like to bounce them on our knee
want to stay and grow up with us
baby stew will surely fill us
just to see my holly home
just to see my holly home
we will live just us alone
safely in our holly home
pound them down and pound them out
older ladies scream and shout
hide their bodies in the reeds
shallow bed of soil and leaves
out will grow ideas and laughter
up will rise our earthly daughter
Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy)
from the album, Ease Down the Road
Surgeons at Vienna's General Hospital carried out the 14-hour operation on a 42-year-old patient on Saturday. The patient had a malignant tumour in his mouth that meant his tongue had to be removed. . . During the surgery, the nerves of the donor tongue were hooked up to the nerves stumps left in the recipient's mouth. This will hopefully allow the nerves to work properly leading to "total functional restoration", they say.
Rolf Ewers, who lead the team, says he hopes that with his new tongue the patient should be able to talk and eat as normal. However, his sense of taste is unlikely to be restored.
A poor result, really. Some distance to go before they've got the know-how to save Hitler's brain. Perhaps they should call Dr. White.
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One of the more interesting spam messages received recently: glass dildos. High durability, dishwasher safe, medical grade materials, hypoallergenic- and some of them look like they'd make good weapons, to boot.
The blood of Christ was supposed to be a universal medicine, capable, at its extremity, of curing even death. The medieval mind conceived this divine suspension in opposition to the lowly blood, the lowly body, of the common human being. Christ was divine, his flesh pure, his blood a panacea- while people were sinful, polluted, excremental. No wonder people sought to bleed themselves as a method of self-improvement. The less of that vile sap in you, the better.
This disrespectful attitude to the flesh was actually an amelioration. The Jews of old found in their bodies a source of endless disgust, and so conceived an abstract, bodiless, and unknowable deity. Job's flesh is punished to test his faith, and the book of Leviticus delineates the body's uncleanliness (and the unclean nature of much of the physical world).
Life in the midst of Old Testament Judaism was a painful and mostly undignified journey. Few had wealth or property- thus, most faced much hard labor- and none had access to reliable medical practices. Geography also argued against the attainment of much comfort. It's no surprise, then, that the Jewish God is a reaction to and a reflection of this harshness of life. He is wrathful, distant, and quick to hand down strict laws separating right from wrong, clean from unclean. Yahweh is the negative image of man, defined mostly by what he is not- He is not squalor, suffering, or filth. How could he be? He has no body.
The Greeks and Romans, in contrast, conceived gods which were extensions of human qualities. They were incarnate in the extreme. They made love, participated in wars, played favorites, were jealous, smitten, besotted- with each other and with mortals. Flawed, gullible, mirthful, lustful, and slothful, the Greek and Roman gods moved heaven an earth with their bodies- immortal, yet fully participant in life.
The Greeks believed in something they called "divine infatuation" (átê), which explained the extremes of human behavior.
But when something undefined and powerful shakes mind and fiber and trembles the cage of our bones, when the person who only a moment before was dull and agnostic is suddenly rocked by laughter and homicidal frenzy, or by the pangs of love, or by the hallucination of form, or finds his face streaming with tears, then the Greek realizes he is not alone. Somebody else stands beside him, and that somebody is a god.
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
This mingling of mortal clay with divinity is still with us, but is certainly not explained in the same manner. We have lost something irrevocably with the rise of the current monotheism- a frisson, a safety valve, a kind of dignity.
Would that we could believe, as the Romans did, that nothing human is shameful.
Even though facing some stiff competition, this must rank as one of the most interesting entries in either judicial or papal history:
In 897 AD, Pope Stephen VI had his dead predecessor disinterred and put on trial.
The unlucky former Pope (Formosus), though dead for nine months, was dressed in full pontifical vestments, placed in a chair, and read a list of his wrongs. The unhinged Stephen ranted at the corpse, frightening all present with the intensity of his rage.
The corpse was found guilty. The three fingers used for papal blessings were hacked off, and the body thrown into a common grave. From whence, a mob promptly dug it up- angered by reports of the cadaver's misconduct- and it was thrown in the Tiber.
Her gray hair had been shaved down to stubble--I'd say she was in her early sixties--and she'd been decapitated, but none of this detracted from her beauty. She had a powerful dignity, and it seemed wrong for her to be getting a facelift. She didn't need one, and I could tell she was the sort who would never have entertained the idea while alive.
. . . permeated yesterday's violent, cruel, immoderate society. From birth to death, the sight and smell of blood were part of the human and social pilgrimage of each and all. Gallows and scaffolds, executioners' carts smoking along the streets (the executioner's assistant fed the fire pan on which the pincers were kept red-hot), heads impaled on stakes or nailed to doors, corpses left to rot and putrefy in the tower cages, cadavers hung on windows with hooks, "quarters" abandoned at crossroads. . .
Barbers, phlebotomists, pork butchers, midwives, brothers hospitalers, opened, closed, cauterized veins with appalling indifference. People had themselves bled in order to effect a change in themselves, to purify themselves ritually at the close of a seasonal cycle- seeking to cleanse the humors, with an astrologic passivity that we today, obsessive consumers that we are of doubtful, indeterminate chemical products, would scarcely have any right to deplore.
Clearly, phlebotomy entered into a cultural system, into a theory of the human being, in a logic of life that we have no more. . . The bygone culture of blood (knowledge of its virtues and secrets, of its qualities, integrated temperings, or conflictive distemperings) saw in bloodletting an evacuation universalis, a great, necessary purge or purification of the blood that is life, a renewal of the vital liquor.
In the early eighteenth century Matthew Buchinger [of Nuremberg] was one of the best-known performers in the world. He played more than a half dozen musical instruments, some of his own invention, and danced the hornpipe. He amazed audiences with his skills at conjuring. He was a marksman with the pistol and demonstrated trick shots at nine pins. He was a fine penman; he drew portraits, landscapes, and coats of arms, and displayed remarkable calligraphic skills.
Surely he could be considered one of the most versatile of all entertainers. His accomplishments seem even more impressive when we realize he never grew taller than twenty-nine inches.
That he displayed these (and many additional skills), though lacking feet, thighs, or [fore]arms, surely makes him one of the most remarkable men who ever lived.
Ricky Jay,
Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women
See Gallants, wonder and behold
This German, of imperfect Mold.
No Feet, no Leggs, no Thighs, no Hands,
Yet all that Arts can do commands.
First Thing he does, he makes a Pen,
Is that a Wonder! Well what then?
. . .
Fix'd in his Stumps, directs the Quill
With wondrous Gravity and Skill;
Upward, downward, backward, forward,
Eastward, Westward, Southward, Northward.
In Short to every Compass point,
Tho' shortened at the Elbow Joint.
. . .
No, she's not worthy, my poor muse,
I cannot say to wipe your Shooes;
But had you Shooes to wipe, I Swear
It shou'd be thine great BUCKINGER,
Great Trunk of Man be not asham'd,
That Nature has thy Body maim'd.
Poem on Mathew Buckinger, The greatest GERMAN living. 1726
It is hoped that the public may benefit from the practical information afforded by the above links. Accusations of gratuitous gore or schadenfreude must be accompanied by an official complaints form filled out in triplicate along with hair and skin samples.
Scientists from MIT and Harvard have succeeded in using nanotechnology to create a vascular system capable of supporting tissue growth. This is a major step toward growing whole organs.
We used living vessels as a guide to model factors such as the angle and size ratio between branching vessels.
But we optimised our design to improve it.
When in the UK, a stop by the Natural History Museum seems a given. Their new Darwin Centre, which opened last year, is the beginning of something special. It will be under construction for several years yet, but where else are you going to see specimens from Darwin's Beagle expedition? Well, any one of several places, actually.
The Hunterian Museum in London has a gigantic collection of anatomical specimens, but it's closed for refurbishment until February, 2005. The sister collection in Glasgow is still open.
If you're in America and won't be coming to Europe any time soon, don't despair. The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia is filled with the strange and beautiful. There, you may view the thorax of John Wilkes Booth and a collection of the brains of epileptics and murderers. They don't publish their calendar anymore, which is a shame, but there are plenty of things to marvel over in their online shop, including this book, published late last year.
Always adding to this cabinet of curiosities- please feel free to join in.
What a very strange man was Henry Wellcome. Born in Wisconsin in 1853, he acquired a certain morbidity at an early age.
Shortly after the family settled. . . there was an Indian uprising in the area. Over 2000 settlers were killed and the towns were transformed to small fortresses defended by volunteers and troops. The young Henry helped his uncle in caring for the wounded and he was also appointed captain to a group of children casting rifle bullets for the settlers. The uprising ended in an Indian defeat and the public hanging of 38 Sioux Indian chiefs. This event created in Wellcome a life-long awareness of the suffering of the dispossessed peoples in whom he saw the suffering of mankind.
He co-founded the Burroughs Wellcome pharmaceutical company, which brought him to London. The company became an empire, and Wellcome became one of the wealthiest men in Victorian Britain. He began piecing together one of the largest and oddest museum collections ever. Shrunken heads, Japanese sex toys, Napoleon's toothbrush, Elizabethan prosthetic limbs, surgical implements from various ages, talismans, masks, bits of tattooed skin, and so on. His collection was equal parts carnival sideshow and cabinet of curiosities.
Wellcome became a naturalized British citizen and was knighted. He was made an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (though he held no medical degree), and he became a bit of a recluse. Since his death in 1936, his collection has spread to the four corners of the earth. From now until November, however, the British Museum and the Wellcome Trust have brought a portion of the items together again. A unique and wonderful experience awaits those lucky enough to visit during this exhibition.
When he happened to suffer an issue of blood, either from his nose or from his mouth, he would pray the Lord that as much of it might issue as could in some way correspond to his blood, shed out of his love. The Lord being pleased to grant his prayer, one day it issued in such a great amount that he lost his sight, and could no longer see; at other times, it was as if he had fallen dead. Just so, we read of St. Lutgard, that, as her desire was for martyrdom, but God did not deign to grant her the grace thereof, he contented her with a great issue of blood from her mouth; so that, by reason of her great desire that he had seen in her to shed her blood, he had granted her that grace.
Thus it happened with Philip, to whom the Lord granted to shed, time and again, entire basins of it. And his last illness was nothing but blood.
For the Gnostics, the human body was a prison. The Gnostic hierarchy had an unknowable god at the top, who had both a physical and spiritual form, followed by his Aeons, which were personified aspects of the divine. One of these Aeons, Sophia (Wisdom), self-conceived and bore the first non-divine creature, Ialdabaoth, otherwise known as the Demiurge. Ialdabaoth went on to create lots of little helpers, known as Archontes, or Archons.
Together, these bestial creatures created the known universe, and the Gnostics heavily identify Ialdabaoth with the Jaweh of the Old Testament- which would make the Archons his angels. Man was created by the Demiurge and his Archons after they glimpsed the divine form of god. Man was made in the divine image, with a physical and a spiritual form, but being imperfect, the Demiurge and his cronies could only create like beings. People may be stamped from a divine mold, but they have been apportioned their fair share of the monstrous and shameful. Thus the sorry state of man- trapped between gutter and stars.
Welcome to the Gnostic universe- ruled by a spiteful Demiurge, who created heaven and earth and who delights in seeing that divine bit in human beings writhe in misery. The only way out- because they keep recycling your soul, you see- is to achieve Gnosis (knowledge), thus freeing your soul- which is the whole point of the religion.
The flesh is to be despised as the impure and alien creation of the Demiurge, and the spirit, closely associated with self, seeks to rejoin with its divine precursor. This separation of flesh and self is considered one of the most negative aspects of Gnosticism. The mind/body perceptual split has long been blamed on Descartes, but it's clear that people have been uncomfortable in their own skins for a great while longer.
Modern gnostics include people like literary critic Harold Bloom, who tends to find gnostic elements in the writing he likes. Certain organizations, such as the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, actively seek to stamp out lingering gnostic influences, which they find heretical. And so they are, though to call such views on heresy myopic is to be kind. They seem far from the 21st century and help to render Christianity a deeper and deeper irrelevancy to modern life. But perhaps they know their constituency.
Gnosticism is as old, or older than, most orthodox Christian belief. And yet the word Gnostikoi was almost unheard of when the religion was contemporary- They simply called themselves Christian. The implication is that to call oneself Christian between the 1st and 4th century AD was a nebulous act. The rites and behavior of most Christians practicing in the time closest to the life of Christ would seem no less bizarre to modern eyes than the above Gnostic beliefs. Religious history, like all others, is not written by the defeated. Christianity was re-branded- and did not cater to the Gnostic demographic.
The below has made the rounds elsewhere, but seems to fit here for reasons that should be obvious at about the 1.3% range. The information is pretty solid, having the following provenance: The Command Post and Asymmetrical Information
Microscopic analysis of WTC dust by Nicholas Petraco, BS, MS, DABC, FAAFS, FNYMS
at The New York Microscopic Society lecture held at AMNH 28 May 2003
trace asbestos (it became illegal to use during the construction of the WTC)
Other trace elements: aluminum, paint pigments, blood, hair, glass wool with resin, and prescription drugs were found.
NOTES:
Particles found were 1-4 micrometers in size. (In general, particles that are 5-8 microns are irritants, and those that are 104 microns are small enough to be airborne and ingested into the lungs.)
Fiberglass particles are smaller than asbestos and lodge deeper into lungs creating more serious long-term health hazards than asbestos like white lung disease which will become more evident 5, 10, 20 years from 11 Sep 2001.
The WTC was open for roughly 30 years. Would be interesting to know, post-dust mite, how much dead skin accumulates in buildings that size in that time- and what portion of the above 1.3% was made of such stuff.
