought of writing for Damn Interesting, you’ve got a few hours yet to seize upon the opportunity. Thanks to those who have submitted writing samples already… we’ll be eating them by the fistful for the next week or so, and we’ll get in touch with you as soon as we’ve fully digested yours.

Vibrator adThey’re really just a simple casing with an unbalanced drive shaft and a motor, but for such an unassuming device, the vibrator has some tremendous taboos associated with it. Most of these prejudices hinge on packaging and purpose– the vibrator in a pager is the same basic device as its stimulating and lurid cousin, but suffers no stigma. But perhaps our society has its taboos misplaced– after all, the pager uses its mechanical oscillations for the questionable purpose of distracting drivers on high-speed motorways, whereas the “vibrator” was originally designed for a noble medical purpose: the treatment of hysteria.

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