Category Archives: Other

My Big Fat Neanderthal Family Wedding

Posted on November 18, 2014 by Roger Gosden

Was there a population that never experienced discrimination? Prejudice has an ancient pedigree, perhaps wired into the human psyche. I was musing whether Neanderthal people bore it first and endured the stigma longest. Thirty thousand years after they mysteriously disappeared, … Continue reading →

Posted in Other | Tagged archaic humans, Brain size, Captain Fitzroy, Charles Darwin, DNA ancestry, Ernst Haeckel, Fuegian, John Gurche, Neanderthals, phrenology, Tierra del Fuego | 2 Comments

Ghost Story from West Virginia

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Roger Gosden

MY NIGHT AT JOHN NORTH HOUSE Aha! So that’s the house I heard rumors about. Surely my family can’t believe it’s haunted? After parking on a steep rise above the town center I stared at the rambling brick mansion with … Continue reading →

Posted in Other | Tagged ghost story, John North House, Lewisburg, Old Stone Presbyterian Church, West Virginia, WV South | Comments Off

Room for a Womb – a transplant story

Posted on October 7, 2014 by Roger Gosden

It seems particularly fitting to congratulate a Swedish colleague who announced the world’s first successful uterine transplant the same week that the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine is announced from Stockholm. Not that the transplant will earn him the … Continue reading →

Posted in Biomedical, Other | Tagged In Vitro Fertilization, Mats Brannstrom, medical ethics, Mullerian agenesis, ovarian transplant, Sherman Silber, surrogacy, uterine transplant | Comments Off

A Grain of Experience

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Roger Gosden

After another dietary study giving refined carbohydrates a bad name and confirming that saturated fat is good for us, a post in praise of bread seems poor timing. I was already coming round to thinking the official doctrine over the … Continue reading →

Posted in Other | Tagged bread recipe, breadmaking, einkorn flout, Natufian culture, Raymond Calvel, wheat gluten allergy | 2 Comments

Voice of the Lobster

Posted on August 16, 2014 by Roger Gosden

There was one lobster left in the tank when I left the restaurant. I felt sorry for the lonesome crustacean, but sadder for its late companions whose carapaces lay empty on customers’ plates. I had no reason to feel guilty because … Continue reading →