An imagined Havana (since I haven’t been there…yet!) You can see a pop-up of salsa dancers, a card-game between fruit-sellers on the street, the “classic” cars, and some architectural features of the buildings which I’ve noticed in pictures of old Havana. Havana is a city difficult to capture in black-and-white because one of its distinctive…
Tag: Art
Sketch of a Hummingbird
…More specifically, a sketch of a ruby-throated hummingbird pollinating a shrub of Autumn sage. Hummingbirds are well-known for their small size (a few inches long), swift wing-beating rate (50-80 times per second), iridescent feathers, and, well, their consistent appearance in “fun facts” and “did you know?” nature graphics. Although hummingbirds do not commonly feature in…
Sketch of a Chickadee
Black-capped chickadees are songbirds living in the forests and woodlands of Northeastern America. They famously hide small quantities of food in distributed locations in their environment. Remarkably, memory for these “cache sites” can persist for around 28 days (Hitchcock and Sherry 1990). (Would you remember where your keys were after weeks of hiding them? What…
Sketch of a magnetically sensitive life-form (a European robin)
The Earth’s magnetic field is something we humans take little notice of on a daily basis. Although we can perform experiments and build machines that detect magnetic fields, our bodies have no intrinsic “magnetic sense.” This is not the case for many animal species, who perceive and rely on the Earth’s magnetic field in navigation….
What makes something beautiful?
We know beauty when we see it. A snowy Himalayan landscape, a Tchaikovsky symphony, or a Bernini sculpture can all inspire a deep sense of wonder and emotional pleasure within us. To a more or less degree, we tend to equate this feeling with the experience of beauty. If we find something beautiful, our emotional and…
Why study (or draw) a fruit fly?
A few years ago, I had never imagined that I would spend several hours of my winter holidays sketching the central nervous system and muscle plan of a fruit fly. Perhaps you feel share the same thought—why would anyone looking for artistic inspiration turn to the fruit fly? If you want to showcase an animal subject, it may…
The immortality of stories
Why are humans so devotedly enthralled by stories? If one non-biological interest has remained constant throughout recorded history and across cultures, it may be our captivation with stories. Consider the oldest recorded story we know of: Aeschylus’ Orestia, a trilogy that recounts the tragic homecoming of Agamemnon from Greece after the Trojan war. This trilogy has survived since the 450s BCE! That is, 4,500 years…
Stargazing—a wonder from science and art
“All other animals look downward; Man, Alone, erect, can raise his face towards Heaven.” – Ovid, Metamorphoses —“The Creation” Ovid was a Roman poet who wrote one masterpiece of a text called the Metamorphoses. You may also recognize this title because Franz Kafka, a German author, wrote a similar sounding work called the Metamorphosis. (Although the themes explored…
Sketch of three birds on a branch
This is the finished version of a sketch of birds I started some weeks ago, showing three songbirds perched together on a tree branch. The leftmost bird is a blue winged warbler, the middle is a zebra finch, and the rightmost is of an imaginary design. (I am sure that in the diversity of birds, this particular…
Synapses, Science, and Aesthetics
Capturing images of Nature is a powerful method of scientific inquiry. The purpose of imaging is not to awaken the inner photographer in each scientist, but rather to derive some insight about the structure and biological function of a given object of study. For example, you can use X-ray crystallography to find out the structure…
The Quantum Thought 