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Mark Dery is guest blogger du jour until August 17. He is the author of Culture Jamming, Flame Wars, Escape Velocity, and The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium. He's at work on The Pathological Sublime, a philosophical investigation into the paradox of horrible beauty and the politics of "just looking."
Worshippers of Morbid Anatomy: Just as I'm warming to my task, my time on the Boing Boing marquee is over. I'd hoped to squeeze in posts about the pornographic rapture of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Theresa (don't you love the sweetly sadistic smile playing at the corner of the cherub's lips as he hovers, poised to plunge the golden spear of holy desire into Theresa's "very entrails," leaving her "all on fire with a great love of God," moaning with the "surpassing... sweetness of this excessive pain"?) and about the hallucinogenically beautiful sculptures in the Borghese Gallery, carved from seemingly infinite varieties of marble: snow-white Carrara, perfect for modeling the soft swell of a breast, the curve of a flank, a chin-dimple; busts of cardinals made of pink marble mottled with white blobs, giving their heads the appearance of being sculpted out of, er, headcheese; marble the color of blood sausage, marble the color of raw salmon, marble green as mint jelly, purple as eggplant, marble flickering with blue and gray veins, Pentelic marble, Parian marble, and let's not forget Phrygian marble, a psychedelic rock that the Victorian writer Henry Hull described as "one of the most curious, as well as handsome varieties of marble with which I am acquainted," a mineral delirium of "banded layers of silicious limestone of various shades of green, verging on blue or gray, alternating with others of a pure white...contorted, waved, or foliated in a remarkable manner..."
If I'd had time, I would have walked you through the Museum of Pathological Anatomy in Florence and the taxidermic Eden of the Museum of Zoology in Bologna, its wall-eyed creatures leaking stuffing, unloved by anyone except the occasional devotee of what the postmodern theorist Steve Baker calls "botched taxidermy." Did I mention the bizarre, Ed Gein-ian anatomical preparations of the 18th century naturalist Girolamo Segato, in the anatomy museum at the Ospedale Carregi in Florence? (A "maker" after Boing Boing's heart, he crafted a handsome table, inset with what looked like polished stones but were, in fact, human organs, preserved, cut into geometric shapes, and fitted into a colorful mosaic. When Segato proudly presented a local noble with the results of his handiwork, the squicked-out noble declined.) And then there's the incomparable museum of teratology and pathology, just a building away in the same hospital, with its mind-altering waxes of skin diseases and its wet specimens of congenital deformities, a Boschian garden of unearthly (yet all too human) things, unforgettable, almost indescribable. And then there's the Museum of Veterinary Pathology and the Ercole Lelli waxes in the Palazzo Poggi, both in Bologna, and...and...
Happily, I'll be blogging about all these things at Shovelware, so if my posts over the past two weeks have whetted your interest in the Pathological Sublime, do drop by. Blogging for Boing Boing has been thrilling, if exhausting. As I said in my opening post, the collective intelligence of Boing Boing's hive mind is among the smartest readerships anywhere. Of course, every wise crowd has at least one troll-tastic Master of His Own Domain, the all-knowing and tirelessly punctilious offspring of George Castanza and Felix Unger. Nonetheless, I'm immensely grateful to those of you who took the time to offer constructive critiques, suggest alternate angles of attack on my subjects, or point me toward stones left unturned in my research. To you I can only say: mille grazie---and then some.
IMAGES (from top to bottom): Sculpture of head with tumors, Museum of Teratological and Pathological Anatomy, Florence; Botched taxidermy, Museum of Zoology, Bologna; Wax model of hydrocephalic child, Museum of Teratological and Pathological Anatomy, Florence; Postcard from Reliquia di San Valentino, Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome.
Philadelphia's Franklin Institute is hosting the traveling exhibition Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy until September 7. To celebrate, Smithsonian Magazine put together a slide show of Galileo's gear, er "Instruments of Discovery." This is an Armillary Sphere. From Smithsonian:
At the center of this instrument sits a globe representing the earth. The bands around it pivot on a common center and illustrate the paths of the sun and moon, known planets and important stars. The device was invented sometime in the last few centuries before Christ, but the sphere became widely used in Europe by a thousand years ago. This armillary sphere dates to 1578.
Deep Sleep Therapy was a bizarre psychiatric treatment in which drugs were used to induce a coma in patients during which the doctors would administer a variety of other mind drugs and electric shocks. The idea was that they'd awaken cured of mental disorders, ranging from depression to schizophrenia. One of the, er, "pioneers" was Dr. William Sargant in the UK who promoted the "therapy" in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, Sargant is best known for his research on brainwashing. He's the author of Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brainwashing (1957), basically a how-to of techniques for reprogramming people. He also developed methods for implanting false memories, and was involved in the Project MKULTRA, the CIA's mind control and chemical interrogation research program. Delightful guy. The BBC Radio 4 recently broadcast a documentary about Sargant's Sleep Room treatments. The program is titled Revealing the Mind Minder General
I spotted this graffiti in San Francisco's Mission District. I've never seen vandalism declaring one's love for the police before (assuming that "SFPD" is referring to San Francisco Police Department).
Enter a phrase intro Translation Party and it will translate it into Japanese and back into English as many times as it takes to reach steady state. (Via Zoomdoggle)
The IDSA Materials and Process Selection Blog discovered a surprise inside a Pinnacle Video Transfer gadget: a weight seemingly added for the sole purpose of making the device heavier and less "cheap"-feeling:
This added material doesn't appear to serve any other purpose-the components don;t generate much heat and there's no noise to dampen. My conclusion is that while the components on the PCB (other than the connectors) where not all that tall, the connectors were. So this drove the final thickness of the product. I guess when you're spending $100 on a piece of video kit, you probably want it to feel somewhat solid in your hands. So this is a cheap way to add some "heft" to the product.
In this episode, Xeni asks Noel and Julian about fan-made romantic fiction (slashfic), the rumored connections between Eleanor and America's military defense technologies, and the neat books these guys publish. Boosh trufans may already know about the hardcover Mighty Book of Boosh, but an updated edition in paperback is coming in October.
BB caught up with the Boosh gang when they were touring the US to promote the stateside release of a three-season DVD set, also available on iTunes. Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" recently begain airing episodes in the US, too. Coming up this week, one last little video tidbit for Boosh fans: exclusive excerpts from their recent US stage performances. Stay tuned!
PREVIOUS VIDEO EPISODES: If you missed part 1 of our interview series with Noel and Julian (mostly about crazed fans) you'll find that here. Part 2 of the Boosh interview (mostly about music and crimping) is here.
(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)
Andrea James: Execution's everything. Six Million Dollar Man intros. Lame: Link Awesome: Link.
A fascinating and beautifully produced audio and photography feature on nytimes.com profiling women soldiers in Iraq.
Before 2001, ground combat was rare for American female soldiers, but Iraq and Afghanistan have changed that. Three women who were commended for their performance in combat reflect on their experiences.
Above, specialist Veronica Alfaro. Her story is riveting, as are the others presented here.
Thomas Murphy, 45, vice president of corporate brand marketing for Sprint, was killed on Friday when a boulder smashed through the windshield of his car, while he and his family were driving in Colorado.
The Colorado State Patrol said a boulder the size of a briefcase fell off a mountain and crashed through the windshield of the family's 2007 Chevy Tahoe. Murphy was knocked unconscious, and his 11-year-old son, Ethan, suffered moderate injuries. Murphy's wife, Jennifer, placed the Tahoe in neutral in hopes it would come to a stop while it was on a steep downhill trajectory, but authorities said it took more than a mile for her to bring the vehicle under control from the front passenger seat.
A report released today by the advocacy group Human Rights Watch says hundreds of gay men have been tortured and killed in Iraq in recent months, some by the same security forces and militiamen who cooperate with the US military. HRW urges the Iraqi government to take action against the increasing victimization.
"Iraq's leaders are supposed to defend all Iraqis, not abandon them to armed agents of hate," says Scott Long, director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Turning a blind eye to torture and murder threatens the rights and life of every Iraqi."
The report includes documentation of horrific and systematic torture, rape, and murder of victims. Some of it is really hard to read. One gay man who was targeted says,
They came to my parents' house a day later. I was out of the house when it happened. The neighbor's son has the same given name and so they kidnapped the wrong guy. When they found out they let the boy go, but they beat him severely-they wanted to kill him. They tortured him with electricity, they beat him with cables. He looked like a roast chicken when he came home.
In a BBC report, Iraqi gay rights campaigner Ali Hilli believes Iraq is the most dangerous place in the world for gay, lesbian, and transgendered people, and says that even during the Saddam years, there was greater sexual freedom for citizens: audio link.
"A man asks Slate's advice columnist, Prudence, what to do when his obese, diabetic sister-in-law asks him to get her some marijuana to ease her pain." Note that the sister-in-law doesn't live in a state that allows medical marijuana, and her husband would be very upset if he found out she was smoking pot.
Etch A Sketch master George Vlosich III created this homage to the King of Pop. He told me it took 150 hours. George hopes to get it signed by the performers at next month's Michael Jackson tribute in Vienna, and then he'll auction it off for charity. GV Etched In Time
CreatureCast is a collaborative blog by evolutionary biologist Casey Dunn and his students at Brown University. They've just created their first CreatureCast Web video and it is fantastic. In this first episode of the series, Sophia Tintori discusses the magic of iridescence in squid. Tintori, who studies marine invertebrates called Siphonophorae, did the animation and audio production for the video. Fantastic work -- I can't wait for the next episode! CreatureCast Episode 1(Thanks, Dr. Casey Dunn!)
Robbo sez, "Genius mathetician Alan Turing was arrested and convicted of 'gross indecency' because he was a homosexual. His brilliant career was destroyed, his service to his country was ignored and he was hounded throughout the rest of his life until his death by suicide. Time to clear his name and give him the honours so long overdue."
John Graham-Cumming, a leading British computer expert who launched the campaign, said: "I think that Alan Turing hasn't been recognised in Britain for his enormous contribution because he died in his forties and almost certainly because he was gay.
"It is atrocious that we don't recognise this man and the only way to do so is to apologise to him. This man was a national treasure and we hounded him to his death.
"One of the things for people in the computing world is that he was part of the war effort but we don't give him recognition in the same way as other heroes. To me, he was a hero in the second world war."
Since his death, plaques, buildings and statues have been raised in Turing's honour. The computing world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize has been called the Turing Award since 1966.
Wired's Evan Ratliff has a good feature up today on the difficulty of escaping your identity in the modern database nation, tracking Matthew Alan Sheppard, a middle-manager who started dipping into the company credit card to finance his penchant for electronic toys, and who then decided to fake his own death, wait for his (unknowing) wife to collect the insurance, and then bring her and his kid to Mexico and open a tequila factory.
What's most interesting about this is how little esoteric tech there is in catching underground desaparecidos -- tap a phone or two, look in their Google caches, wait for them to use their SSN or register their kids at school (how Ratliff got caught). The database nation turns out to be a most banal panopticon.
Two weeks before, when Sheppard sat down to formulate a plan to fake his death, he'd been armed only with Google and LexisNexis. Stumbling on an article about Steve Fossett, the explorer whose plane disappeared in September 2007 and whose remains were yet to be discovered, Sheppard concluded that even without a body, Monica would likely be able to obtain a legal determination of death and thereby collect his company-issued life insurance policy -- worth $1.3 million. He pored over recent reports of missing persons and faked deaths, looking for strategies to emulate and pitfalls to avoid.
That, in fact, was how he'd come up with the idea of leaving his BlackBerry conspicuously at a gas station on the Friday before his disappearance. It was a classic misdirection: Someone would grab the phone and start using it, Sheppard hoped, and any cop who didn't buy the drowning would trace the phone to some petty thief -- while Sheppard's real trail faded. (The ruse backfired, it seems, when the thief sent a few messages and then quit, convincing Sergeant Roberson that Sheppard was alive.)
Deep Sleep Therapy was a bizarre psychiatric treatment in which drugs were used to induce a coma in patients during which the doctors would administer a variety of other mind drugs and electric shocks. The idea was that they'd awaken cured of mental disorders, ranging from depression to schizophrenia. One of the, er, "pioneers" was 
Enter a phrase intro 
, also 
John Graham-Cumming, a leading British computer expert who launched the campaign, said: "I think that Alan Turing hasn't been recognised in Britain for his enormous contribution because he died in his forties and almost certainly because he was gay. 
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