12: The Island of the Colorblind, Oliver Sacks

If seeing patients, visiting archeological sites, wandering in rain forests, snorkelling in the reefs, at first seem to bear no relation to each other [...]

The perfect life, right?

I read this several months ago, and though I took brief notes on a Feldman's Books bookmark, I don't remember what half of them refer to. Ah well. Below the notes I managed to decipher.

Reading of island life re-awakened my desire to try breadfruit. Where can I find a breadfruit in the Bay Area? (The web tells me it's relatively easy to find canned jackfruit, but I feel like being difficult, and want a whole breadfruit.)

Holothurian==sea cucumber—that's knowledge you've been wanting your whole life.

Wittgenstein and Sacks are bad-asses that share an interesting trait that's not entirely foreign to me:

It is said that Wittgenstein was either the easiest or the most difficult of house-guests to accommodate, because though he would eat, with gusto, whatever was served to him on his arrival, he would then want exactly the same for every subsequent meal for the rest of his stay. This is seen as extraordinary, even pathological, by many people—but since I myself am similarly disposed, I see it as perfectly normal.

Nan Madol—interesting archaeological site off the eastern shore of Pohnpei.

Branchial myoclonus—rhythmic motion of palate, middle ear muscles, and certain muscles of the neck. Gill movement in man!

Victoria regia(=amazonica)—giant water lily.

Welwitschia mirabilis—a crazy living fossil.

Some of the largest living things on earth:

• Calamites, extinct giant horsetails. The giant trees were connected by underground rhizomes. All trees connected by a network of rhizomes were clones of the original tree and may be considered a single organism.
  
• An antarctic beech forest in Australia, where the trees are connected by runners and offshoots, said to date to the last Ice Age, 24,000 years ago.
  
• 37 acres of genetically homogenous Armillaria bulbosa(=gallica) in Michigan (since surpassed by a 2200 acres monster colony of Armillaria ostoyae in Oregon).
  

The wikipedia article makes good reading. Extremes are interesting.

Parkinsonian patients find it easier to walk stairs or rough terrain far more easily than a smooth, flat surface.

Coconut crabs are seriously strange—or at least surprising. This bit from the Relationship with humans section of the wikipedia article is, well, outrageous:

Children sometimes play with coconut crabs by placing some wet grass at an angle on a palm tree that contains a coconut crab. When the animal climbs down, it believes the grass is the ground, releases its grip on the tree, and subsequently falls.

New books to read:

• Alexander Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America during the Years 1799-1804—I picked up Volume 1 already and sloshed through 60 of its 500-odd pages. I'm stuck due to its intimidating hugeness.
  
• Nora Ellen Groce, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language: Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard
  
• Nordby, Hess, Sharpe, Night Vision: Basic, Clinical and Applied Aspects
  
• Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack
  
• Richard Dawkins, Climbing Mount Improbable