Scientific Ramblings

So I noticed this lymph node in my neck and thought it a good opportunity to look up something about the lymphoid system, which I knew very little about. So I pulled out an anatomy book to look at. It was one of those dry types of books that say a lot without saying much at all, so I still know very little about it, but a little bit less little than the little before. But it reminded me of a good quote from Chesterton (from "Orthodoxy" to be precise):

Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know they are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say "The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment," you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you wish to begin "I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out," you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

I could hardly limit myself to that and it is already a somewhat lengthy quote. Chesterton was such an intelligent man and I have yet to find a single point upon which we disagree; when someone asks me a question these days, I quite frequently bring in a reference to something he said.

Now I shall return from this digression to return to the matter about which I began, though merely so that I may go upon another digression, which may actually be the main point after all. While looking at little squiggly lines to spread some sort of dim illumination upon the long, scientific words that told much about where all the lymph nodes and suchlike were and what they were capable of, and very little about what my lymphoid system was probably doing at this very moment, I discovered a matter of far more importance:

The human body is 60% fluid by volume. I thought I had heard it was more like 80%. Oh well. I guess we are not so much like watermelon after all...