Scatter Brained

C H A P T E R   5

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124
S C A T T E R B R A I N E D
taste like the exact same variety of sugared chalk, but it turns 
out that each color (supposedly) has a diff erent fl avor:
Pink 
➔
 Cherry
Yellow 
➔
 Banana
Orange 
➔
 Orange
Green 
➔
 Lemon
Purple 
➔
 Grape
White 
➔
 Wintergreen
✖  ✖  ✖
In the average lifetime, the human heart beats around three 
billion times.
HEART-
SHAPED BOX
So why don’t most heart-
shaped boxes look like this 
one? Some have theo-
rized that with its sin-
gle cleft, the traditional heart 
shape has more to do with hu-
manity’s fascination with female 
buttocks than blood-pumping or-
gans. But we prefer the theory that, 
for many centuries, few people in 
the Western world really 
knew
 
very much about the appearance 
of the human heart, because 
looking at corpses was 
 verboten.

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125
✖  ✖  ✖
Leonardo da Vinci was among those who violated the Catho-
lic Church’s ban on examining the interior of bodies. He was 
obsessed with the human heart and its function for much of 
his life, and several of his intricate sketches of the heart sur-
vive. But Leonardo never fi gured out that the heart pumped 
blood, nor did his accurate drawings change the way we 
think of a heart shape. Perhaps that’s why his last words are 
said to have been “I have off ended God and man because my 
work was not good enough.” Speaking of last words . . .
07
 Fond Farewells:
Th
  e Best and Worst of Famous People’s Last Words
399 BCE:
 For a guy who was put to death for his purported 
impiety, the Greek philosopher Socrates remains religious to 
the end. “Crito,” he says just before drinking hemlock, “I owe 
a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” (As-
clepius was the god of healing.)