Second Favorite Organ

The environment is always nearby. That makes it special. Recently, Mayflower, Arkansas was inundated with oil and not the red hot olive oil kind that is great for dipping. No. It's a mess. Who wants black sticky "diluted bitumen" instead of green grass in their backyard? Yuck. I can't help but wonder what's next when things like this happen.

In an ironic twist, Stephen played portions of the Jeremy Irons Huffington Post interview about gay marriage.  When you put your mind to it, you can come up with something that no one else has thought of before. Or at least, not that anyone actually said on camera. And in a rare departure from the news we typically enjoy on The Colbert Report, Stephen put forth some of his opinions on the issues, although he didn't really have strong feelings either way.

One thing that Google hasn't dominated yet is brain mapping. I enjoy their road maps and satellite images and street views, but they don't have a brain map yet, at least not that I know of. But President Obama is planning on mapping brains. Indeed, there is an acronym - BRAIN. Stephen pointed out that it's not fair to use the acronym in the acronym, but I don't have feelings either way about that. BRAIN stands for "Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies." And now you all see the value of acronyms. Anyway, Stephen pointed out that it logically follows that if a gun registry means they're coming for our guns, it follows that a brain registry means they're coming for our brains. Don't worry. I think there are many people out there that won't miss them.

Dr. Francis Collins joined Stephen last Thursday (4th time here) to talk about Brain Mapping. From what Stephen said when Dr. Collins was introduced, it sounds like he has quite a brain himself, maybe even as good as the one Stephen has. And he brought a brain. Not a real brain, but a rainbow colored teaching model. There are 86 billion neurons in each of our brains.  So, did the good doctor sit in the green room and count them before the show? Someone had to count them, otherwise how would we know? I guess that doesn't matter. What does matter is that Google will not be driving a tiny car up your nose to map it. There are other ways to do that.

Stephen donned a colorful red and blue cap with nice white dots. The cap had a beautiful rainbow colored ribbon attached which allowed us to see Stephen's brain activity, and it was not unlike the Richter Scale. This incredible technology was duct-taped together, so you know it was built by real techies. Some day, when all is known about brain mapping, it should be possible to get "Call Me Maybe" out of your head. You're singing it right now, aren't you?

While Dr. Francis Collins sees the possibility of some day curing things like Autism, Schizophrenia, Parkinson's Disease, Epilepsy and Alzheimer's, Stephen wondered about the possibility of tricking your brain into thinking it's a snow day and school has been cancelled and your mom brings you tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich.