It's a name with Persian roots. Naz means "delight, comfort". Fun fact, Nazgul is also a name used in Central Asia. Alibek is also a popular surname in this region, and Nazil could've been from the same part of the Soviet Union.

Backpacking in SEA sounds awesome! I've ever been there only in touristic places like Bangkok and Anghkor. Still love the place. Amazing nature, some of the best foods in the world, beautiful architecture and so much history.

Cool! I'd like to visit Laos some time in the future. Shame you can't just go hiking in there because of all the mines, Laotian nature looks beautiful from the pictures. What would you recommend to a first time traveller in this country?

It is said that the sick fuck actually tried to make conjoined twins out of a pair of ordinary Roma twins.

Cool! I also dig the fact that botulotoxin, one of the deadliest substances to exist naturally, is successfully used in medicine. Botox treatment doesn't only remove wrinkles from skin, it can deal with spasms, tics, chronic pain, excessive sweating... basically everything that can be stopped by suppressing nerve signals. Who knew that swollen tins of biohazardously spoiled food contain the key to curing so many conditions.

Not exactly the same plant. Socrates is believed to be poisoned with true hemlock Conium maculatum, not hemlock water-dropwort Oenanthe crocata, which is presumably named after the real deal. They are both in the same family that contains a lot of extremely poisonous species, and also edible ones like carrots and parsley.

Thank you! I always love it when there's a well-researched comment under a post to learn something new. I've looked up curare and found this neat:

Curare is deadly but it can be used as an antidote to another dangerous poison, strychnine, because their acetylcholine activity cancels each other.

Shut your bot mouth, bot.

So hair mainly consists of a protein called keratin. Keratin is made out of loooong molecules. These molecules are polymers, which means they are strings of similar, repeating elements - amino acids. One of these amino acids is cystein. Cystein in one strand is able to bind to cystein in another strand. This binding makes keratin stronger. So hair is keratin, and keratin contains a lot of cystein, and that's why it is so strong, and cystein contains sulfur. Sulfur smells bad when burned.

I didn't think about that until I watched The Thin Red Line. It puts a lo of emphasis on war's senseless destruction, not only of people and man-made things, but of nature and animals, too. Imagine how many marine animals died from bombs falling into the sea, how many habitats were destroyed. Defoliant use during the Vietnam War was a huge ecological disaster, we'd boo any company that did stuff like that for profit, but it was done for war so it's okay.

Eyes have different innervation than most parts of our body. Most of the body is controlled via the spinal cord, but the structures in the head, like eyes, are controlled via cranial nerves that come directly from the brain. There are 12 pairs of cranial nerves that are traditionally numbered from top down. Eye movement nerves are number 3, 4 and 6. If you got your connections disrupted on the level of, say, number 4, you still have some movement left in the eyes/eyelids, but can't move anything else in your face. The whole body is paralyzed, too, because the spinal cord / brain connection is off.

Some people are/were totally paralyzed, yep. There is some ongoing research on recognizing and helping such people. Doctors can scan for brain activity and use machines that interpret this activity as attempts for communication. They've actually made a brain implant that allowed a patient to ask for beer, curry and some music. It's amazing.

One of the most fascinating movies I've seen and also one if the scariest. He was quite young, wealthy, glamorous, active, everything in his life was nice and happy, and then bam, in one second it all just goes away. Like he's transported to hell instantly.

Herodotus writes mostly positive things about the Persians. He says their laws are wise, and that they abhor lies and criticize Greeks for their tendency of scamming each other.