> The bag got me thinking (This is really pitiful!): When someone begins hyperventilating or hiccoughing, a common suggestion is for the person to breathe into a bag. How does that help? Wouldn't that limit the quantity of air one could take in per draught?

Yes! Finally, one of those questions I can answer (and only because we're in the First Aid unit in Health and this is fresh in my mind). Breathing into a bag DOES limit the amount of oxygen available, but when you're hyperventilating, breathing in amounts of CO2 (carbon dioxide? monoxide? Can't remember which) supposedly helps the hyperventilation, which is why you breath into the bag.

> And shouldn't the potentially diminished O2 content in the bag actually increase, rather than alleviate, hiccoughs?

No idea. I'm just repeating what I was so recently taught :-)

> If this kind of thinking becomes a trend when i'm home, i may have to start refusing days off from work.

I love "odd thinking." It kind of goes in a process. For example, my former "life philosphy" (boy, did I need help!):

"If I'm weird because I'm different, and everyone is different, then everyone is weird, it's just that no one will admit it."

That was the spawn of one of my weird-thinking sessions. Something else that bothered me for awhile was a sign in my middle school's band room. It read, "Early is on time and on time is late!" encouraging us not to be late to class, I suppose. What got me is that by thinking in this manner, no matter what you did, you were late. In a semi-mathematical format:

Early = On Time
On Time = Late
(Therefore) Early = Late
And obviously, Late = Late.

No matter what you did, you were late.

ri "Unless, of course, you didn't go at all" a