Category Archives: Evidentialism

A Name By Any Other Rose

Evidentialism Factslap: People breathe primarily through one nostril at a time.

The human nose is a biological wonder. It can smell up to 1 trillion odors, trap harmful debris in the air before it enters your lungs, and affect your sex life. But arguably its most important job is to condition the air you breathe before that air enters your respiratory tract. This means warming and humidifying the air before it passes to your throat and beyond. To do this, the nose undergoes a nasal cycle in which one nostril sucks in the majority of the air while the other nostril takes in the remaining portion. A few hours later (on average), the nostrils switch roles. This cycle is regulated by the body’s autonomic nervous system, which swells or deflates  tissue found in the nose. Although we don’t notice this switch throughout the day, if you cover your nostrils with your thumb one at a time, you’ll likely observe that air flow through one is significantly higher than the other. This is also why one nostril tends to be more congested than the other when you have a cold (the non-dominant one gets more filled with mucous).

There are a few possible reasons for this nasal back-and-forth. Some scientists theorize that the cycle actually improves our sense of smell. Because scent molecules degrade at differing rates, some smells are easier to identify through fast-moving air (in the dominant nostril), while others are more easily picked out in slower currents of the non-dominant, usually more congested, nostril. Very few smells can get past our nose undetected thanks to this alternating nasal superpower.

Except, of course, for political bullshit.

Put On Your Red Shoes…In The Serious Moonlight

Medieval and early-modern Europe saw ’dance plagues,’ where people danced uncontrollably for days.

There’s dancing like no one’s watching, and then there’s dancing like you have a plague. Such was the plight of hundreds of denizens of Strasbourg, then part of the Holy Roman Empire and now part of France, where a “dancing plague” lasted for weeks in 1518. First on the dance floor (read: city square) was one Frau Troffea, who danced until she collapsed from exhaustion one extremely hot day in July; after recovering her strength, she resumed her rug-cutting. She and the 30 or so others who joined in over the next week in a variety of public locations seemed unable to stop, as though their movements were involuntary. The “plague” lasted until early September, by which time at least 400 had joined in. Many were injured, and some sadly didn’t live to tell the tale.

This wasn’t the only dance plague to occur in medieval and early modern Europe. Similar events took place throughout the Holy Roman Empire as well as in Germany, Switzerland, and France, though none have been documented as thoroughly as the one in Strasbourg. No one is sure, all these centuries later, why any of this happened in the first place — many contemporary explanations were religious and/or superstitious in nature, whereas more modern theories suggest that a mold called ergot might have been responsible. As with many phenomena from ages past, the full story may never be told.

But you could probably boogie it.