The story is nearly two years old, but it doesn’t get any less interesting or amusing: Russian Man Grows Penis on Arm: “Russian doctors have conducted an 11-hour operation to replace a patient’s deformed penis with one grown on his forearm, the Moskovskiy Komsomolets daily reports.”
Elsewhere a newly pregnant acquaintance commented about drinking ginger root tea (“The tea is like a miracle – it really takes the edge off my nausea.”), and another acquaintance warned, “Be careful with the ginger. […] it can induce miscarriage. My doc wouldn’t let me drink it.” Google states that there is no scientific evidence to back up that fear/warning/claim, though various alternative/herbal-medicine, New-Agey pages argue the position. A “practicing master herbalist” (probably AD&D 2nd Edition rules …) provides another perspective.
The non-scientific nature of most of these claims leaves me skeptical, but at the same time I would be interested in more scientific studies into the (bio-)chemical aspects of these herbs, compounds, etc.
In other “scientific news” we have: Earliest Evidence Of Modern Humans In Europe Discovered: Artifacts May Date Back 45,000 Years (“The evidence consists of stone, bone and ivory tools discovered under a layer of ancient volcanic ash on the Don River in Russia some 250 miles south of Moscow, said John Hoffecker, a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.”) and Skull Supports Theory of Human Migration (“Until now, however, paleontologists had been frustrated by the absence of fossils to test the hypothesis of most geneticists that the people of sub-Saharan Africa and in Eurasia at that time were one and the same — modern humans. The human fossil record in Africa from 70,000 to 15,000 years ago had been virtually blank.”).
Last night I finished off three aging eggs by making two more loaves of carrot-nut bread. I had photo-documented ten cooking/baking events last year, so I figured I should continue in 2007. I bought yeast packets in the fall so I could bake some bread, but haven’t gotten around to it. I find it a lot of fun when I’m doing it but I have a hard time getting motivated to start the process.
I also got around to revisiting Maria William‘s website last night; I hadn’t seen it for a few years and the layout has changed a bit. I think of her as a good example of a self-taught artist who has made it in the profession. She had some rather negative commentary on the state of art schools / art degree programs, especially with regard to the state and status of drawing, which has been echoed recently in some blogs I’ve seen and by some artist acquaintances.
It has been popular recently to look back at the illustration work of Andrew Loomis, much of whose work can be found for free online. There is much to be said for technical drawing skill; I like to think, too, of Escher, who combined skill and precision with imagination.
Illustrator of the day: Autumn Whitehurst.
