Illustration Friday: Twirl, a photo by Sultry on Flickr.

Years ago, there was no better Disneyland adventure than the Tilt-a-Whirl Teacups twirling and making me dizzy. These days, I'm happy to twirl a spoonful of cream or sweetener into my latte, mocha, green tea or espresso.

Messenger, a photo by Sultry on Flickr.
Multiple layers of images of dendrites, neurotransmitters, etc, tweaked and intensified in photoshop.

WHOA!!! Check this out!!
Thanks to Robert Krulwich who put this on his blog.

Hoarder
Originally uploaded by Sultry

Today was a tough day.
A friend and I did an intervention of sorts on a Long Term Friend. Several of us finally figured out that LTF had been less than truthful with us about her activities, physical condition and mental state. The friend had dropped in last weekend to discover that LTF was immobile, had neither electricity nor running water, and had innumerable bags of trash (or something) throughout her house.
At 8:30 am we called the only agency I knew of that might come out and do an assessment on LTF AND be able to get her to go someplace for observation.
With the help of that agency, two EMT crews, a Fire Department crew and the occupants of five (!) police cruisers, she was moved with (relative) dignity to the local major hospital for assessment.
As one of her family members said (when family stepped in), we may have saved a life today.

I will never look at personal grooming chores, emptying the trash, cooking, or household maintenance the same way.
Or asking for help when I'm overwhelmed.

Nasher Sculpture Museum Store Chess Set

This chess set was gorgeous. The pieces were simple, yet had rounded, weighted bottoms so that the pieces would easily fit into the scooped out places on the board.
I found more info:
From arango-design.com:
"The Wobble Chess set, designed by Adin Mümma, 2006, is made of beautiful walnut and maple hardwood. The pieces are rounded and weighted to fit the concave landscape of the board, giving a quiet action to the intense game."
Additional Information:
Design: Adin Mümma / 2006 / Canada
Materials: Walnut, Maple and Chrome Plated Zinc
Dimensions: 15" Length x 15" Width

This is an amazing book. It makes me think about food. It makes me sick. It makes me sad. It makes me mad. It makes me think twice before I eat. It helps.

ADS YOU DON'T SEE IN TEXAS

I don't think we have any positions like this in the Lone Star State.

Sunday Drive

IF we won the lottery (or the reverse economic downturn) AND ">this house in McKinney Texas was airlifted to New England, I could see myself living in it. OR enjoying the people who have been living in it. Built in Library and organ in the foyer? Good things.

Oh, and we saw a sign on a marquee that said:

If at first you don't succeed,

sky diving is probably not for you.

Bread mold and you (and me).

I have just discovered a huge vast field of evolutionary biology. It has its own language but is amazing. Life forms (animal AND plant AND fungal, bacterial and others I cannot pronounce are all related. Really. It's science. There's evidence. I feel less alone already.
But I needed to look up these words to read an article called Molecules as Documents of Evolutionary History.
semantides aka semantophoretic molecules
phylogeny
aufgehoben (constantly abolished and simultaneously preserved)
episemantic molecules (which really don't have good on-line definitions)
asemantic molecules (which also don't have good on-line definitions)

A Minor Disappointment

DH and I took a drive through downtown Dallas yesterday. I took some photos of buildings in the arts district which are under construction.

At the left is a rendering of the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts. It looks like the exterior is about 3/4 complete. There's also a huge building that looks like it is mostly stainless steel "blinds". I couldn't find out which purpose it will serve.

Then today I took a couple more of two paintings-in-progress. And then, just a minute ago, when I was trying to upload them and move them from the camera to a jump drive, I DELETED THEM.

Boo hoo.

Alien Knitting Slugs

From the Sunday New York Times Magazine: 2-15-2009.

(click to embiggen)

Birds do it! Bees do it!!

And I'm glad I'm not a slug trying to do it.

The sex education gurus and evolutionists and anti-evolutionists don't seem to have considered the costs and benefits ot teaching about the mating habits of slug.

Therealities of what happens might be better "protection" than condoms or The Pill. Instant abstinence!
If this is "intelligent design" my IQ points must be bogus.
Personally, I'm glad we evolved....

I got intrigued from reading Janet Lembke's book "Because the cat purrs" and was, frankly, confused and mystified by her description quoted from Lionel Adams of slugs' mating ritual:

When the pursuer overtakes the pursued, each touches with its tentacles the tentacles of the other... then begins a circular procession, each with its mouth at the other's tail, and this procession lasts from half an hour to two hours and a half. ... then, suddenly the slugs intertwine fiercely, and launch themselves into space,
heads downward, but suspended by a thick strand of mucus for the distance of
15-18 inches.

She waxes eloquent saying that this tangle of slime actually looks like an "upside-down two-stemmed cocktail glass of a glistening blue slightly paler than the Bombay Sapphire gin bottle."

The video on YouTube informs us that the male organ emerges from behind the slugs head. (And we thought Klingons, Vulcans and average aliens were odd! AND we get to hear the "plop" of the spent slug hitting the forest floor when the deed is finished. (the other slug eats its way up the mucus bungee cord and moves on.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Google helped me find Theresa McCracken's blog: McHumor wherein she contributes more shocking facts:

The male organ can get bigger than the slug's entire body.And weighs 1500 times more during mating season than during the rest of the year.

And if they run out of time before they finish, they gnaw off the male organ in order to separate. Unlike Lorena and John Bobbitt, there are apparently no hard feelings, jail time or even marital counseling.

The visual (courtesy of Rik Littlefield):
Garden Slugs Mating

In masterful understatement he explains:

Aside from bringing out a surprising beauty of these normally sort of "blah" animals, the mating process of slugs will shake your preconceptions (groan!) of how these things work.These slugs have an elaborate ritual involving much crawling around each other in circles, followed by twining together and hanging from a cord of slime, and culminated by flaring together of large genitalia that are extruded from underneath the mantle on one side of the body. The slugs of this species are hermaphroditic, but must exchange sperm in a symmetric act. Other species do things a bit differently, including some that even convert males to females by a process called "apophallation" -- biting off the
penis -- .

Truth IS stranger than fiction.

This sexy, slimey, sluggish detour has reminded me of one of the tenets of Montessori education. Follow the curiosity, and fill in the gaps. Trust that the student will find things to be interested in, and guide him or her to satisfy the interest innate in humans.

What are you interested in?