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The Microscopic Structures of Dried Human Tears | Collage of Arts and Sciences

In 2010, photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher published a book of remarkable images that captured the honeybee in an entirely new light. By using powerful scanning electron microscopes, she magnified a bee’s microscopic structures by hundreds or even thousands of times in size, revealing startling, abstract forms that are far too small to see with the naked eye.

Now, as part of a new project called “Topography of Tears,” she’s using microscopes to give us an unexpected view of another familiar subject: dried human tears.

via The Microscopic Structures of Dried Human Tears | Collage of Arts and Sciences.

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Mona Lisa’s Smile: Casting Begins

the Mona Lisa was completed by Leonardo da Vinci in 1517
What made her smile?

When Leonardo was painting the Mona Lisa, art historians have offered numerous theories. One of them is that he was trying to capture expressive portraits that he saw in the faces of the people around him — faces that seem to be saying multiple things as they change from one emotion to the next. Personally I see a slight sly smirk, especially when viewed in my peripheral vision. When discussing this painting, my wife came up with a theory that I found fascinating.

12″: Meet the Beatles

Trivia: This 1964 release was not actually The Beatles’ American debut, but it was their first release on Capitol Records 1.

“Oh please, say to me
You’ll let me be your man
And please, say to me
You’ll let me hold your hand”

— I Want to Hold Your Hand, The Beatles

This early period of The Beatles was their pop phase, with dozens of up-tempo tracks that even non-Beatles fans recognize and have heard countless times on “Oldies” radio stations across the country in the back seat of their parent’s car. It wasn’t until the UK release of Help that the sound of The Beatles began to change; most notably 2 with Paul McCartney’s song Yesterday.

The following video contains a moment with a fan holding a sign with “THE BEATLES ARE GEAR” written on it, which was Mod slang for “very cool” or “in style”. (The sign is at the 24-25 second mark)

  1. The first Beatles record distributed in the United States was actually Introducing… The Beatles on Vee-Jay Records of Chicago. It was released ten days before Meet the Beatles. ↩
  2. In my opinion, at least ↩
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12″: Dreamboat Annie

The album cover art that would eventually destroy this band, but bring us BARRACUDA

My love is the evening breeze touching your skin
The gentle sweet singing of leaves in the wind

The whisper that calls, after you in the night
And kisses your ear in the early light

You don’t need to wonder, you’re doing fine
And my love, the pleasure’s mine

Let me go crazy on you
Crazy on You, Heart

See also — One of my favorite scenes in a film that this song always reminds me of; Lux Lisbon’s ((Kirstin Dundst)) secret visit to Trip Fontaine’s ((Josh Hartnett)) car for a frantic make-out session in Sofia Coppola’s film adaptation of The Virgin Suicides:

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Jews Aren’t Allowed to Use Telephones

Twenty years ago, Berlin artists created an amazingly pervasive memorial of the holocaust in the Bavarian Quarter that still continues today.

“Jews in Berlin may only buy food between four and five o’clock in the afternoon”

Today, Germany is filled with memorials and institutions dealing with aspects of the Holocaust, including Daniel Liebeskind’s Jewish Museum and Berlin’s central Holocaust memorial. But Stih and Schnock’s in-your-face signs about Nazi policies, integrated into the present-day life of a residential Berlin neighborhood, remain one of the most visceral and unsettling. I recently walked through the Bavarian Quarter—which is part of Berlin’s Schöneberg district—with the artists to discuss their work and its legacy.
— Ian Johnson, New York Review of Books