[HAPS-L] Cranial nerves and memes

[Ken Saladin <ksaladin@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Years ago, I challenged my class with a contest to come up with the best 
cranial nerve mnemonic to replace "On old Olympus' towering tops...."  One 
of my students came up with the one I've used ever since in my textbooks, 
"OLd OPie OCcasionally TRies TRIGonometry, And Feels VEry GLOomy, VAGue, 
And HYPOactive" (which, for most cranial nerves, gives two to four of the 
initial letters, per my caps). The student, Marti Haykin, subsequently went 
to medical school and has become, of all things, a neurologist in Pittsburgh.

I was checking on her and the status of Old Opie today, and found this 
Wikipedia page listing numerous cranial nerve mnemonics -- some of them 
obscene (of course!) and many of them lame, but whoever wrote the article 
put Old Opie at the top of the list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranial_nerves

Googling "Old Opie" brings up a lot of false positives -- references to the 
Opie & Anthony radio show, for example -- but adding a word ("Old Opie 
occasionally") pulls up several hits to the mnemonic, which appears to be 
spreading as a Dawkinsian meme.

I find it sad, though, that so many health-science students AND INSTRUCTORS 
call such memory aids "pneumonics," as if they were some sort of lung 
disease. I've seen them called that right here on HAPS-L. If that's the 
right word for them, it's pneus to me!


Ken

==========================================
To manage subscription,send email from the
subscription address to
imailsrv@xxxxxxxxxxx and in MESSAGE (1)

To unsubscribe from HAPS-L, 
put :     unsubscribe HAPS-L,

(2)To subscribe from a different address, 
put :    subscribe HAPS-L  your_full_name     
=========================================