Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
This week, I saw several delightful headlines like "South Korea cracks down on baby flesh pills." Apparently, the pills, made in some parts of China, are sold as treatments for impotence and other conditions. Interestingly, an article in the new Smithsonian magazine explores the long history of ingesting human bones, flesh, and blood for medicinal purposes. Indeed, two recent books -- Richard Sugg's "Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires" and "Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture" -- document these cannibalistic cure-alls. From Smithsonian:
The question was not, ‘Should you eat human flesh?’ but, ‘What sort of flesh should you eat?’ ” says Sugg. The answer, at first, was Egyptian mummy, which was crumbled into tinctures to staunch internal bleeding. But other parts of the body soon followed. Skull was one common ingredient, taken in powdered form to cure head ailments. Thomas Willis, a 17th-century pioneer of brain science, brewed a drink for apoplexy, or bleeding, that mingled powdered human skull and chocolate. And King Charles II of England sipped “The King’s Drops,” his personal tincture, containing human skull in alcohol. Even the toupee of moss that grew over a buried skull, called Usnea, became a prized additive, its powder believed to cure nosebleeds and possibly epilepsy. Human fat was used to treat the outside of the body. German doctors, for instance, prescribed bandages soaked in it for wounds, and rubbing fat into the skin was considered a remedy for gout.
Blood was procured as fresh as possible, while it was still thought to contain the vitality of the body. This requirement made it challenging to acquire. The 16th century German-Swiss physician Paracelsus believed blood was good for drinking, and one of his followers even suggested taking blood from a living body. While that doesn’t seem to have been common practice, the poor, who couldn’t always afford the processed compounds sold in apothecaries, could gain the benefits of cannibal medicine by standing by at executions, paying a small amount for a cup of the still-warm blood of the condemned. “The executioner was considered a big healer in Germanic countries,” says Sugg. “He was a social leper with almost magical powers.” For those who preferred their blood cooked, a 1679 recipe from a Franciscan apothecary describes how to make it into marmalade.
The New Yorker has invited Twitter hero @FILMCRITHILK to write a great, insightful, ALL-CAPS essay on the attraction of The Hulk in stories.
SO PERHAPS THERE IS A MUCH BETTER QUESTION AT HAND: WHAT MAKES THE HULK DRAMATIC? WHAT ARE WE ROOTING FOR WHEN WE WATCH HIM? WHAT IS IT THAT WE WANT TO HAPPEN IN ANY GIVEN SCENE?
WE HAVE TO GO BACK TO THE CENTRAL QUESTION: WHAT MAKES THE HULK SO COMPELLING TO US?
HULK WRITES ABOUT IT ALL THE TIME, BUT ONE OF THE ONGOING PROBLEMS OF BLOCKBUSTER CINEMA THESE DAYS IS ASSUMED EMPATHY. IT’S AS IF OUR STORYTELLERS JUST PLOP A FILM IN OUR LAPS AND SAY, “HERE’S OUR MAIN CHARACTER AND WE’RE GOING TO ASSUME THAT YOU’RE INTERESTED IN THEM FOR THAT REASON ALONE. THEY’RE THE MAIN CHARACTER!” … HULK DESPISES THIS TREND. IT TENDS TO GET EVEN WORSE WHEN STORYTELLERS FALL INTO THE MARKETING-CENTRIC TRAP OF “LIKABILITY,” WHICH IS A WORD THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MAKING CHARACTERS INTERESTING. USUALLY IT’S JUST A CODE WORD USED BY EXECUTIVES WHEN THEY’RE WORRIED A CHARACTER IS “DOING BAD THINGS.” AND TO ADHERE TO THE WORRIES OF LIKABILITY IS TO THUS EMBARK ON A FOOL’S PLAY AT DRAMA.
Which gives me the chance to drop in my favorite joke from last weekend, shamelessly cribbed from The Observer: "YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M ANGRY. I BACK UP MY RAGE WITH SOURCES AND DOCUMENTATION." -The Credible Hulk
The “raging frenzy” of the sex drive, to use Plato’s phrase, has always defied control. However, that’s not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Judging Desire tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior.
Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh-and-blood cases—much flesh and even more blood—to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an Ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for “gross indecency.” The cast of Judging Desire is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged—and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it. With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire.
From Sex and Punishment: "Female Love and Leather Machines in the Early Modern Period"
Perhaps because the Bible ignores same-sex female relations, or maybe because men cannot imagine that women could experience sexual pleasure without them, lesbian relations have been given inconsistent treatment by the law. It was mostly ignored until the Renaissance, when courts started to punish women who dressed like men and used "artificial instruments" with each other.
Can two women love each other sexually? Eighteenth-century morals said no, at least where the females involved were respectable. Among the better classes, lesbian relations were impossible to imagine. Good women could love and embrace each other, sleep together, and write each other passionate letters; all that was noble. But loving and making love were entirely different matters. Unless they were gratifying their husbands, women of "character" were imagined as sexually numb creatures. British judges allowed that females of "Eastern" or "Hindoo" nations might act differently, but not the women of the "civilized" world.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Microsoft Research's SoundWave is an experimental interface that detects gestures based on how movements of your hand interfere with an inaudible tone generated by the computer. It doesn't use the same operating principal as the Theremin but it reminds me of that famous "hands-off" musical instrument. "SoundWave: Using the Doppler Effect to Sense Gestures" (Thanks, Lyn Jeffery!)
Last week, I started a subscription plan for my weekly comic strip, Tom the Dancing Bug, which appears here on Boing Boing. It’s called the INNER HIVE, and I’m so grateful for the response it’s gotten. I have high hopes that it’s a step in the direction of financial viability for comics in this digital age.
I was stunned when TV Personality and Superstar John Hodgman not only publicly endorsed (and joined!) the INNER HIVE, he made an impassioned case for this model of artist sustainability. I was further stunned when Author and Superstar Neil Gaiman also publicly endorsed the INNER HIVE (and joined!). If these guys think I'm on to something, maybe I'll start to believe it myself.
Below is the original statement I made announcing the plan last week. PLEASE JOIN THE FUN AND HELP MAKE IT HAPPEN!
Carl Pyrdum's 2010 essay on the internal logic of Gothic manuscript illuminations uses a delightful series of illustrations and sprites from Super Mario Brothers. History at its finest:
If you look carefully (the image above–and all the images in this post–should expand if you click it), you can see that the two initial capitals on the page form separate platforms, not quite touching. The uppermost capital provides support for two vine-like borders, one growing upward and another that downward toward the lower capital. And the vines in turn provide support for little birds who sit atop them.
If it turns out that the hound can leap, too, the rabbit still might be able to get away if he can convince Mario to give up one of his precious oak leaves. Flying creatures are allowed to ascend into the open white space of the medieval manuscript page, as this moth is doing in the top left margin of this very same page:
The poor insect enthusiast beneath can only gaze up wistfully at the moth, unable to get any higher on the page because he’s run out of platforms.
Now, this attention to gravity is a general tendency, not an ironclad rule. If you poke around Gothic manuscripts long enough you’ll find many exceptions, but probably a lot fewer than you might expect. In fact, I’ve found that the fancier the manuscript, the more consistently its artists tend to respect gravity’s role on the page. Deluxe manuscripts like the Yale Lancelot or the Bodleian Alexander are scrupulous about making sure everything is resting on something that’s attached to something that’s attached back to one of the anchor points. In fact, the better manuscripts purposefully play with the expectation of downward gravity, creating elaborate and fanciful connections between the objects on the page. Next time I get around to this subject, I’ll try to show you some of my favorite examples.
Collector of anomalies, esoterica, and curiosities.
Guests at the Cottage Lodge green hotel in the New Forest, southern England, can use a bicycle-powered generator to power up the TV. The proprietors should hire Russell Johnson as the night manager. "Hotel installs bicycle-powered television"
Kyle McDonald and Aram Bartholl of fffff.at teach you how to avoid being "auto-recognized" in photographs: surveillance shots, party pictures on Facebook, you name it. The short version: tilt yer head.
Camden, NJ's City Coffee has managed to thrive, despite the retail mass-collapse in Camden's city center. The coffee shop's secret is to offer every conceivable service. So in addition to coffee and pastries, you can also get a urine test, a paternity test, financial planning, tax prep, a studio photo-portrait, and, soon, a specialist cleanup service for landlords whose houses have been rented by compulsive hoarders. The counter-staff also serve as unofficial fixers for local lawyers, because all the judges and clerks eat there. Jo Piazza profiled the business for the WSJ:
On a normal day, jurors and lawyers mix with criminal defendants, city bureaucrats cross paths with recovering addicts from the nearby methadone clinic — and everyone comes to see Mona Pryor, whose job title as City Coffee’s operations director scarcely hints at her many roles.
“Lawyers are always coming in here to ask me to put in a good word with judge so-and-so, or asking me to introduce them to someone from the other side,” said Pryor. She is the one-woman force behind most of City Coffee’s services, with an associate’s degree in accounting and a variety of specialty certificates.
“We did about 300 tax returns this season. I do the DNA swabs and the drug testings. I’m one of the only notaries around and I am always marketing the businesses,” Pryor said from a desk covered in dozens of note pads. “But I also make a perfect latte.”
City Coffee owner Ronald Ford Jr. succinctly sums up the central insight behind his multi-business strategy: “You can get your drug test while you are waiting for your coffee to be done.”
Peter Galuszka writes in the Washington Post: "Imagine my surprise a few weeks ago when I heard a chopper noise I couldn’t identify. I looked up and maybe 150 feet off the ground was a light grey helicopter that seemed to hover over my property. It was clearly marked “NAVY” and was the size of a ubiquitous civilian Sky Ranger but with one big difference: This aircraft had no cockpit and no pilot." (via pourmecoffee) — Xeni
LIFE.com has a beautiful gallery of Michael Rougier photographs from Japan in 1964: runaways, rock and rollers, biker gangs, "pill kids" and other Japanese teens. LIFE Magazine published some of these in September, 1964, but some have never before been published.
Above, the original caption from 1964: "Kako, languid from sleeping pills she takes, is lost in a world of her own in a jazz shop in Tokyo."
The MPAA and the DHS have teamed up to increase the punishment meted out to people who buy their DVDs instead of downloading the same movies for free from the Internet. Now when you buy a DVD, you'll get twice as many unskippable anti-piracy warnings, including one with a Homeland Security Investigations “special agent” badge next to the FBI badge, as well as a screen telling you that "digital theft harms the economy" and inviting you to visit a taxpayer-funded website that parrots a bunch of unsubstantiated lobbynomics numbers that the MPAA pulled out of its ass.
Only MPAA members are licensed to use these government logos, because other studios are apparently not entitled to a share of whatever imaginary protection the DHS is extending here.
Here's ThreatLevel's David Kravets:
That screen, like the others, presumably will be made unskippable during viewing. The warning says, “Piracy is not a victimless crime. For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov.” The center’s logo is tough, too, with a hawk clenching a banner that reads “Protection Is Our Trademark”.
Oddly, such warnings are rarely included in versions uploaded and downloaded via P2P networks.
A worker paints a single-seater submarine designed by Zhang Wuyi and his fellow engineers at a shipyard in Wuhan, Hubei province May 7, 2012. Zhang, a 37-year-old local farmer, who is interested in scientific inventions, has made six miniature submarines with several fellow engineers, one of which was sold to a businessman in Dalian at a price of 100,000 yuan ($15,855) last October. The submarines, mainly designed for harvesting aquatic products, such as sea cucumber, have a diving depth of 20-30 metres, and can travel for 10 hours, local media reported.
SO PERHAPS THERE IS A MUCH BETTER QUESTION AT HAND: WHAT MAKES THE HULK DRAMATIC? WHAT ARE WE ROOTING FOR WHEN WE WATCH HIM? WHAT IS IT THAT WE WANT TO HAPPEN IN ANY GIVEN SCENE?
If you look carefully (the image above–and all the images in this post–should expand if you click it), you can see that the two initial capitals on the page form separate platforms, not quite touching. The uppermost capital provides support for two vine-like borders, one growing upward and another that downward toward the lower capital. And the vines in turn provide support for little birds who sit atop them.
Guests at the Cottage Lodge green hotel in the New Forest, southern England, can use a bicycle-powered generator to power up the TV. The proprietors should hire 
That screen, like the others, presumably will be made unskippable during viewing. The warning says, “Piracy is not a victimless crime. For more information on how digital theft harms the economy, please visit www.iprcenter.gov.” The center’s logo is tough, too, with a hawk clenching a banner that reads “Protection Is Our Trademark”.
