Superb Paleolithic art

I previously blogged about the deteriorating conditions of the famous cave paintings at Lascaux. On a more upbeat note, there is another extensive cave system - the Chauvet Cave - that also has spectacular Paleolithic art. Especially when you consider that the images embedded above were drawn 30,000 years ago - it's truly impressive artwork.

All of the source links from this 2008 post have undergone linkrot over the years, but I'm reposting it for 2025 to add some interesting observations from the most recent issue of The Atlantic:

When the American republic was founded, the Earth was no more than 75,000 years old. No contemporary thinker imagined it could possibly be older. Thus Thomas Jefferson was confident that woolly mammoths must still live in “the northern and western parts of America,” places that “still remain in their aboriginal state, unexplored and undisturbed by us.”

The idea that mammoths or any other kind of creature might have ceased to exist was, to him, inconceivable. “Such is the œconomy of nature,” he wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia, “that no instance can be produced of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”

Those illusory behemoths roaming out there somewhere beyond the Rockies remind us that the world of the Founding Fathers is in some ways as alien to us as ours would be to them... The originalist fallacy that dominates the current Supreme Court—the pretense that it is possible to read the minds of the Founders and discern what they “really” meant—in fact turns the Founders into ventriloquists’ dummies. We express our own prejudices by moving their lips.

It is fascinating to me that Thomas Jefferson, arguably one of the best educated and progressive thinkers of colonial America, would not have any concept of the age of the earth (or the cosmos, of course).  

Chest of a man taking a diuretic

This 76-year-old man has a history of coronary artery disease, as evidenced by the old midline thoracotomy scar from a coronary bypass.  I'm posting the image to feature his amazing gynecomastia, which developed as a side effect of his taking the prescribed diuretic spironolactone (physical exam and laboratory evaluation ruled out other potential causes).

A diagnosis of spironolactone-induced gynecomastia — an adverse drug effect seen more frequently in men taking more than 100 mg per day — was made. The mechanism is multifactorial and includes androgen-receptor blockade and increased peripheral conversion of testosterone to estradiol. 

An abstract at PubMed lists other causes of drug-induced gynecomastia:

"The drugs definitely associated with the onset of gynecomastia are spironolactone, cimetidine, ketoconazole, hGH, estrogens, hCG, anti-androgens, GnRH analogs and 5-α reductase inhibitors. Medications probably associated with gynecomastia include risperidone, verapamil, nifedipine, omeprazole, alkylating agents, HIV medications (efavirenz), anabolic steroids, alcohol and opioids."

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