HAPPIER CIRCUMSTANCE

See ya later Blogger!

2011-06-06T19:02:00.002-04:00

WHY... hello tumblr!

Go here from now on.

A Walk in Brighton/Allston | JFK/Harvard Ave Graffiti

2011-06-06T16:20:00.001-04:00

A walk from a couple of weeks ago, when it finally began to look decent out.

These two kindly posed for us [without me having to ask!]

And when we got home, bonus Kimbo. "I'm a book!", she proclaims.

1st Trip into the North End

2011-06-06T02:35:00.001-04:00

-Of the summer of course. My friend Chris invited us out:

It was a warm enough day-

Hey it's the Old North Church.

And here again (with bonus Majesty streaks)

Old couples are cute.

So is Madeline.

[Man, Semiotics much there, eh Roland?]

Yeah, you know I've heard things can spontaneously
change color in this neighborhood.

Chris and I have a history of hanging out on some fine rooftops.

This is my favorite of the day. No color editing.

Maritime Industrial goodness. The USS Constitution in the mid-ground, Bunker hill monument in the background and Ambient Dub wayyyyyy in the background.

Some intimate little people-habitats.

There's that pretty Old church again.

Another little intimate space.

I hope you had a peaceful weekend too.

Mythical Creatures Infographic

2011-05-23T00:49:00.001-04:00

If you're looking for more cryptozoological craziness,

just ask Conrad Gesner.

Möbius Cheat Sheet

2011-05-23T00:28:00.001-04:00

I wish I knew about this when I was still taking math tests.

[click for full effect]

Also, a möbius gear.

Ethan Law & a Big Wheel

2011-05-23T00:14:00.000-04:00

I wish I was this good at anything.

And that the people there didn't clap until the end.

I like that you can see the giant circular bag in the background.
Does he just tie it to the roof, you think?
Wonder how you might explain that if a cop pulled you over.

Cat-tar Solo

2011-05-22T17:43:00.001-04:00

Matthew Cusick's Map Collages

2011-05-22T17:24:00.001-04:00

Kara's Wave, 2009

Inlaid maps and acrylic on aluminum panel

24 x 36 in

Chasing the Dragon, 2006

Maps, book pages, acrylic, on wood panel

40 x 65 in

Bonnie, 2004

Maps on wood panel

42 x 60 in

Red & Blue, 2010

Maps, book pages, ink, on panel

20 x 33 in

Red & Blue [detail]

Geronimo, 2007
Maps and atlas pages on wood panel
30 x 24 in

Geronimo [detail]

See them all at the artist's page

"Your World of Text" like Beautiful Internet/Human Trainwreck

2011-05-21T01:43:00.002-04:00

In that...

1. It is veritably, absolutely not good for you to watch.

2. You cannot look away.

If you've ever wanted to be exposed to some of the rull real humanity out there on the internet - for all of it's terrifying gorgeosity - I'd recommend playing around on Your World of Text. It's not all inane insanity- it could potentially have all sorts of productive, artsy, or even surreptitious [read: fun] applications. Make use of your imagination as you read this copied summary from another site ['cause I'm lazy]:

Your World of Text is an infinite grid of text editable by any visitor. The changes made by other people appear on your screen as they happen. Everyone starts in the same place, but you can scroll through the world using your mouse.

Put any letters at the end of the URL to go to a new world. For example, http://yourworldoftext.com/forexample. They all start off blank. If you use something hard to guess, no one will be able to visit your world unless you tell them about it. [source]

One can only imagine what must be out there, but ya' oughta just have a look for yourself. Apparently this has been around for a minute [at least since '09], but I can't ever see this sort of thing falling out of popularity- at least, as long as the Blessed Internet lives [may it be eternally, Ah-men]. No, I'm pretty godsdamn sure there'll always be a need for a gigantic wall for people to spray craziness all over, be it digital or brick.

Here's one of my favorite bits so far; it's good for a giggle if you really get creative with the sort of person that might have written it and the circumstances in which they found themselves (which could be said for pretty much anything you can find on YWoT):

Best wishes for no tummy aches, you wonderful midnight-robot-stoners.

Love Katamari? Play it on any webpage!

2011-05-20T00:31:00.002-04:00

Simply load any page and then copy & paste the following in the URL bar:

javascript:var i,s,ss=['http://kathack.com/js/kh.js','http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.1/jquery.min.js'];for(i=0;i!=ss.length;i++){s=document.createElement('script');s.src=ss[i];document.body.appendChild(s);}void(0);

[source]

You'll be glad you did (until you waste all of your time doing this).
Works best in Chrome or Safari.

Otomata by Batuhan Bozkurt

2011-05-17T17:50:00.001-04:00

I'm passing by this dreary-ass afternoon playing around
with Otomata, a fun little flash sound sequencer.

similar to glitchscape or tonematrix, which I posted about awhile back.

and while I'm at it, I'ma make some noise with this flash dj setup.

Fibonacci Pigeons

2011-05-14T10:45:00.000-04:00

SHOULDN'T WE BE CONCERNED?!

Zen Flowchart

2011-05-14T10:20:00.003-04:00

Why make it more complicated? [link]

A Motherfraking Möbius Gear

2011-05-14T10:11:00.002-04:00

Thank Berkeley robotics student Aaron Hoover for this mind-bending, one-sided gem.

Wired describes his difficult to convey contraption-

The white section is the Möbius strip and is flexible. It is made from silicone rubber, and has a twist, which means that — despite what your eyes and brain are telling you — it only has teeth along one side (because it only has one side).

The outer, black strip has a double twist that I still can’t make out after letting my eyes follow it around for a good 10 minutes now. Somehow, the little blue rubber “spur” gears guide these two impossible shapes and allow them to mesh. In theory, either the blue gears (planets, as this is essentially a planetary gear system) or the white “sun” strip can drive the movement. In practice, it’s easier to move the white strip by hand, and even then, the blue gears pop out occasionally.

I’m finding it hard to tear myself away from this picture, but I managed it for long enough to read Hoover’s detailed description of the planning and printing process (.pdf) from start to finish. It, too, is almost impossible to understand for a layman like me, but reading the nightmarishly complex calculations needed to make the gears line up makes this deceptively simple model seem even more impressive.

Learn more about it from Aaron.

Yo-Yo Ma + Lil Buck = Spike Jonze?

2011-05-11T01:24:00.004-04:00

Wow, man, apparently. That's one expectedly cool (yet totally unexpected) equation.

Spike Jonze comments on capturing the otherwise more intimate moment:

The other day, I was lucky enough to be at an event to bring the arts back into schools and got to see an amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and a young dancer in LA, Lil Buck. Someone who knows Yo-Yo Ma had seen Lil Buck on YouTube and put them together. The dancing is Lil Buck’s own creation and unlike anything I’ve seen. Hope you enjoy.

Vivian Maier, Street Photographer

2011-05-11T01:16:00.003-04:00

Via Buzzfeed:

Vivian Maier was a nanny who lived in Chicago for most of her life and passed away in 2009 at the age of 83. Little more is known about her, except that she was an avid street photographer. Her work was discovered at an auction in 2007, more than 100,000 negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, sold by a storage facility who were cleaning out her locker for delinquent rent. Here is a small sampling of Vivian Maier's stunning work from the Maloof Collection, spanning from the 1950s to the 1970s. Many of the photos, if they had any information at all, only provided a year and/or city.

Considering she didn't get many of them developed, it makes me wonder if she thought they were any good [I found them stunning].

Bad Grammar Indeed

2011-05-09T00:36:00.002-04:00

Found on Tumblr

BorderBall '79

2011-05-09T00:31:00.001-04:00

And everyone was a winner that day. [If only still.]

Kinda Reminded me of this post- Kabul: 1970-2010

Teddy Roosevelt Totally Capping Bigfoot

2011-05-06T22:07:00.001-04:00

Overloaded with Party Energy

2011-04-30T12:19:00.000-04:00

We've all been there.

Math Win

2011-04-26T19:14:00.000-04:00

erroneously categorized on Math Fail

WHO HAS TRAINED WHOM?

2011-04-26T12:04:00.002-04:00

[the choreographer; the rest]

The Fruits of Our Saturday Morning Stumbling-Upon

2011-04-16T12:41:00.003-04:00

]

The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist

2011-04-02T15:41:00.000-04:00

A strange funk...

Found on The Daily Psychedelic Video

The Avalanches @ Last.fm

Wooden Shjips Continue to Dominate my Playlists

2011-04-01T19:04:00.001-04:00

Say what, is yall stoopid? Maaan, you mean to tell me you went though

all of 2010 and never heard Vol. 2 by Wooden Shjips?

…Well, buckle up, cowboy!

[Happy Friday and enjoy!]

Obligatory Cat Cuteness Post

2011-02-19T14:46:00.000-05:00

I haz a sidewayz

Every self respecting blogger should at some point address how cute their cat is. Hell, lots of bloggers' sole concern is their cat's cuteness- after all, it's vital internet business that must be conducted, updating a public in desperate need of a friggin' escape from stress and anxiety, lest the ~~big truck~~ series of tubes fail and modern society collapse, only the most stalwart of us survivors bravely weathering the ensuing cuteness dearth.

Anyway, thank the Majesties that won't happen. This is Akimbo, a name far superior to Dyanasty (gross), the name her adoption papers gave her. We've had her for about 5 months, she's about 9 months old now. She's a bit dumb, totally sweet, and kind of a jerk sometimes. But a member of our little family.

She appreciates paper bags' property of invisibility. Here, she's recycling!

She loves to help with all of our projects; here, racking a cream ale.

Man, we should really bottle that already.

Mary, she loves the peace sign bathmat you gave us. She has excellent taste.

Irina Werning Takes Us Back to the Future

2011-02-17T20:41:00.000-05:00

La Negra in 1980 and 2010, Buenos Aires

Porteña photographer Irina Werning has her subjects reenact moments from much earlier in their lives. In replicating these fuzzy yet candid memories, she has attended well to their placement, clothing, the sort and source of the lighting, and photo quality. It also looks like her subjects had a lot of fun too. Only a few of my favorites here, visit the artist for the full, on-going project.

Lucia in 1956 & 2010, Buenos Aires

Cecile in 1987 & 2010, France

Nico in 1990 & 2010, France

Tommy in 1977 & 2010, Buenos Aires

Mechi in 1990 & 2010, Buenos Aires

Martia & Coty in 1977 & 2010, Buenos Aires

The Artist's Parents in 1970 & 2010, Buenos Aires

Lali in 1978 & 2010, Buenos Aires

Oscar 1978 & 2010, Buenos Aires

A Staged Sunday on La Grande Jatte

2011-02-13T19:58:00.001-05:00

At the time Georges Seurat (1859-1891) decided to memorialize it, La Grande Jatte was considered a good place to get away from the stresses of filthy, crowded Paris living. Seurat was a big fan of the island and used it as the setting for many of his sketches and paintings. According to a comment on its StumbleUpon page, this staging of Seurat's humongozoidal masterpiece A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte took place in Belwoit, Wisconsin - perhaps way, way the hell farther out of Paris than Seurat wanted to go. I can't seem to find any information about the staging; it's not perfect or anything, but I'm really impressed they got the dog and sailboat in place. And, of course, by the desire to do it at all.

A little about Seurat:

A key post-impressionist painter, Georges Seurat moved away from the apparent spontaneity and rapidity of impressionism and developed a structured, more monumental art to depict modern urban life. For several of his large compositions, Seurat painted many small studies.

Seurat studied avant-garde painting techniques, especially impressionism and the latest scientific theories pertaining to light and color. From 1885 to 1886 he developed the divisionist technique. This new style, which consisted of systematically applied small touches of unmodulated color, was based on contemporary optical theories of color relationships.

Two years after his first neo-impressionist work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants, Seurat exhibited A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1886, The Art Institute of Chicago) at the eighth and final impressionist group show in 1886. His disciplined technique exerted a considerable influence over neo-impressionist artists such as Camille Pissarro, Henri Edmond Cross, and Paul Signac.

Sources:
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Wiki

Update [5/17/11]: ...with the cast of The Office

Congratulations, Egypt!

2011-02-11T13:06:00.002-05:00

HC and roflbot send psychic high fives out
to everybody in Tarhir square and in all of Egypt.

Follow the end of the Mubarak era on Al-Jazeera.

Phil Jones' Telephone Pole Posts

2011-02-11T12:15:00.001-05:00

Phil Jones, a designer and art director from Minneapolis, MN, creates a new spin on the standard "Lost Dog" flyers that get stapled up around your neighborhood. Other pieces of his can be found on his tumblr.

Death to Comic Sans!

Via rebel:art and We Like That

25 Fuzzy Memories

2011-01-28T17:34:00.001-05:00

This is the first installment of my list of 100 memories and a rare venture into the realm of the deeply personal. I hesitated to present such a post, but seeing as how it's my blog, and what with mindless self indulgence and all, I can find no reason not to include a bit more of myself on good ol' HC. After all, life is more than bright colors, flashy tech, and cute animals. It's also dealing with the random shit that has happened- ups and downs, strikes and gutters.

I first learned about lists of 100 and thought, psh, I'd never make it that far into a list- I can barely commit to writing a blog at all! But then, I figured, it's a brand new year (and the last one sucked...) so why not try something new. Why not make a good, long list of some of the more colorful moments I've had in my time. There are a few from this past year, but most are from far better years-gone-by. Enjoy my reverie as I drag you into it.

1. Playing catch with grandpa, when I missed the ball and he nailed me in right eye. Should have bought me the Nerf gun I wanted; it was a lot softer. The backyard of the old house in St. Louis, 1992.

2. An assignment from fifth grade that helped teach me the difference between literal and figurative. My little cartoon was all ears because I'm good at drawing them.

3. A surprise birthday party for Patrick, looking out from the window at him walking up his driveway. Eight years old? Nine? We weren't friends for very long.

Guaita, San Marino

4. Hiking to the top of the oldest tower in San Marino with my friends Malarky and Lynann. 16 years old.

5. My first day working in the education unit in the Suffolk County House of Corrections. 18.

6.The best cup of coffee I ever had was sitting on a rope-swing bridge spanning a lovely waterfall. It was summer and I was in the cloud forest in Costa Rica. It was just after dinner, gloaming out. I had left my shoes in the kitchen.

7. Smashing a guitar to help out a friend, Morgan, with his group project on Liberation Theology. He got an A and it was somehow relevant. I was not even in the class.

8. (While I'm at it) Smashing a guitar in a fit of collegiate revelry, after having used it as a vehicle for noise music. It was Kerns' idea and guitar.

9. Seeing the lighter side of food poisoning after a day of wandering in Paris. The only food affordable in any of the surrounding arrondissements was dubbed "The Black Pearl of the Orient" and taught me an important lesson about humility and undercooked chinese "cuisine".

After the yelling, the awe continued.

10. Standing atop Brecon Beacons and yelling at Wales about how aweinspiring it was being. Also windy.

11. The empty Thai resteraunt, setting for an important first date. Bath, UK, 2008.

12. Meeting Martin Sheen. He was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for 12 and 12, a substance dependance program. I was working in the kitchen. He had an extremely warm personality and is quite small. 2001.

13. Decorating candy houses at Alex's real one, circa Decmber of 1992 - December of 1998.

God, I was a lot bigger...

14. "Learning" how to ride a bike for like the 47th time, in the gardens of the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Somewhere in Amsterdam, there's a family with vacation footage of me failing at this. It might have been the highlight of their trip; I don't speak Dutch. Summer '06.

15. Drunk, nostalgic, and dressed to the nines in the main ballroom of the Waldorf=Astoria just before college graduation. I'll never be this young again.

16. First day of high school, aserting that I didn't want to be a jock anymore. The last time I'd be taking the abuse that young men learn to give each other.

17. The moment I realized the physcial mechanics of sex: 2nd Grade, walking back from the playground, on the sidewalk in front of the Parish rectory. Tyler Metcalf explained it in great detail. He was always very science-oriented as a child.

18. Straining for the right words in Italian to communicate that I was sick, lost, and didn't want a hooker. Accosted by a pimp. Rome, late at night. Wondering where William went. Awkward.

19. Falling into a river after taking some bad advice concerning ziplines. Summer, crazy-Jesus brainwash camp, somewhere in Arkansas, 2000.

20. Taking 22 bee stings without knowing if I was allergic or not. Virginia, 2009.

21. Waking, and in that first conscious instant, jumping up, sprinting out onto the dock, stripping naked, and leaping into the undisturbed lake. Outside of Whitefish, Montana, 2005.

22. Feeling that I was not myself and that it was grand. Carnival in Dam Square, Amsterdam, 2008.

23. A 4th Grade play. Something about a pet shop owner, played by my best friend John Simons, doting upon all of his anthropomorphic pets. I was cast in the role of the evil capitalist who attempted hostile takeover of the Pet Shop, Mr. Morton. Parents all over our zip code clapped.

24. Numerous dawns overlooking the Res in Brighton: ones with Freeman, ones with James, ones alone.

25. Ducking Vietnam Steve all of Summer 2008. As it turns out, not being able to walk doesn't mean you can't be develop terrifying stalker habits.

More to come.

Who Doesn't Love John Waters?

2011-01-01T01:56:00.001-05:00

Especially when he dishes out such excellent, concise life advice.
Ooh, and Pink Flamingos, lest we forget.

Ibex are Dam Good Climbers

2010-12-30T23:41:00.000-05:00

See all the little specks on the Cingino dam in the Italian Alps? They're Alpine Ibex and they're not scared of a little 160-ft hike straight up. Especially if it means they get to lap up a little salt along the way, which is believed to be the reason they are attracted to this nearly sheer drop. I've known some porkers in my day who loved some salt, but dam.

Perhaps "like an Ibex on a dam" will become a phrase conveying confidence in a tough situation, particularly one where salt is involved. Be on the lookout for your next opportunity to use it!

Via InPic.ru & DailyMail

RIP Captain Beefheart [1941-2010]

2010-12-18T13:51:00.002-05:00

Sadly, Don van Vliet AKA Captain Beefheart died yesterday due to complications from MS. He was 69. Now he's zig-zag wanderin' through the cosmos with Zappa. You'll be missed, Don. Thanks for leaving so much for us to remember you by.

Check out Lester Bangs' famous profile of Beefheart.
And make sure you play Trout Mask Replica at least once today.

Dear Internets, Can We Talk?

2010-12-18T13:24:00.001-05:00

A Gesture of Love to You.

Hi. It's nice to see you again. I know it's been awhile, but I wanted to see if... well, if there are still any of the old magics between us. I know I treated you wrong, went away for a whole season without saying why (grad school). But I want you back, my digital-darlin'. As you can see by Catonkeyboardinspace, I'm serious about this.

Volatile's Demo Track "Miley"

2010-09-21T12:48:00.001-04:00

[Every song mentioned in this post deserves to be played extremely loudly.]

My DJ friend who goes by Volatile just released this demo that I had to tell ya'll about. Dude takes "Party in the USA", which represents everything mindless and evil in America, and chops his way into highlighting everything that is awesome and right about it (i.e. 808s and actual, you know, like real music). Just a pinch of French electro, and I've been playing it all morning despite the hangover. Check it out, then check out Volatile and our friend DJ Young Kirby, who together are Bowelhaus - Oct. 6th @ The Enormous Room in Cambridge. You'll know us there because we'll be the urban youth bringing the ruckus.

The finished version of this, and I'm assuming other tracks as well, will be on Bowelhaus' much anticipated first release, We Came to Wreck Everything [EP]. Coming soon to a brain near you. [check back for updates]

Bonus: right after I heard that I also caught this remix of the same song by Redfoxx (below). Less of a remix and more of a sllllloowwwwwed down old mix, lightly cut. Like it infinitely better than the original and not just because it's like three times as long. Also this Ke$ha remix by the same peeps. Oh, and this Washed Out one too.

[Not Especially] Related Posts: Washed Out & Toro y Moi

Putting Religious Extremism in Perspective

2010-09-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

Hey, Loud-mouthed Racist Guy on the Subway- know who you're talking about! Quit speaking such nonsense. Muslim does not automatically equal extremist, just as American doesn't automatically mean libricide. Look how few extremists there really are. The guy who made this had to inflate the relative size of Al-Qaeda and the would-be Qur'an burners just so you could see the insignificance of their numbers.

And still this guy, going on and on, like there's no common ground between the most of us!

What do extremists have in common, regardless of religion, within and without the U.S.? Their hatred of pluralism - the radical notion that we should embrace more than one idea. It's "both/and" not "either/or".

Which is why you, Loud-mouthed Racist Guy on the Subway, don't seem to get that when you treat people like they're all the same, like they're all extremists, you yourself are being an extremist jackass. Run tell dat to your equally-ignorant friends. Then read a book or something.

E. chlorotica is "Half Plant, Half Animal"

2010-09-17T15:46:00.000-04:00

This little guy is Elysia chlorotica, a species of sea slug that is able to usurp the chlorophyl-producing capabilities of the algae it eats. For this reason, they are nicknamed "solar-powered sea slugs".

Through a process called Kleptoplasty, the slugs are able to hang onto plants' chloroplasts (the cell organelle responsible for creation and storage of chlorophyl), keeping them intact in specialized cells in the slugs' digestive system. Amazingly, the slugs are also able to incorporate the chlorophyl-producing genes from the algae into their own genetic makeup. This allows them to make use of the burgled chloroplasts. The exact mechanism by which this is achieved is still unclear, but by the end of it, the slug can live off of light alone- up to ten months on the same alga's chloroplasts!

E. chlorotica is the only example in the Animal kingdom known to be able to do this. Incredible, the solutions evolution can come up with to overcome problems in an organism's environment! I, for one, am going to be eating more algae.

Hipster Dinosaurs

2010-09-17T10:35:00.000-04:00

Via Fork Party

The pun on integrity was the moment when I was like "Alright, hipster dinosaurs. You can be on my website."

"America Kills" Installation

2010-09-14T18:42:00.000-04:00

Artist Sebastian Errazuriz came across a saddening and revealing stat: in 2009, the number of U.S. soldiers who committed suicide more than doubled the number who died in combat. I had never heard this statistic either, but it is true. Noting the total lack of reporting on this deeply troubling data, Errazuriz spray painted it on the side of his Brooklyn studio, capturing just one part of the insanity of sending people (usually adolescents or very young adults) to kill other people (strangers, "the enemy"). He comments on his motivations and the experience:

The counting of dead soldiers outside my studio was long and surprisingly eerie; it was hard to forget that every brush stroke was a soldier who had died the previous year. A lot of people stopped to read the mural and were immediately impressed by the reality portrayed. Most of them seemed quite shocked and approached me to ask if what I was painting was real. I tried to explain that I simply wished to create a physical image that could capture people's imagination, creating awareness of the current numbers in death, war and the infinite discrepancy between the resources and energies destined to fight and protect soldiers at war versus the energies invested in protecting their mental health and stability. [emphasis added]

Via designboom

Solar Beat

2010-09-14T01:28:00.000-04:00

Our solar system becomes as simple as a music box, thanks to flash and Luke Twyman, over at WhiteVinyl Design. Play around with it here.

Related Posts:
Glitchscape
ToneMatrix is for Humans

Collaborative Sound Art In B♭

Vocab Mindmap II

2010-09-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

Get the .pdf

I like to be up-front about my nerdiness. I'm proud about it. Like any good nerd, my pet topics are, in general, multidisciplinary. I think it's vital to the title Nerd that one be eclectic in their curiosities. In particular- I express my nerdiness as a logophile by making mindmaps of good words, more or less as I encounter them. Perhaps I haven't seen these words in awhile or maybe I just haven't seen them at all. Visualizing things like this has really made a difference in my vocabulary, and has done wonders for my memory in general. I can only speak for myself, but I'm sure others would do well to give this a shot.

This is the second mind map I've posted here [here's the first], and like the 48th I've made using the free version of Mindnode for Mac.

It's For The Kids

2010-09-13T01:13:00.000-04:00

Via Truthdig

La Planète Sauvage AKA Fantastic Planet (1973)

2010-09-11T03:23:00.001-04:00

IMDb • Wiki • Rotten Tomatoes • Youtube

A movie whose English subtitles are worth hunting down (as opposed to trusting a dub). The animated La Planète Sauvage concerns an intensely psychedelic future world where humans, known as Oms (a pun on hommes, men), are kept as pets or hunted like pests. Their masters, the gigantic Traags (those blue guys), never forget what they learn, live for centuries (one Traag season is 5 years) and have the ability to influence their surroundings through meditation- wickedly trippy meditation.

Like this.

An Om narrator, named Terr, is orphaned as an infant when his mother is killed by Traag youths. Terr grows up alongside his doting Traag owner and eventually learns French from her. Benefitting from the knowledge of his mind-blowingly colorful and melty captors, Terr is able to escape to and ingratiate himself with a society of wild humans. A series of bizzare creatures dreamed up for Terr's journey reinforces the film's feral whimsy.

Jim Woodring, much?

The wild Om that Terr meets up with are rather like the Rats of NIHM (1982), both in the style they are animated in and that they're being systematically eradicated by a larger species. Unlike the Rats of NIHM, however, these Om are more like tiny dirty hippies- chilling and and dancing and screwing, burrowed inside a colossal tree trunk.

Sounds OK.

Like the good French lilliputians they are, they rebel, retaliating against their would-be exterminators. Is there room for peace? Can mutual coexistence be navigated when two species fundamentally misunderstand one another? La Planète Sauvage is notable for posing challenges to animal cruelty and questioning, in this manner, dominance over other forms of life- elucidating new meaning of the word "savage" (or "sauvage" depending on your Franc-affinity).

A few more reasons to seek out this animated masterpiece:

Its playful use of language, especially when the Om hear the Draag's scientific terms, is reminiscent of the slang in A Clockwork Orange (except with French instead of Russian and Ukrainian)
Its funky if not downright porn-groovish soundtrack doesn't let you forget its early 70s origin ("Mayfieldesque" is what I'd call it - don't worry, there's a bongo at one point)
Moreover, Madlib says the soundtrack had a big influence on him (sample source for much of the first Quasimoto album, The Unseen)
The landscapes, some of which are straight-up Terry Gilliam animation and others which are that but mixed with Hieronymus Bosch and a little Dali

The movie was so good it makes me want to go on Amazon right now and buy the novel [Oms en Série (Oms by the Dozen), Stephan Wul, 1957], but as of yet there is no english translation. If you're bilingual and love sci-fi and/or psychedelia, then I've got your graduate thesis topic right here. In the meantime, this French-Czechoslovakian joint is out on DVD and around the internets in various forms. And, I guess, I'll read more Philip K. Dick to fulfill this need of thoughtfully insane sci-fi. At least until I learn French.

Stop, Walk, High Five

2010-09-08T10:12:00.000-04:00

NSF Study: Developmental Differences in Stress Responses

2010-09-03T23:42:00.000-04:00

Adriana Galván, of UCLA, is exploring how daily stress and associated stress hormones impact decision making. Through a grant from the National Science Foundation, she is able to contrast the effect of stress on brain function in adolescents and adults.

Galván monitors the level of stress in her study participants four times per day. When an individual records high or low levels of stress, he or she immediately comes to the lab for evaluation.

Data suggest that the greatest sources of stress for teens are parents, while for adults stress tends to come from work or schoolwork.

There are also differences based on the time of day. While adults are most stressed in the morning, teens are most stressed in the early evening. Data also suggest that teens show greater cognitive impairment when stressed than adults.

Once the individuals come to the lab, their levels of cortisol are evaluated. Galván explained, "We expect diurnal patterns of cortisol release to differ between adults and adolescents and that this distinction will correlate with levels of stress. Previous work has shown that, under identical stress conditions, teens show greater cortisol release than adults."

Full Text via NSF and LiveScience

Mental Road Block

2010-08-19T02:46:00.001-04:00

[Watch this space] for when I feel creative again, after we're through the Summer doldrums. Then I'll post something worthwhile.

X-Ray Photographer Hugh Turvey

2010-08-07T20:14:00.001-04:00

In 1996, English artist Hugh Turvey started favoring x-rays as his medium. Prompted by a musician friend who asked him to make an album cover, Turvey made the above image, revealing his subject's biologically-based adoration of soccer/football/fútbol. With an eye for adding color and an experimental attitude, Turvey has since produced over 800 captivating pieces of x-ray art.

[source]

Hugh, 39, has been fascinated since childhood with getting underneath the surface of things. He said: “I’m driven by my curiosity. It’s about discovering the world around us. As a kid I would take things apart to see what was inside and how they worked. I have an insane curiosity for how things work. X-ray gives me a way to get that insight and turn it into art” [source]

A poster for a very successful three week exhibition in November, 2009 at the Oxo Gallery London.

But my absolute favorite are his x-rayed flowers, of which there are many.

Arum Lillies

Honesty seed pods

A colored x-ray of a lily

Seaweed

Tulips

And one bonus [non-x-ray] one:

Turvey also employs the technique of stroboscopy to shoot fast motion.

Conrad Gesner's Historiae animalium

2010-08-03T03:44:00.003-04:00

Conrad Gesner [26 March 1516 –
13 December 1565]

Gesner was most noted in his day as a physician, botanist, and Classical linguist. Throughout his life he was interested in biology and collected specimens and descriptions of wildlife through travel and extensive correspondence with other scholars. His approach to research centered upon four tenets: observation, dissection, travel to distant lands, and accurate description. This emergent empirical approach was new to Renaissance scholars, who usually relied entirely upon Classical writers for their research.

His Historiae animalium (Zürich, 1551-1587; "Studies on Animals") is considered to be the first modern zoological work. Building a bridge between ancient, medieval, and modern science, he chronicles data from old sources, such as The Old Testament, Aristotle and medieval bestiaries, and adds his own observations, creating a new, comprehensive description of the Animal Kingdom. In what is the first attempt by anyone to describe many of the animals accurately, the book is illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts drawn from personal observations by Gesner and his colleagues.

Though Gesner sought to distinguish facts from myths, his encyclopedic work also includes mythical creatures and imaginary beasts, intermixed with the strange newly discovered animals of the East Indies, those of the far north and animals brought back from the New World. The work included extensive information on mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. It described in detail their daily habits and movements. It also included their uses in medicine and nutrition.

Historiae animalium showed the animals' places in history, literature and art as well. Sections of each chapter detailed the animal and its attributes. Gesner's work included facts in different languages such as the names of the animals. His information drew from folktales, myths, and legends. The colored woodcut illustrations were the first real attempts to represent animals in their natural environment. It is the first book with fossil illustrations.

The five volumes of the natural history consists of more than a whopping 4500 pages [He spends 125 pages on cows alone]. The first volume is an illustrated work on live-bearing four-footed animals [or mammals in today's parlance]. This old form of animal classification, by number of feet and method of birth, was borrowed from Aristotle, the Ancient Greek scientist and philosopher who was the first Western biologist. Gesner studied and taught Aristotle's works extensively and used many of his descriptions and investigative techniques in Historiae animalium. Volume 2 is on egg-laying quadrupeds. Volume 3 is on birds. Volume 4 is on fish and aquatic animals. A fifth volume, on snakes and scorpions, was published in 1587, after Gesner’s death [from the plague, which was common in Europe during his time].

There was extreme religious tension at the time Historiae animalium came out. Under Pope Paul IV it was felt that the religious convictions of an author contaminated all his writings, so it was added to the Catholic Church's list of prohibited books.

It makes you wonder what motivated him. He indicates in the introduction to the first volume that as a physician, he feels that a deeper understanding of the Animal Kingdom will broaden our knowledge of medicine. As a religious man, he also feels that it will help his readers to understand the great plan of God, who he believes created the perfect universe and all of its creatures. Gesner was Protestant, and his faith in the perfection of God's plan for the natural world moved him to envision the Garden of Eden on the back of the first volume.

This is a Camelopardal, a giraffe that's also part camel and part leopard. It was known in 16th-century Europe only from travelers' reports.

Gesner devotes an additional 100 pages to the dog, recognizing that their history is closely tied to that of humans. He writes extensively about the problem of rabies, and includes famous stories about the faithfulness of dogs to their masters.

Gesner does not question the existence of the unicorn, but admits that the image here is based upon literary depictions and not scientific observation.

Gesner credits elephants as being the most intelligent animal, and as having emotions the most like humans of any other creature. He comments that its ivory has been traded as a luxury item around the known world for centuries.

This illustration of an Indian rhinoceros was originally made by noted artist Albrecht Dürer. Dürer himself had never seen a rhinoceros, but based his drawing on one made in Lisbon of a rhinoceros brought there from India in 1515.

The satyr was a creature from Greek mythology: a man with the legs and hindquarters of a goat. The "satyr" depicted here is a creature said to have been caught in the woods outside Salzburg; it reportedly died a few days after capture.

Gesner rejects the old notion that the chameleon lives on a diet of air alone. He quotes the personal observations of a friend who kept a chameleon in captivity and observed it eating insects with its long, sticky tongue.

Gesner accurately identifies Taprobana, now known as Sri Lanka, as a popular nesting ground for sea turtles. He also comments on the tastiness of the sea turtle's meat, which has nearly driven it to extinction in the 20th century.

Because of its importance to humans, Gesner devotes over 100 pages to the chicken, more than any other bird. He spends a great deal of time to the care of chickens, including methods of increasing egg production.

Gesner was somewhat insecure about his illustration of the ostrich, but like a modern scientist he admits his doubts, "Some say that the bill should be broader … and that the feet should be cloven, as in calves … Let the eye-witness be the judge, for I have never seen this bird for myself."

Gesner is extremely skeptical of the existence of sea monsters, but he feels it necessary to mention them because he cannot absolutely refute earlier descriptions of them.

...but primarily, because people like to hear about sea monsters.

In Greek mythology, the hydra was a seven-headed monster slain by Hercules. Gesner considers it to be imaginary but includes it because of a recently published pamphlet about a seven-headed snake found in Turkey.

Sources:

Wikipedia page for Historiae Animalium
Wikipedia page for Conrad Gesner
National Institutes of Health Interactive Archive
NIH Photo Gallery
Complete English Text via University of Virginia Library

Early 1900s Russia in Color

2010-08-02T02:10:00.001-04:00

Andrei Petrov Kalganov. Former master in the plant. Seventy-two years old, has worked at the plant for fifty-five years. He was fortunate to present bread and salt to His Imperial Majesty, the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II, Zlatoust; 1910 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Old church of Saint Nicholas the Wonder Worker, Nyrob; 1910 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

Group of workers harvesting tea. Greek women, Chakva; between 1905 and 1915 Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Collection (Library of Congress).

[Source: Denver Post Photo Blog. Loads more there.]

Pogo's Videos are my Jam

2010-08-01T23:28:00.002-04:00

Pogo is an Australian DJ who has been getting a lot of internet respect for his technique of building textured trip-hop out of minute samples from classic and contemporary movies. But his equally adept film-editing skills and his inclination toward the whimsical are what turn otherwise casual Youtube channel stumblers into true fans all over the world. Above is the most commonly noted among his videos, "Alice" (composed entirely of Alice in Wonderland bits and pieces). Its dreamy, thumping beat has ensnared over 4 million viewers on Youtube.

This is "Gardyn" his first attempt at mixing real world sounds. A gift to his mom on Mother's Day, it features her voice as well as sounds found around her garden. This is a beautiful gift. I'd have to say "Goddamn, well done!" if he were my kid. [Incidentally, Pogo is younger than I am, at 22 years old.]

Other bright and catchy tracks of his include...

"Expialidocious" [Mary Poppins, 1964]

"Scrumdiddlyumptious" [Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971]

"Bangarang" [Hook, 1991]

"Upular" [Up, 2009]

and most recently, "Toyz Noize" [Toy Story, 1995]...

and "Buzzwing" [also from Toy Story].

As you may have noticed, several of those films are famous classics that are owned by Sony. In 2009, Sony made a big fuss about Pogo posting "Alice" and "Bangarang" on Youtube and required that he take them down. I thought his response was admirable, which is where I got the idea for this post:

My work serves as free viral marketing to the organisations that own the films I sample from. It's high time the music industry pulls its head out of its ass, and realises that today's remix culture is an asset, not a liability. To shoot down the potential here would be utterly illogical.

[Update 5.8.10: Pogo has just designed a new logo, which I'm in favor of. This guy designed it for him.]

War Buddies

2010-07-31T18:42:00.000-04:00

[Source]

Tomboy/Slow-Motion 7" [Obligatory Panda Bear Hype Post]

2010-07-31T18:22:00.001-04:00

The two tracks currently available from this September's anticipated (by me) release leave me wanting more. Based solely on the wandering haziness of the title track and the hip-hop backbone of the "Slow-Motion", I imagine I would like the full LP on vinyl for my birthday. Panda Bear stated that it would focus more on guitar and rhythm than most of his stuff with Animal Collective or Jane (though I like them too). So I'm pretty damn intrigued.

CollegeBinary Presents 3 Minute Philosophy

2010-07-31T17:45:00.003-04:00

Australian S. Peter Davis (also called CollegeBinary) makes good use of youtube by providing light-hearted primers on several philosophers- above, Kant's stubbornness highlights himself as an especially douchey one. Reminds me a bit of Brad Neely (of Wizard People, Dear Reader fame).

The Pythagoras one, below, might be my favorite.

Also make sure to check out Galileo, Descartes, Aquinas, Aristotle, Hume, Nietzsche, and Locke.

Did You Know 4.0 Drops Tech Usage Knowledge

2010-07-30T02:19:00.006-04:00

This is the most recent update [Fall 2009] of the Shift Happens video, of exploding internet fame. The original Did You Know? started as a powerpoint presentation to faculty in August, 2006 at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado as a way to acquaint teachers and staff to new media and its use among younger generations. Developed with the assistance of The Economist, the latest version showcases the most recent data on shifting media landscapes. I've taken the liberty of posting links [where possible] to every cited source below. Enjoy being on the forefront of the world's information-technology changes. Because, for better or for worse, this is how we're using tech at the moment.

Books published: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year
Google Book Scan: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Book_Search
1,000,000,000,000 web pages: googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html
65,000 iPhone apps: www.mashable.com/2009/08/05/flurry-iphone-apps
Radio/Magazines/TVs: “Grown up digital” by Don Tapscott, 2009, McGraw-Hill. p. 30.
Print circulation: www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx
Online readers: www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Newspaper-Websites.aspx
Traditional vs. digital advertising: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/business/media/04adco.html
Ad-less TV: adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3if26a27fe344b20e4f9487ffe00ad0098
YouTube uploads: www.mashable.com/2009/05/20/youtube-video-uploads
Unique visitors to TV network social media sites: siteanalytics.compete.com
Rickrolling: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling
Digital music: www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSTRE50F6NE20090116
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
Cisco: www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/28/Nexus-brings-Cisco-into-new-territory_1.html
World record texts: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_messaging
Average teen texts: www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html
Nokia: www.fastcompany.com/magazine/138/iphone-envy-you-must-be-joumlking.html
Cell phone purchases: www.blackberrycool.com/2009/05/study-shows-pizza-and-entertainment-driving-mobile-purchases
Dell: bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/12/dell-has-earned-3-million-from-twitter
Obama: articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/07/nation/na-money7
McCain: blog.mlive.com/elections_source/2008/03/mccain_raises_11_million_in_fe.html
Discipline over social media: www.mashable.com/2009/08/10/social-media-misuse
Twitter Iran: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/obama-iran-twitter
Twitter Michael Jackson: bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/michael-jackson-tops-the-charts-on-twitter
Malware: www.mxlogic.com/securitynews/web-security/michael-jackson-top-subject-of-malware-spam-this-year766.cfm
Spam: www.arstechnica.com/security/news/2009/06/report-botnets-send-over-80-of-all-spam-in-june.ars
Mobile in 2020: www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/The-Future-of-the-Internet-III.aspx
Ray Kurzweil: news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-10102273-76.html

David Gallaugher's Parkwheel

2010-07-30T01:34:00.000-04:00

This is a few years old, but remains one of the coolest art projects I've seen on the internets. David Gallaugher of Dalhousie University created this mobile statement about the need to have more greenspace in urban areas. I wouldn't mind moving around Boston in one of those things. It would detract from the ugliness of Cleveland Circle while I was on my way to the Boston Commons and the public gardens. Shout out to Halifax, yall!

[Original source]

Time Lapse Mandala

2010-07-30T01:14:00.001-04:00

My good friend Madeline of Madeline May Write pointed out this awesome video of Buddhist monks creating a beautiful mandala from colorful sand. A mandala is a geometric design that in its microcosm represents the whole universe. They are typically created as a form of meditation and are totally, utterly rad.

A funny thing about both mandalas and the universe, that is so perfectly demonstrated in this meditative practice, is impermanence - the work of art, the human person, the environment which we share- all of it is not meant to last, and won't.

Which makes me wonder: does the fact that it is on film bear any relevance to the monks? Does the mandala "remain" and still exist, as far as the youtube viewer is concerned? I can't answer this with any certainty; I'm not Buddhist and have a mere enthusiast's weak grasp on the idea. I imagine that it would bother the monks, yet they consented to being filmed in this noble pursuit of blessing all the world.

Perhaps they hadn't thought about that. Or, perhaps more likely, they figure youtube as impermanent as the sand painting.

Toro Y Moi

2010-07-29T01:32:00.001-04:00

More new chillwave goodness for yas. [You can guess the sort of day I've had]

This guy goes by Toro Y Moi.

Washed Out

2010-07-29T01:15:00.000-04:00

Ernest Greene's [AKA Washed Out] two EPs, Life of Leisure [2009] and High Times [also 2009], warrant the attention of all yall hip young people. I've been in it all damn day.

Because summertime means riding the chillwave. So get on it before your SAD sets in again.

Anatomy of an Impact

2010-07-06T02:23:00.004-04:00

Look at this millisecond by millisecond description written by Australian engineers of what happens when one car hits another at 50 mph (~80 kph). The physical impact is completed in about a quarter of the time is takes to blink your eyes (which is about 300 to 400 ms). It happens faster than your 50-100 billion neurons can perceive it. Their description reads like a poem, with the last line delivering the real punch. If it can be thought of as a poem, it's one about how slowly our minds move in contrast to the mechanical world.

This is a reconstruction of a crash involving a stationary Ford Falcon XT sedan being struck in the driver's door by another vehicle travelling at 50 km/h.
[One millisecond equals 1/1000th of a second.]
0 milliseconds - An external object touches the driver's door.
1 ms - The car's door pressure sensor detects a pressure wave.
2 ms - An acceleration sensor in the C-pillar behind the rear door also detects a crash event.
2.5 ms - A sensor in the car's centre detects crash vibrations.
5 ms - Car's crash computer checks for insignificant crash events, such as a shopping trolley impact or incidental contact. It is still working out the severity of the crash. Door intrusion structure begins to absorb energy.
6.5 ms - Door pressure sensor registers peak pressures.
7 ms - Crash computer confirms a serious crash and calculates its actions.
8 ms - Computer sends a "fire" signal to side airbag. Meanwhile, B-pillar begins to crumple inwards and energy begins to transfer into cross-car load path beneath the occupant.
8.5 ms - Side airbag system fires.
15 ms - Roof begins to absorb part of the impact. Airbag bursts through seat foam and begins to fill.
17 ms - Cross-car load path and structure under rear seat reach maximum load.
Airbag covers occupant's chest and begins to push the shoulder away from impact zone.
20 ms - Door and B-pillar begin to push on front seat. Airbag begins to push occupant's chest away from the impact.
27 ms - Impact velocity has halved from 50 km/h to 23.5 km/h. A "pusher block" in the seat moves occupant's pelvis away from impact zone. Airbag starts controlled deflation.
30 ms - The Falcon has absorbed all crash energy. Airbag remains in place. For a brief moment, occupant experiences maximum force equal to 12 times the force of gravity.
45 ms - Occupant and airbag move together with deforming side structure.
50 ms - Crash computer unlocks car's doors. Passenger safety cell begins to rebound, pushing doors away from occupant.
70 ms - Airbag continues to deflate. Occupant moves back towards middle of car. Engineers classify crash as "complete".
150-300 ms - Occupant becomes aware of collision.

Via Sentient Developments
Original Source: drive.com.au

C'mon, Quit Reading this Already

2010-06-27T01:54:00.003-04:00

Good to set as a homepage, if you're like me. Focus! [Source]

Mushroom Malai Revives, Reaffirms Indian Food Obsession [Recipe]

2010-06-26T03:27:00.004-04:00

This malai looks way better than mine ended up looking.

Also our camera isn't working at the moment.

For the first year or so after I started learning to cook, I rather lackadaisically stumbled through preparing mostly continental americana stuff - casseroles, kitchen sink stir fries, stuffed peppers, stuffed mushrooms, chilis, chowders, and so many other perfectly pliable forms of food. Even the occasional Thai or Mexican dish could be adapted to my then-bachelor sensibilities (cheap, quick, loads of veggies and often consumed while on my feet). The thing that's always appealed to me about these dishes, and about the general spirit of these sorts of foods, is their fluidity of recipe. Almost anything can be in a casserole. Got extra green onions? Yup, chuck 'em in. Olives? Why the hell not? More garlic! More I say! —In this, one of my many minds about cooking, the down-home mode of cookery, I take recipes as vague suggestions at best and otherwise don't really bother with them. Or measurements either.

This is a very bad approach with the preparation of Indian food, turns out. In fact, it's straight up untenable. Though I'll never give it up when making most things, I needed to adopt a new strategy if I'm to successfully assuage my ever-growing (and deep rooted) cravings for naan, dal, roti, saag, and other forms I'm only just discovering. Unaccustomed to the concept of closely following directions because of my Western "cowboy" culinary upbringing, I found myself wary to tackle any complex dish requiring precise cooking times, temperatures, and spice ratios. The order in which the ingredients meet the heat is key to a dish's resulting flavor under- and overtones. This is just a little bit more complex than the dishes that my anything-goes, crock-pot sensibilities normally favor.

Complex, but not impossible! And certainly not that hard at all, just requiring that I learn some damn patience and listen to a few knowledgeable sources (roommates or flatmates are the best and the internet is an infinite cookbook). Learning just a little of information about why things are done in a given order, or why spices are paired with certain veggies (not just for flavor, but also for health and digestion aids) helps make it more intuitive for future kitchen experiments. For example, one of the nice things about a lot of Indian recipes calling for Ghee (clarified butter) is that it has a lot higher smoke point than most cooking oils. That is, you can safely heat it to 250 °C (485 °F) without it burning. Knowing this you can be free from fear in really turning up the heat to fry onions and meld spices well early on in the life of a meal. I posit that little data like that make cooking more fun, nerdy [n.b. a good thing], healthy, and delectable.

Anyways, I'll quit blabbing my food philosophies and get to the recipe [I often think this about other blogs when I'm not feeling reflective, just hungry]. This one is from Indian Food Forever, a fantastic resource for the curious addict of the fine foods from all the corners and crannies of the sub-continent. Anything malai refers to the use of cream; here it is used along with mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions to make a delicious, comforting soup. Get on it. You'll need a food processor or a blender and a voracious sense for adventure.

Mushroom Malai Recipe

Ingredients:

200 gm mushroom
2 onion (pyaj)
3 tomato (tamatar)
1 piece ginger (adrak)
1 green chilli (hari mirch)
1 cup cream
1 tbsp coriander leaves (dhania patti)
1/2 tsp salt (namak)
1/4 tsp turmeric powder (haldi)
1/4 tsp red chilly powder (lal mirch)
1/2 tsp spice blend (garam masala)
2 tbsp clarified butter (ghee)

Instructions:

Cut mushrooms into slices.
Finely chop onions.
Grind ginger, green chilies and tomatoes.
Finely chop coriander leaves.
Heat ghee in a pan and fry onions until they turns pink/clear.
Fry tomatoes in it and then put cream and mushroom.
Cook for 5 minutes and then add turmeric, red chilly powder, spice blend and salt.
Cook at low flame until mushroom softens, then remove from flame.
Garnish with coriander and serve hot.

Makes 3-4ish servings. Great paired with a curry and some rice or roti.

Pygmy Jerboa is a Cute Harmless Alien

2010-06-26T01:57:00.004-04:00

More specifically, this particular dinosaur-like peculiarity of a rodent is a Baluchistan Pygmy Jerboa (Salpingotulus michaelis). They're indigenous to an area of about 5000 sq/mi in northwest Pakistan, though they might also exist in Afghanistan. Beyond what has been gleaned in the field, not much is really known about them according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), the most widely-accepted scientific authority of its type. They're sure it's vulnerable to some threat, but, humorously, there's not enough data to say what it is with certainty. What facts there are paint the picture in my mind of a jumpy-hamsterlike society that is just darling.

It is a nocturnal, loosely colonial [aww], gregarious [d'awwww...], herbivorous [eating little leaves, aww...] species occuring in rolling sand dunes or barren flat gravel and sandy plains in hot deserts.

[Molur et. al, 2005, a zoologists' report: "Status of South Asian Non-volant Small Mammals", p 192]

In fact, here's the full write up of the little guy from page 192... [Click to Enlarge]

The thing is, even though they're classified only as "vulnerable" rather than "endangered" or even "critically endangered", they're still not pets. They'll need to be monitored closely in their habitat, which means that everyone's curiosity about mail ordering one is, at this point, misspent. Perhaps we'll be successful at keeping them around, and one day you can have one hopping all over your keyboard, making what I imagine are little gibbery-scriggly noises.

I wonder if this is a researcher who filmed this nugget of internet goodness. Perhaps that explains the decision to weigh the little bugger. Or maybe it's just that it's so lightAs somebody in the comments section of That Cute Site: "He almost weighs an eighth!" Just about. :)

Related: Info on IUCN's Red List of Threatened Species

Oklahoma Man Arrested for Dancing

2010-06-25T03:23:00.001-04:00

Well, ok, dance-trespassing. Eddy Khaodevanpheng, a 22-year old Oklahoma City resident, was arrested today at an OKC convenience store for refusing to leave when management asked him to please quit getting down in their establishment. Obstinate, he claimed he was "fighting for his right to dance" and did so around the gas station and back and forth across the nearby intersection, presumably to ward off potential threats to this basic funky freedom.

Police told the man to leave after he informed them he was fighting for the right to dance, and he "danced across the parking lot to the McDonald's where he stood and watched us while dancing,” an officer wrote in the report. He then danced back across the parking lot to the Valero, where he was arrested.

When asked why he returned to the gas station, the man told police he was "following the leader,” the report states. He said the arresting officer was the leader because he had a radio, pepper spray and a gun, and police replied by saying he was going to jail because he "didn't listen to the leader.

It doesn't seem like the cops or the management really got it: who he was fighting and what was at stake. But it doesn't really matter - clearly, his commitment to the fight should have been persuasive enough. What I can't seem to find is a description of the kind of dance: was he crunking? Voguing? Doing the Charleston? I imagine that this is the first case in a new type of neurological disorder where the sufferer constantly hears Daft Punk playing in their head and has no control over whether their ass follows suit, until they break down from dance-overkill. Fortunately, he didn't have to groove in lock-up for long; he's already been released to fight another day.

Related: Just four days ago, an Iowa-city teen booked for grinding with a giant angel statue in a local cemetery.

Americans Concur: Our Health Care's Shit is Wack

2010-06-25T02:35:00.001-04:00

[Source: A 2009 PEW poll, via good.is]

I come from a zany, imaginary place called Oklahoma. It's Texas' hat, if that helps you place it on the map. And while I'm atypical for Green Country [in that I bailed on it], I like to keep up with it's ever-developing oddness. I'm still fond of it in many ways.

This is native Oklahoman, Biker Fox.

I'm tellin' ya, this place is seriously, truly strange.

One of the things I care less for that my state of origin and adolescence produces is its politics. Oklahoma, being so make-believe, has a tendency to elect some whimsical, silly jackasses for its officials. Sadly, I'm not talking about Biker Fox - no one's elected him yet. Who I mean is, for one, Republican Senator Tom Coburn, the little and loudest among the many conservatives who claim that the U.S. has the best health care in the world [we don't, even the CIA says so]. A new poll from the PEW research center demonstrates well the partisan divide regarding accurate health care assessment:

The stark political divisions evident in the current debate over health care are mirrored in opinions about how the health care system compares with those in other industrialized countries. Most Republicans say U.S. health care is either the best in the world (28%) or above average (29%). Democrats largely take the opposite view, with nearly seven-in-ten saying U.S. health care is either average (35%) or below average (34%). Independents have more in common with Democrats than with Republicans in their evaluation of America's health care. Roughly six-in-ten say health care in this country is average (32%) or below average (29%) compared with other industrialized countries.

Conservative Republicans stand out in their positive assessments of U.S. health care. Two-thirds (66%) say America's health care is either the best in the world or above average. Just 39% of moderate and liberal Republicans agree. There is a smaller ideological divide within the Democratic Party -- with 75% of liberals rating U.S. health care as average or below average compared with 67% of moderates and conservatives." [source]

This is despite the fact that the poll also says most Americans disagree, correctly recognizing it as comparatively average or worse.

Big shocker that nationalist pride in a 2nd or 3rd rate health care system plagued with equal access, delivery, and funding problems is correlated to income bracket, in addition to political affiliation.

There are plenty of weird, wonderful, and outrageous things about both Oklahoma and the U.S. that are worth keeping around - state fairs, noodling, Gary Busey. These things are our shared heritage. But what ain't worth writing home about are the politicians, bureaucrats, and, if you're not among the rich elite, the doctors.

Unrelated: a song by Colorado shoegaze band Weed Diamond, called "Oklahoma".

E-Z Hipster Art Recipe

2010-06-24T01:19:00.001-04:00

A meme, made by Tumblr user marioandre.
Follow its example and be the good little dead-ends-of-western-civilization you are.

Most Delicious Mitosis Ever

2010-06-18T01:46:00.000-04:00

Click image for best resolution. I've got my eye on that anaphase one.
Krispy Kremes baked by New York native artist Kevin van Aelst.
His other works also have a certain humor to them.

-interactive review of cellular mitosis
-KK copycat recipe. [Just a wee high in fat/cholesterol. Not recommended for a long life of continued, controlled cellular division]

Some of the More Tasteful Big Lebowski Fan Art

2010-06-17T03:34:00.002-04:00

Found mostly on DeviantArt and Flickr.

gillyweed25, cross-stich

chofmann36, pastels on velour.

iri5, awesome on VHS tape.

cheps-oner, spray paint on canvas.

Carlosgurgel, Some kinda poster.

Biff Bang Pow, action figures

manticorestencilart, spray paint on vinyl

choffman36, pastels on velour paper

deadjellyfish, sculpture

choffman36, vector

Thesauri Totally Got Shelved

2010-06-17T01:58:00.000-04:00

[Source]

Legends of Benin [1969-1981]

2010-06-17T01:01:00.001-04:00

Heavy horns, vocals with real flow, and some real down-home afro-beat hotness. Throw a gritty funk dance party and then all fly over to Benin to meet up with the rest of your friends, the Beninese. From the back:

A collection of super rare and highly danceable masterpieces recorded between 1969 -1981 by four legendary composers from Benin, Antoine Dougbé, El Rego, Honoré Avolonto and Gnonnas Pédro, each one of them with their own distinctive sound. This compilation comes with a 40 page full colour booklet with ultra rare pictures and biographies. Fasten your seat belt and enjoy the mind blowing sound of Benin.

1. Gnonnas Pedro Et Ses Dadjes - Dadje Von O Von Non 3:53
2. El Rego Et Ses Commandos - Feeling You Got 3:44
3. Antoine Dougbé - Honton Soukpo Gnon 7:05
4. El Rego Et Ses Commandos - E Nan Mian Nuku4:26
5. Honoré Avolonto Et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - Tin Lin Non 8:48
6. Gnonnas Pedro Et Ses Panchos - Okpo Videa Bassoruo 3:30
7. Antoine Dougbé Et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - Ya Mi Ton Gbo 6:34
8. Antoine Dougbé - Nou Akuenon Hwlin Me Sin Koussio 5:03
9. Honoré Avolonto - Na Mi Do Gbé Hué Nu 6:44
10. El Rego Et Ses Commandos - Vimado Wingnan 3:01
11. Honoré Avolonto Et L'Orchestre Black Santiago - Dou Dagbé Wé 4:26
12. El Rego Et Ses Commandos - Djoblimé 2:31
13. Antoine Dougbé - Kovito Gbe De Towe 6:39
14. Gnonnas Pedro Et Ses Dadjes - La Musica En Verité 7:09

Much love to all four of these legends. My personal favorite sound is Gnonnas Pedro for his driving intro track, Dadje Von O Von Non, and for his wandering, building closer, La Musica en Verité.

Try it out [via Little Vibrations] and then buy it direct from label Analog Africa. Also highly recommended from them: African Scream Contest

Alexandro Garcia Lands Art Saucers on 3rd Eyes

2010-06-17T00:06:00.002-04:00

Guerror del arco iris, 1990

Uruguayan Alexandro Garcia saw something in the sky that changed him permanently. Attempting to describe his UFO experience impelled Garcia to develop his natural gift for drawing and painting. With no formal training, he built his chaotic style upon piece after piece etched with common pens, pencils, and on any available paper, such as the back of an almanac. With time he began to elaborate his style, bringing forth eye-poping colorscapes, convoluted geometries, and visions of psychedelic Other-worlds. His collections are considered in the vanguard of so-called "outsider art" [whatever, that label is hegemonic]

[Via Synaptic Stimuli, this flickr photostream, and the Christian Berst Galerie d'Art].

[Click each for full effect]

En Algun Lugar, 2008

Energias, 2008

Armonia Estelar, 2009

El Futuro, No Date [c. el futuro?]

[No Information]

Worst Oil Spills in Global History [Infographic]

2010-06-16T17:22:00.002-04:00

Infographic drawn by Gavin Potenza and found via wpbeginner. Last updated 6/14/10 with information from ITOFP, a non-profit fund started by oil tanker owners who seek out responses to oil spills and other similar ecological disasters [original source of data].

Follow the Deepwater Horizon disaster @ Reuters.

Design Tweaking

2010-06-16T01:24:00.001-04:00

Any comments or complaints about the new look are welcomed. I'm not sure how I feel about it myself. I think it's easier to read...

70s Thai Orchestra [Maybe Not from the 70s, Maybe Not from Thailand]

2010-06-15T13:56:00.015-04:00

Psychedelic, country jam-band style molam (or mor lam; a traditional genre of Lao song, literally meaning "expert song" or "expert singer"). Nothing more is known for certain about the album: who recorded it, how many performers there were, whether it was for profit or private use. It's a bit of a mystery. It might actually be a record called Siamese Temple Ball, but there's debate and general confusion whether or not this is true. Personally I hope it is, because the liner notes of that record have this to say for itself:

Flight comes to Thailand in the Year of the Rat. Siamese Temple Ball provide the lilting soundtrack for a chemical journey. Schoolgirls dance bashfully for the expectant throng. Life continues at a comparatively slow pace away from the rigours of fierce sun-light.

[which was then followed by the label's description]

In the tradition of Sun City Girls, Ya Ho Wha 13, The Spacious Mind, Taj Mahal Travellers, Mu, Word of Life, Group 1850, and Ghost, Siamese Temple Ball give maximum pleasure for thirsty brains. [label source]

Yeah, that describes 70s Thai Orchestra pretty well. Get into the complex interchange of the phin pya, the electrified khene, and some wicked-ass thumping percussion (haha, hyphens). It's a big party that took place who knows how many years ago. I'd recommend cranking it and inviting a few friends over to groove the hell out.

70s Thai Orchestra

8 Reasons to Listen to Gorillaz' Plastic Beach [2010] Right Now

2010-06-15T03:31:00.003-04:00

In a single (mostly trip-hop/pop influenced) album, Gorillaz manages to feature Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, De La Soul, Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, The Lebanese National Orchestra for Oriental Arabic Music and f-ing Lou Reed (among others).
Damon Albarn and associates really break out of the 4-cartoon-characters mold that they've so well established. Sounds like Jamie Hewlett is sick of drawing the same band members over and over again. And can you blame either of them? Imagine that you were in their shoes when faced with a demanding planet Earth who really love these four characters, and a record company that stands to make a hunk of profit as well, how would you navigate it? Evolve the characters. Develop the sound. This one doesn't sound like the 2001 eponymous debut and certainly not like Demon Days. Some of the same character voices are there, but they're all speaking the socially, politically, and environmentally charged core of album.
Oh, right, throughout the record there is a brilliant double-metaphor. The basic message as I have distilled it is that A) the planet is dying, we are it's murderers, and in the near-future, survivors will pass the time cooking up wicked rhymes, pirating, and succumbing to carcinogens in the air. Considering this, the use of grime-style flows throughout the album rises to the level of the heavily symbolic and B) as a culture, we're too demanding on our artists. We want music now, high turnaround, regardless of how crummy or played-out it sounds- when the demand is so high, with so little appreciation for production quality, when no one is willing to pay for it. Which is why there's so many cheap, plastic, interchangeable, so-called pop musicians around. It's increasingly toxic to the medium and soon enough, artists won't put any care at all into their releases. This dually impoverished dystopian future will be bleak and make use of several sick bass lines.
Hence, Plastic Beach was 5 years in the making (which really seems to be part of the point of the ridiculously catchy track "Superfast Jellyfish") Real quality is never on-demand. It takes time to percolate an album as complex, clever, and bangin' as this one.
You won't be able to stop listening once you start. I've heard it around 7 or 8 times this past week and it's not gotten old.
The first half of "Empire Ants" is built on a reggaetón beat that manages to not suck at all, a milestone for reggaetón.
You could be the first one on your block to do a sweet extended house remix of "On Melancholy Hill" and be adored by all. Unless, oh wait, somewhere out there on the internets someone already beat you to it.

8. Preview it here then run out and buy it up. I can't wait until it's out on vinyl!

Philip Zimbardo: "The Secret Powers of Time"

2010-06-14T20:00:00.004-04:00

Though psychologist, author, and lecturer Philip Zimbardo is best well known for his work on the topic of evil, he has also spent a lot of time researching time. This clever, well animated short helps demonstrate his argument that we don't pay nearly enough attention to perceptions of time - our own, those of the people around us, those of cultures around the world. Video by the RSA.

Or check Zimbardo delivering an even briefer version of this talk on TED. You know, if you just can't sit through 10 minutes of awesome animation (you future-oriented people out there).

-Zimbardo's homepage

-Info on the (in)famous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, for which he is best known

-And though he's no longer researching evil, he still uses his knowledge to help explain Abu Ghraib [via TED].

Kabul: 1970-2010

2010-06-08T13:14:00.003-04:00

Click image for larger size. [Source]

Why Men Don't Have To Die So Early (But Do Anyway): Sex and Gender Differences in Longevity

2010-06-07T22:56:00.007-04:00

[Source] Data from August/September, 2001.

In a recent course on gender role socialization, I had the opportunity to do a bit of research into longevity, which is becoming a pet topic of mine. In doing so, I found a lot of information about why men die earlier - about 5.4 years earlier in the U.S. - than women. It seemed silly for only one person, a professor, to read it after I'd spent time on it. Especially since there is so much that men (both very gender-typed ones and males who eschew the label) in the internet audience, can do a lot to change health trajectories and add years to life. In just one testament to the amount of control we really have over our health, Dan Buettner, a researcher who focuses on twins' health outcomes and longevity, says that people, regardless of sex, have it within their power to add as much as 10 years onto their lives. With that in mind, enjoy factsnacking on this bloggofied version of the paper.

[Oh, and please forgive the writing style; I'm a social sciences person and we can be a little stiff like that. This is by no means a complete or exhaustive review of the literature on this, just a lil' something to raise awareness. As with all my original content, comments enouraged]

For more on why gender roles do real, measurable damage on men and women, see William Pollack, A New Psychology of Men, and the wiki on gender roles.

---

Despite the longstanding patriarchic belief that females are naturally the weaker sex, modern research clearly demonstrates that men have significantly more impairments in physical health behaviors, predispositions, and outcomes. The mortality rate in the U.S. for men is consistently 1.5 to 3 times higher until 85 years of age. Men make up 70% of heart attack fatalities before the age of 65 as well as the majority of cases of mouth, throat, skin, and urinary organ cancer (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 178-9). Typically, men die 5.4 years earlier than women and have a 43% greater age-adjusted mortality rate (class notes). This has been the status quo long enough that the New Oxford American Dictionary makes reference to women as exemplar for longevity: “the greater longevity of women compared with men” (Longevity, 2005). Why should it be the case that so many more men die at younger ages? Why is it that women have a lead in longevity? Some theorists point to biological rationales, saying that differences in specific attributes of physical development are the root cause. Others point to social and psychological sources for the gender gap. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; framing the issue as nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy. In fact, the biological, socio-cultural, and psychological realms interact in a complex and recursive fashion.

Biological Factors

The biological contributions to the gender gap in mortality typically involve either a protectant predisposition for females or an innately harmful risk for men. For instance, it is commonly accepted by the scientific community that men are more vulnerable to disease because of their genetics: females have two X chromosomes whereas males have one X and one Y. Having an extra copy of the X chromosome provides females with an increased resiliency to X-linked disease because both X chromosomes must have copies of the (recessive) gene that codes for that disease in order for it to be expressed phenotypically (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 182). That is, the “effects of deleterious recessive genes on the X chromosome… are exposed [for men] because there are no corresponding genes on a paired chromosome as there are for females” (Kruger & Ness, 2006, p. 80).

This means that men more likely to experience debilitating X-linked disorders, whether they be dominant or recessive, the most common of which include Hemophilia A & B, Fragile X syndrome, and various types of muscular dystrophy (General Practice Notebook, 2009). However, disorders such as these comprise a relatively small effect on the overall mortality gender gap. As Waldron (quoted in Kilmartin, 2010) succinctly stated, “Most of the common X-linked diseases aren’t fatal, and most of the fatal X-linked diseases aren’t common” (p. 182). This consideration is crucial to the argument being made here: a great number of small to moderate influences add up to create a longevity crisis for men. Genetic predisposition is just one factor of many biogenic and psychogenic causes.

A much more powerful type of biogenic influence on mortality rate is the different levels of hormones in males and females. In humans and many mammalian species, postpubertal males typically exhibit substantially higher levels of the androgen testosterone than do postpubertal females (Regan & Berscheid, 1999). Several sources suggest that having higher levels of testosterone puts men at a significantly greater risk for many health-related problems, such as stress- and aggression-related illness as well as heart disease. For example, females are partially protected from the influence of “bad cholesterol” (LDL) because of their lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen, which exacerbate and retard the development of atherosclerosis, respectively (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 182-3; Lawlor, Ebrahim, and Smith, 2001). Men, however, have the opposite mixture, which provides no benefits and leaves men vulnerable to heart disease.

The direct link between testosterone and physical aggression in animals is well established (e.g. Breuer, McGinnis, Lumia, & Possidente, 2001; McGinnis, Lumia, Breuer, & Possidente, 2002), and has been typically experimentally investigated by direct injection of male laboratory animals with androgenic steroids (which produce androgens, i.e., testosterone). The link between the two in humans is less clearly defined, due to the methodological and ethical problems in experimentally manipulating hormone levels in human subjects and the resulting paucity of data. All the same, literature reviews and meta-analyses suggest a weak to moderate correlation between testosterone levels and physically aggressive behavior (Hyde, 2005, p. 584; Regan & Berscheid, 2005, p. 300).

This suggests that men are predisposed to higher levels of physical aggression, which is itself further positively correlated with incidence of numerous frequently fatal health issues including heart disease, cancers, ulcers, and hypertension (Johnson, 1990). This is likely because increased physical aggression often leads men to hostile, competitive problem-solving strategies, creating a feedback loop where stress and anger beget more of the same and frequently put men in dangerous situations. Overtime, this regulates the body to be used to higher levels of cortisol and, consequently, blood pressure (a leading cause of hypertension; Johnson, 1990). Moreover, it has been observed that males who do no produce testosterone have greater longevity. Historical anecdote, numerous research observations, and classic studies comparing eunuchs and “intact” males that eunuchs, whose bodies produce little or no testosterone, tend to live longer (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 183) – an average of fourteen to fifteen years longer (Owens, 2002, p. 2009)! Contrarily, females’ naturally lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of estrogen act in combination to protect them. Females exhibit higher levels of the pituitary hormone oxytocin, which is associated with the inhibition of the sympathetic nervous system and facilitation of the parasympathetic nervous system (i.e. an overall calming effect). This could explain why females observed in experimental settings are far more likely to respond to stressors with much more heart healthy “tend-and-befriend” strategies (Taylor, et al. 2000). It should hold, therefore, that men stand a much worse chance at surviving disease based on their natural hormonal levels.

Owens (2002) goes further to explain that the significantly higher levels of testosterone in males has direct influence, not just on aggression, but also on “differences in male and female structural, physiological, endochrineological, and immunological systems (Kruger & Nesse, 2006, p. 80). These differences frequently have the effect of favoring female longevity and shortening the lives of males. For example, testosterone results in men having physically bigger bodies, putting them at increased risk for heart-disease, bone and joint problems, and developmental issues (Kruger & Nesse, 2006, p. 80).

Further, for reasons not fully understood, testosterone acts as an immunosuppressant, making males remarkably more vulnerable to the influence of bacterial, viral, and parasitic disease (Owens, 2002). This demonstrated biological disadvantage harms men more than women across the board, but is moderated by environmental hazards and geographic location: in the U.S., U.K., and Japan, men are approximately twice as vulnerable as women to parasite-induced death; in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, where the overall incidence of parasite-induced death is much higher, men become four times more likely to die from parasites (Owens, 2002, p. 2009).

These demographic data suggest the need for integrative interpretations of the effect of hormones on the sex difference in longevity: the environmental conditions interacted with naturally occurring biological differences between males and females to produce effects that were advantageous for one group (females) and disastrous for another (males). In the next section, it will be demonstrated that the role of society further moderates and complicates the gender gap in longevity.

Socio-cultural Factors

While there is ample evidence to support the conclusion that men are biologically and naturally at risk for disease and earlier deaths, it should be noted that social and cultural factors aggravate this problematic biological reality. It is estimated that approximately 50% of the mortality gap can be attributed to behavioral factors (JAMA finding reported in class lecture), which are influenced by cultural and social standards.

The largest single factor of this kind is certainly the influence of prescriptive gender norms, which guide and constrain the cognition, affect, and behavior of men and women. These roles define what it means to be a gender-typed person, one who embodies (or especially strains themselves to fulfill) the recommended vision of what a man or woman should be. Traditional gender norms dictate that men be strong, tough, independent, and rigidly unemotional whereas women should be chaste, self-conscious, emotionally expressive, and concerned with their appearance, to name a few. The result is that women construct femininity in ways that promote positive health behaviors and men construct masculinity in ways that exacerbate their biological disadvantage, leading to very different life-style choices.

Thus, women, by societal standard, are expected and encouraged to engage in physically and mentally healthy activities such as exercising and eating “light”, regularly visiting and asking questions of a physician (for reproductive health if for nothing else), avoiding smoking and chewing tobacco, moderating their alcoholic consumption, and actively seeking interconnectedness and cooperation. Men, on the other hand, are further burdened by the expectations that they continue to work when they are sick, gorge themselves on foods high in fat and sodium, chain smoke cigarettes and cigars, chew tobacco, fight for dominance, eschew the help of mental health professionals, and remain “strong and silent”. That is, women are encouraged to see “eating light and staying fit” as a part of what normal women do, as a part of what makes them women, whereas men are encouraged to bond over excessive alcohol, smoke, and red meat. The cumulative effect of this difference in social programming and expectation is that men have far more problems with obesity, heart disease, and tobacco, alcohol, and drug related diseases.

Taking the health risk into account, it seems pertinent to ask: why would so many men still wish to hold fast to traditional gender prescriptions? Gender norms are so pervasive because they provide common social ground on which to connect to, bond, build, and maintain relationships with same-sex individuals. Men are socialized from an early age to know what “safe topics” there are with other men: sports and women, for example. Topic selection like this demonstrates how norms act as a quick and easily referenced set of instructions. They are close at hand because they have been instilled in men and women since they were boys and girls. Consequently, it can be much more difficult for an individual trying to break the norms. For one, it becomes harder to figure out what to do in an ambiguous situation without relying on norms to shape behavior (e.g. attempting to throw “men drink beer and talk about sports” out the window and instead focus on cooking with the guys might get one called shaming words like “fag”). This second concern of avoiding the experience of social isolation or shame is common as social punishment is the de rigueur response to disregarding norms from gender-typed individuals.

Another valid explanation for why men continue abominable social and health behaviors in the face of health research is the influence of those in direct contact with them. Specifically, one’s same-sex friends, family, and co-workers are the greatest single factor in predicting one’s health behaviors (lecture notes). This is because seeing other people’s behaviors – especially when one is close to the other people and likes them – strengthens the perception that these habits are normal, typical manly or womanly behavior, thereby encouraging it. This influence is the strongest when 1) the norm in question in observed in all of those around you (unanimous), 2) the norm is observed in an important group of people, such as upperclassmen to a college freshmen (salience) and 3) when it is observed in people very similar to the observer (identification with the familiar).

As an example, imagine four male friends in their mid-twenties getting in a pick-up truck, heading out for an evening together. When they get in the cab, three of them (the gender-typed males) do not buckle up their seat-belts. Two of those same three light up cigarettes, as the third had been chewing tobacco most of the night. What goes through the mind of the fourth guy, the one who is normally inclined to intelligently practice motor vehicle and pulmonary safety, is some equivalent of “Oh shit! I need to do what a man does here in order to fit in! I certainly don’t wish to be ridiculed, shunned, or mocked”. The result is that this type of social influence – where it is experienced as unanimously upheld, in a salient group, with similar individuals – often leads men to make poor health decisions, even when they are well informed of the dangers. This is true for a wide array of high-risk activities that men often die from, e.g. diet, needless violence, eschewing social support, not getting an annual physical, and not exercising (class notes).

As this is true for males with male friends, this is also true for males with male family members; these sorts of poor health behaviors are socially reinforced through the generations:

Communities with high rates of father absence, incarceration, or other features that mimic high extrinsic mortality rates may be especially prone to encouraging shorter-term, higher-risk strategies, which will in turn lead to higher rates of early mortality… Thus, multiple generations may exhibit similar behavioral and health patterns (Kruger + Nesse, 2006, p. 80).

Without the social support of loving fathers, many men learn few low-risk, alternative strategies to survival by observation. The simultaneous guidance and constriction of gender norms – and indeed, all social norms – must be all the more attractive to such men, as they are pervasive and aid in building relationships with other men. In combination with friendships and work-relationships that likely reinforce the same stereotypes and negative health behaviors, men in situations like the ones described by Kruger + Nesse may have few protective health factors and, consequently, develop high-risk life-styles.

As one might suspect, this has a direct impact on the male to female mortality ratio (M:F MR): the most male and the least female deaths occur in young adulthood (Kruger + Nesse, 2006, p. 92). Male deaths at this age result mainly from external causes of death (such as high-risk stunts, drinking and driving, male-on-male violence). The next spike in the M:F MR comes in mid to late adulthood, the result of death from behaviorally moderated internal causes (e.g. more men die from smoking, eating foods high in fat, cholesterol, and sodium, etc. at this age). This is consistent with “the lag in the impact of health-related behaviors on mortality” (Kruger + Nesse, 2006, p. 92) that had been learned from peers and family at a young age.

Is it inevitable, then, that this male morbidity is a natural and necessary consequence of biological and social life? Of course not. There is a further level of processing affecting health behaviors needing consideration: the individual psychological.

Psychological Factors

In the previous section, it was demonstrated that individuals feel pressure to play into their gendered norms because, psychosocially, we have an innate desire to belong to groups. For men, making poor life-style choices often helps individual males feel more connected to their male peer groups and to “Men” as a whole. Recalling Pleck’s sixth proposition that “an actual or imagined violation of gender roles leads to an overperformance of those roles” (lecture notes), this illogical behavior can be explained in terms of proto-typicality threat. That is, that men tend to be overly aggressive and overly carefree about their physical health in order to seem like the proto-typical Man, domineering and never needing external aid. Physical health risk becomes a form of posturing to secure social position in this way, barring men from avenues toward genuine expressions of self-care.

Aside from physical health behaviors, another way that the proto-typicality threat becomes manifest in men is in their experience with emotional restriction. According to traditional masculinity, men are taught that there is only one emotion that is socially acceptable for men to display publicly: anger (Pollack, 1999). The rest of the broad spectrum of human emotion is kept locked away for the gender-typed man, and the only way he has to show it is through enraged outbursts. This has already been shown to have numerous adverse biological consequences (Johnson, 1990). Conversely, women are, across cultures, more prone to disclosure of emotions and more apt to use emotionally descriptive language in their conversation and writing (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 162).

It has been noted that the mere act of emotional disclosure is both normal and very frequently beneficial to the person’s psychological health (Lepore + Smyth, 2002; Pennebaker, 1997; Frattaroli, 2006). More specifically, numerous studies confirm the finding that expressive written disclosure has directly measurable immunological benefits and subsequent drops-off in disease related doctor’s visits (e.g. wherein the effects lasted two months after writing: Pennebaker, Kiecolt-Glaser, and Glaser, 1988; Greenberg and Stone, 1992; Richards, Beal, Seagal, + Pennebaker, 2000; wherein the effects lasted 6 months after writing: Pennebaker, Colder, and Sharp, 1990; Francis and Pennebaker, 1992; wherein the effects lasted 1-4 years after writing: Pennebaker, Barger, and Tiebout, 1989, Gidron, et al., 2002), as well as emotional processing (Russ, 1992; Bodor, 2002; Campbell, 2003) and behavioral functioning (Francis and Pennebaker, 1992; Spera, Buhrfeind, Pennebaker, 1994; Pennebaker and Francis 1996; Cameron + Nicholls, 1998; Krantz and Pennebaker, 2007). Based on the evidence presented by Kilmartin (p. 162), it would seem men are getting none of these benefits because they are so discouraged from disclosure. What is worse is the sense that this rigid stance toward emotional life is a normal part of “being a guy” and that breaking from this norm is deviant. This deviance is avoided by overperformance (never, ever expressing normal feelings) continuing the vicious cycle of non-expression. This large body of research suggests there is a range of psychological and physical health benefits that men are denied to emotionally straitjacketed, gender-typed men.

As a result, men underreport psychological illness and are less likely to seek mental health services despite high success rates in treatment with common problems such as depression or anxiety (class notes). Common “manly” alternatives to these methods of treatment are simultaneously self-medicating and self-destructive— substance abuse, which men are more likely to be diagnosed with (class notes), suicide, which men are four times as likely to complete than women in the U.S. (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 184), tobacco use, which kills twice as many men as women in the U.S. (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 186), and distracting themselves from the problem by engaging in high risk behaviors such as “drunk driving, drug dealing, sharing hypodermic needles, use of firearms, high speed driving, [and] engaging in gang violence… many more males than females participate in these behaviors” (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 188). This strong psychological tendency of gender-typed males to engage in so many self-harming activities and participate in so few psychologically rewarding ones constitutes further addition to the overall sex-difference in longevity.

A "Biopsychosocial" Explanation

Taking into account the numerous harmful biological predispositions, intense social pressure to engage in self-harm and self-neglect, and the psychological need to belong and to avoid shame, it is no wonder that men die so much earlier than women. Over the course of the life-time, biology favors the longevity of women and curtails that of men. But, biology per se does not cause sex differences in mortality; by itself, biology can only account for at most two thirds of the variation and at the least one quarter of it (Kilmartin, 2010, p. 182). Social forces exacerbate these basic biological differences. Females – who already are biologically inclined toward less hostile, less competitive solutions to problems because of their low testosterone, high estrogen, and oxytocin, and therefore, toward living longer – become Women, having been socially programmed to know that women are creatures who care about their appearance, ask questions about health, and maintain their bodies. Males – who are biologically inclined toward aggression and competitive solutions to problems because of their high testosterone, low estrogen, and lack of oxytocin, and therefore, toward dying earlier – become Men, who are socially programmed to be violently competitive, independent at all costs, and inexpressive unto death. In each case, biology interacts with social and psychological forces— males and females overperform as Men and Women in order to conform to gender roles and to avoid the psychological costs of shame and ostracism. It is truly a harmful and outdated system for all involved. Yet, only for men is the summation of the biological, social, and psychological interaction over a lifetime of development work out to poor health and tragically shortened lives.

Conclusion

What is vital to retain from all this research is that only the biological factors are completely out of the reach of individual influence. Recall the non-gender-typed man in the example about smoking and seat-belt usage: for him, as for all men who observe they are in the minority on traditional “manliness”, there is a way out. It takes boldness, certainty of will, and clear judgment – virtues few gender-typed males ever truly develop. But if that fourth man can take a stand in favor of healthy choices and a return to common sense, then over time the cumulative effect of social change will start to level out the sex differences in mortality rates. Men need to see one another being smart about their bodies and their mental health. And as this happens, as men are made aware of biopsychosocial explanations for differences, and as research continues to demonstrate the need for new definitions and appreciations of what it means to be men, perhaps more will find the will necessary to take a stand, to live a life well and long.

References

Bodor, N. Z. (2002). The health effects of emotional disclosure for individuals with Type 1 diabetes. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.

Breuer, M. B., McGinnis, M. Y., Lumia, A. R., + Possidente, B. P. (2001). Aggression in male rates receiving anabolic androgenic steroids: Effects of social and environmental provocation. Hormones + Behavior, 40, 409-418.

Cameron, L. D. + Nicholls, G. (1998) Expression of stressful experiences through writing: Effects of a self-regulation manipulation for pessimists and optimists. Health Psychology, 17(1). 84-92. doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.17.1.84

Campbell, N. B. (2003). Emotional disclosure through writing: An intervention to facilitate adjustment to having a child with autism (Doctoral dissertation, University of Mississippi, 2003). Dissertation Abstracts International, 64. 2380.

Francis, M. E. + Pennebaker, J. W. (1992) Putting stress into words: Writing about personal upheavals and health. American Journal of Health Promotion, 6. 280 -287.

Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823-865. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.823

General Practice Notebook. (2009, March 5). X-linked recessive disorders. Retrieved from http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/simplepage.cfm?ID=-1341784030 on 2010, May 9th.

Gidron, Y., Duncan, E., Lazar, A., Biderman, A., Tandeter, H., + Shvartzman, P. (2002). Effects of guided written disclosure of stressful experiences on clinic visits and symptoms in frequent clinic attenders. Family Practice, 19, 161–166.

Greenberg, M. A., Wortman, C. B., + Stone, A. A. (1996). Emotional expression and physical health: Revising traumatic memories or fostering self-regulation? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 588– 602.

Johnson, E. H. (1990). The deadly emotions: The role of anger, hostility, and aggression in health and emotional well-being. New York, NY: Praeger Publishers.

Kilmartin, C. (2010). The masculine self. Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY: Sloan Publishing.

Krantz, A. + Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Expressive dance, writing, trauma, and health: When words have a body. In Serlin, I. A., Sonke-Henderson, J., Brandman, R., Graham-Pole, J. (Ed.), Whole Person Healthcare Vol 3: The arts and health (pp. 201-229). Westport, C.T.: Praeger Publishers.

Kruger, D. J. + Nesse, R. M. (2006). An evolutionary life-history framework for understanding sex differences in human mortality rates. Human Nature, 17(1), 74-97.

Lawlor, D. A., Ebrahim, S., + Smith, G. D. (2001). Sex matters: Secular and geographical trends in sex differences in coronary heart disease mortality. British Medical Journal, 323, 541-545.

Lepore, S. J. + Smyth, J. M. (2002). The writing cure: An overview. In Lepore, S. J. + Smyth, J. M (Eds.), The Writing Cure: How expressive writing promotes health and environmental well-being (pp. 3-14). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

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College Graduation Rates [Infographic]

2010-06-07T22:17:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to all students graduating this past May! As I've done that myself, I have been on the road for the past few weeks, camping in North Carolina's scenic and psychedelic outer banks, visiting an organic brewery or two. Now that I'm back, and back favoring the virtual world for the real one, I thought I'd share some graduation related info with all you intellectually curious types.

Characters For an Epic Tale

2010-05-21T23:53:00.000-04:00

Artist: Tom Gauld & his

flickr photostream

Binder Clips Make Simple Cable Solution

2010-05-21T23:41:00.001-04:00

Pretty much everyone can benefit from seeing this picture, I think (which is what I think every time I post pictures). It's a true measure of creativity, to come up with alternative uses for common objects like that. I'm definitely buying more tomorrow [Source].

3 Photos of Russian Soldiers

2010-05-21T22:05:00.002-04:00

These pics from English Russia, an eclectic Russian photo blog, show how, oddly enough, musical interest is a hallmark of their army.

In Grozny Central Park. February 1995. [source]

Needs No Caption. Timeless. [Source]

And, while not strictly a musical instrument, I'm certain this made an awesome sound

[same source as above].

Evolution of the Roman Alphabet

2010-05-21T17:49:00.000-04:00

Hard to say who made this and why (tell me if you know), but this really simple animated .gif I just dug up does a great job of demonstrating the development of the latin alphabet. Thanks to whomever cobbled it together back in 2007- the .gif, that is, not the writing system.

It's one alphabet that is very close to my heart, so I hope you take time to appreciate it.

Bonus word:

Syllabary - n. a set of written symbols that represent (or approximate) syllables

Letter of Note: Aldrich Ames on Polygraph Testing

2010-05-18T18:36:00.014-04:00

After stumbling upon the following letter from Aldrich Ames, the USSR's and later Russia's top man in the CIA from the 1980s to the early 90s and the highest paid spy in American history, I decided to pay homage to the endlessly readable Letters of Note, and post one such letter here.
[Update 5.19.2010: Many thanks to Letters of Note for linking back here in this morning's post]

In the letter, which is addressed to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, Ames comments on the impracticality of polygraph testing as a method of screening for potential government employees and interrogating suspects. He speaks with some weight on the matter as he beat the so-called lie-detector twice, evading exposure by CIA agents in 1986 and again in 1991.

Rightly mocking the polygraph, which is now widely regarded as pseudoscience because of its high rate of false positives, Ames brands it "junk science"; the US's reliance on the polygraph to root out misrepresentations and falsehoods is a product of a bureaucratic misunderstanding of both the technology and human physiology. He makes a just comparison between the CIA's misplaced faith in the lie-detector and people who are swayed by graphology, astrology, homeopathy, and cold reading - each a bullshit theory or an outright con. And - after all he is in federal prison for all eternity - he allows himself a moment or two of vitriolic humor, making reference to the CIA's PR mishaps after the then-recently bungled Iran-Contra affair and the careers of the agents who failed to detect him. Transcript follows the letter below.

Dear Mr. Aftergood,

Having had considerable experience with the polygraph (well beyond that which you referred to), I read your very sensible essay in Science with great interest. I offer you a few comments on the topic for whatever interest or use they may have.

Like most junk science that just won't die (graphology, astrology and homeopathy come to mind), because of the usefulness or profit their practitioners enjoy, the polygraph stays with us.

Its most obvious use is as a coercive aid to interrogators, lying somewhere on the scale between the rubber truncheon and the diploma on the wall behind the interrogator's desk. It depends upon the overall coerciveness of the setting -- you'll be fired, you won't get the job, you'll be prosecuted, you'll go to prison -- and the credulous fear the device inspires. This is why the Redmond report ventures into the simultaneously ludicrous and sinister reality that citizens' belief in what is untrue must be fostered and strengthened. Rarely admitted, this proposition is of general application for our national security apparatus.

You didn't mention one of the intriguing elements of the interrogations of Dr. Lee which is in fact quite common -- the false representation to the subject of the polygraph results. Because interrogations are intended to coerce confessions of one sort or another, interrogators feel themselves entirely justified in using their coercive means as flexibly as possible to extract them. Consistency regarding the particular technique is not important; inducing anxiety and fear is the point.

Polygraphers are fond of the technique used by psychics called cold reading, as a slightly less dramatic practice than actually lying to the subject about the results. In this sort of cold reading, the interrogator will suggest to the subject that there may be a potential problem, an ambiguous result, to one of the questions and inquire whether the subject knows of anything that might help clear it up, etc, etc.

Your account of the Redmond report -- I haven't seen it -- shows how another hoary slider is thrown past the public. The polygraph is asserted to have been a useful tool in counterintelligence investigations. This is a nice example of retreating into secret knowledge: we know it works, but it's too secret to explain. To my own knowledge and experience over a thirty year career this statement is a false one. The use of the polygraph (which is inevitably to say, its misuse) has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes. I'd love to lay out this case for you, but unfortunately I cannot -- it's a secret too.

Most people in the intelligence and CI business are well aware of the theoretical and practical failings of the polygraph, but are equally alert to its value in institutional, bureaucratic terms and treasure its use accordingly. This same logic applies to its use in screening potential and current employees, whether of the CIA, NSA, DOE or even of private organizations.

Deciding whether to trust or credit a person is always an uncertain task, and in a variety of situations a bad, lazy or just unlucky decision about a person can result not only in serious problems for the organization and its purposes, but in career-damaging blame for the unfortunate decision-maker. Here, the polygraph is a scientific godsend: the bureaucrat accounting for a bad decision, or sometimes for a missed opportunity (the latter is much less often questioned in a bureaucracy) can point to what is considered an unassailably objective, though occasionally and unavoidably fallible, polygraph judgment. All that was at fault was some practical application of a "scientific" technique, like those frozen O-rings, or the sandstorms between the Gulf and Desert One in 1980.

I've seen these bureaucratically-driven flights from accountability operating for years, much to the cost of our intelligence and counterintelligence effectiveness. The US is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. (The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, also rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.) It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

On the other hand, there have been episodes in which high-level pressures to use or acquire certain persons entirely override pious belief in the polygraph. One instance which made the press is that of the Iranian connection in the Iran-Contra affair.

I wish you well in this particularly important theater of the struggle against pseudoscience: the national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated by honest and forthright efforts like yours.

Sincerely,

Aldrich H. Ames

40087-083

P.O. Box 3000

White Deer, PA 17887

P.S. I should say that all my outgoing mail goes through the CIA -- unlawfully -- for review, censorship and whatever use it chooses to make of it.

Transcript source @ FAS

6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology that Everyone Believes which brought Ames to my attention

Cats and Dogs [Infographic]

2010-05-18T00:02:00.000-04:00

Via Online Schools, another in a series of edutaining infographic blogs. I like their style and topic choices. This is for me one in a series of dog-related research. Also recommended is this PBS documentary Dogs That Changed the World.

[View it large].

Words I Learned Today from the Phrontistery

2010-05-17T20:15:00.001-04:00

Artist: Joseph Kosuth. Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.

I am free now to be academically indulgent and just because I found a whole bunch of words today related to colo(u)r. The Phrontistery [n. a thinking place; Gr phrontisterion from phrontistes a thinker, from phroneein to think] is a veritable shrine to lexical intrepidity, claiming the International House of Logorrhea, a dictionary of obscure words, the Compendium of Lost Words, and "many other glossaries, word lists, essays". In short, loads of etymological related goodness.

One treat is a list of 168 of the most antiquated, recherché, and useful terms describing color that stretches way beyond that of your more common, pedestrian rainbows. Selected favs:

Amaranthine : a dark reddish purple color; eternal, infinite; of or related to the amaranth plant; of an imaginary flower that never fades

Eau-de-nil : a pale yellowish green color (like the Nile, presumably)

Ferruginous : rust colored; containing iron; brown approaching yellow

Gamboge : a strong yellow color; partially transparent dark mustard yellow pigment

Greige : hilariously, it's a color "between gray and beige, closely akin to the [even more blandly, accurately named] taupe"

Lurid : doesn't just mean "unnaturally or unpleasantly vivid in color" but especially when applied to red-yellow and yellow-brown mixtures (which is why an alternate meaning of lurid is "shining with an unnatural red glow as of fire seen through smoke; 'a lurid sunset'; "lurid flames'")

Umber : brownish red; obtained from natural clays variously colored by the oxides of iron and manganese

Rhodopsin : "visual purple" further defined as "a red photopigment in the retinal rods of vertebrates"

Vermeil : bright scarlet red or vermillion color; gilded silver

Viridian : chrome green; a bluish green pigment made from a foam of chromic oxide

I'm sure there will be a mindmap accompanying this post someday, since vocabulary building is one of my favorite applications of mindmaps. Watch for it maybehaps. [P.S. -a bonus, very thorough etymology dictionary. Enjoy seeing how mindblowingly embedded language is in itself. ]

Colorful World of Drugs [Infographic]

2010-05-17T16:43:00.000-04:00

Another baller bit of knowledge paraphernalia from Information is Beautiful.

Funny how marijuana is presented as the "middle way" drug.

And It's Been A Long Time Comin'

2010-05-17T01:20:00.002-04:00

[Via The Big Caption and BoingBoing.
Thanks to Dennis over at Ride Like You Mean It for calling this to my attention.]