A Biostatistician Uses Crochet to Visualize the Frightening Infection Rates of the Coronavirus

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health | December 9th, 2020

Chances are you’ve looked at more graphs this past year than you did over the pre­vi­ous decade — not just while work­ing at home, but while scrolling through cas­cades of often-trou­bling quan­ti­ta­tive infor­ma­tion dur­ing your “off” hours as well. This phe­nom­e­non has hard­ly been lim­it­ed to the Amer­i­cans who obsessed over the pre­dic­tions of and returns from their pres­i­den­tial elec­tion last month, an event turned prac­ti­cal­ly into a sideshow by the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic. Around the world, we’ve all want­ed to know: Where did the coro­n­avirus come from? What is it? Where is it going?

Apolo­gies to Paul Gau­guin, who did­n’t even live to see the Span­ish flu of 1918, a time when nobody could have imag­ined instan­ta­neous­ly and wide­ly shar­ing visu­al ren­der­ings of data about that dis­ease. The world of a cen­tu­ry ago may not have had dynam­ic ani­mat­ed maps and charts, updat­ed in real time, but it did have cro­chet. Whether or not it had then occurred to any­one as a viable medi­um for visu­al­iz­ing the spread of dis­ease, it can be con­vinc­ing today. This is demon­strat­ed by Nor­we­gian bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Kathrine Frey Frøs­lie, who in the video above shows us her cro­cheted rep­re­sen­ta­tions of var­i­ous “R num­bers.”

This now much-heard term, Frøs­lie’s explains, “denotes repro­duc­tion. If the R num­ber is one, this means that each infect­ed per­son will on aver­age infect one new per­son dur­ing the course of the dis­ease. If R equals two, each infect­ed per­son will infect two per­sons,” and so on. Her cro­cheted ver­sion of R=1, with a pop­u­la­tion of ten, is small and nar­row — it looks, in oth­er words, entire­ly man­age­able. Such a dis­ease “will always be always present, but the num­ber of infect­ed per­sons will be con­stant.” Her R=0.9, which steadi­ly nar­rows in a way that resem­bles an unfin­ished Christ­mas stock­ing, looks even less threat­en­ing.

Alas, “for the coro­n­avirus, the R is most­ly larg­er than one.” In cro­cheted form, even R=1.1 is pret­ty for­mi­da­ble; when she brings out her R=1.5, “it is evi­dent that we have a prob­lem. Even the cro­chet patch kind of crum­bles.” Then out comes R=2, which must have been quite a project: its ten orig­i­nal infec­tions bloom into 2,560 new cas­es, all rep­re­sent­ed in almost organ­i­cal­ly dense folds of yarn. As for R=2.5, when Frøs­lie even­tu­al­ly gets it hoist­ed onto her lap, you’ll have to see it to believe it. Through­out 2020, of course, many of our at-home hob­bies have grown to mon­strous pro­por­tions — even those tak­en up by med­ical sci­en­tists.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Sim­u­lat­ing an Epi­dem­ic: Using Data to Show How Dis­eases Like COVID-19 Spread

Every­thing You Need To Know About Virus­es: A Quick Visu­al Expla­na­tion of Virus­es in 9 Images

The His­to­ry of the Plague: Every Major Epi­dem­ic in an Ani­mat­ed Map

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

The Beau­ti­ful Math of Coral & Cro­chet

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Dr. Fauci’s Lecture from MIT’s Free Course on COVID-19: It’s Now Online

in Biology, Online Courses | November 16th, 2020

Back in Sep­tem­ber, we gave you a heads up on MIT’s free course on COVID-19. As we men­tioned, “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” runs from Sep­tem­ber 1, 2020 through Decem­ber 8, 2020. And it fea­tures a com­bi­na­tion of MIT fac­ul­ty and guest speak­ers, includ­ing Dr. Antho­ny Fau­ci, cov­er­ing the sci­ence of the pan­dem­ic. Since our orig­i­nal post, Dr. Fau­ci’s pre­sen­ta­tion, “Insights from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic,” has gone online. You can watch it above. Then find all of the oth­er lec­tures here.

MIT’s course has been added to the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our meta col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Leonardo da Vinci’s Elegant Studies of the Human Heart Were 500 Years Ahead of Their Time

in Art, Biology, Health, History | September 11th, 2020

Leonar­do da Vin­ci didn’t real­ly have hob­bies; he had pas­sion­ate, unpaid obses­sions that filled whole note­books with puz­zles sci­en­tists are still try­ing to solve. Many of the prob­lems to which he applied him­self were those none of his con­tem­po­raries under­stood, because he was the only per­son to have noticed them at all. The ama­teur anatomist was the first, for exam­ple, “to sketch tra­bec­u­lae,” notes Medievalists.net, “and their snowflake-like frac­tal pat­terns in the 16th cen­tu­ry.”

These geo­met­ric pat­terns of mus­cle fibers on the inner sur­face of the heart have remained a mys­tery for over 500 years since Leonardo’s anatom­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions, car­ried out first on pig and oxen hearts, then lat­er, in hasty dis­sec­tions in the win­ter cold, on human spec­i­mens. He spec­u­lat­ed they might have warmed the blood, but sci­en­tists have recent­ly found they enhance blood flow “just like the dim­ples on a golf ball reduce air resis­tance.”

Leonar­do may have been wide of the mark in his tra­bec­u­lae the­o­ry, not hav­ing access to genet­ic test­ing, AI, or MRI. But he was the first to describe coro­nary artery dis­ease, which would become one of the lead­ing caus­es of death 500 years lat­er. Many of his med­ical con­clu­sions have turned out to be start­ing­ly cor­rect, in fact. He detailed and ele­gant­ly sketched the heart’s anato­my from 1507 until his death in 1519, work­ing out the flow of the blood through the body.

As the Medlife Cri­sis video above explains, Leonardo’s stud­ies on the heart ele­gant­ly brought togeth­er his inter­ests in art, anato­my, and engi­neer­ing. Because of this mul­ti-dimen­sion­al approach, he was able to explain a fact about the heart’s oper­a­tion that even many car­di­ol­o­gists today get wrong, the move­ment of the aor­tic valve. In order to visu­al­ize the “flow dynam­ics” of the heart’s machin­ery, with­out imag­ing machin­ery of his own, he built a glass mod­el, and drew sev­er­al sketch­es of what he saw. “Incred­i­bly, it took 450 years to prove him right.”

The mind of this extra­or­di­nary fig­ure con­tin­ues to divulge its secrets, and schol­ars and doc­tors across mul­ti­ple fields con­tin­ue to engage with his work, in the pages, for exam­ple, of the Nether­lands Heart Jour­nal. His stud­ies on the heart par­tic­u­lar­ly show how his aston­ish­ing breadth of knowl­edge and skill para­dox­i­cal­ly made him such a focused, deter­mined, and cre­ative thinker.

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonar­do Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanti­cus, the Largest Exist­ing Col­lec­tion of His Draw­ings & Writ­ings

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Inven­tions Come to Life as Muse­um-Qual­i­ty, Work­able Mod­els: A Swing Bridge, Scythed Char­i­ot, Per­pet­u­al Motion Machine & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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MIT Presents a Free Course on the COVID-19 Pandemic, Featuring Anthony Fauci & Other Experts

in Biology, Current Affairs, Health, MIT, Online Courses | September 8th, 2020

Most of us use the terms “coro­n­avirus” and “COVID-19” to refer to the pan­dem­ic that has gone around the world this year. We do know, or can fig­ure out, that the for­mer term refers to a virus and the lat­ter to the dis­ease caused by that virus. But do we know the full name “severe acute res­pi­ra­to­ry syn­drome coro­n­avirus 2,” or “SARS-CoV­‑2” for short? We will if we take the online course “COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic,” which MIT is mak­ing avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic free online. We’ll also learn what makes both the virus and the dis­ease dif­fer­ent from oth­er virus­es and dis­eases, what we can do to avoid infec­tion, and how close we are to an effec­tive treat­ment.

All this is laid out in the course’s first lec­ture by Bruce Walk­er, direc­tor of the Ragon Insti­tute of Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, MIT and Har­vard. Walk­er intro­duces him­self by telling us how he grad­u­at­ed from med­ical school when HIV was at its height in Amer­i­ca, tim­ing that placed him well for a career focused on dead­ly viral dis­eases.

The course’s com­plete line­up of guest lec­tur­ers, all of them list­ed on its syl­labus, includes many oth­er high-pro­file fig­ures in the field of epi­demi­ol­o­gy, immunol­o­gy, vac­cine devel­op­ment, and relat­ed fields: Har­vard’s Michael Mina, Yale’s Akiko Iwasa­ki, the Broad Insti­tute’s Eric Lan­der, and — per­haps you’ve heard of him — the Nation­al Insti­tute of Aller­gy and Infec­tious Dis­eases’ Antho­ny Fau­ci (find his ses­sion below).

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” began last Tues­day, and its lec­tures, which you’ll find uploaded to this Youtube playlist, will con­tin­ue week­ly until Decem­ber 8th. Even if you have no back­ground in med­i­cine, biol­o­gy, or sci­ence of any kind, don’t be intim­i­dat­ed: as lead­ing pro­fes­sors Richard Young and Facun­do Batista empha­size, this course is meant as an intro­duc­to­ry overview.

And as Bruce Walk­er’s first lec­ture demon­strates, it’s not just open to the gen­er­al pub­lic but geared toward the under­stand­ing and con­cerns of the gen­er­al pub­lic as well. Tak­ing it may not reas­sure you that an end to the pan­dem­ic lies just around the cor­ner, but it will give you clear­er and more coher­ent ways to think about what’s going on. The virus and dis­ease involved are still incom­plete­ly under­stood, after all — but thanks to these and oth­er researchers around the world, get­ting bet­ter under­stood every day.

“COVID-19, SARS-CoV­‑2 and the Pan­dem­ic” will be added to our list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Cours­es on the Coro­n­avirus: What You Need to Know About the Emerg­ing Pan­dem­ic

Watch “Coro­n­avirus Out­break: What You Need to Know,” and the 24-Lec­ture Course “An Intro­duc­tion to Infec­tious Dis­eases,” Both Free from The Great Cours­es

Inter­ac­tive Web Site Tracks the Glob­al Spread of the Coro­n­avirus: Cre­at­ed and Sup­port­ed by Johns Hop­kins

Why Fight­ing the Coro­n­avirus Depends on You

Use Your Time in Iso­la­tion to Learn Every­thing You’ve Always Want­ed To: Free Online Cours­es, Audio Books, eBooks, Movies, Col­or­ing Books & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hear the Sound Of Endangered Birds Get Turned Into Electronic Music

in Biology, Current Affairs, Music, Nature, Travel | July 27th, 2020

Bird-watch­ing is hav­ing a moment, thanks to the pan­dem­ic.

As non-essen­tial work­ers adjust­ed to spend­ing more time at home, their ears adjust­ed to the increas­ing­ly non-for­eign sound of bird­song out­side their win­dows.

Those sweet tweets are no doubt large­ly respon­si­ble for the record break­ing turnout at this year’s Glob­al Big Day, the Cor­nell Lab of Ornithol­o­gy’s annu­al bird­ing event, held ear­li­er this spring.

50,000 par­tic­i­pants logged 2.1 mil­lion indi­vid­ual obser­va­tions, and 6,479 species.

Appar­ent­ly, there are even more birds in this world than there are sour­dough starters…

…though for the imme­di­ate future, civic-mind­ed bird­watch­ers will be con­fin­ing their obser­va­tions to the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty, as a mat­ter of pub­lic health.

We look for­ward to the day when bird enthu­si­asts resid­ing out­side of Belize, Mex­i­co, or Guatemala can again trav­el to the Yucatán Penin­su­la in hopes of a face-to-face encounter with the Black Cat Bird.

Til then, the ani­mat­ed video above, in which a Black Cat­bird unwit­ting­ly duets with Belize’s Gar­i­fu­na Col­lec­tive, makes a sooth­ing place hold­er.

The cat­bird and the col­lec­tive appear along with nine oth­er elec­tron­ic musi­cian / endan­gered native bird teams on the fundrais­ing album, A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean.

A Black-cheeked Ant-Tan­ag­er joins NILLO, a pro­duc­er and DJ from Cos­ta Rica who draws musi­cal inspi­ra­tion from the trib­al com­mu­ni­ties around him.

Siete Catorce, a pro­duc­er who helped pop­u­lar­ize the pop­u­lar bor­der genre known as rui­dosón—a mix of cumbia and pre­his­pan­ic trib­al sounds—is paired with a Yel­low-head­ed Par­rot.

Jor­dan “Time Cow” Chung of Equiknoxx seam­less­ly inte­grates a Jamaican Black­bird into his unique brand of organ­ic, exper­i­men­tal dance­hall.

The album fol­lows 2015’s Guide to the Bird­song of South Amer­i­ca, and as with its pre­de­ces­sor, 100% of the prof­its will be donat­ed to region­al orga­ni­za­tions focused on birds and con­ser­va­tion—Birds Caribbean, La Aso­ciación Orni­tológ­i­ca de Cos­ta Rica, and Mexico’s Fun­da­cion TXORI.

Birds, as the project’s founder, Robin Perkins, told Gizmodo’s Earth­er, are the most musi­cal ani­mals in the world:

There’s some­thing real­ly nice about focus­ing on endan­gered species and songs that are dis­ap­pear­ing and not being pre­served and to use music to raise aware­ness about the species. I believe music has a big pow­er for social activism and social change and for envi­ron­men­tal change.

Lis­ten to A Guide to the Bird­song of Mex­i­co, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Buy the album or indi­vid­ual tracks on Band­camp to ben­e­fit the char­i­ties above.

Robin Perkins’ lim­it­ed edi­tion prints of the fea­tured birds also ben­e­fit the bird-focused region­al char­i­ties and can be pur­chased here.

via MyMod­ern­Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

The Bird Library: A Library Built Espe­cial­ly for Our Fine Feath­ered Friends

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

Down­load 435 High Res­o­lu­tion Images from John J. Audubon’s The Birds of Amer­i­ca

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Everything You Need To Know About Viruses: A Quick Visual Explanation of Viruses in 9 Images

in Biology, Current Affairs, Science | July 17th, 2020

It’s a great time to tune in to what sci­en­tists are try­ing to tell us.

It’s true that we’ve received a lot of con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion over the last four months with regard to how to best pro­tect our­selves and oth­ers from COVID-19.

Sci­en­tists and health care pro­fes­sion­als have a learn­ing curve, too.

Their bul­letins evolve as their under­stand­ing of the nov­el coro­n­avirus grows, through research and hands-on expe­ri­ence.

There are still a lot of unknowns.

Some peo­ple take any evi­dence-based mes­sag­ing updates regard­ing masks and re-open­ing as proof that sci­en­tists don’t know their ass­es from their elbows.

To which we might counter, “If that’s the case, please take a minute from berat­ing the poor gro­cery store employ­ee who asked you to fol­low clear­ly post­ed state man­dat­ed pub­lic health prac­tices to edu­cate us. For­get the econ­o­my. For­get the elec­tion. Blind us with some sci­ence. Pre­tend we don’t know any­thing and hit us with some hard­core facts about virus­es. We’re lis­ten­ing.”

(Crick­ets…)

Sci­ence writer Dominic Wal­li­man, founder of the Domain of Sci­ence Youtube  chan­nel, may have a PhD in quan­tum device physics, but he also had the humil­i­ty to real­ize, ear­li­er in the pan­dem­ic, that he didn’t know much about virus­es:

So I did a load of research and have sum­ma­rized what I learned in… nine images. This video (above) explains the key aspects of virus­es: how big they are, how they infect and enter and exit cells, how virus­es are clas­si­fied, how they repli­cate, and sub­jects involv­ing viral infec­tions like how they spread from per­son to per­son, how our immune sys­tem detects and destroys them and how vac­cines and anti-viral drugs work.

Wal­li­man ani­mates his 10-minute overview with the same bright info­graph­ics he uses to help stu­dents and laypeo­ple wrap their heads around com­put­er sci­ence, biol­o­gy, chem­istry, physics, and math.

The virus video has been fact-checked by immu­nol­o­gist Michael Bramhall and biol­o­gist Christoph von Arx.

And how refresh­ing to see trans­paren­cy with regard to human error, pub­lished as a cor­rec­tive:

In slide 9 tox­in vac­cines are for bac­te­r­i­al infec­tions like tetanus, not virus­es. 

For those who’d like to learn more, Wal­li­man has tacked a whop­ping 15 links onto the episode’s descrip­tion, from sources such as Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can, Nature, Stan­ford Medicine’s Scope blog, and the Nation­al Cen­ter for Biotech­nol­o­gy Infor­ma­tion.

Down­load a free poster of Domain of Science’s Virus­es Explained in 9 Images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Spring Break vs. COVID-19: Map­ping the Real Impact of Ignor­ing Social Dis­tanc­ing

A Chill­ing Time-Lapse Video Doc­u­ments Every COVID-19 Death on a Glob­al Map: From Jan­u­ary to June 2020

The Case for a Uni­ver­sal Basic Income in the Time of COVID-19

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est project is an ani­ma­tion and a series of free down­load­able posters relat­ed to COVID-19 pub­lic health Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Take a Virtual Tour of the Mütter Museum and Its Many Anatomically Peculiar Exhibits

in Biology, History, Museums, Science | May 11th, 2020

A few months before Philaelphia’s Müt­ter Muse­um, exer­cis­ing now famil­iar COVID-19 pre­cau­tions, closed its doors to the pub­lic, it co-spon­sored a parade to hon­or the vic­tims to the pre­vi­ous century’s Span­ish Flu pan­dem­ic, as well as “those who keep us safe today.”

The event was part of a tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Spit Spreads Death: The Influen­za Pan­dem­ic of 1918–19 in Philadel­phia.

Anoth­er tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion, Going Viral: Infec­tion Through the Ages, opened in Novem­ber, and now seems even stronger proof that the muse­um, whose 19th-cen­tu­ry dis­play cab­i­nets are housed in the his­toric Col­lege of Physi­cians, is as con­cerned with the future as it is with the past.

For now, all tours must be under­tak­en vir­tu­al­ly.

Above, cura­tor Anna Dhody, a phys­i­cal and foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist and Direc­tor of the Müt­ter Research Insti­tute, gives a brief intro­duc­tion to some of the best known arti­facts in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion.

The muse­um’s many antique skulls and med­ical odd­i­ties may invite com­par­isons to a ghoul­ish sideshow attrac­tion, an impres­sion Dhody cor­rects with her warm, mat­ter-of-fact deliv­ery and respect­ful acknowl­edg­ment of the humans whose sto­ries have been pre­served along with their remains:

Mary Ash­ber­ry, an achon­droplas­tic dwarf, died from com­pli­ca­tions of a Cesare­an sec­tion, as doc­tors who had yet to learn the impor­tance of ster­il­iz­ing instru­ments and wash­ing hands, attempt­ed to help her deliv­er a baby who proved too big for her pelvis. (The baby’s head was crushed as well. Its skull is dis­played next to its mother’s skele­ton.)

Madame Dimanche is rep­re­sent­ed by a wax mod­el of her face, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able due to the 10-inch cuta­neous horn that began grow­ing from her fore­head when she was in her 70s. (It was even­tu­al­ly removed in an ear­ly exam­ple of suc­cess­ful plas­tic surgery.)

Albert Ein­stein and the con­joined twins Chang and Eng Bunker are among the house­hold names grac­ing the museum’s col­lec­tion.

One of the most recent addi­tions is the skele­ton of artist and dis­abil­i­ty aware­ness advo­cate Car­ol Orzel, who edu­cat­ed the pub­lic and incom­ing Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia med­ical stu­dents about fibrodys­pla­sia ossi­f­i­cans pro­gres­si­va (FOP), a rare dis­or­der that turned her mus­cle and con­nec­tive tis­sue to bone. She told her physi­cian, Fred­er­ick Kaplan, below, that she want­ed her skele­ton to go to the Müt­ter, to join that of fel­low FOP suf­fer­er, Har­ry East­lack… pro­vid­ed some of her prized cos­tume jew­el­ry could be dis­played along­side. It is.

Get bet­ter acquaint­ed with the Müt­ter Museum’s col­lec­tion through this playlist.

The exhib­it Spit Spreads Death is cur­rent­ly slat­ed to stay up through 2024. While wait­ing to vis­it in per­son, you can watch an ani­ma­tion of the Span­ish flu’s spread, and explore an inter­ac­tive map show­ing the demo­graph­ics of the infec­tion.

h/t Tanya Elder

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of 30 World-Class Muse­ums & Safe­ly Vis­it 2 Mil­lion Works of Fine Art

Take a Long Vir­tu­al Tour of the Lou­vre in Three High-Def­i­n­i­tion Videos

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of The Uffizi Gallery in Flo­rence, the World-Famous Col­lec­tion of Renais­sance Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Here lat­est project is a series of free down­load­able posters, encour­ag­ing cit­i­zens to wear masks in pub­lic and wear them prop­er­ly. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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