Life imitating art

There's an episode of The Simpsons where a crayon, long-embedded in Homer's head, is finally removed, immediately making Homer smarter. A similar thing has recently come to pass in Germany where a 59-year-old woman had most of a pencil that went into her head 55 years ago, removed. She has suffered headaches and nosebleeds from the foreign object for some time. It is only because of improved technology that doctors were willing to try to extract the pencil from Margret Wegner's head. According to Reuters, most of the pencil, some three inches long, was taken out in an operation at a private Berlin clinic, but the tip had grown in so firmly that it was impossible to remove. The report carried no advice as to whether Margret has become more intelligent with the pencil's removal.