Tragically, the epidemic of hanging artificial genitalia from truck hitches has spread, prompting still more state legislation, this time in Virginia (as I posted in 2007, Maryland already tried to ban them).
We are a really bizarre species to find this sort of thing amusing, aren’t we? I’m at a loss whether to be exasperated that artificial body parts are seen as so horrible and indecent they must be banned, or to be exasperated that people think putting artificial body parts on machinery is funny. Trucks don’t even reproduce sexually. Duh.
Post Category: Frivolity
January 16th, 2008 at 04:14pmcicada
Because I saw the band last week - they’re not half bad - and no one to whom I mentioned it knew the reference. One of my favorite Yeats poems, written for Maud Gonne, and yes, a good name for a band.
No Second Troy
WB Yeats
WHY should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
Post Category: Poetry
January 14th, 2008 at 09:47pmcicada
Greenhouse, Chelsea Physic Garden
As I file away the debris of the last year, I realize that I never finished posting about my week in London this summer. It was exhausting, but by no means exhaustive. I feel foolish that I didn’t plan ahead! But I did hit the major highlights: on Sunday I saw the Chelsea Physic Garden with Neurophilosphy’s Moheb. On Tuesday I visited the shiny new Wellcome Collection, right around the corner from University College London. Thursday was Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, and the Natural History Museum. On Friday I dropped by the Royal College of Surgeons, which houses both the Hunterian Museum and the Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology. (Wellcome’s name is all over the place, because it’s the UK’s largest independent charitable trust funding medical research. I can’t quite determine if they’re richer than HHMI. . . isn’t that the non-profit equivalent of “richer than Croesus”?) I’ve already posted about the Hunterian Museum & Wellcome Museum. Today I want to add some notes about a few other destinations.
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Post Category: Destinations, Wonder Cabinets, Science, Museum Lust, Biology
January 13th, 2008 at 09:40pmcicada
Gourmand, 2002
Andrew Severynko
Andrew Severynko’s website reveals an idiosyncratic mix of pastoral watercolors, mixed media, and metal steampunk beasties. He’s represented by Williams Gallery.
via feuilleton
Post Category: Retrotechnology, Artists & Art
January 9th, 2008 at 10:28pmcicada
Untitled (zebras) 2006
charcoal on paper
Julie Comnick
Yesterday I dropped by Julie Comnick’s new show at the Flashpoint Gallery in DC (Jan 4 - Feb 9). I say “dropped by” because, despite her obvious technical skill, my attention was fully engaged for only about five minutes. It’s a solid show, but it didn’t provoke me to the kind of reconsideration & reflection I demand from art on a scientific theme.
Here’s the press release:
In According To Their Kind, Julie Comnick’s exhibition of large-scale charcoal drawings, the artist explores issues of selective breeding and the human impact on the course of evolution. The installation at the Gallery at Flashpoint is comprised of five distinct series of drawings: quotations from the story of Noah’s Ark, depictions of animals paired and bound for breeding, tethered boats (arks), excerpts from modern reproductive medicine and magnifications of in vitro fertilization procedures. The juxtaposition of these images asks the viewer to consider several unsettling trends in contemporary society. While animals are selectively bred in captivity to revitalize endangered populations, humans are able to pre-select the genetic makeup of their children.
Did you catch all that? This show was, despite the small exhibition space, really five shows in one. All of the pieces are “untitled,” and they were so disparate it was difficult for me to take in the entire show as curated.
The grouping that flows best is the series of thirteen small framed drawings depicting the stages of an embryo created by in vitro fertilization. The broad strokes of charcoal suited this series remarkably well. That really is how an embryo looks through a light microscope: black and white, smudgy and grainy, against a stark white field. The careless tumbling of the round embryo from corner to corner of the field throughout the series of drawings successfully conveyed both the unpredictable randomness of development - will this embryo implant, or fail? - and a sort of playful geometric abstraction. I think they’re lovely, and at only $250 apiece, quite the steal.
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Post Category: Artists & Art, Biology
January 6th, 2008 at 10:42pmcicada
Untitled
Nez Perce County, Idaho
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.
–Theodore Roethke, “The Far Field” (excerpt)
read the complete poem here.
Post Category: Poetry
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:29pmcicada
Glove map of London, 1851, by George Shove. Printed map on leather.
Long before Googlemaps on an iPhone or handheld GPS devices, there was the very analog Victorian Glove Map. How cool is this?
via Mapping the Marvellous
Post Category: Ephemera, Museum Lust
January 1st, 2008 at 06:54pmcicada
Untitled
Brompton Cemetary, London
“Sonnet XVII”
Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all.
For there is that about you in this light–
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain–
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Post Category: Poetry
December 29th, 2007 at 05:26pmcicada
A New Year’s tradition: some truly yummy words I learned in the past twelve months. I love adding to my vocabulary, though odds are I’ll never use a single one of these in conversation.
1. aquamanile
2. scacchic
3. imbricated
4. snowclone
5. quisling
6. apotropaic
7. ofermod
8. ephemeris
Earlier: words I learned in 2006
Post Category: Words
December 29th, 2007 at 04:26pmcicada
National Geographic
I used to have a pet hooded rat, which is why I think the giant rat recently discovered in Indonesia is actually kinda cute. Plus, it’s almost as large as my cat! It would be hilarious to get them together.
You know, I hope the rat is sedated in this photo, and not dead. Hmm.
Post Category: Frivolity, Biology
December 20th, 2007 at 12:54amcicada
Is there some sort of typological standard for disembodied medical hands? I took this picture in London, and thought nothing of it at the time - but it does strongly resemble the hands in Nicole Natri’s collage, and the descriptions of hands at the Spitzner museum. Hmmm. . . .
Post Category: Destinations, Frivolity
December 18th, 2007 at 07:52pmcicada
Reader/medical student Niall Hamilton, photographer of microorganisms, sent me this oh-so-seasonal Christmas petri dish:
Niall says, “the black is a yeast species often found around bathroom sinks, and the snow is another yeast species (a pretty unremarkable environmental one).”
Looking at this, I can almost smell the LB. Nothing like a festive Christmas in the warm room!
This reminds me of the time I gave petri plates to my beginning biology students, with instructions to expose the plates to their fingers, doorknobs, pens, etc, then put them in the classroom incubator. Usually this assignment yields nasty yellow and white microorganisms, some hairy fungus, and a satisfying “euw, gross.” But the next morning, I was horrified to find neon-colored slime on many of the plates - bright red, hot pink, even orange! I was envisioning MRSA and looking around for antibacterial hand soap, when I found a plate with iridescent glittery colonies. Ack! It turned out that my female students had decided to test their lip glosses.
Post Category: Frivolity, Biology
December 16th, 2007 at 12:15pmcicada
Can a president who is not comfortable thinking about science hope to lead instead of follow? Earlier Republican debates underscored this problem. In May, when candidates were asked if they believed in the theory of evolution, three candidates said no. In the next debate Mike Huckabee explained that he was running for president of the U.S., not writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book, and therefore the issue was unimportant. - Lawrence Krauss, Wall Street Journal
Sciencedebate 2008: Join a bunch of concerned and intelligent people in the call for a presidential debate on science - let’s be confident that our next leader can, at the very least, pronounce “nuclear” correctly.
In a related vein, that naughty Saint Gasoline makes me laugh and then snort, yet again:
Sadly, I think you could probably persuade politicians to use this strategy - if you could make them, or the American public, understand it. Or get them to pronounce “Schrodinger.”
Someone should ask about quantum physics at Sciencedebate 2008. . . nah. That would be mean.
Post Category: Science, Science in culture & policy
December 11th, 2007 at 08:59pmcicada
Still frantically shopping? How about this anatomically accurate tee, from the musically named autumnomatopoeia (”legos, livers, and more. Oh my!”)?
Here’s an excellent gift idea list from Heather at Cabinet of Wonders.
See also my gift idea list. And Vanessa’s anatomy-related gift list at Street Anatomy.
Post Category: Conspicuous consumption, Frivolity
December 11th, 2007 at 06:19pmcicada
Metamorphosis
Almacan
Digital artist Almacan (Kazuhiko Nakamura) creates intricately detailed surrealistic portraits, equal parts Giger and da Vinci. This one reminds me of an insectoid Green Man about to disperse into the undergrowth. . . and also, strangely, of Richard Dadd’s Bacchanalian Scene. Almacan says:
I am inspired by surrealism and cyberpunk styles of art. I find myself drawn to 19th century machine designs and armor among other things from that time period as motif. All of these images have been created with a portrait style while still containing a puzzle type quality.
His work is available via his website and Deviantart store.
Via feuilleton.
Post Category: Retrotechnology, Artists & Art
December 9th, 2007 at 10:43amcicada
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