Anatomy Atlas Part 13 – Facial muscles

Looking at preserved human heads in formaldehyde was not one of the most enjoyable experiences  during my studies. One gets accustomed to pretty much anything but looking at someone’s actual face with removed skin is very disconcerting.

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Drawing faces is one area where my skill is seriously lacking. I do not have problem recognizing people or remembering their faces, but I have great trouble picturing or recalling human face in my mind, and as a consequence I have trouble drawing it. Even when my drawing skills were at their best, I would not be able to draw an identikit. I also have trouble describing people verbally, there is some disconnect in my head between recognizing someone and remembering how they look like. I can be way over my head in love with a person, yet I would not be able to tel the color of her eyes unless I make conscious and targeted effort to remember it.

Regarding this the interesting experience is not the study of anatomy, but the study that I attempted afterward – study of arts. During the practical part of admission exams we were given a bust of Goethe to draw and I broke cold sweat. I would prefer to draw anything else but a human face.

I have passed, but only just. Therefore I could not enlist in my preferred program because It filled with people with much better scores, and I had to settle in my secondary choice. That was in the end one of the reasons why I abandoned these studies after one year, respectively that has made the inevitable decision a lot easier.

Behind the Iron Curtain part 11 – Ownership of the Means of Production

These are my recollections of a life behind the iron curtain. I do not aim to give perfect and objective evaluation of anything, but to share my personal experiences and memories. It will explain why I just cannot get misty eyed over some ideas on the political left and why I loathe many ideas on the right.

It can be argued that the regime in former Soviet bloc was never communist. I would agree with that and so did the regime itself. However to argue that it was not socialist or leftist would be false. The regime did try to provide for people and take care of them. And whilst it was agreed that the ideal of communism was not achieved yet, the means of production did belong to the people. Sort of.

The argument presented to us at school was a simple syllogism: Means of production belong to the state. The state consists of the people. Therefore the means of production belong to the people.

As it often is, it never is that simple and it did not work out. And the experience convinced me that ownership of the means of production by the people cannot work on grand scale. I think it might work on small-scale, on a scale of up to a few dozen or perhaps a few hundred people, not more. This is about the maximum where people can function as internally cohesive society (commune, if you wish), because at this small-scale people can manage to keep internal tabs of tits for tats. So cheaters and slackers can feel the negative consequences of their actions quickly either by being shunned by those they wronged, or by not getting their share of the produce etc. Thus people keep connection to each other and to the consequences of their actions, because those consequences – both social and economical – are nearby both in time and space.

I have already mentioned slacking at work, because nobody was motivated to work too much. What has thrived on the other hand was black market for labor. So for example if you wanted a house repaired, via official means it might take years and not be done properly. The only way to get things done was often to have “friends” help you to repair it in their free time. Such helps were paid cash without paper trail and artisans like plumbers, electricians etc. were highly sought after – and such illegal work was for them the only means to get extra money. So they skived off of work and often even stole materials from the state in order to make untaxed money on the side (immediate and personal reward – and also immediate and personal punishment if the word got around that one does a sloppy job).

Rarely anyone ever felt this is wrong. There was a great emotional disconnect between the State and its people. The above mentioned syllogism was not convincing enough. I mentioned the saying “who does not steal from the state, steals from their own family”. It was perceived by many people that since everything belongs to the state, it also belongs to ME and therefore I am entitled to help myself when the opportunity presents itself. One teacher tried to explain to us that such is not the case, that by stealing for example a sack of cement from the state of ten million people means one is only taking one tenth of one millionth of said sack that is their own, and the rest is stolen from the remaining 9.999.999 people, but I have noticed that none of my schoolmates was affected much by this logic. Those 9.999.999 people are a faceless crowd, an abstract concept too big to fit into human mind.

The problem here, as Terry Pratchett once brilliantly stated in Night Watch, was not the wrong kind of government, but the wrong kind of people. People on average are not kind-hearted, altruistic and rational. They are petty, selfish and short-sighted. Trying to make them connect with something as grand as a “state” or “nation” only works as long as they are personally and immediately affected. It cannot keep them motivated for long and for a reward that might only affect their grandchildren when the communism finally arrives and money is not needed anymore.

 

Making a Rondel Dagger – Part 9 – Turning the Handle

The dagger of Ciri in The game Witcher 3 has handle turned from some yellow wood. Looks almost canary yellow in the game, but orange in the extracted 3D file without the in-game lighting. There is only one wood that I know that has such color – Osage orange – and only when freshly worked at that, it ages to dark brown. There is another wood that has very nice yellow (vanilla) color both fresh and aged, and that is Black elder. I would love to make the handle from black elder, because it is beautiful hard wood and it is a pleasure to work with. Alas, I do not have a piece big enough. So I had to go with Sycamore maple which is pale yellow and ages to slightly darker yellow.

I begun by cutting an approximately 50×50 mm rectangular block on my circular saw. Dried maple wood is unfortunately not only very hard, but also has very small pores, so it tends to burn on circular saw. There is nothing that can be done about it except to work slowly. Unfortunately I only had this one piece of big enough maple wood at hand and it had a very deep split at exactly the wrong place, so I had to shorten it to 120 mm, 6 mm shorter than I wanted to based on the proportions from the 3D game file. But since I am not aiming for exact replica and I will make slight changes to the design of the dagger anyway that should not bother me. But it does, go figure. I can gain a few mm on the bolster and on the rondel later on if I decide it needs to be done.

 

Next step was to turn the handle. This is where I can show off with my Poor Man’s Lathe that I have built twenty years ago. Unfortunately I did not have too many opportunities to work on it yet, so my experience with wood-turning is extremely limited.

First came fixing the piece of wood between the points of the lathe. On the left the drill holds not a drill bit, but a special piece with a central point and three screwdriver like flattened teeth to hold onto the workpiece. Normally I would hammer it into the wood, but sycamore wood is very hard. I had to pre-drill the holes. On the right there is a round tip that goes into a depression in the wood. It helps to put a bit of grease or a few drops of oil on this point, otherwise the friction can and will burn the wood and it will smoke.

Second comes turning the wood down to a cylinder of the maximum diameter the final piece is supposed to have. On this part it is important to work with slow rotations because the workpiece is not yet symmetrical and on high rotations it would vibrate and it could potentially fly out of the lathe and smash window in best case, or throat in worst case. Neither of these lessons have I learned first hand, and do not intend to. Better safe than sorry.

So easy does it, no rushing, slowly chipping on the edges until there is a symmetrical cylinder rotating on the lathe. Then the speed can be increased and final shape can be formed. Since this is hard wood, the angle of the chisel blade to the piece is held at close to 90 degrees and I was more scratching than cutting the wood. Trying to get a continuous cut on completely dried hardwood like this is asking for trouble unless one is very, very good and experienced at it – in best case the chisel bites in deep and no matter how sharp it is, it tears of a splinter instead of cutting, ruining the piece. Worst case the leverage could damage the chisel or tear it from one’s hands and… I shudder to think about it. I learned the first lesson here, but fortunately not the second one. For the same reason also the chisel support should be kept as close to the workpiece as possible the whole time.

When turning the shape I first turned town the part for bolster as precisely as I could under the circumstances (the circumstances being that I have no bolster prepared yet). then I turned a piece of handle down to the final width and lastly I turned the middle. Apart from the overall width on both ends I did not do any measurements and I turned the handle down to a shape that simply “looked” right to me.

After that I could remove the chisel support and could polish the piece with 80, 120, 180 and 320 grit sandpaper. This I have done partly on lathe by turning the piece and partly in hand sanding lengthwise in order to remove all visible scratches. Sycamore wood is very hard and can take very good polish, but this piece will get dirty yet no matter what I do, so there is no point fussing about that too much yet.

Last step is making the hole for the tang. I do not have a drill bit long and thin enough for this, so I drilled as far as I could and I burned the rest through with a piece of steel of approximately the right shape held in a vice and heated up with torch to red heat. This has produced an awful lot of smoke and took a lot longer than I hoped for. Not an enjoyable work, if you ask me. Not particularly safe one either. Even with the door open wide the whole room has filled with smoke hat stung the eyes even through protective welding goggles.

Towards the end, when the burnings from both ends met in the middle and actually made a hole throughout the whole handle, the smoke spouting out of the end could be ignited for a short time. That was fun to watch and a bugger to make a picture of, with burning torch in one hand and the phone in the other. I have managed only this one picture, where the flame almost goes out already. After I made hole through, I have closed the gas valve on the bomb and put the hot torch on granite stone on the table. Thus I was finished for the day with nearly thre hours of work done. Two hours later I went back to to check nothing burns and on finding my shop smoke-free I could go to bed.

Next step will be to find suitable pieces of steel for the bolster and the guard, and shaping them together with the hanlde – and the tang – so everything fits together.

The Humble Potato Blooming

The humble potato does have pretty flowery, albeit a little small.

Only after I downloaded the picture into my PC have I noticed the hiding Colorado potato beetle. Damn. I have thought I nabbed them all. Time to go out with a jar with a few drops of acetone again. Unfortunately I doubt the beetles will listen to reason, it is either them or me.

Oh and btw, if you ever heard or read that in former Soviet bloc the propaganda was saying that the CIA was intentionally dropping the beetles from airplanes on crops in order to starve us, it is true.  It was taught in schools until the end of the cold war. We were told this as late as in 1980’s. Until today when someone says the colloqual term “americký brouk” (american beetle),  most people will know what the talk is about.

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The Beautiful Town Idstein – Part 10 – Various Ornaments

One house had these three reliefs in plaster. The first one  and the third one are depictions of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. I do not know why, I have found no association between him and Idstein.

Some houses had some sort of coat of arms (more like coat of tools) carved into the woodwork. And one house had a cat climbing the wall which was unfortunately too high up for my puny phone camera to take a good look at.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last atypical ornament was this faun, looking mournfully over a garden fence. I have no idea whether it is a modern addition or genuine antique, but it fitted the town nicely and did not stand out as inappropriate. Which does not prove anything.

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Anatomy Atlas Part 12 – Liver, Spleen, Stomach

Given how all these organs are important and vital, it really makes one wonder why they are only protected by a soft abdominal wall. From these only liver has meaningful ability to repair itself.

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Liver is, as you surely know, the main chemical factory of the body. Any chemical that gets absorbed into the bloodstream in your gut will go through it – thus the huge Vena cava inferior in which this nutrient rich but oxygen depleted blood is subsequently drained via hepatic veins. These veins are allegedly the reason for abdominal pain when exercising right after a big meal – there is a competition between blood flow through the liver and through the muscles and that leads to the veins having spasms. It is also the reason why I am sleepy about half an hour after a big meal – the liver stops most of the blood by expanding its veins, the blood pressure drops, I gets dizzzzzz…..

However that means not only food, but also every toxin you ingest, has an effect on your liver. That is the reason why liver has such an ability to recuperate or even regrow. It is an organ under huge pressure and essential for life.

We were told during our courses on toxicology that it was selective pressure that is possibly responsible for people of european descent having higher tolerance of alcohol than people of oriental descent – ever since the alcohol was discovered in the Mediterranean and Middle East regions, people of those and neighbouring regions were indulging in drinking a lot of wine and beer. Those who did not have the right types and ammounts of alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes in their liver to deal with it with least adverse effects died sooner, thus exerting selective pressure on the population.

I do not know whether it is true, but there is similar correlation in lactose intolerance. It does sound plausible.

Spider Catching a Beetle in its Web

During a lunch break at work I was taking a walk along a huge water cooling unit when I have seen a beetle caught in a spider web. Since I of course did not have my camera on me, I have done my best with my phone.

At first I thought the spider is nowhere near, but it only took a while to crawl out of its hiding under one of the metal covers. The spider did not approach the beetle at first, and when it did it only felt it with its front legs and then backed off because the beetle was thrashing around and it was about as big as the spider itself.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Then a few moments later the spider has tried to drag the beetle upward, but it did not work. The beetle was evidently too big and too strong for that and it fought back valiantly.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

After that the spider crawled away from the beetle and I thought it gave up. After all the beetle was tearing the net apart. But then the spider has surprised me. It has merely changed its tactic. It crawled along the edge of the web and coordinated its collapse so as the beetle was tearing the silk threads, instead of freeing itself it got more and more constrained in movement. I did not know that spiders can do that.

When the beetle was constrained enough – destroying about 50% of the web in the process – the spider approached it again and has done its spin wrap of the prey into a cocoon.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

All that was left after that was the final blow – the spider has sunk its chelicerae into the side of the beetle, presumably between the plates of its chitinous armour. That took a few minutes and the poor beetle was still trying to move.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I checked up on the place before I went home. At first I did see neither the spider nor the beetle. I found the spider hidden under the metal cover again, with only its front legs protruding outward, holding the packed beetle and waiting for the digestive juices do their thing.

I have observed spiders hunt before, but the tactic of collapsing the web around bigger prey was new for me.

The Daily Bird #740.

Picture from early this spring, the light was crap but the picture has an interesting story.

The buzzard flew away when I was trying to take a picture and it perched on the top of a huge cypress tree in the neighborhood. There it was harrased by a magpie until it left. Here it is shown flying circles around the magpie who did not give up its place so in the end the buzzard buggered off and the treetops were ruled by this magpie and two more, who joined it shortly.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

‘Bout the Whole Sharp, Pointy, Stabby Things Issue and Guns

I am not feeling particularly well these last few days. In addition to the usual depression that is  just an everlasting companion these last years, and the hay fever due to my neighbour not having harvested the hay yet, several joints have decided to act up so I cannot work properly. And I do not feel like discussing partisan politics this week except to say fuck all politicians and political ideologies across the spectrum left right and center – sideways.

However this is my hundredth post on Affinity and despite the number being completely arbitrary, I thought it should be about something more substantial than about strawberries misbehaving.

The whole issue of sharp and pointy objects has got me thinking more than one time throughout my life. When I was a kid I was being told that I will be allowed to handle sharp things from the age of ten years. I looked forward to it. For my tenth birthday I got a small pocket knife and my father has taught me how to sharpen it and how to properly care for it. In our household a sharp knife is really sharp and a blunted knife is what usually gets called sharp by many people I know. I had a knife somewhere around my person ever since.

I really like knives, daggers, machetes, axes and swords. I also like bows and crossbows. I am not collecting either, but I would like to make some of each and when I do make them, I will take care to make them not only functional, but beautiful too.

However there is no denying that all these objects are potential murder weapons. Some of them are indeed optimised for being a weapon, whilst others can have as a primary function being a tool.

I would like to know where this fascination with dangerous things comes from. My take on the issue is that it si far more common than people might realize at first thought. For example many of the most aesthetically appreciated animals are very finely tuned killing machines. Many people like cats and a person who does not appreciate the beauty of a tiger or a leopard would be a rare specimen indeed. Dragons and dinosaurs are very popular among kids and they are not known for being fluffy and cuddly.

This has brought me in a roundabout way to thinking how is liking knives different from liking guns and how is that in turn different from liking squids? And my take on the thing is, that not too much, if at all.

The important thing is not what one does like, but what one does about it. A gun collector or skeet shooter is just as normal as a sword collector or a fencer, and they all are just as normal as a stamp collector. The difference is in how people are conditioned by culture about dealing with the specific issue – both from the point of the enthusiast, and from the point of of the general populace. Some hobbies are frowned on, some are viewed as harmless oddities, some are reviled, some admired. And accordingly some people are reclusive about their hobbies, whilst others engage in them publicly and proudly.

And this is what makes the american gun nuts such a big problem. The difference between a gun nut and me is not that they are someone “other”.

It is not that they like guns and like to collect them and/or tinker with them. Gun/weapons collectors and enthusiasts are in every country around the world and nowhere, regardless of how strict/lax the laws are, are they a problem of the magnitude one sees in the US.

It is not that they think about their weapons in terms of how dangerous they are and how optimised for doing harm they are. I do that too and I do not believe that anyone who has ever held a sharp knife in their hand has never thought about it.

It is not that they think about how they could use their weapons in self-defense should the need arise. Whoever has ever been on the receiving end of violence will think about what they will do next to minimise the harm to themselves and their loved ones.

It is the culture that has elevated owning murder instruments onto a right in itself, sanctifying it and worshiping it, that pushes otherwise normal people over the border of normality into the land of the dangerous. It is the culture that makes people actually wishing to use the weapons against other people, instead of dreading that it might come to that.

In a culture where carrying a sword  was similarly held in high esteem, and where dueling for the slightest offence would be considered not only normal, but positively desired a different problem might arise – instead of an epidemic of mass shootings an epidemic of dueling, where the young and hopeful would waste their lives pointlessly at the end of a sharp piece of steel.

And you know what? That scenario ain’t fictional. And it took both legislative change and a shift in culture to deal with the problem.