The Evil Monkey has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from a southeastern U.S. university. After a postdoctoral nightmare of Inquisitorial proportions, he is currently working in a laboratory and an adjunct assistant professor at a nearby state university.
Scicurious is a graduate student wrestling with a PhD in Physiology at a southern institution. She is a nerd, a geek, and also a dork. And yes, that really is her brain.
NotoriousLTP is an MD-PhD student in New York City. After finishing (hopefully soon) his PhD in behavioral neuroscience, he will re-enter the fun vortex that is medical education.
First off, how many is a "few"? I mean, I think of a "couple" as two, and a "few" as three. But what does that make five? "Some"?
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Anyway, please head on over and congratulation Southern Fried Scientist for his Quark win!!! 3quarksdaily picked his post on dolphin-safe tuna for their quark award! I'm so jealous, but it's a great post and totally deserves it. The other quarks went to Daylight Atheism and Bad Astronomy, and they were both worth checking out. Clearly I need to write some better stuff before next year...I want a quark to hang on my wall...
Secondly, you should check out a post AK wrote on defining neurotransmitters. When we discuss neurotransmission, even in scientific papers, we tend to think very simplistically about it. This is something that is necessary in papers where you might have a 39,000 word limit, but it's not necessarily a good thing.
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Next, I'm sure you all have heard about the Dancing Cockatoo, Snowball, who can dance to the rhythm of music (though he's got TERRIBLE taste, I mean, the Backstreet Boys?! That's so...1998...). Check out the new book about the brain, music, and language, at the official blog by Oxford University Press! There's also apparently a documentary, though I think it'll be over by now. I don't know if I support this kind of research, though. I mean, the BACKSTREET BOYS!? How did THAT pass animal welfare regulations?
Comments
I also define a 'couple' to be two and a 'few' to be three...
Thanks for the links!
Posted by: angela | June 25, 2009 4:54 AM
I had a boss once who used "couple" to mean about 3-4, "few" to mean maybe 6 or so, and "several" to mean perhaps 10 or more.
This would get very confusing, because to me "couple" is either exactly 2, or for uncertain quantities "almost certainly 2", "few" is usually around 3 or 4, and "several" around 4-6.
Posted by: Andrew | June 25, 2009 6:35 AM
5 is "several"...
Posted by: Charlie B. | June 25, 2009 6:48 AM
"Several" is 5-7 for me. I guess I use "couple" for 2-3 and "few" for 3-4, approximately -- but I don't have a clear idea of how I use the latter two.
Posted by: Zachary | June 25, 2009 7:31 AM
Fifty grains of rice is a few, fifty birthday cakes is a lot. To me, it really depends on what you are talking about but I agree, a few is at least three.
Posted by: Richard Simons | June 25, 2009 9:40 AM
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad you liked my post.
Posted by: WhySharksMatter | June 25, 2009 10:14 PM
5 is a handful, pentadactyly speaking.
Posted by: DD | July 18, 2009 8:00 PM