Things I Learned From Librarians (1)

I learn a lot of interesting things from talking to my colleagues.  Our end-of-evening conversations, as we watch the patrons reluctantly shuffle out, tend to veer strange with plentiful use of Internet for illustrations and citations.

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Last month, A informed me of the glorious goopiness of the hagfish. After watching a couple videos, I decided that that was the perfect descriptor for the cold that I had developed.  Are you ridiculously phlegmy?  You have a hagfish cold!

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The other week, we were talking about body modifications*, including penile splints. (No, I’m not linking to that.)

*(this one’s totally SFW)

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Yesterday, A and I were discussing ABO blood types (have you heard of the Bombay phenotype? It’s called O_h!) and their relative tastiness to mosquitos, Rh factors, and the various other blood groups and factors – notably CMV in the blood.

We moved from there to blood loss  and death conditions (naturally).  Some research revealed that the body below the heart could be clinically dead for up to 30 minutes without irreversible damage (just from the clinical death state).  Hypothermic conditions can potentially double that time, but even so, the brain can only stand 5-10 minutes.  So calling in dead was determined to be hardly worth the effort.

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Tags: blood types, body modification, clinical death, conversations, hagfish