Anatomy lesson

this was one of the sculptures in the gemeentemuseum in the hague that i really liked. its from damien hirst, named "wretched war-the dream is dead". its made of sterling silver. a little bit creepy perhaps, but at the same time quite beautiful. at least, thats what i thought. its more impressive when seeing it than here on this picture. its part of the exhibition "anatomy lesson" that now runs in the museum (on view until may 1 next year). it was a very interesting exhibition exploring science, art and human anatomy. human anatomy not only has been of tremendous interest in science, but also in art. we saw old paintings/drawings in anatomy books, but also the famous painting by rembrandt, the anatomy lesson. and then more modern works like the one above. it was really very interesting to see how people, both scientists and artists have been amazed by human anatomy from the early public dissections of hanged criminals to more abstract modern work. going through it, i learned quite a lot!

on the museum website i just read that the exhibition has been realised with the support of the pharmaceutical company roche in the netherlands. i guess there we see an important difference between science and art; this is fine for art, but would not be that ok in case of a scientific publication (for example about how well a newly released drug of the company works).

Banning sugar?

this sculpture is in cambridge, in a park called the cambridge common, which is right behind the harvard university campus. i liked this sculpture, but did not really know why it was there. underneath the inscription you can still faintly see that someone wrote "yet they still do" (i think someone should repaint that, its a good addition that makes you think if you didnt when reading the first sentence).

it is a memorial to the great hunger in ireland. both the woman and the man have a child in their arms, and they depict separation due to hunger. the great potato famine was a period between 1845 and 1852. due to a potato disease, potatoes were not available, while a large part of the irish population depended entirely on the potato for food. 1 million people died, and another million emigrated from ireland, causing a significant drop in the population.

regarding food..., today i read an article in nature magazine in which the authors argue that sugar should be taxed, just like cigarettes and alcohol! they write that there are 30% more people obese than there are undernourished (although im not sure this is worldwide or US only). interestingly, while sugar is present in nearly every product, long-long-long ago sugar was only available during a short period of the year; in fruits during harvest, and in honey (but honey is guarded by bees... ). so.. evolutionary we are (still?) not used to taking in so much sugar, yet we all do.... (many people eat 500 extra calories a day, just from sugar additives in their food!! just look at the labels... especially here in the us many, many products will contain high-fructose corn syrup)

several governments are now thinking of taxing sugar, but while you dont need to smoke or drink to survive, everyone does need food..... im not sure making sugary things more expesive will help to reduce sugar intake. but maybe it will help the food industry? if sugar becomes something "bad"/expensive, maybe they will stop putting high-fructose corn syrup in everything?

sorry for the boring post, here is the entire article, which is in fact really interesting. if you cant get to the entire article, i can always send it to you... :)

Mountain dew

in one of the episodes of the big bang theory, sheldon is doing some experiment at home. he has all this glassware and solutions set out before him. then leonard asks him what the bright fluorescent yellow solution is, and he says something like "ah, that is a refreshing beverage of mountain dew" while taking a big gulp of it. it is even more fluorescent yellow in real than in this picture, i would say! and i like it!! but i heard its the worst soft drink there is, with the highest amount of sugar.... 

just read this article that a nutrition professor lost weight by eating twinkies (some kind of chocolate bar). what he did was limiting himself to a 1800 calorie diet a day (a normal intake for him being around 2600), proving thereby that it does not matter WHAT you eat, but how much of it.... but he himself had no explanation for not being unhealthier after this diet. rather, they found he was healthier (by for example having a lower cholesterol level). here a link to the entire article!

ah well... what should i say? guess its time for the gym...!

Subway romance

this picture is crooked. nevertheless.... i liked it. this is an advertisement from a bank, and currently many subways have such big green shouts on the ground. i like this one most (or rather, the other ones are just boring texts, this one you can still take in a funny way; and yup, i did wait a little for this MBTA worker to look down. although on his phone... :)

apparently they did a craigslist study, and found that Park Street, where the red and green line get together (and to which you can walk from the orange line, undergrounds), is the most romantic T stop in Boston. hahahahahaha! how did they determine that? they studied the "missed connections" posts on craigslist, and park street came up most... how scientific! no really, they even have an abbreviation for it; the TRIST index (Train Romance Index Score Total), and they did some real calculations, taking into account the number of average daily users of the particular stop divided (or multiplied, i forgot.. :D) by the number of missed connections on craigslist... 

so, to sum it all up: in Boston, Park Street is the most likely place to find a mate. (above is at harvard square; is he checking the missed connections-section? this stop is on third place by means of TRIST score)

ah, but actually i do not agree with that! its the most likely place to find someone of interest that you then let go, and then have to find back again by means of craigslist... pfew... how complicated...!

(oh, btw... i read today also that transit officers are more often checking whether you paid your fare, so... when seeing your "mate", dont just jump after her/him into the train; pay first!!)

Bubble jump

and although scary, the kids couldnt stop themselves jumping right into the bubbles.... :)

couldnt help but performing a bit more of pubmedsearching, and found this paper in Science from 1969, where the author is describing the size and lifespan of his bubbles; so cool!!! here is a small citation:
"Bubbles, made from solutions A to F (Table 2), were beautifully colored, although rather thick at the beginning. After bubbles made from these solutions had lasted over 200 days, I became interested in blowing larger bubbles. Big bubbles were blown in a Plexiglas box (55.9-cm edge cube) (13), but they did not last more than a week. Then, Corning Glass Works provided first one and later three 72-liter Pyrex flasks (14), the largest spherical flasks produced in this country. They were perfect for my purposes, and many bubbles were blown to a diameter of 40 to 50 cm out of solutions A to F." (for the scientists: also interesting to see that the writing style of a paper is markedly different from nowadays, just from reading this small part its clear, no?)

Some soap

some water, a little glycerol and some secret ingredients. plus good humidity, not too much sun and a little wind; that is necessary to make gigantic soap bubbles. and of course an audience is needed... i am not sure the soap artist thought children were the perfect audience, but defenitely they loved it!! the bubbles were huge, and jumping into them makes them explode and you hair full of soap (which is a little scary; see above), and blowing into them makes smaller bubbles into big bubbles. i think i took 300 pictures -mostly bad ones.. :( . the children got crazy, as soon as another bubble appeared out of the artist's net, they jumped up to destroy it, while he kept saying: leave them, leave them. at least leave them until they are a full bubble!! it was amazing to see... :)

sylvia came over from san diego, she has a meeting in boston starting friday and we took half a day off thursday to go to Lincoln, to the de cordova sculpture park. the museum was closed, but the park was interesting enough (and the bubble man)! now ofcourse we will try to make huge bubbles ourselves too... in fact there are quite some papers on pubmed about soap bubbles; just saw that in june there was a publication in nature that describes what happens to bubbles when they explode; rather than vanishing, this creates small bubbles.... just to let you know...