polaris schmolaris

on this day in the year 1793 b.c., the star, thuban in the constellation, draco ended it’s two thousand year reign as earth’s de facto north star. it handed over the title to kochab (a scrappy upstart) whose successor would be (the much ballyhooed) polaris. while the succession was ineveitable, we can all be thankful that due to the 25,765 year axial precession of the earth’s platonic year, thuban will again start jockeying for the position in the year 29,707 a.d.

let us never forget that the north star is a title, not a name. (the much ballyhooed) polaris should not take its position for granted.

i created this cuz the tawdry ménage à trois among nomenclature, typography, and genetics needs to be made more explicit.

__

additional type terms can be found here, here, and especially here. the chromosomal nomenclature that i used is based upon the recommendations of the paris conference of 1971.

an impressive bust -or- a little head

i received this phrenological sculpture for my birthday recently from my kid sister. you will note that the very spot on the side of my cranium where i have been having a headache for weeks is the very spot that controls my desire for liquids and is right below the ingenuity zone. yikes!

the back of the bust reads:

For thirty years I have studied Crania and living heads from all parts of the world and have found in every instance that there is a perfect correspondence between the conformation of the healthy skull of an individual and his known characteristics.

—L. N. Fowler

“in every instance a perfect correspondence”!?!?!?! this burgeoning pseudo-scientific field sure sounds like the wave of the future. i hope that it doesn’t replace metoposcopy, though or my dear old daddy will be out of a job.

is there any identity more confusing than the sea slater’s? he lives in the water but his dad was a land dweller. his grandpa lived his whole life in the water too but his great grandpa liked to scuttle over the land. and back and forth it goes in a game of evolutionary ping pong until his water-loving gggggrandfather was a single-celled organism named adam who ate an apple at the wrong time and all hell broke loose.

a greener green than you’ve ever seen

not only can the human eye see x-rays, it can also see imaginary colours. i’m not talking about fictional colours (like douglas adams’ hooloovooo) but colours that no physical light source can produce. furthermore it is very easy to see these colours (without first having to wig out on peyote).

the way it works is this »

If a saturated green is viewed until the green receptors [of the eye] are fatigued and then a saturated red is viewed, a perception of red more intense than pure spectral red can be experienced. This is due to the fatigue of the green receptors and the resulting lack of their ability to desaturate the perceptual response to the output of the red receptors.

i have made two image files to assist the prospective colour-adventurer on his or her quest to see—for the first time—an imaginary colour. open this image and this image in separate tabs. stare at the magenta pentagon for 30 seconds or so until it starts to grey. then quickly switch tabs to the green square. for the next 5 seconds, you should experience a greener green than you’ve ever seen.

x-ray vision

one of science’s greatest sekrits is the little known fact that humans possess x-ray vision. ie. that humans can SEE x-rays (not see LIKE an x-ray) »

While generally considered invisible to the human eye, in special circumstances X-rays can be visible. Brandes, in an experiment a short time after Röntgen’s landmark 1895 paper, reported after dark adaptation and placing his eye close to an X-ray tube, seeing a faint “blue-gray” glow which seemed to originate within the eye itself…The knowledge that X-rays are actually faintly visible to the dark-adapted naked eye has largely been forgotten today; this is probably due to the desire not to repeat what would now be seen as a recklessly dangerous and potentially harmful experiment with ionizing radiation.

if repeating this reckless experiment has the potential to let me see through peoples’ clothes (at my discretion) and/or turn me into a superhero of some sort, i might be game.

i went to the boston museum of science today and stumbled into this exhibit about yeti, sea serpents, mermaids* and other fictional beasts.

fictional animals AT A MUSEUM OF SCIENCE? for reals? kids these days are going to be all kinds of messed up.

*preferred plural: mermaiden.