“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs” – so began James Joyce’s (infamous)
Finnegans Wake. That line is but the completion of the book’s last sentence, “A lone a last a loved a long the”, You can, of course, stitch the two halves together in order simply by reading first
this string and then
that one.
Joyce was a notorious jokester. One of the jokes embedded in that first and final sentence is a pun on the name of a scholar who straddled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Giambattista Vico. “Vicus” puns on the Latin for village, street, or quarter of a city and Giambattista’s last name. Just why Joyce did that has prompted endless learned commentary, none of which is within the compass of this essay, though, be forewarned, we’ll return to the
The Body’s Best Defense, on Overdrive
When inflammation harms instead of helps and how to stop it
When you catch an infection, your body responds with redness, swelling, and pain. This is called inflammation. It’s how our immune system gets rid of intruders.
This response is an essential part of the healing process. But inflammation can also work against us when things go wrong, it can become a major driver of disease.
How can something that heals also make us sick? It depends on how long inflammation lasts.
Stress triggers inflammation. If that stress is an infection, the immune system turns on the inflammatory response until the invader is thwarted, and the body goes back to normal. But when stress is constant and the immune system can’t kill it, inflammation never shuts off, and a process that should be temporary becomes permanent.
this republican party, he can attach whatever wings he wants to, i read his article carefully. he is brilliant, a writer about brain behavior. partisan politics, i m not sure. this republican party is what it is, although interestingly, the republican party as it is right now, based in the south and the midwest, being what it is in the sort of ronald reagan-bush family image is moving very rapidly. don t forget, lawrence, within the last couple of weeks they caved on the fiscal cliff, at least temporarily. they just voted in john kerry by 94 to 3. and leaving aside the guys from texas and oklahoma, all the other republicans voted for john kerry. and they re moving very quickly on immigration. so i think on the one hand the party in its guts, in its roots is not about to change any time soon. and they can forget about the
republican party of oh, i don t know, about 20 years ago, when they did indeed have new england senators, oregon republican senators, exactly that geographic description of where he would like to see republicans succeed. well, it is my sad duty to inform david that theodore roosevelt is dead, nelson rockefeller is dead, and yes, even richard nixon is dead. this republican party, he can attach whatever wings he wants to, i read his article carefully. he is brilliant, a writer about brain behavior. partisan politics, i m not sure. this republican party is what it is, although interestingly, the republican party as it is right now, based in the south and the midwest, being what it is in the sort of ronald reagan-bush family image is moving very rapidly. don t forget, lawrence, within the last couple of weeks they caved on the fiscal cliff, at