I am impressed. VERY impressed.
However, if I decided to make one of these, I would probably design the thing to size with Adobe InDesign and have a 2′ x 6′ print made on lacquer-safe poster paper. That way, if I screwed up in some way (which I probably would), I could easily have the thing reprinted and start over. Also: I wouldn’t have to spend 100 hours doing detailed paper cutting.
Smiles are best when you’re not expecting them, and sometimes you accidentally find a smile in the most unlikely of places.
I feel like I’m channeling Delerium* right now: Isn’t there a word for this sort of thing? For seeing a smile in a garbage can and some dishes on the counter, or for seeing a rabbit in a cloud, or for seeing shapes in tea dregs at the bottom of a cup?
It’s like found art, but different. A found smile?
*referring to a character from The Sandman
Continuing yesterday’s topic of eyes and genetics.
My maternal grandfather was red-green colorblind, as was his brother. I don’t know if either of his parents were colorblind, but since the gene expresses itself only on the X chromosome* and is therefore only inheritable to men via their mothers, my great-grandmother was a carrier of the gene if not colorblind herself. If she were only a carrier, each of her boys had a 50% chance of inheriting the gene.
Genetic probability is like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in my family: absurd, but not impossible. My grandfather had nine daughters and my great-uncle had four daughters.
So all of my aunts and their first cousins inherited a color-deficient X chromosome from their fathers. At least two of my male first cousins are colorblind, and who knows how many of us females are carrying the gene since none of us have children yet. But it turns out that my great-uncle’s wife was also a carrier of the gene—and one of her four daughters is colorblind (0.5% incidence rate in women). Both of her sons are colorblind.
Another thing I find very interesting in my family is the statistically high number of colorblind men whom my aunts have married. If only 5-8% of men in the general population are colorblind, it’s absurd, but not impossible, that a third of my married-into-the-family uncles are colorblind. (Maybe it has something to do with a genetically predisposed attraction to men who wear mismatched socks.)
I wonder if there’s a correlation between color blindness and eye color? It seems like there should be some sort of science already done on that sort of thing. I’m guessing not, since eye color is determined by a completely different set of genes. Wouldn’t it’s be cool, though, if people who were colorblind had, ironically, one green eye and one red eye? Yes, I’m also fascinated by heterochromia (each eye a different color: think David Bowie), though that doesn’t run in the family. Well, technically my hazel eyes are an example of central heterochromia (two different colors in the same iris) but that’s just not as cool. (Well, I do have a trick lazy eye that’s kind of cool. I can control it and easily weird out Ben anytime I please. Heh heh.)
So what have I learned from all of this? That I am easily fascinated.
Semi-related: At the next family reunion, I want to take close-up photos of everyone’s eyes (blood-related and not), then ask people to guess whose eyes they all are. It’ll be interesting to see how similar (or different?) they all look.
*You can learn more about the details and probability of inheritance from Causes and Incidences of Colorblindness
Two of my teenage cousins are learning about genetics in school, which led to a discussion on the popular-in-my-extended-family topic of color blindness. I blogged before about the hazel eye color genetics on my mom’s side but I don’t think I’ve really touched on my family’s tendency toward being colorblind. Not surprisingly, the science of it all fascinates me.*
I remembered coming across the Vischeck website a few years ago and experiencing their algorithmic simulation of what it’s like to be color blind. There are a few different types of color blindness, but the majority of color blind people have a red-green deficiency. I didn’t realize that there was also a rare blue-yellow deficiency, but that made for an interesting triple-punch comparison of colors using this photo of colored Tsuga transparent pitchers.
Another neat feature of the Vischeck website that I didn’t remember was the capability to convert a whole web page into colorblind simulation. I found this pitcher picture on a ColourLovers.com web page along with a lot of other colorful kitchen-related photos, and I think my simulations were definitely worth the time they took to load. Here are shortcuts to the rendered pages so you don’t have to wait: [edit: Vischeck won't let me link directly to the rendered pages. You'll have to plug in the article URL directly here.]
Original with full color spectrum: Cooking Inspiration: The Colorful Kitchen
Deuteranope and Protanope, as simulated with two different forms of red-green colorblind
Tritanope, as simulated with the rare form of yellow-blue colorblindness (that turns everything pink!)
Cool, huh? Though I am not a fan of the sickly gold-green color that those bright red spatulas turn into with red-green color deficiencies. I love having red accents in my kitchen, so if you come to my house and are colorblind, let me know ahead of time and I’ll direct you straight to the living room.
The Geek Test as seen by someone who is red-green colorblind took me a little by surprise… it changed the lime on black color scheme to amber on black—its alter-ego from the olden days! Crazy. As in, crazy cool. I wonder if the creators of amber on black terminals were colorblind and originally thought that they were just going with the flow.
I have more to say on the color blind people in my family, but that will have wait until tomorrow. My perception of color is draining out of my sinuses and I need to go to bed. So go play with that awesome algorithm until then!
*I tried being a biology major during College 1.0, but it didn’t work out, so my interest in scientific research is mostly satisfied by watching cable TV programming and living vicariously through my sister the nerdoscientist.
While Marianne was here, I was browsing the internet (I know, right?) and bumped into a Norwegian hip/clever/funny t-shirt company called Probat… and promptly fell in love. It probably had something to do with the geeky Norwegian grammar t-shirt Marianne proudly showed off*. Grammar nerds in every language, people! I love it!
The important thing to note is that one of her brothers gave her the t-shirt… I think a geeky/nerdy products are even better when received as a gift.
Another Probat design I thought you (my priceless readers) might particularly enjoy is this one:
This fine mustard-yellow pillow cover translates to “Never trust a man without a mustache” and features an image of Tom Selleck. Hot! Though I’m still trying to figure out why the topic of mustaches is so popular right now. And whether “moustache” is simply the Canadian/British spelling or whether it specifically refers to a waxed, brushed and mighty fine handlebar mustache**.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like you can buy and ship any of Probat’s products from their main website to the US. There is a sister site called Norwegian Tees that has a small selection of designs that can be shipped here, but they’re fairly expensive for t-shirts—$29 plus $9.99 shipping. This one’s on my wish list, though: the Ostehøvel t-shirt. I feel that I, too, could be that sexy when wearing it. Norwegians invented the cheese slicer, you know.
*There are two words for “when” in Norwegian, you see. One is mostly past tense and means “that one time” while the other is more present/future/repeat occurrences. People mix them up all the time. This shirt clears it all up on a pleasant Kelly green background!
**My dad had a mighty fine handlebar mustache for a little while when I was a young teen—yes, because he’s just that awesome.
I’m almost two years late to the punch, but I can’t believe I missed this one. It’s a real article! Here it is on the Washington Post.
I pillaged my bookmarked links to find a bloggable topic, clicking first on “Axixa, a hygenic way of peeing on the walls.”
It’s weird and fascinating and I tell you what: I would have really appreciated hygienic public wall-urinals being around during that scorching summer I spent in central Spain. Holy hell, it smelled like roasted piss. My nose still curls as I think of passing the popular wall where men had no problem peeing in broad daylight.
Of course, if you’re a woman, you’ll need an adapter to more efficiently use a hygienic wall pee hole. Enter the “female urination device,” aka FUD, which sounds kinky but is very practical if you are in the wilderness or faced with a skeevy-looking toilet at a bar or LAN gaming center. There are a surprising number of FUD models available in either disposable cardboard or reusable (and washable) materials. I haven’t tried one myself, but I will admit to being FUD-curious.
(I’m technically posting this after midnight, but since I was having internet connection issues (THE HORROR) I’m fudging the time so it will still show up as a post for Monday. It’s still Monday to me because I’m still awake!)
My biggest achievement today, if you can call it that, was to write this little piece of actionscript code. Okay, okay, I did it in a class. But I keep refreshing it to watch the circles appear in random places. And… Can’t… stop…
Okay, after much frustration, I can’t seem to embed the file here the way I want it. So here it is, very tiny. You can also see it full-screen with faster refresh action.
So there I was, overwhelmed with a huge school workload and looming finals, when I finally watched a series of videos on YouTube recommended by my friend and famous Chicago comedian Bryan Bowden. I did not realize how much joy and tearful hilarity The Maria Bamford Show would bring me. It was exactly what I needed.
And I find myself watching the 5-minute episodes over and over again, laughing at the same things even more than before. As Bryan nudged his blog readers, so shall I nudge you: Here’s episode one to get you started.
I have more to say on Comedy, in general, but I’m going to save it for another post when I’m feeling a little more coherent.
Fin.
This was one of the last projects for my summer drawing class. It’s charcoal on 18×24 drawing paper.
In retrospect, I would have chosen a less rigid form for the “abstract” and more free-form assignment… those angles were tough. I had to print out a protractor because the one I used last in high school was nowhere to be found. And I wasn’t about to go buy a protractor, because who uses a protractor in real life?!?
Oh, well, drafters and artists and wannabe artists who need to draw angles, I guess.
