TV Golf, Botching the Birdies: “The Buick Open golf tournament was in Michigan, so why was the silvery song of a canyon wren — a bird never seen east of Texas — heard on the TV broadcast?” Washington Post

Running in the genes. As the Olympics nears, the nature vs. nurture debate gets applied to black runners’ prowess. The Times

Strangelove syndrome gives hands a life of their own. A fascinating and rare neurological syndrome may shed light on the neural basis of free will. Forty cases of anarchic hand syndrome, nicknamed Strangelove syndrome after the unforgettable struggles of the Peter Sellers character in Kubrick’s 1963 film to control a wayward hand, have been described. Seemingly caused by damage to a frontal region called the supplemental motor area, most sufferers are at war with the affected limb, slapping, scolding or binding it. Although the concept of free will is a dicey one without a precise neurological basis, one way to conceptualize this syndrome is that a secondary, competing center of will takes over control of the hand. Other neurological syndromes result from “neglect”, in which damage to certain brain areas makes patients lose awareness of the fact (“deny”) that a certain part of their body belongs to them, with predictable results. But, in anarchic hand syndrome, in contrast, ‘ “the patients are aware of the bizarre and

potentially hazardous behaviours of their hand

but have great difficulty inhibiting it,” said

Professor Della Salla. “They often refer to the

feeling that one of their hands behaves as if it

has its own will but never deny that this

capricious hand is part of their own body.” ‘ Let me suggest another way to cut this cake. Might anarchic hand syndrome be a particularly dramatic challenge to the mistaken notion, or convenient fiction, we have of thinking that organisms have a unity of purpose in the first place? The Times; BBC Here‘s the result of a Google search on anarchic hand syndrome — not much. [Searching on Strangelove syndrome comes up with more hits, but they have nothing to do with neurology. Kubrick’s film seems to have become an icon for deepseated public fears of unbalanced military professionals and doomsday scenarios.]

Spiking the Gun Myth. The New York Times reviews Daniel Bellesiles’ Arming America, which deflates the myths evoked by current gun advocates about the early role of the gun in American life. Excerpt from the book:

The gun is so central to American

identity that the nation’s history has

been meticulously reconstructed to

promote the necessity of a heavily

armed American public. In the classic

telling, arms ownership has always

been near universal, and American

liberty was won and maintained by

the actions of privately armed

citizens. The gun culture has been

read from the present into the past.

Franklin Orth, executive vice

president of the NRA, told a Senate

subcommittee in 1968, ‘There is a

very special relationship between a

man and his gun — an atavistic

relation with its deep roots in

prehistory, when the primitive man’s

personal weapon, so often his only

effective defense and food provider,

was nearly as precious to him as his

own limbs.’ What, then, of the man

who does not have such a special

relationship with his gun? What kind

of man is he? And even more

frightening, what if we discover that

early American men did not have that

special bond with their guns?”