Brain

Let's roll out the list. It includes, in no particular order of sluttishness: Kwame Kilpatrick; Jesse Jackson; James McGreevey; Ted Haggard; Gary Condit; Mark Sanford; John Edwards; Bill Clinton; Newt Gingrich; Rudy Giuliani; Eliot Spitzer; Antonio Villaraigosa; Arnold Schwarzenegger; James West; Larry Craig; David Vitter; John Ensign. And now Anthony Weiner, Democratic representative fromNew York. The thing these individuals have in common is as obvious as, well ... the erect penis in Mr. Weiner's underwear in that risqué picture he claimed he never tweeted to a young woman and wasn't even sure was really him - only to confess last week that he was lying on both counts.

Politicians have been making a lot of gaffes lately (what else is new?). Michele Bachmann thought the founding fathers abolished slavery; Sarah Palin invented the word "squirmish," and, now comes news that our president, Barack Obama, has no idea what year it is.  Signing a datebook at Westminster Abbey in England today, Obama wrote the following:  "It is a great privilege to commemorate our common heritage, and common sacrifice," Barack Obama, 24...

The daylong conference Saturday at Johns Hopkins Hospital was held to showcase advances on research into traumatic brain injury. One recurring theme was the devastating toll such injuries have taken on an estimated 200,000 American soldiers wounded by explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The PowerPoint-wielding medical specialists had much progress to share. But the extent to which these brain injuries remain a stubborn mystery was highlighted when a doctor who treats soldiers in Fort Drum, N.Y., stepped up to the microphone at Turner Auditorium.

Today in Boca Raton, a South Florida woman named Ann Van Wagner pays a debt to an illegal immigrant who saved her life. Ms. Van Wagner has organized a fundraiser at a Boca bowling alley — "Bowling For Brains" — to support the Johns Hopkins Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory headed by Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa. "Dr. Q" removed a tumor from Ms. Van Wagner's brain at Hopkins in January 2010. She's made a full recovery and has been supporting his research ever since. Ms. Van Wagner's hero is perhaps the nation's leading illegal-turned-incredible citizen, a native Mexican who hopped a border fence in 1987, worked in the vegetable fields of the San Joaquin Valley and eventually ended up at Harvard Medical School, where he graduated cum laude.

Saturday is the day Fifi looks forward to every year. Fifi is the American Visionary Art Museum 's giant pink poodle-with-wheels, who once a year ventures outside to take part in what is clearly Baltimore's funkiest annual event, the Kinetic Sculpture Race . This year, some 36 land- and seaworthy vehicles, all strictly people-powered, will be taking part in the 15-mile race over land, sea, mud and sand. Like Fifi, some are designed to resemble animals; one of last year's crowd favorites was a hookah-smoking caterpillar.

The driver of a car that struck and gravely injured a 20-year-old Johns Hopkins student who was bicycling near the university in February has been issued tickets charging her with traffic violations, the Baltimore state's attorney and Police Department said Tuesday. The decision to charge Jeannette Marie Walke, 83, in the crash with Nathan Krasnopoler on Feb. 26 comes despite an initial announcement by police that charges were not expected. That statement prompted criticism from advocates for Maryland bicyclists, who have long contended that city police are too quick to excuse drivers involved in crashes with bikes.

The wacko conspiracy theories perpetrated against President Barack Obama have reached a new height.  Apparently unsatisfied with simply questioning the country of the president's birth, crazy people calling themselves "conservatives" are now suggesting the president had some kind of secret brain surgery, like he's the Manchurian Candidate.  The website Escapetyranny.com, which bills itself a "social network and forum for conservatives," has...

Nathan Krasnopoler, the 20-year-old Johns Hopkins University student who was struck by a motorist while bicycling on University Parkway in February, is not expected to recover brain function and doctors have "no hope for a meaningful recovery," according to his family. In a statement released Tuesday, Krasnopoler's family said the brain damage the student received in a Feb. 26 collision appears to be permanent. "Nathan remains unresponsive due to his brain injury resulting from the lack of oxygen reaching his brain, which was caused by his collapsed lungs and the delayed response due to his entrapment underneath the vehicle," the statement said.

The first clue that this offensive line draft class is more than beef and brawn came when someone asked Boston College's Anthony Castonzo what he'll do after football. "I'd like to open up a foundation, pursue my biochemistry degree and use it to do cancer medical research," said Castonzo, giving an answer that seemed more fitting for a graduate school interview, not a scouting combine one. Three of the top offensive tackle prospects — Castonzo, Colorado's Nate Solder and Mississippi State's Derek Sherrod — have distinguished themselves as much in the classroom as on the football field.

disease: n. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms. — American Heritage Dictionary I have been teaching and writing for decades on the topic of "rhetoric and mental illness," arguing that "mental illness" has been a catch-all term of behavioral explanation that elucidates nothing and is often false; there is usually no "disease" in mental illness.