Expressive hands, in paint and shadow

This seems to be my weekend to discover artists exploring fascinating ways to connect with the natural world. After stumbling onto Tsuneaki Hiramatsu’s firefly photographs, I saw some of body-painter Guido Daniele’s astonishing “handimals” in my daughter’s latest issue of National Geographic for Kids, and had to seek out more:

You can see much more of Daniele’s amazing, er, handiwork (how could I resist? come on!) on his blog. And it reminds me of some very impressive hand-shadow work I’ve seen in videos such as this tourism ad for Calcutta:

I’ve heard it said that hands can be expressive, but I don’t think I’ve realized until now just how profoundly true that is.

A world lit by fireflies

Just a few from a fantastic series of time-lapse images by photographer Tsuneaki Hiramatsu, via io9:

More here, and on Hiramatsu’s blog.

More bioluminescent goodness here and here.

Space cats

I approve:

(via Neil deGrasse Tyson)

“The Bark Side”

Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely. I had a ton of post ideas all lined up — then along comes this video, which just has to go up first:

Check out little Doggie Chewbacca and little Doggie Ewok. I’m melting.

(via Jalopnik)

Everything is better with cats

Oh, excellent! AbeBooks identifies a pressing problem, and a solution:

Here at AbeBooks Headquarters, we occasionally step away from our bubbling beakers to read books. And we’ve all noticed a disturbing trend throughout classic literature.

Many of the so-called “classics” are entirely devoid of cats. I know.

Cats and books go together like bees and honey. So we took it upon ourselves to properly “Catify” some of the classics. We bring you, the joy of Kitty Lit. Cats on classic covers!

A couple of gems:

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Meow

Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight domestic shorthair who – from the home he shares with his mother and sister – dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar lacks opposable thumbs, and can’t be a writer, because he is a cat.

And:

The Cat Hair in My Eye

Holden Catfield is a whiny, disillusioned youth barely out of kittenhood. As he roams New York City, he becomes increasingly despairing of the state of the world, and lacks faith and hope in the goodness of society. With any luck, neutering him will make him less moody. Or maybe a nice ball of string.

The rest here.

Want more? Check out The Kitten Covers as well, for more of this:

(Top image by Edward Gorey)

Wonderful world

Yes:

And a bonus hand-shadow interpretation:

(via Pharyngula)

Still vanishing

Oh, god:

[...] 56 exotic creatures — a fierce menagerie that included wolves, monkeys and 18 Bengal tigers, an endangered species whose numbers total less than 3,000 in the wild — [...] had fled their cages on a 73-acre private reserve. Friends described the couple who ran it as animal lovers, but they also had a history of run-ins with the authorities.

By late Wednesday, a day after the hunt began, the authorities in this central Ohio city of 25,000 said they had killed or captured all but one of the animals, a monkey. It had not been seen all day, and officials believed that it might have been killed by one of the other animals, said Tom Stalf, assistant director of operations at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium.

The creatures had been freed on the reserve, a few miles west of downtown Zanesville, after one of the owners apparently cut open their wire cages or opened the doors and then fatally shot himself, the authorities said.

An attempt was made to tranquilize one of the tigers, but ultimately all eighteen were shot and killed.

I understand the authorities putting public safety first, but the deaths of so many innocent, frightened, and in many cases endangered animals are still a tragedy.

As I’ve written before (and as the article points out), there are only three thousand tigers left in the wild — with just a thousand breeding females — and their situation is no less dire today. Click here to help.

Perspective

Sometimes the universe decides we need a little deflating:

(via The Dish)

Miscellany

Here are a few items I haven’t had time to write about, but are still, I think, worth your attention. I may revisit and more fully discuss some of these in the future, but there’s no reason not to share them now.

James McWilliams makes the case against eating meat. And Mark Bittman, questioning the line we draw between “pet” and “animal,” calls attention to our continuing cruel treatment of farm animals. (He writes a must-read follow-up here.)

Maria Bustillos discusses “Wikipedia And The Death Of The Expert.” Interesting to revisit this piece after having finished Robert Sawyer’s excellent WWW Trilogy, which projects a breathtaking and optimistic vision of the benefits of our online interconnectedness (and the emergence of a benevolent online AI). But it’s also interesting to consider this “democracy of opinions,” “we are all experts” mindset in the light of a recent talk by Timothy Ferris at last weekend’s World Science Festival. Ferris said that while science and democracy have flourished together (as he wrote in The Science of Liberty) the real test of democratic culture today is whether such a diversity of voices can produce the quick, decisive actions needed to respond to climate change. The Internet broadens our landscape of data and opinions — but is it slowing down our power to choose among these options, to act to save ourselves?

Why libraries matter: because every damn kid matters. And hey, every prisoner matters too.

On the education front: Diane Ravitch, former Assistant Secretary of Education and author of The Death and Life of the Great American School System, speaks out against standardized testing. David Bornstein explores a better way to teach math. And while the US faces a crisis in civics education, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor reminds us that learning about government can be fun: check out her brainchild, the nonprofit gaming site icivics.org. (My daughter’s favorites: “Executive Command” and “Argument Wars.”)

A must-read piece by Linda Holmes on how we should deal with the fact that, no matter how much we individually read and watch and listen and consume what culture has to offer, we’re going to miss almost everything.

Edward Lerner rails against the media for celebrating the end of the space shuttle flights and basking in NASA’s old glories, rather than getting the public excited about the need for a continuing, active, and ambitious space program.

Michael Boylan asks: “Are There Natural Human Rights?”

Jonathan Franzen suggests that technology makes us more self-directed, while love makes us other-directed. Well worth reading. And in conjunction, read David Brooks’ op-ed, “It’s Not About You.” Perhaps they overstate the case in some areas, and there’s some thoughtful pushback in the comments, but these are still, I think, wise pieces.

Animals made us human

Animals Make Us Human is the title of Temple Grandin’s wonderful book on how animals think, feel, and perceive, and how humans can provide the best possible life for the ones in our care. Not quite on the same topic, RichardDawkins.net links to an article about an interesting anthropological speculation:

What explains this yen to have animals in our lives?

An anthropologist named Pat Shipman believes she’s found the answer: Animals make us human. She means this not in a metaphorical way — that animals teach us about loyalty or nurturing or the fragility of life or anything like that — but that the unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man.