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Are you managed or monitored?
Shiny things collected by an easily distracted marine biologist. There will likely be fish, critters, science, other people's art, fannish stuffs (mostly of a science fictiony or cartoonish nature), teapots, things that make me laugh, and occasionally, kids.
senoritafish.livejournal.com
senoritafish.deviantart.com
biomarina.deviantart.com
senoritafish.gather.com
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neil-gaiman:
doodlethedayaway:
Listening to Neverwhere and doodling. So here’s my take on Door (making tea in Richard’s flat)… she doesn’t look anything like the voice actress. oops.
She doesn’t have to…
I’m gonna havee to dig this out and reread it… (Source: attemptinggoodart)
luciens-library:
The test about women in media is called “the Bechdel Test”. Alison Bechdel, who created the idea, writes comic books (or graphic novels or whatever) herself, and here is my advice to you. Go and find her graphic novel Fun Home. It is mind-blowing and will change everything you thought you knew about comics. She does a bunch of other comics work too, but hot DAMN Fun Home is good. If you like James Joyce or literature or autobiographical writing, go and read it. If you like none of those things, go and read it anyway. It’s a seriously powerful piece of work.
(via neil-gaiman)
Sky Whales
adamvanwinden:
Neil Gaiman’s February tale for Keep Moving had me at ‘Sky Whales’.
If you make art you should get involved. If you just like reading go and read the stories, they are very good.
More on the project here. http://keepmoving.blackberry.com/desktop/en/us/ambassador/neil-gaiman.html#Jan
I really wonder about my reading skills sometimes. I’ve been confused at whales in the art for this story. I just went back and looked at it again, and it turns out I totally missed the last paragraph. What can I say; I was waiting for the bus and it must have come right at that moment.
However, this is the reason I can read old favorites again and again. I always miss something or forget something - and there is always something new. I’ve had a number of people tell me they cannot read a book (or see a movie) more than once. I have a difficult time understanding that. (via neil-gaiman)
wnycradiolab:
pohnnyworld:
According to designer Elizabeth Perez, “The book’s spine is screen-printed with a matchbook striking paper surface, so the book itself can be burned.”
Not that you’d ever want to, of course.
Kinda brilliant.
Maybe after you’ve memorized it…
compendium-of-beasts:
The atropos, or life-consuming viper. (1801)
NYPL
Atropos was the name of Horatio’s Hornblower’s first command, which you might know if you were a weird girl like me and read books about the British navy in the Napoleonic Wars.
(via scientificillustration)
lunchbagart:
I helped my son with his book report diorama. The trolls Bert, Tom and William have been turned to stone by the rising sun. You can turn their campfire off and on, too.
paleoillustration:
From ”The big cats and their fossil relatives” written by Alan Turner and illustrated by Mauricio Antón.
“In this beautifully illustrated natural history that links extinct larger feline species with those still in existence, collaborators Alan Turner and Mauricio Anton weave together the evidence of modern feline behavior with that of the fossil record. Turner’s clear, insightful prose and Anton’s masterly illustrations combine to offer specialists and newcomers alike an accurate and accessible guide to the evolution of cats.” Amazon.com
Mmmm, looks like one to add to the wishlist! (via scientificillustration)
jtotheizzoe:
Nabokov on Kafka on Insects
Vladimir Nabokov, celebrated author of Lolita, and other novels, was not merely a writer. Not that being a writer is any sort of a “mere” thing, but go with me here. Nabokov was a professionally-trained entomologist, a lifelong student of insect biology.
He curated Harvard’s butterfly collection, contributing a great deal to the practice of lepidoptery and even getting parts of his work published in our day and age. Nabokov was a fan of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, the story of Gregor Samsa, who turned into a bug. That’s Nabokov’s teaching copy of Kafka’s book up there, scrawled with notes. Nabokov lectured on Kafka, and using his knowledge of insects he offered a theory as to what kind of bug Gregor may have become (not a cockroach as usually assumed):
Now what exactly is the “vermin” into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly transformed? It obviously belongs to the branch of “jointed leggers” (Arthropoda), to which insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong. If the “numerous little legs” mentioned in the beginning mean more than six legs, then Gregor would not be an insect from a zoological point of view. But I suggest that a man awakening on his back and finding he has as many as six legs vibrating in the air might feel that six was sufficient to be called numerous. We shall therefore assume that Gregor has six legs, that he is an insect.
Next question: what insect? Commentators say cockroach, which of course does not make sense. A cockroach is an insect that is flat in shape with large legs, and Gregor is anything but flat: he is convex on both sides, belly and back, and his legs are small. He approaches a cockroach in only one respect: his coloration is brown. That is all. Apart from this he has a tremendous convex belly divided into segments and a hard rounded back suggestive of wing cases. In beetles these cases conceal flimsy little wings that can be expanded and then may carry the beetle for miles and miles in a blundering flight … He is merely a big beetle.
Nabokov also offered this nice note to the Joes and Janes in the audience:
Curiously enough, Gregor the beetle never found out that he had wings under the hard covering of his back. (This is a very nice observation on my part to be treasured all your lives. Some Gregors, some Joes and Janes, do not know that they have wings.)
Nabokov isn’t the only entomologist who has studied Kafka’s work. Donna Bazzone of St. Michael’s College in Vermont wrote about the impossible biology of an insect the size of Gregor Samsa, based on the study of thousands of insect species:
None could be as big as the “new Gregor.” If the body with its exoskeleton were to scale up to human size, it would be so heavy that even appropriately sized legs and musculature could not support it. Such an insect could not move. Also, because insects do not have a respiratory system with tubes connecting to internal lungs that have large absorptive areas, a giant like Gregor the roach would not be able to get enough oxygen to survive. Furthermore, our circulatory systems are powered by a large muscular heart that sends blood to all cells in the body through an elaborate network of blood vessels. Insects lack such a sophisticated circulatory system, so if you scaled the body to human size, insect blood (containing oxygen and nutrients) wouldn’t be able to reach all cells.
I always knew something bugged me about that story.
Thanks to Open Culture for the Nabokov book link that sent me down this rabbit hole.
Heh. I love mixing real biology with my fiction. I’ve only done it with Inuyasha, though.
explore-blog:
The Complete Sherlock Holmes is now free on Kindle, with a new introduction by Robert Ryan. Should you download it? That’s elementary, my dear.
Even if you don’t have a Kindle you can download their software and read it on your computer. I do have one, but unfortunately it needs a new screen.
I used to have a lovely big leatherbound Complete Sherlock Holmes years ago (along with a Complete Annotated Shakespeare), but alas it has been misplaced. So this may do until I can replace it at some point.
Last time my book group met we had the whole books vs. screen discussion; and some people just cannot (or will not) read off a screen no matter what kind of screen it is, even if someone gave them the ereader. Be that as it may - it’s free.
I think some of this is also available in other formats at Project Gutenberg - but I’m not sure if it’s complete.
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