Friday 5: Count All the Bees in the Hive

Which of the Winnie-the-Pooh characters do you most relate to?

Rabbit, I suppose? I like to read, I can be bossy, and I find real-life Tiggers to be very trying.





Which of the Winnie-the-Pooh characters has qualities you’d find most attractive in a romantic partner?

My own partner is very much a Piglet, if that's any indication!


In what way have you “wandered much further” today than you should?

I'm only answering this in the morning, so the day has hardly begun, really. I'll admit to sleeping in a little, but only a little.


Of Winnie-the-Pooh stories you can remember (from the books, Disney cartoons, or other sources), which is your favorite?

To be honest, I don't remember much from Winnie-the-Pooh. I know I liked the Disney adaptation of "Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day" when I was younger. I was also quite enamored with the word "blustery" and immediately set about using it in real life.

I also like the Russian animated adaptations. The art is so charming! The crayon backgrounds look just like a child's drawing, which I think is very appropriate for Winnie-the-Pooh. Plus, this version of Piglet is absolutely adorable.

There are only three, but they're all freely available on YouTube. Here is the first Винни Пух adaptation: В которой мы знакомимся с Винни-Пухом и несколькими подозрительными пчелами. (In which we meet Winnie the Pooh and a few suspicious bees.)





Which quote from the Winnie-the-Pooh stories would be good for the epigraph in the book about your life?

"I've got a sort of idea, but I don't suppose it's a very good one."

What I Read: Native Son

This is another off of my TIME Top 100 / Classics Club list. Just four left after this one! 2017 will be the year I finish this long-standing project.

Image courtesy HarperCollins

Woof, y'all. I have really complicated feelings about this book. Technically, I DNF'd it: after getting swept up in the beginning and getting to know Bigger, about halfway through the book I found myself putting off reading it.

Why? That was the important question. The quality of Wright's writing hadn't changed. And the story was some gripping Crime and Punishment "will he make it?" nail-bitery. But there was a resistance in my gut and I kept on noticing all of the other books I have on my current reading list: The Origins of Totalitarianism, Kris, some books I had grabbed from a friend's "give away" pile, more free books I had received through my local study circle . . .  why didn't I want to finish this one?

Studies show that spoilers actually increase your enjoyment of a story. I still avoid deliberately spoiling timely or serious things, because just because "studies show" something doesn't mean I need to be deliberate asshole to other people, especially with something as trivial as spoilers. But I will absolutely use that as an excuse to look up a plot summary on Wikipedia when I'm not really feeling a book to see if I want to continue.

In this case, I decided not to. I don't think it's my place, as a white reader, to bring up questions about stereotypes in the novel -- James Baldwin did that already, in "Many Thousands Gone." But I absolutely can decide that I'm not in the mood to read stories where brutality against women is an offhand plot point to further a male character's redemption arc (in as much as Bigger ever redeems himself; YMMV on that one). Justice for Bessie!

Maybe another version of me, at another point in time, can finish Native Son. But right now it's not for me.

Sciart Monday: Tweetstorm!

If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know we're in the middle of the third annual #sciart Tweetstorm.

The idea is simple: sciart artists (sciartists?) flood Twitter with their sciart and with others ("Share 3, Tweet 5" being the official/unofficial rule). It's a great chance to promote your own stuff and to find new artists as well. Here are some new favorites of mine, with just (sadly) one day left to go.

1. Entomological playing cards & brain cell cartoons from Dr. Immy Smith

So Smith actually put together a KS sometime last year? Two years ago? to fund the design and printing of the Cryptic deck which is better explained through pictures than with words:

Cryptic Cards from DrImmySmithArt

I couldn't really afford to back the KS project at the time but now that I have more room in my budget and they're available on Etsy, I just might splurge. I like to collect card decks, and the more unusual, the better!


2. The cover of this issue of Toxicology Research, put out by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Here's a closeup on the illustration by Junyi Zhang:

And an excerpt from the artist's statement:

After I read the paper, I started to think about the concept of ZIP8 portrayed as a dragon, chasing and picking up the fireballs – that is, zinc and other metal ions – and breathing the fireballs towards earth, just like the process of active metal ion transport. The two figures carrying fireballs represent the transcription factors MTF1 and NF-kappaB.

3. This isometric interpretation of pi by Jason H. Moore, PhD, is relevant to my interests.

I appreciate that squares of the same value are the same color as well as the same size. Incidentally, the colors and the right angles remind me a lot of bismuth:

Image courtesy Heinrich Pniok

4. And finally, this year's Tweetstorm coincides with the brand new home of Symbiartic, the sciart blog from Scientific American that now has its own stand-alone web presence. Give them a follow in your RSS feed or on Twitter (or both!), won't you?

Friday 5 on Saturday: Something's Astir

What did you last use a spatula for?

Nothing.

One of my Swedish friends here was an exchange student in the US when he was younger, and somehow the question of kitchen implements came up often. It turned out that his host family didn't really know what to call anything, either, so any unknown kitchen implement was just immediately labeled "spatula."


What did you last use your can opener for?

We don't even have a can opener!


What did you last pick up with a pair of tongs?

I don't think we even have tongs? So probably a baked good at the store or Pressbyran.


What did you last use a ladle for?

Chili, I think.


What did you last stir with a wooden spoon?

Some boiling pasta, to get it to settle down a little.

Newly Listed: Remember the 90s? Comp Sci Earrings

What's wrong with a little harmless 90s nostalgia? Sure, "Remember the 90s?" has become a running gag on the Internet, but I don't care. The whole nation went in for retrospective nostalgia with Happy Days in the 70s, and then again with That 70s Show in the 90s, and no one was cynical about it then.

Let's be real, the only thing keeping us from reliving cultural nostalgia en masse via another TV show is that thanks to technology, we can all relive our favorite bits of the 90s whenever we like. For me, that's Oasis, The Presidents of the USA, and these rad marble art earrings, another installment in my cybertwee series.

Blue, purple, and silver cybertwee earrings by Kokoba

The purple accent beads are made from optical fibers, the backbone of high-speed Internet connections.

I could totally see Angelina Jolie sporting these in Hackers, couldn't you?

This is just one of a couple of pairs of computer science earrings featuring fiber optic beads I have in the queue. You can browse the entire collection of computer science inspired jewelry, including pieces in the cybertwee aesthetic as well as items inspired by circuit diagrams, in the Computer Science section of my Etsy shop. Blog readers can use the code BLOGGETTE for 15% off!

Friday 5: Rest

When did you last need a few days of complete rest and nothing else?

I feel like that every day, to be honest. I had a really gnarly chest cold for most of February that kept me relatively housebound. I'm better now, but the first two weeks were unpleasant, to say the least.



How do you keep yourself occupied when you have to be in bed all day and night?

Music; reading; reviewing vocabulary on a couple of language-learning apps I use; sleeping.



Who do you most want to hear from when you have to withdraw to your bed for a few days of rest?

It depends. Whenever I have to go into self-imposed quarantine, it means I have a lot of time to just think; often, I'll remember a story or a question I had for someone in particular. But usually I can just send them a message on Gchat or Facebook, so I don't have to make immediate plans to see them when I'm feeling better.



What adverse effects have you experienced while staying in bed for a few days?

I don't like the deconditioning and loss of stamina/energy I notice when I feel better enough to go running again.



When you first notice a few symptoms, are you more likely to shut everything down right away, or try to power through until you don’t have a choice anymore?

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." I try to take it as easy as possible right from the beginning, including lots of garlic, zinc, and lemon tea.

#TBT: Pi and Golden Ratio Multistrand Bracelet

This is one of my newer TBT posts. I made it in 2011, and I'm not entirely sure why I never listed it. I loved it then, and I still love it now. (Maybe I was being greedy and keeping it to myself?)

Pi and Golden Ratio bracelet from Kokoba

This multistrand bracelet features the digits of pi and the Golden Ratio in blue lace agate and aventurine, with adorable faceted mookaite briolettes acting as spacers in between digits.

I love the hell out of those briolettes. They are just the cutest thing, and perfect for bracelets and earrings! 

The copper has a lovely patina by now, but you could also brighten it up with a quick run through a polishing cloth.