the various stream

new roger buffalo brown

2011-08-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

iiiii

Out here at the Roger Brown house in New Buffalo, the days go like hours, though when lucky some hours also go like days. Some forms really don't present themselves to you in the city as they do the the countrier-side of things, where the traces growth and decay seem to strike a less frenzied and more lovely balance between each other.
iiiii

lunch, August 2nd.

2011-08-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

9iiii

9iiii9ii

9iiii

9ii

an american classic.

collected

2011-07-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

ooo

just now, back porch

2011-07-21T18:34:00.000-07:00

ooo

complete rock stars

2011-07-21T12:01:00.000-07:00

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Projects of curiosity & care, trophies of LEGOS.

fields of Formalism

2011-07-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

oooo

From above, perhaps Nebraska [ SLC > ORD]

charmed/chained

2011-07-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

iiii

disaster animals in Japan

2011-07-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

sss

Not having the chance to go to Japan this summer, the tsunami, nuclear meltdown, evacuation, and all the persistent recovery feels otherworldly. Generally it feels like I am learning about it as if listening through a thick pillow of distance and inconsistent information.

My friend Selena has been busy with JEARS and other groups helping needy and abandoned animals in the evacuation zone of Fukushima - updates along the way on her blog. A few lira, yen, or dollars to the cause I'm sure are appreciated.

In the absence of the all the people and pets now in the exclusion zone, I wonder how the wild and feral animals are doing? Experiences like Chernobyl suggest new possibilities for life exist given the unexpected spaces a disaster creates... when given the space

elements, valences, snoopies

2011-07-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

00000

nose to knows

2011-07-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

oooooo

pantheon

2011-07-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

ooooooo
ooooo
“If we should take a million of worlds like this and number their particles, we should find that there are more Gods than there are particles of matter in those worlds.”

Apostle Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, v. 2, p. 345, February 18, 1855 Deity are one; and they constitute the one God that the Prophets speak of, and that the children of men in all worlds worship.
JD 2:345 - p.346, Orson Pratt, February 18, 1855This explains the mystery. If we should take a million of worlds like this and number their particles, we should find that there are more Gods than there are particles of matter in those worlds. But the attributes of Deity are one; and they constitute the one God that the Prophets speak of, and that the children of men in all worlds worship.
JD 2:345 - p.346, Orson Pratt, February 18, 1855

eastern passage

2011-06-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

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Sifting through old papers = a series of entry ticket stubs to the sights of the People's Republic of China (circa 1998?)

I appreciate the fact they are all numbered: No: 002548, No: 458781, No:0992429

What digits they are up to now.

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scrap bin scrap

2011-06-26T11:24:00.000-07:00

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features

2011-06-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

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If you are a synaesthetic of a certain flavor, seeing might be like smelling, or reading like hearing.

Digi-photo layer cake (the eyes have it) at Cap Sauers Holding, early spring.

And some petals from gifted flowers of a June birthday meets the anchoring piece of an old anatomical model kit just waiting to be properly put together.

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postprandial 6/24/11

2011-06-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

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principle of plentitude

2011-06-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

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cockerdoodle

2011-06-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

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Samson, East Boston, May 14th.

walldrawwalldrawwalldraw

2011-06-17T06:58:00.000-07:00

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lost and found in the color sound ~

Sol LeWitt at MassMoCA, circa December 2008.

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lit

2011-06-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

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joss stick + slow shutter.

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northeast travel journal

2011-06-14T14:11:00.000-07:00

Given the gap in posts, multiples seemed to be in order ~

Hollowed crab out on the beach in Woods Hole.

Live squid eggs under low magnification at the MBL

Grizzly bear cub, Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History, Vol. III (1880)

Twin-spotted sphinx on a porch - Montpelier, Vermont

Ladies Home Journal, circa 1937

Superfoot, St. Leonard, Quebec.

rocky beach community assemblage in Harpswell, Maine.

garden flowers in Sterling, Massachusetts.

sleeping friends; everness.

tadpoles of bullfrog.

cut strawberries.

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royal visitation

2011-04-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

A queen of Camponotus pennsylvanicus in the bathroom early April.

Sorry gal, but I'm moving you outside.

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cherry bomb

2011-03-05T22:56:00.000-08:00

Raulston Arboretum, Raleigh, NC, March 5. ))))))

iiiiiiiii

))))))

2011-02-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

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bosons

2011-02-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

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~~~~

2011-02-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

aaaaa

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Tohoku style.

I <3 Iwate.

aaaa

{:} {:} {:} {:}

2011-02-13T22:45:00.000-08:00

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two different chinks

2011-02-13T16:50:00.000-08:00

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Having experienced my fair share of racial epithets as a Chinese American, this science headline couldn't help but instinctly raise my eyebrows.

That is right, 'two different chinks' have been identified. Maybe they are brothers?
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finger; lakes

2011-02-11T10:07:00.000-08:00

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Flying east to west above upstate New York; a mirror the size of five towns.
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snow day #2

2011-02-05T11:38:00.000-08:00

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raccoon dog / elephant seal / window sill

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bioforms

2011-02-03T08:41:00.000-08:00

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Ernst Haeckel corals (c.1904) meet Andersonville conifers (c.2011)

equatorial

2011-02-02T11:36:00.000-08:00

))))

citric magma at lunch.

aloha mix and match

2011-02-01T12:47:00.000-08:00

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Hawai'i, Big Island, Jan. 2011

ATRFAVT

2011-01-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

I was just gifted some letters yesterday - two A's, one R, one F, two T's, and one V to be precise.

They are members of the loose tribe of letters from those signs-as-you-please that populate the landscape, favorites of gas stations and high schools yo teach' - time for a spelling quiz!) across the country.

The plastic + fluorescent light descendants of that genius invention, Moveable type, as well as Scrabble and its freer little bro, Bananagrams.

These letters were begging to be made into something. To be given meaning through the power of being part of an entity as collective and significant as a W.O.R.D.

/ nucleotides of a nascent lexicon /

2010-11-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

Bird. Field Museum, Thursday

Like a fish needs a bicycle

2010-11-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

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Phillip Pond and Nim Lee are making bikes that swim, and what could be better than that?

for more on the fish bikes.

the girl who

2010-11-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

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Image from NY Times weekend section found on the 146 bus + two dried berries from a bush down the block = Lisbeth Salander going to take over your mind.

faith, love, and seaweed

2010-09-21T07:46:00.000-07:00

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cover art love. free books on the street.

playing tag with the royals

2010-09-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

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catch & r elease with the monarchz.

out by the airport, but these guys go much further on one tank of gas than those hunks of plane

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(un) make up

2010-09-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

love these web gadgets - Halloween comes early!

mysteries of the everyday

2010-08-30T17:18:00.000-07:00

aaaaa

biomorphic yeah-yeah

2010-08-28T18:35:00.000-07:00

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Alex Chitty: looking at her website, it is clear is she serving it up lots lately with new work.

I am looking down a microscope on to all the smaller miracles, blob and scribble.

and: her water bear zine.

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minutes from the meeting

2010-08-26T10:28:00.001-07:00

symme-trees

2010-08-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

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I heart Art Nouveau for the bad-ass organicism of forms, shapes, and naturalistic intuitions reflected in that which is built. That sort of resonance is even nicer when it isn't necessarily even intentional.

Arashiyama, Japan.

sit stylez

2010-08-16T15:31:00.000-07:00

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Dan Peterman, Thank You for Your Patronage: Chairs from Street Carts, 1989.

more

David Hull

2010-08-15T06:30:00.001-07:00

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Philosopher & historian of biology David Hull passed on this last week.

His work in biology was deeply influential throughout graduate school. Besides his numerous papers, I once spent whole summer simply studying his one book Science as a Process.

This morning preparing for my fall classes I find myself relying on copies of books he kindly let me take from his collection when I visited him last year. Philosopher, steadfast gay rights advocate, and even a decent portrait painter to boot....

short obituary here

in honor of...

2010-08-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

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PAWS Chicago sends me a big glossy magazine, which among other things includes mention of the donations to PAWS that are made in honor of/memory of certain individuals.

Fuji Soft

2010-08-12T12:23:00.001-07:00

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Mount Fuji is certainly one of the most famous and iconic of all mountains in the world. Its symmetry and sliding slate-colored slopes beckon one's sight. For centuries it has been the muse for many an artist, including the 36 views of Mt. Fuji by Katsushika Hokusai ( the originals of which I was lucky enough to see at the Ota Museum this past month.

Luck should also have it a friend on mine brought me up to Uwakudani, a sulphurous steaming peak from which the Fuji can be seen very well. Of course no Japanese tourist sopt would be complete without a soft ice cream stand, setting the stage for a nice visual and metaphorical moment for a 37th view.

To call this "Fuji soft" seems apropos, and especially so since there is a computer company by that very name in Yokohama - Fujisoft - from which you can supposedly also see Mt. Fuji, on the clearest of days...

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pinned

2010-08-11T09:14:00.000-07:00

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caught in Shikoku.

Aug. 6th

2010-08-06T08:12:00.000-07:00

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>>

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"far east"

2010-08-05T23:03:00.000-07:00

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some of what has been going on the last couple of months.

everything flies

2010-08-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

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misty cool / artsy cool

2010-07-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

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The aforementioned recent trip to th Setouchi Art Festival meant making new friends with art, and revisiting some old ones, like this Olafur Elliason piece that I met at the Chicago MCA last year (clearly we travel in the same fancy circles).

The art lover in the photo recently posted on Japanese techniques for cooling from the summer heat, including public space water misters - so it seems only right to make mention of this artistic device. Certainly Olafur is thinking along the same lines in terms of his work. Perhaps that is why they asked for this piece to be in the Japanese mid-summer festival?

daily things #1001

2010-07-26T19:21:00.000-07:00

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A cicada husk found clasping to a tree on Naoshima, in the Seto Inland sea.

This fellow was next to the new Lee Ufan museum and the Setounchi International Art Festival 2010 . For more on that, I recommend Christa's post.

For more on cicadas on the other hand, perhaps here, or here.

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Chiyoda 3331

2010-07-11T05:18:00.001-07:00

Chiyoda 3331 art space opened in just the past few weeks and there was an opportunity to stop by. A former public school building now new collective-esque art center of galleries, studios, a cafe, and shops. A beautiful day that turned nicely into a night. Fingers crossed for the possibility of something as interesting as the kids use to rock when they lived in it.

a ceiling is a sky

2010-06-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

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every outside has an inside it worries over.

(colors as the camera took them, no additives or preservatives)

daily things - June 24, 2010

2010-06-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

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Look, listen, scribble, catch ~

( translatehighlightamplify )

daily things - June 22, 2010

2010-06-21T18:16:00.001-07:00

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keys to new places, backs of new business cards, erases that always have an edge, 100 yen store finds that help you find your own way.

strapped/strapping

2010-06-20T16:38:00.000-07:00

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Shinjuku; seen from Tochomae station ~

This was a perfect little visible coffee break after just seeing the the Hussein Chalayan show across town at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo: Spacepods, dresses that weave into a science fiction, and all the like. In a country that is now painting Mobile Suit Gundam on their airplanes, are we surprised it might appeal?

Stopping by to see the latest in footwear at the ABC Mart last night, and the current Nike shoes (hell, more than plenty of the cross-trainers) had a similar membraneous quality, like collagen strands in a tissue.

daily things - June 20, 2010

2010-06-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

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~ Yokohama says "ohayoo" ~

durham

2010-03-06T14:53:00.001-08:00

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The city has a new skatepark in the year since I was here last.
It's like small scale Robert Smithson, but much better because it is rideable.

Year of the....

2010-02-14T15:06:00.000-08:00

On this Chinese New Year of the Tiger, any number could be found, northside and southside of the city.

Here is one spotted during the parade in Chinatown this Sunday...

And this one in the living room.

I enhance them via Photoshop because that is the thing about tigers: You never know where one might be hiding - they camouflage and sneak.

For example, this tiger, that I'm sure you've all seen on the internets, where they hide in the grass.

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strike!

2010-01-25T10:11:00.000-08:00

This was the big and foreboding question posed in the commentary column of a recent edition of my local paper, the Chicago Shimpo.* ( I love you Shimpo).

If Kelly Kulick and her historic victory this week have anything to say, it is a live and kicking! (and striking).

*Yes, there are other locals, like the Tribune or Sun-Times, but let's be honest, they are bad. Expect more posts on some recent reportage from it...

~ zurichness ~

2010-01-21T11:13:00.000-08:00

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Following the trend of catching up, this is another post of events some 2 months past.

This brings us time-traveling to late mid-November, location: Zürich, Switzerland. Walking down Geroldstrasse you come across a strange dispenser on a post. It is nothing other than a bag for dog poo, with handy non-lingual visuals to guide you through the process of using the bag as a glove, and picking up after a pooch (and such a cute spotted one at that).

This is a nice resource for the people walking their dogs, but then I suppose even for the good Samaritan as well? I once read The Ecology of Stray Dogs by Alan Beck, a 70's urban ecology classic. He estimated an ungodly amount of dog waste that Baltimore absorbs into the grass and concrete every year. Shudder to think; better still, read about it! The photos of the dogs in the book are quite charming and the whole book is now available for free as a PDF online.

Walking down the road further still, past the crazy Freitag shop, and you come to Heils-Armee Brocki, a very nice Salvation Army Thrift shop if I ever saw one (go here to let the tidal wave of salvation music flow over you). Xa - the reason for which I was even in the city - had received advanced intel on this spot, and it did not disappoint. She bought two pairs of boots, and I picked up the two lovely, used items:

A set of pick-up sticks. One of my favorite games of all time, this set clearly got soe good use. An "H. Huber" appears to have been the owner according to the marker on the flap. The masking tape the flap must be over 10 years old, but still is sticky like new (those Swiss do not compromise on product excellence). I an happy to report the sticks have good action and are highly playable.

Another find was this copy of "Hobby" magazine circa 1954, completely in German, so I have no idea what it says, but I don't really have to. The pictures tell it all - specs and stories on hypersonic jets, car manufactury, blueprints of high speed underwater cameras, adventure narratives about tree houses, and LP player innovations, all inflected with a healthy dose of science fiction - everything for the young boy and the boy within most grown men. It is complete eye candy from a graphic design point of view in a way that can only be understood in seeing it, and perhaps first hand, in its loose, smooth and floppy magazine pages. The best couple franks spent

small richness of zürichness /

"a recalcitrant status quo"

2010-01-18T16:52:00.000-08:00

"America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing to prevent us from paying adequate wages to school teachers, social workers and other servants of the public to insure that we have the best available personnel in these positions which are charged with the responsibility of guiding our future generations. There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum-and livable-income for every American family. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from remolding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

The Living in a World House essay

to be found in
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galactic scone

2010-01-16T11:05:00.000-08:00

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When staring down at the plate and the incidental sugar that sprinkled off breakfast is like looking up at the sky.

I don't even know the last time I was somewhere dark enough to see the Milky Way otherwise (perhaps Oregon 2007?)
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Ape Ogling

2009-12-30T08:34:00.000-08:00

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Oh, how time evaporates...

Time Machine - the following post dateline November 8, 2009:

A bike ride that looped through the Lincoln Park Zoo was a nice opportunity to observe some apes. As not only on of the oldest, but also one of the still free zoos in the country, it is worth reflecting on our (albeit highly problematic) access to animal life as city dwellers.

N. and I took a stroll through the cat house, where we saw some very odd monsters in the cage, and wielding a hose no less. A couple days later in the Flaxman I came cross Animal Logic by Barnes by chance; the resonances resonated.

Onto the "Primate House" where the gorillas were typically quiet and somewhat withdrawn while the chimpanzees simply lounged. Cashew curled in one nest while her daughter poked at her occasionally, as parent and kids are wont to do.

A PBS show a couple years back watched Cashew with her son exploring a new "habitat enhancement" that had just been introduced to the enclosure. As biologist Elizabeth Lornsdorf talks to Alan Alda:

The individual that just took his tool is Cashew, who's an adult female and her son is next to her, swiping her ketchup from her. So he is not yet really into fishing on his own, he would rather mom do the work and he would rather steal. But notice, she is not offering it to him, she doesn't, you know, really seem to want him to have it, but he's just in a good place to get it from her.

The scene made me think of Alison Ruttan and her primatological body of work. Of course as cousins, the parallels are completely unsurprising to me, but maybe I'm just being anthropomorphic?

I aspire to join the ranks of the other "Great Apes" - chimps, gorillas, bonobos, and such. For now and s a human though, I wonder if its best to settle for " So-So Ape" status, till I get my priorities worked out a little bit more.

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petal to pollen

2009-12-02T05:59:00.000-08:00

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the "Christmas cactus" in the bathroom is apparently eager to get a jump on the blooming holidays.

anything at the dollar store

2009-11-05T16:00:00.001-08:00

funpops

2009-10-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

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It reads:

"thanks for the chill thrill, Mom!"

Fair enough - no doubt it give one the chills!

Price Chopper, Shrewsbury, MA. August 09.

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tenodera

2009-09-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

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chinese mantis in tall grass woods.

end of septembering.

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marathoner

2009-09-12T07:24:00.000-07:00

This photo was in the alley, on the left side, as I walked down two days ago. It is one of those photo-postcards that you almost never see anymore, but perhaps was never sent, given it's lack of a stamp.

On the back it says:

"What I looked like before the race."

"Hopkinton, 1980"

From that I realize it must be a image from the start of the Boston Marathon, 26 outside of the city.

The blurriness and peacefulness of everyone in the background, including the cherry tree

The website is very nice, and shows the times of the last-year's winners. "Dire Tune" came in second for the women. I'm sure in Ethiopian that name sounds and seems different than when I read it English. Deer-ay Too-nay. It sound like the name of a French delicacy.

What is so surprising the exactitude with which the men's and women's times are split. The top four finishers for both categories are piled up on each other within one minute of each other, and yet the the genders are split by 23 minutes. What explains this? As I biologist it seems natural for me to think of something physiological, but even that seems a bit fantastical given just how precise this 23 minutes difference is. Looking at other years, the clustering of top finishers is similar, but the split varies - 19 minutes, 25 minutes.

Clearly then I think that the leading racers must truly set the pace for the others. Even still the gender difference persists. What to make of it? perhaps nothing, as it is too much is being made of gender presently in the track and field world....

As for the emotions around such exertions, the competition and scrutiny, I remember the drama of "Heartbreak Hill" always covered by the commentators when I watched it on TV growing up. A map of the course shows an elevation profile; for your knees and mind both, this marathon is a monster thing.

It makes me finally wonder if the fellow in the photo I found had a picture taken at the end of the race, captioned "This is what I looked like after the race." At this point though, I'd rather leave it to the imagination.

lost wings

2009-09-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

________I'm preparing for the autumn season of teaching, of cooling air, and of insect collecting. It is a pleasure to go out with students to round up the last of the six-legged's before the season's over and mid-October snaps that frosty door shut on all things invertebrate. It had me rooting through jars and nets and boxes and rearranging my collection kit in my office.

Among other things, I also peeked into an old collection of butterflies and moths I caught early in my graduate school days down in North Kacalaky. A summer's worth of learning the local Lepidoptera there, the collection had been through some hard times, including being knocked down by my cat and chewed on by some other insects.

That said, nothing prepared me for the carnage I came across in the butterfly box, devastated by another brutal round of those beetles that specialize on eating dead insects, and which somehow had found their way into my tightly sealed collection crate once again...

All told, perhaps a third of the collection lay in tatters, the little beetle larvae culprits weaving around below as well as inside the hollowed out carapaces of what were fine swallowtails, lunas, fritillaries. Now I'm in the process of freezing all the remaining specimens for two days in hopes of purging them of whatever eggs lurk inside, ready and waiting to whip through the box again like some wicked hexapod tornado at any possible time.

Meanwhile, I gathered just a few of the wings that lay at the bottom of the box and made a tidy pile of them. Perhaps some butterfly passing by my desk window will take confused notice of the eyespots and colors and wonder what Shiva-like butterfly species lived inside my apartment. If Nijhout had to figure out a "groundplan" for the wing patterns of such a mythic creature he'd had have to been twice as brilliant as he already is, or at least twice as patient.

cleaning consequence #A4Re2 (a wild list)

2009-08-30T10:30:00.000-07:00

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A scrap a paper when I was clearly keeping tabs of what animals I saw on a trip to Panama in January of 2007. Marc was the generous host for part of the stay and guide into the jungleness of it all. The mentioned anteater appeared sitting right above our heads on BCI.

bats, anoles, small frogs, termites, ibises, trapjaw ants, army ants, dead tarantula, dead toucan, anteater!, strange mantises & beetles, leeches, black scorpion, coati (poop & tracks), multicolored kingfisher, big damselfly, Atta columbicus, Cephalotes briveps, bullet ants!, capuchin monkeys, agouti, Harpy eagle, dancing cluster daddy-long-legs, Heliconius buterfly, howler monkeys, ant-mimicking spiders, jumping - hopping water bug, morpho butterflies, fishing speiders, tanagers

white, mangled things update

2009-08-20T07:54:00.000-07:00

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After the recent Dorami incident a couple other distressed objects came into view of the various stream, experiences of the white and the somewhat broken.

After unloading the dryer two sets of headphones where found in the pocket of some jeans. After 30 minutes of findings some way to untie them, I wondered what I had done that all for. After all, they had been through the washer and the permanent press/high heat cycles of the dryer as well, so they would clearly become yet another piece of useless consumer electronics.

So imagine my pleasant surprise to find that both sets still worked *fine* - eerily perhaps even better (?) than before once plugged in... I guess washing helps everything. Either way I humbly recommend this as a novel, contemporary disetanglement puzzle, the kind that I always seemed to see in Pennsylvanian Dutch stores when I was a kid. This one will appeal to the iPodding generation (especially for any Amish during their rumspringa).

The next morning was a matter of omelettes. That was the plan. I was enthusiastic, perhaps even giddy for breakfast and I pulled the carton out of the refrigerator a little too fast perhaps --fling-- went an egg out of the package and onto the floor.

It looked so perfect there, like the yolk finally had a taste of some freedom. A pity though. A two-egg omelette lacks what a three one can (literally) bring to the table.

It recalls to me another egg posting I'd done years back on the old Paper Boat blog*. That one actually made it into the pan...

* I must be walking down memory lane these days,folks, my apologies

orange addendum

2009-08-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

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I found another orange mention while dusting off some of the old electrons from my a previous blog. That post, titled "Orange" is from five years back exactly...good memories of those poppy-colored walls.
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orange is the new green

2009-08-12T13:50:00.001-07:00

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In the current eco-frenzy the color of vogue is naturally Green: green, green, green, green , green. blah, blah, blah.

Don't get me wrong, I love green, but here in the temperate region of the globe we sometimes neglect a full appreciation of nature's other colors. While walking up Mount Wachusett the other day I myself was lost in the mosses, the leaves, the lichens in an overall daydream of green when suddenly orange tapped poked me in the side in the form of a milkweed beetle.

Next thing I knew orange appeared at every corner in some novel fashion seriatim: fungus, leaf, newt(!), insect gall, toad, wasp, and then a the very summit of the modest mountain, a goldfish pond could be found, flikcering bits of orange in a deep brown soup...

A quick Google search for the words "orange nature" turns up an nice Flickr site devoted to the theme.

Such sentiments make Andy Goldsworthy smile on the inside, I have no doubt.

Dorami

2009-07-21T10:03:00.001-07:00

~ ~ If something didn't break while you were gone, you probably weren't actually away ~ ~

A brief history of the thing:
Dorami - sister to Doraemon, purchased as a cute copyright infringement at a ceramics factory in Xi'an China, spring 1996. First fractured: spring, 1999, North Carolina (knocked off bedstand while reaching for alarm clock). 2nd fracture: summer, 2009, Chicago (whole shelf knocked down by housesitter).
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go ahead, stare at it

2009-07-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

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fantasy creatures have hearts (and livers) too

2009-07-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

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Japanese monster artists have created a vast menagerie of crazy creatures (or Kaiju 怪獣). the beloved Godzilla being a most notable specimen.

Godzilla/Gojira has always been a bad-ass, with her ability to breath fire, or breath ice, be radioactive, shoot lasers from her eyes, and various other things besides (depending on what model year we are talking). But if she eats some bad shrimp, does she get a stomachache like I do? Does she even have a stomach?

Where fantasy meets the possibility of reality and myth finds embodiment is the place where a monster’s monsterful anatomy might also be imagined, and in detail. Every cause has an effect, as modern science has taught us, so it is only fair that some odd organs should underlie what otherwise would seem to be “super”natural abilities:

Godzilla’s purported ability to move her limbs with the complex grace beyond that of a Shaolin monk or drummer Buddy Rich, for example? Well, according the the anatomy chart here, we can leave that to the two subsidiary nerve ganglia in her that work like two “sub-brains” to process all that muscle control - one for the arms and one for the legs, respectively. What I love about this is that even in such a fiction lies the fact that many insects are built in just such a neurologically distributed way. When it comes to science, perhaps the matters of "fiction" and "non-fiction" are fuzzy at best...

A glimpse at some more Japanese monster anatomy charts can be found here.
Better still, the old-school Leuckhart charts
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ode to water quality

2009-07-16T09:07:00.000-07:00

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I agree, on a blog called "the various stream" it seems only right to mention recent news on water quality:

Chicago's 2009 water quality report just came out and it was notably silent on the matter of the various pharmaceuticals that lace the public agua supply. This pharmacopeia in the tap would seem to be something to worry about considering drugs are designed to have effects at low doses - what is it to have anti-depressants, cholesterol reducers, sex hormones, and nicotine all mixed up at the faucet? In the mind of health officials perhaps "no news is good news" for the public...

It makes me think of Osamu Tezuka's masterpiece Ode to Kirihito that I am now reading on an excellent recommendation from Xa. As of page 234 (granted it is over 800 pages so things may change) the diligent doctor Kirihito believes that an odd disease in remote villages turning people into dog-like forms is caused by water contamination - in that case from prehistoric mineral deposits with some strange substance in them. hmm....

Of course, just today a paper was published on the clever use of analytical chemistry to track patterns of illicit drug use among neighborhoods and towns in Oregon via testing the public water supply. Ironic but maybe unsurprising to think that the technology would be used to surveil the public's behavior in one instance and yet ignore its implication in another; alas the "war on drugs" doesn't include Glaxo Smith-Kline in our ice cubes...

If you start feeling like a golden retriever, perhaps you have a jump on where to start looking for answers.

p.s. (7/18) It *was* the water after all (some rare earth mineral). Poor Kirihito got used being doggish in the end though...

@spirographic@

2009-07-14T08:25:00.000-07:00

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I noticed today that baby dinosaur eyes has done its page up in nice circular curl-E-Qing.

This is great just because, but also for the fact I just happen to have bought misself a spiral generating device in a 100 yen shop in Japan the other day, (w/ both pen and paper included in the kit).

The results in the very first attempt were quite satisfying; it has been over 20 years since I've used one of these things, but it is like riding a bicycle (actually not at all like riding a bicycle)

as for spinning , b.d.e. offers more still - I just can't get enough!
(make sure you click through options, post-bananas)

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tokyo to narita

2009-07-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

passengering in a country obsessed with trains, it is hard to not oneself become obsessed

>>>

2009-07-01T05:36:00.000-07:00

at Kurodani temple waterlilies let things go.

wiretheskiessowirey

2009-06-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

a circled K - a woman talking wirelessly with only wires above - eyewitnessing of a sunny Kyoto in June

click here for the haps

darwinia: file entry #452

2009-06-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is his the sesqui.150.centennial of DJ Darwin, my favorite DJ of them all.

Beautiful images with problematic narration. At minute 1:46 the unfortunate and seemingly unquestioned employment of the concept "weaker human beings" by the curators in conflation this with "the tensions class conflict." The same sort of unqualified voicing that was as biologically misguided then as it is now. Yeah, nobody means anything by it, as sure as it's always said, but if you Get It, then why not Get It Right (right?) Perhaps it's my Americano ears with their own pretensions egalitarian that the British accent can't help but add some unwanted rub...

the box game

2009-06-05T06:48:00.000-07:00

a friend of mine T.R. recently told me about a project by friends of his called The Box Game, which in turn I share with friends-you-all.

I like it very much and perhaps for the obvious reasons of: public solicitation + mystery + graphing all put together. As a dish, it is my fantasy casserole combination.

In this photo (purloined from their blog) I only can assume and hope it is Devil's Rock looming in the background. It not only triggers a deep childhood memory of synthesizer music, it is also a nice allusion to mashed potatoes and the idea of this casserole I now want to cook (kind of like shepard's pie, but not. with pine nuts)

> yay the box game <

space is the place

2009-06-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

Space: the final frontier. Or just the stuff that is - between here and there, what people take up too much of, what every dubious lover wants.

Cloud Gate (aka. the Bean) warps it for you, providing empirical evidence for Einstein's contention that space is indeed bendable. Holla out to Anish Kapoor.

And here is a new photo of a room you'll never get to go into. Unless you are tiny (maybe you are)

You see, when you cross the new Nichols Bridge, spanning the there & here on opposite sides of Monroe Avenue you can walk into the Art Institute, wander around for miles, and finally get to the Thorne miniature rooms: 1 inch to one foot. I took this photo and fooled myself into thinking small was big and tall was short. Even still, I remain 5'6".

See the nicer images of the fuller collection here.

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nature pages

2009-05-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

This last week at the MBL I came across Louis Agassiz's credo, all big and in its original form, hanging in the library.

We studied all-too-plenty books during the visit, but nature is also and always there to let you know what is what. Even the smallest fishes in Eel Pond were an infinity to consider.

ps. visit the Leuckhart chart exhibit

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slips of stuff

2009-05-17T19:38:00.000-07:00

a stencil from summer 2006 (?) found in the stationary drawer today among some yellowing envelopes. Love the Lampyridae.

sun spotz

2009-05-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

Thierry Legault photographs the space shuttle Atlantis tranversing the girth of a star we call the Sun. Yes, it is a photo from land of the shuttle floating through outer space, in orbit. Yes, the sun does in fact seem to be the very yellow object of a child's crayon.

Outer space is completely black, tracing the seemingly perfect sphericality of a thermonuclear reaction that is older than ancient. The shuttle is in silhoutte because the sun is the biggest light bulb for millions of billions of miles, and I suppose Legault ended up foregoing flash when the camera clicked. Of course, that light is 8 minutes old since the sun is far far away; 93 million miles off the object-actual sun looks different than the background provided for Atlantis.

They say and you know that Atlantis was a giant island kingdom that sank to the bottom of somewhere in watery oblivion, having almost been found more times than not. Now something by the same name with wings quenches the large yellow blanket of light. Or maybe it is a giant pollen grain. or a tiny pollen grain, because it is spring and maybe Theirry was photographing through a microscope not a telescope. it's all really it is hard to know, especially if you care to know.

a raccoon walks in front of you on the sidewalk, so it's spring

2009-04-29T18:35:00.000-07:00

"Badgers can be choosers."

(E. Izzard)

It's always there regardless

2009-04-20T13:26:00.001-07:00

the omnipresence in collage of an emperor who was thought of as god.

I love the collages of Nobuyuki Oura, but in some particular places they seem to make too much meaning. Ironically but not unexpectedly - where most meaning might be made of them.

The newspaper article mentions how the images ran counter tothe educational goals of the museum and its commitment to neutrality and fairness. What fairness has to do with neutrality I'm not sure; it'dseem the latter must often be given up to allow for the former. Either way, it is one thing to be neutral, and another to be neutered.

walking home and the light won't leave you alone

2009-04-07T21:42:00.001-07:00

zoopolis

2009-04-03T05:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe you are at the zoo. Maybe it is the Lincoln Park Zoo and you are with a class and you are breaking up into teams to watch, listen, and consider the why-how-what of zoos as institutions and the metaphorical or literal Arks they claim to be.

There are jaguars six feet from you and you smell them, but something about their spots defy your best attempts to take them completely in. A gorilla disdainful. Sad colorful birds. Thoughtful children. Screeching children. The pigeons seem non-plussed by the condors.

If you squint your eyes you might think one of your students is in fact a giraffe. At this point you look for a water fountain and sit down on a bench shaped like a giant yellow rainforest frog. No doubt that will make you feel more clear-headed in a minute.

i heart Sonnenzimmer!

2009-03-29T19:24:00.001-07:00

Nick and Nadine make things more beautiful than you could imagine (and I know your imagination is particularly fecund)

visit Sonnenzimmer! and buy a poster for someone you love.

Sonnenzimmer: the shoestring portrait from dsinker on Vimeo.

sound lives on

2009-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

((((*))))

in memorium

the continued search for Andrew Yang

2009-03-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Of course you might imagine my surprise when I read this headline in the the Chicago RedEye the other day. I had only just eaten at "Yang Restaurant" an hour before in the South Loop at now I was considering if they or I had been arrested, and were just slow on the uptake.

It turns out Marni Yang was the criminal in question - and what a crime it was:

"Yang plotted the killing, driving a rental car with stolen plates and buying dark makeup and a cornrow wig to disguise herself, prosecutors said."

The various press coverage does its best to be equally creepy - from web videos sifting through her online personals to bikini photos.

Two days later my phone rang. This is how it went:

"Hi, is this Andrew Yang?"

"Yes, it is"

"I know this might be a strange question, but I'm a reporter with CBS and I am wondering if you are you the Andrew Yang who is son of Marni Yang?"

"No, I am definitely not that Andrew Yang"

"Ok, sorry, thanks! "

Wow. And so what was she going to ask me - how I'm doing? Who knew journalists actually still called people randomly up by names and numbers listed in the phone book. These reporters need to be issued computers, yo.

Regardless, the episode fits in to the Who is Andrew Yang? files, and its updates.

As for the Andrew Yang that I was mistaken for this time, I can only say sorry and good luck with things....

dibs

2009-02-21T15:52:00.001-08:00

If there is any really good reason to look forward to the end of Chicago winter besides the obvious ones, I would offer relief from the tyranny of "dibs."

Of course digging out a car is no small or happy thing. I saw one of many empty spots in my street and parked it. A couple days later this note showed up on my windshield. Ah, communality.

I don't know who to feel sorrier for, me as a victim of a needless and random hate crime, or the poor sod who in an apparent gesture of so-so samaritanism didn't manage to keep a spot free for himself. I also wonder where his chair went, since I never saw it. The magnanimous restraint of his neighbor in not keying my already pocked-marked car seems a little dramatique, but threatening missives need that kind of punch.

Gaper's Block has a thread on dibbing for our enjoyment.
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Synchronschwimmen

2009-02-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

One of my students showed this video in class the other day. We were all pretty floored.

icykills

2009-02-10T23:20:00.000-08:00

Today was balmy in that eerie "climatic instability" way, but boy, it felt nice on the skin.

The icicles from the other week are a memory, but one worth keeping in mind - who knows that next week will be like.