Saturday, July 4, 2009

Oliver Sack's Desk


Seed Magazine has a great picture of Oliver Sack's desk. Though a bit difficult to navigate, it allows you to zoom in and get a closer look at some of the things on his desk and explanations about the objects and pictures.

I love the discussion of the different elements on his desk, and how he gives and receives them for various birthdays based on their atomic number. (He recently gave a friend some Mercury for his 80th, and stirs his coffee with rhenium from his 75th birthday.)
For those not familiar with Dr. Sacks, he's a fascinating writer. From his site:

"Sacks is perhaps best known for his collections of case histories from the far borderlands of neurological experience, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and An Anthropologist on Mars, in which he describes patients struggling to live with conditions ranging from Tourette's syndrome to autism, parkinsonism, musical hallucination, epilepsy, phantom limb syndrome, schizophrenia, retardation, and Alzheimer's disease...He has investigated the world of Deaf people and sign language in Seeing Voices, and a rare community of colorblind people in The Island of the Colorblind."


OliverSacks.com
Oliver Sacks @ Columbia University
Wired Magazine's interview with Oliver Sacks
Interview with Oliver Sacks @ Universe


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