Over at Dr. French Fry’s blog, I read this:
In psychiatry there is something known as a defense mechanism. Defense mechanisms can be mature, neurotic, or immature, they are ways that people deal with feelings of anxiety, pain, and internal conflict. One of my personal favorites is suppression. It’s classified as a mature defense mechanism, and is defined as conscious burrying of troubling thoughts so that you can continue to function. Just push it out of your head an keep on truckin’. Acting out is an immature defense mechanism. Projection is transference of anger to a more acceptable recipient. Intellectualization is when one can’t wrap his head around a painful thought or uncomfortable experience so he finds a rational way to process the info. A classic example always given the text books is that of a man who finds out he has cancer. This causes him to learn everything he can about the pathophysiology of the disease and instead of telling his son he has cancer he teaches his son about the aberrant cell cycle, P53, and the Rb gene.
My kids are getting used to hearing me burst into laughter about something I read on various blogs. If I keep laughing, they’ll usually peer over my shoulder to share the moment. Nobody understood why I thought the quoted passage was funny!
It explains so much.
∞ itis 
Yeah, that last one sure sounds like me sometimes! Recently, my sister had to have a whole bunch of bloodwork, and she called me because she knew that I’d probably know what all the codes meant. And I did! “ANA – those are your antinuclear antibodies… EBV – they’re looking for Epstein-Barr…”
Oh man. Thanks for sharing! Not only did I really need the laugh, I’m sharing with some of my other friends who are even more research obsessive as I am. Cheers!