Derbyshire goes into full Lamentations mode:
So there I was, absorbed in reading an interesting article about neurobiology. This was in the Chronicle of Higher Education, for which you need a subscription. Then suddenly—CLANG!—they dropped an anvil on my foot.
Many traditional forms of brain imaging require a subject to lay down in a claustrophobia-inducing tube inside an extremely loud scanner, a situation not conducive to meditation or prayer, says Dr. Newberg.
Well, yes, I suppose it must be hard to meditate while laying down in a tube. I mean, you have to concentrate on getting the down laid nice and evenly, and as far up the sides of the tube as it’ll go. But what kind of down are we talking about here? Goose down? Swan’s down?
This is probably a lost cause…. In any case, I’m still shocked to see this in a journal that boasts itself as being “of higher education.”
Whereas Derb sees this as a time to cry, I tend to view it as a time to laugh.