The following is an article from The Annals of Improbable Research.
by Stephen Drew, AIR staff
The book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has awakened an interest in bezoars. Two years ago bezoars nudged briefly into the public consciousness, but they somehow lacked staying power. This was not due to any lack of bizarreness, for this was a case of doll’s head bezoars. And they were real, not fictional.
Bezoars are tough, literally indigestible masses that, one way or another, got into the stomachs or intestines of an animal. A hairball is a bezoar. The bezoars in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince are of a different sort -- stones taken from the stomachs of goats.
The doll’s head bezoars were, simply, dolls’ heads. These plastic crania made their first public appearance in a set of x-rays taken at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. Two Harborview radiologists celebrated the bezoars in print, publishing an illustrated report in the American Journal of Roentgenology.1
Drs. Ken Linnau and Frederick Mann played the role of J.K. Rowling, using clear prose to describe a curious interplay of childhood themes and dark adult doings.
They tell a strangely gripping tale. It begins with a 35-year-old man who suffers from
abdominal pain and distention. The doctors (who, in addition to being authors, play vital roles in the story) take an abdominal radiograph. As the x-rays develop, so does the plot.
The image is most curious. It “showed multiple rounded objects, some of which projected in the shape of a head with a pointed nose.” The hospital staff are intrigued.
At this point, we have a detective story. Someone named Clara L. Cone assists in the radiologic evaluation of the dolls’ heads. She then vanishes from the report.
The leading theory about the patient is that he is body-packing -- ingesting packets of illicit drugs for the purpose of smuggling. Through skillful questioning, the doctors tease out the real story: “The patient stated that he had ingested multiple heads of a popular children’s toy doll over the course of several days. He declared that swallowing dolls’ heads was his habit for anal autoerotic gratification.” In other words: delayed gratification. The doctors accept this explanation, or imply they do, and perform surgery for mechanical small-bowel obstruction.
The patient gets on with his life. But like the only-once-mentioned Clara L. Cone, he disappears from the story. Does he go on to partake of other dolls’ heads, or does he turn his gaze in some other direction? Drs. Linnau and Mann leave us in the dark here. They devote the rest of their report -- indeed, the bulk of it -- to certain intricacies of identifying dolls’ heads by means of radiographic equipment. “The entire head of the doll, including nose and hair, are radiodense,” they explain.
J.K. Rowling insists there will be only one more book in the Harry Potter series. It will be our last chance to see how, and perhaps why, the dashing young wizard advances in his knowledge of bezoars.
Reference
“Trauma Cases From Harborview Medical Center. Doll’s Head ‘Bezoar’: Complete Craniocervical Dislocation Causing Bowel Obstruction,” Ken F. Linnau and Frederick A. Mann, American Journal of Roentgenology, vol. 180, no. 4, April 2003, p. 986.
(Thanks to Scott W. Langill for bringing this to our attention.)
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This article is republished with permission from the September-October 2005 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can purchase back issues of the magazine or subscribe to receive future issues, in printed or in ebook form. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift! Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.
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For some details/research:
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/011912.html#011912
The blame should sit evenly on the consumers as well as the retailers.
Crowd control is a critical factor on days like this, and these corporations don't want to lay out additional expenses for security, thereby cutting into the profits.
They should hire extra personal, just for that one day, and arm them with tasers, pepper spray or something similar (I'd go to work for Wal-mart then,and turn them loose.
but the thing most people miss is the lack of personable accountability is is frightening. Not just on this day, but throughout the year. Not to mention pure common sense...if there is 1000 people crowding into a store for the same LIMITED QUANTITY ITEM, you need to stop think, is it worth risking injury/death to save $50.00 on that Wii/X-Box/Playstation/(insert current hot toy here)? Is it really worth injuring/ killing someone else so junior can have that 1 toy he really wants?
It's truly sickening watching the news and seeing reports of this kind of crap every year.
I personally stay home on Black Fridays and miss the deals. The one time I did venture into a Wal-Mart on that day, I almost got into a fight over a bag of cat food! What the hell?
I think the Black Friday sales should be discontinued all together. There has to be simpler,safer way to maintain profits and continue to offer the best holiday deals.
On the other hand, people should not be pushing, shoving, stampeding. But again, if people were made to stand in an orderly line, then there would be less of an opportunity for a huge mob at the doors.
So, it is on everyone, but the retailers are the ones who should be in the position to control the shoppers so that they don't behave like a mob.
And I also agree that Black Friday should be discontinued - I don't really see it being worth people getting killed or permanently disabled over. We don't have it here in Canada and we don't seem any worse off for it (although we do have our Boxing Day sales, but I don't think people typically suffer any lasting injuries from them).
Other then being called some nasty words for forcing people back into line I haven't had any problems.
and the one's that will survive will be the one's smart enough to stay the hairy heck home
and NO I won't appologize
1) The stores are MUCH to blame for egging the shoppers on with the deals and then NOT being prepared for the crowd with extra precautions and security measures. I doubt the managers even know what to do!
2) But shoppers do need to think about it....Come on, it's just not worth those extra few bucks to risk someones' life or have a lifelong disability....And it CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. My husband and I avoid all the major stores, malls and shopping centers on Black Friday on principle.
go to retailmenot or http://www.followsales.com find the best online deals. JUST leave away from the major retailers if you cherich your life!
Greed is NOT an acceptable excuse for mobbing, trampling other human beings, etc.
My brother and I went out to Best Buy one year. Got there at I think 4 or 5am and the line was already wrapped around the parking lot to the street. No stampeding, everyone waited their turn to get in. People were giving my brother and I hard glares when we snagged the last monitor that was on sale, but other than that, everything was crowded but civil.
Never doing it again though... Black Friday just is not worth it. Even though I stay up late, I still enjoy my sleep in a nice comfy bed. Not camping out in front of a store to save a few bucks.
The amount of people that go to Wal-Mart for the sake of convenience is very small compared to the bulk of people that go there. Convenience is the only reason that I would go there, like late at night when I wanted to buy a USB recharger for my Nintendo DS, or another night when I needed to pick up some AAA batteries. As for cost of merchandise, these people aren’t really saving on the crap they are buying, it's just they have bought into the belief that they are. They are paying cheap shopping mall prices for overpriced dollar store items. Most people don’t want to look for deals; they just want to be told where they can get them no matter what budget they are on.