RE: [HAPS-L] Cranial nerves and memes

["David Evans" <devans@xxxxxxx>]

I used to run a "Filthy cranial nerve mnemonics" contest with a nice
prize (a sprang for the prize). All of my A & P students were invited to
enter and to judge. The competing mnemonics were covered so that those
who didn't wish to sully their eyes by seeing the obscenity, didn't have
to. Naturally, the names of the creators were concealed.

I stopped doing this around 10 years ago when a complaint was heard by
the dean at the time. The dean passed this on to me and explained she
would take no action since the complaint was not in writing but I took
the veiled threat as it had been intended. All this happened two deans
ago but I still won't conduct the contest again--another initiative
stifled.

As they used to say on "Hill Street Blues:" "Be careful out there."

David in Darkest PA

-----Original Message-----
From: HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:HAPS-L-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Ken Saladin
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 12:43 PM
To: HAPS-L@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [HAPS-L] Cranial nerves and memes

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

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