Our nervous systems are only equipped to conjure images in three dimensions. Yet Étienne Ghys of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France is creating videos to help people see in four. “How on earth can we visualize such a thing? Ghys and his colleagues begin by pointing out that our challenge in visualizing four dimensions is very similar to the one that would be faced by a perfectly flat creature who lived in two dimensions and tried to visualize three, like the inhabitants of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland or the lizards in the page in Escher’s Reptiles. A cube or a sphere would be nearly unimaginable for the two-dimensional lizards, since they are unable to rise out of the plane.” (via.) Maybe next they could make a movie out of Christopher Priest’s Inverted World.
“A brand is always a story well told,” a buyer at Henri Bendel tells the New York Times, in this story about a young Chicago woman who sought out the help of Michel Roudnitska — the Brian Eno of perfumers — to create a fragrance in memory of her grandmother, Ellie and Ellie Nuit. Also, NYC readers: Next Wedcnesday, the Secret Science Club hosts Dr. Leslie Vosshall, head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics and Behavior. Topics discussed: “Is love in the eye of the beholder—or in the schnoz? How do different animals detect smell? How do sweet and stinky scents influence behavior? And why does camembert cheese smell like heaven to some people and offal to others?”
Handmade Looking Writing
Reviewing “Lesser Panda,” by Sarah Morris at White Cube in London, The Guardian’s Adrian Searle recently wrote “Technically, Morris’s paintings are so accomplished there is nowhere for them to go. They are what they are and do what they do, resolutely declaring themselves as both product and spectacle.”
But…
Next to a Sarah Morris painting I feel sweaty, awkward, street-soiled and gangling. There’s not a bleed of paint, an errant hair or a fly trapped anywhere in the paint. If Morris’s horizontals or verticals ever appear off-whack, it is because the world is wrong. Euclid would run screaming from the room.To witness such perfection in a handmade object is wearying. Even Mondrian was allowed blips. Barnett Newman was positively sloppy. Morris’s unremitting dazzle is somehow soulless and inhuman, which I guess is the intention. However much the colour sings and the Olympic quoits jump and shuffle about, the general effect is alienating.
Reading that, I was reminded of an interview with Margaret Kilgallen, where she said she tries her best to make her lines even, but she doesn’t mind some asymmetry or crookedness as it is the sign of a human touch.
Will the Kilgallen way ever be the prevailing attitude toward online writing: the idea that a typo here or there is just the sign of a human being behind the text?
Were an artist to seek “perfection” in every painting, the end result would likely be fewer paintings. Some artists are better at it: a tighter grip, keener eye, or a number of other reasons can enable more precision. While it is true there is some laziness to letting a line get crooked, I don’t know of any art critic holding it against an artist unless it’s obvious.
Published writers aren’t allowed mistakes. To many, any kind of error proves absence of authority. Previously, we discussed the unlikelihood of conversational artificial life any time soon. The English language just has too many words, each nuanced with a number of scarcely interpretable resonances. But someday we’ll be talking to robots and they’ll be writing our press releases. And when they do, will it seem cool to let go a misspelling or a grammatical error here or there? You know…just to keep the reader on his toes.
The amount of email we all struggle with means if you aren’t born with a copyediting sixth sense, you probably made several errors today. The l33t-speak “teh” once seemed to signal “I’m too busy to backspace.” (Don’t we often feel that way? I’ve got something like 50 emails weighing on my shoulders and I’d love it if half the future recipients wouldn’t be offended if I type the message out as fast as I think it.)
Also, we make tradeoffs with our time. Time is allocated depending on the priority of the recipient. A document I turn in to my employer is edited line by line several times. But with emails to friends, I don’t just skip spell check — sometimes I don’t read it over before pressing send (which usually leads to clarifications in the Re:s, but anyway!) My blog is somewhere in the middle. Fretting over the spelling and grammar eats into the short time I have to write the posts. And writing out my ideas is the point of this blog. That being said, it’s the first page result googling my name, and on the off chance someone important is checking it out, I don’t want to appear hasty or incompetent.
That’s what spelling and grammar is all about: appearances. There are people out there who, no matter what you accomplish in life, will view you as at a third grade intellect if your tenses don’t match.
Tech Dirt recently wrote:
There’s a class of folks (you know who you are!) who are well known in any kind of written forum/blog/email list etc. It’s the infamous “Grammar Nazi.” There are nice Grammar Nazis — and we appreciate those — and then there are the obnoxious Grammar Nazis who like to imply that you are the stupidest person to ever touch a keyboard because you mixed up affect and effect. From my perspective, I certainly appreciate the folks who point out the grammatical errors we make (we try to fix them quickly, if it makes sense), though I often find it silly to get bogged down in some of the minutiae of certain grammar rules that for all intents and purposes are almost universally ignored.
He also explains a nice Grammar Nazi (”usually emails us privately”) and the obnoxious kind (”always, always, always posts their comments publicly.”) By the way, if a writer does happen to write “you’re” instead of “your”: yes, he probably does know the difference, dearest helpful readers. Those of us without the sixth sense sometimes type homophones when we are working fast.
What is particularly vexing about the correctors is the implication that someone who makes typos doesn’t deserve to write. This is the belief of elementary school English teachers, at least when I was growing up. Points were docked for misplaced commas or misspellings, so the person with the highest grade didn’t necessarily write the greatest essay.
The best editors aren’t the best writers. I like the first draft quality of Philip K. Dick’s books. Maybe Gertrude Stein wasn’t as self-aware as people thought, when it came to her run-on sentences. I hate to think the reason modern literature is such a wasteland these days is because the genius novelist we’ve been waiting for was turned away by a Random House editor, “Ah, he can’t spell.”
Art by Sarah Morris.
Previously:
Saying Yes and Hearing No
Open Source Art: Will There Ever Be Another Lily Chou-Chou?
Alright, Sokay: Tomorrow’s English Language
The New Wave of Neural-Advertising in Michael Crichton’s “Looker”
When Humanity Only Survives Within Driving Distance of a Shopping Mall
The city can become an addiction. Live in it too long, and your body will reject the outdoors. Over the weekend, I got up early-ish to catch La Strada at the Brattle (part of the free Elements Of Cinema series.) It seemed like a good Saturday morning thing: get coffee, watch a smart film, maybe browse the dress shops and get coffee again.
But as soon as I opened my eyes, they started to burn. I left the window open that night and the airborne pollens — ragweed or whatever it is that Zyrtec normally takes care of — drifted into my room and into my eyes like evil pixie dust. I shut my window, got dressed, and did what I normally don’t do trying to get to Harvard Square: I drove.
The whole “pahk the cah in hahvahd yahd” thing is a joke not just on the Boston accent. Driving in Harvard Square is kind of like pushing marbles through straws. Saturday morning isn’t much of a problem. Well, any Saturday other than yesterday.
Due to construction, the two and three hour parking spots within eight blocks were unavailable. The open spots were limited to one hour. Hardly enough time to attend a movie and a lecture. No going around it: the meter maids in this city are busybodies. After circling around several times, wishing I were on my bike, I ended up parking much farther than I intended and came smack in contact with exactly what I’d been avoiding all morning: the outside air.
It was a beautiful day. Low 80s, clear skies, perfect for biking, running, reading under a tree, anything outside. But rather than delighting in the weather, I was cursing it. Lightheaded, my eyes feeling like sandpaper lined the rims, sneezing, I was just a mess. I thought wearing glasses would make it better but it was just the opposite: contact lenses shield against these allergens. The sunshine was bouncing off the lenses, only making the situation worse.
This is urban New England, I’m hardly Lawrence of Arabia in a sandstorm, but it bothered me so much, and realizing I was already twenty minutes late, I returned to my car thinking, “how far to the Cambridgeside Galleria?”
I was looking for refuge from the outside world in the form of a shopping mall. My body was rejecting nature in favor of the sanitized, always-68 degrees shopping center down the street. So I watched the sky from the Whole Foods cafe, waiting until I could blink again without discomfort.
Just as domesticated pets can’t make it in the wilderness, city people, according to the “hygiene hypothesis,” live in such clean conditions their immune systems weaken. Preschool peanut bans are so prevalent and contentious, I wouldn’t be surprised if the DEA gets involved eventually.
In addition to increased sensitivity, cities produce more ragweed due to CO2 levels — increasing with climate change. There are additional ripple effects on tree pollen, fungal spores, and other allergens. And warmer climate means the allergy season is much longer than it ever was before.
Years ago, people with severe allergies found relief in the mountains. But “increased human activity such as building and other disturbances of the soil, irrigation, and gardening, have encouraged ragweed to spread to these areas as well.” We’re building our way unhealthy.
Damien Atkins’s play “Lucy” (Kurt Anderson interview here) is about an anthropologist with a 13 year old autistic daughter. She comes to the conclusion her daughter “is perfect. She’s the future,” making a stunning hypothesis that autism is evolution. Mankind is protecting itself from the devastating environmental consequences of modern living. (A little Kumbaya, but quite a lot smarter than whatever M Night Shyamalan was going on.)
Wall-E so radically tackled devolution with the future human race portrayed as gelatinous blobs. More accurately they would have sneezed uncontrollably at contact with the plant.
Todd Haynes’s 1995 film [Safe] was a great comment/parody/prophesy of the modern age fraught with yuppie ailments:
“Safe” has been described as a horror movie of the soul, a description that director Todd Haynes relishes. California housewife Carol White seems to have it all in life: a wealthy husband and a beautiful house. The only thing she lacks is a strong personality: Carol seems timid and empty during all of her interactions with the world around her. At the beginning of the film, one would consider her to be more safe in life than just about anyone. That doesn’t turn out to be the case. Starting with headaches and leading to a grand-mal seizure, Carol becomes more and more sick, claiming that she’s become sensitive to the common toxins in today’s world: exhaust, fumes, aerosol spray, etc. She pulls back from the sexual advances of her husband and spends her nights alone by the TV or wandering around the outside of her well-protected home like an animal in a cage. Her physician examines her and can find nothing wrong. An allergist finds that she has an allergic reaction to milk but explains that there is no treatment for that sort of allergy. She sees a psychiatrist who does nothing but make her nervous. In the hospital, Carol sees an infomercial for Wrenwood, a new-age retreat for those who are “environmentally ill,” and leaves her husband and stepson to try and find salvation at this retreat: headed by a phony, grandstanding, “sensitive” individual named Peter Dunning.
I remember watching it in high school, thinking “just get over it!” Likely someone is thinking the same thing reading my opening paragraph. It’s embarrassing, but I’m not alone:
Ragweed pollen and mold thrive in the opposite conditions. So when it’s dry and windy, you get ragweed; when it’s damp and rainy, you get mold.
Here’s the other cheerful news, you might want to prepare for a worse ragweed season next year. Dr. Mark Dykewicz, chief of the Section of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, at St. Louis University School of Medicine says that next year’s ragweed crop will be from this years rainy, fertile conditions.
In Europe, they are putting up “Wild West ‘wanted’ posters” advocating burning the ragwood (”ambrosia”) plants, which climbing north to Germany, and even Scandinavia.
‘Some gardeners naively think it is an attractive plant and give it water and fertilizer in their front gardens,’ says Susanne Schwarz of Berlin’s Health Department.
‘They should be eradicating this menace instead,’ she adds. ‘Best thing to do is pull it out by the roots and burn it, since the seeds can remain fertile for up to 40 years.’
In case you’re wondering, yeah, I’ve got a doctor’s appointment this week. In the meantime, a friend advised me to take local honey because the pollen in the honey acclimates you to the pollen in the air. Sounds unlikely, but I appreciate the concept as a narrative. Maybe if The Happening hadn’t resigned itself as a joke, Mark Walberg would have hunted the wilderness for an antidote. A lab set up in the fields somewhere. The twist ending M Night Shymalan forgot to write, like a riff on Dorothy’s discovery: the answer is “no further than our own backyard”
Until then, closing my eyes is as heavenly as a dive in a pool full of feathers. And I’m thinking allergies are nature’s way of reminding us to pay attention.
Photography by Julia Fullerton-Batten.
Previously:
Who Needs Sleep?
An Apology for Idlers
Related links:
- Hygiene Hypothesis on PBS, Evolution: “The Evolutionary Arms Race”
- Architects take Beijing’s smog into account, LA Times (via.)
- Ragweed Allergy Heats Up With Climate Change, Medical News Today
- Take Me Out To The (Peanut-Free) Ballgame, Channel3000
The mind delights at the design possibilities and pteromerhanophobia sufferers need not fear the prospect of “metallic glass” used as aircraft wings. UK researchers have new insights about glass properties — that it’s a “‘jammed’ state of matter that moves very slowly.” This will mean further developments in “metallic glass” — attempts to make metal get harder with stress –no more dents — and also easier to mold, as it will soften rather than turn to liquid when heated.
“For Popper, all discovery is really just criticism. Although we think of scientific truth as being somehow more stable than literary or cultural truth - literary fashions come and go, but gravity remains - the opposite is actually true. Scientific truth is true precisely because it is open to change, willing to reverse itself and admit its errors. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon will always be a magnificent painting, but a scientific idea that is no longer true…well, what good is that?” - The Frontal Cortex
So…big news. I’m getting married. Well, I’m not sure yet to whom. But I know when: 2011. That’s when SpaceWedding rockets brides and grooms 62 miles up to space. Now, if any potential suitors happen to have $2.2 million lying around, I’ll print out the invites. (via.)
Tomorrow night’s full moon will be low hanging, bright, and enormous. NASA has more about this moon illusion, “Apparently, only human beings see giant moons.”
A drug in clinical trials could potentially grow new neurons in the brain. BrainCells “hopes the compounds will provide an alternative to existing antidepressants and says they may also prove effective in treating cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s.”
May 19, 1780. New Englanders thought it was Judgement Day as the sky was totally black in the afternoon. Over two hundred years later, scientists agree it was because of massive wildfires burning in Canada.
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