lornamatic

Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy book ain’t got nothin’ on this.

Those indeed are real bird parts, lovingly flattened and pasted down into books.

So an epidemiologist and a dendrochronologist walked into a bar…

OK, no they didn’t. There’s no punchline here. But Discover Magazine’s Megadeath in Mexico is a fascinating article about the great stuff that happens when different fields of science collide.

To be successful in science, you must focus in your field, to the exclusion of almost everything else. That’s a tragedy, since most of the biggest discoveries have been and will be made by the rare people who are able to cut across multiple disciplines.

This article details a researcher whose discoveries challenge the popular historical assumption that smallpox introduced by exploring Europeans was to blame for the devastation of indigenous American colonies during the 14th century. Instead, it looks a lot more like a hemorrhagic fever, and the dates of incidence line up exactly with years during which flooding was prevalent. Just about every 30 years or so, it’d get bad again.

Every 30 years. That’s pretty much the same timeline for the major influenza pandemics. Is it because of generational exposure and immunity as some have hypothesized? Or could it be just another totally normal part of the planet’s cyclical ecology? Don’t worry, I’ll save the climate change rant for another day.

But do read the article.

Last night I noticed something funny with my webpage stats. There was a new referrer, a site I hadn’t heard of before. So I loaded up the page.

It was a religious site, talking about the importance of giving thanks to God. They’d hotlinked to one of my photographs from the Evansville tornados. No polite notes asking whether they could use it, or whether they could use my bandwidth. And I’m all about the thanks to God, but sometimes you know, it’d be welcome to hear something like,

“Hey great photo! Thanks for paying for round-trip plane tickets to a disaster area, and for taking the time to tour and photograph the aftermath. In fact, thanks for taking care of ALL the details, like it’s really terrific how you picked up the cost for that Canon 20d, and the pretty piece of L glass that’s attached to it. It’s so thoughtful that you’ve traveled around the world and taken photo seminars and really learned how to use that camera, all so that I could just use your image, because it’s so perfectly appropriate for my post about GIVING THANKS.”

Now, I admit, it’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure I remember that God has some pretty specific opinions on that whole topic of taking things without asking. And I’m pretty sure that by allowing Photoshop to be created in the first place, God is basically giving tacit permission to edit your hotlinked pictures that appear without permission or THANKS on other people’s websites.

Especially the ones about giving thanks. I mean, we never even got to PLEASE, here.

I decided to write my own message of thanks. The picture used to read “THANK YOU FOR OUR LIVES” has now been changed:

I even bumped up the contrast, a little.

If you want, you can visit the site and create your own message of thanks. Be sure to tell them I said Hi.

You know that scene in the Wizard of Oz, where suddenly the world is in COLOR, and nothing will ever be the same again, not even after it goes back to black and white? Some day, I’ll write about what it was like, that day when the internet stopped being all text, and pictures started filtering through. That day, I found out there were flowers in Baghdad, of course there were, just like anywhere else in the world, and I sat at my desk and cried.

Over the past year, the same thing has happened for video, regular people taking video and uploading it. Regular people, like the ones who live in Lebanon, or Israel.

I’ve been looking for regular people’s video documentation of the conflict in the Middle East on Youtube. I’ve not found anything from Beiruit or Lebanon so far, but I suspect this will change fast.

For now, here is one person’s view from Haifa, Israel, where the air raid sirens have been blaring. War sucks.

1. Wallis paper is the best thing ever.

2. If you use Wallis paper, *do not* blend with your bare fingers. You can sand your fingertip off; trust me on this.

3. Get magical impasto effects by pushing pigment around using a brush dipped in water (do this only on paper that can support water, like Wallis; water will destroy vegetable fiber papers).

4. Get beautiful layered glazing and watercolor effects by mixing pastel dust in acrylic liquid matte medium and applying with a brush.

5. Clean up and sharpen dirty old stomps in an old electric pencil sharpener.

6. Get subtle color effects in white by rubbing your (clean) fingers or stomp on the pastels to pick up pigment, then place color on your surface by lightly tapping your fingertips on it.

7. Prevent your hands from cracking and drying out: hand lotion + a shop towel makes cheap wipes for quick cleanup.

8. Don’t blow pastel dust off your drawing unless you want to give yourself and everyone else lung cancer. To clear the dust, tap the side of your drawing against a hard surface (like the edge of a trash can).

9. Micaceous iron oxide as a ground (acrylic binder, painted on whatever surface you want) is the other best thing ever.

10. Latex gloves are nice to keep your hands clean. You can get them at the hardware store for around $4. The bad-ass shop gloves construction worker-themed box costs $1 more than the creepy medical supply-themed box, and may be worth it for when your friends come over and quietly yet suspiciously eye your pastels supplies.