End Game: Breakthrough
Lipez, Richard
END GAME Breakthrough RICHARD LIPEZ Of all the phenomena that continue to baffle modern science—how electricity works, "black holes" in space, why the exhaust pipe on the Opel rusts out after...
...Zeplinger, who has finally shown conclusively how brains work, initiated his research in 1973 when his own brain seemed to malfunction, and he wished he knew why...
...Zeplinger forgot about mice and moved on to his main interest...
...The experiment was hastily canceled...
...As so often happens with startling scientific discoveries, Dr...
...Quite clearly, most, if not all, human activity is determined according to the positions of our heads, detailed charts of which positions are available from Dr...
...Just eight minutes into the experiment, however, Norris Lampton began shouting, "Get me a hat...
...Dept...
...Zeplinger aimed Manitoba at the hole—which emitted a faint hissing sound—his left arm was involuntarily extended and "shook hands...
...Zeplinger plunged into his new obsession (his old obsession, Louise R. Drake, having moved to Toledo with her outraged husband and seven confused children...
...Zeplinger had scribbled down copious notes which, when organized and typed up, were presented to the Penna...
...The gist of Dr...
...Dept...
...Zeplinger was caused to crouch like Groucho Marx and flick an imaginary cigar at passers-by, one of whom telephoned the police...
...As it happened, Dr...
...By tilting Rangoon toward the hole, Dr...
...He could only type up the first stanza of "The Tree in Pamela's Garden" by dancing around the keyboard of an IBM Selectric—and that only after being alternately threatened and cajoled by Dr...
...Agr., Dr...
...Zeplinger's initial experiments were on mouse brains, which he found to be "extremely small and dumb...
...Zeplinger's wind-swept front steps for an hour...
...In an attempt to figure out which parts of the human brain perform which tasks, Dr...
...Agr., which registered them...
...By the time the Dray Police Department squad car pulled up, Dr...
...Having stopped in his tracks and quickly retrieved his notebook, Dr...
...When Dr...
...Zeplinger for $29.95 (plus sales tax for Pennsylvania residents...
...Zeplinger to repeatedly sing "Some Day My Prince Will Come" from Walt Disney's immortal classic, Snow White...
...This subject caught Dr...
...But by then the Dept...
...Very early on, the doctor did succeed in locating a mouse's memory center and was able to implant in it several of the short poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson...
...It came on an otherwise quite ordinary Tuesday morning as the doctor was strolling past a neighborhood nuclear power plant that was scheduled to be shut down one day soon for minor repairs...
...Many of his friends and acquaintances were curious, too...
...Zeplinger, having solved the age-old riddle of the brain, has now moved on to an investigation of cheap silverware...
...Zeplinger to perform certain odd tasks, such as: "Drop Hummelsdorf off at the glassworks," or "Never mind the dizzy owl, go lend Elmo a hand...
...Zeplinger later discovered that his new aviator shades were picking up Dray Police Department radio calls...
...Zeplinger stood for some time beside a small, wet hole in the side of the power plant, and bent his head this way and that way...
...Panama is where the nose is, Hawaii the area of your left ear, Majorca your right ear, and so on...
...Zeplinger's interest after his extraordinary morning outside the power plant, when the doctor and his Tuesday night bowling partner, Dray Police Chief Edgar L. Blagdon, entered Jeanette "Sissy" Sissle's luncheonette on Dray's Main Street, and all the spoons in the place suddenly and inexplicably bent in half...
...END GAME Breakthrough RICHARD LIPEZ Of all the phenomena that continue to baffle modern science—how electricity works, "black holes" in space, why the exhaust pipe on the Opel rusts out after 18,000 miles—none has, until now, defied rational description quite so stubbornly as the workings of the human brain...
...Close proximity of the North Sea to the small aperture caused Dr...
...Gerard Manley Hopkins would have been another matter...
...But by then he was well into his project and curiosity had gotten the best of him...
...The learned mouse, however, was unable to recite what he knew...
...Zeplinger, who was not crazy about Robinson in the first place...
...Inner voices would instruct Dr...
...Zeplinger's big breakthrough was more or less accidental...
...Zeplinger's findings is this: The various parts of the human brain (see Mercator Projection) are activated by close proximity to small hissing holes, or possibly by the gravitational pull of certain heavenly bodies...
...was pressing for results, Richard Lipez, a columnist for the Amherst Record in Massachusetts, contributes the "End Game" feature on this page every month...
...Zeplinger's head suddenly began to sputter and crackle, and he knew immediately that something big was going on inside his brain...
...I demand a hat...
...All that has changed, at long last, with the publication of How Brains Got So Smart, by Drew Zeplinger, M.D., a fellow in post-uvulal internal medicine at the Bumstead Institute in Dray, Pennsylvania, birthplace of the late Frank R. Bumstead, founder of the institute bearing his name, though probably best known as inventor of the Bumstead Chair and other disposable lawn furnishings...
...so Dr...
...Armed with a grant from the Penna...
...For descriptive purposes, let us say that the human head is the world...
...Zeplinger tried to "freeze" a volunteer's brain and then "warm up" certain sections to see what happened...
...One icy morning, a volunteer, Norris Lampton, aged fifty-eight, was sent out to sit bareheaded on Dr...
Vol. 40 • October 1976 • No. 10
