Mantis update: mantis rampage!

Posted by on August 8, 2008 · 4 Comments 


Ceiling can taste freedom.hitcounter

Booie, the littlest and, frankly, weediest of our latest mantis army, died quietly in the night a few days ago. In accordance with mantis tradition, his body was devoured by crickets.

In what’s becoming an Alcott family tradition, the death of the weakest mantis is a signal that the others’ days are numbered, and the survivors should be released into the wild, where they might mate and create another mantis army to menace the insects of tomorrow. The liberation ceremony for Ceiling and Snacks was held this morning on our front porch.

Pick me up! Pick me up! shouts Ceiling from the depths of the carrier she shares with Giant Black African Millipede.

Snacks, out in the open air, taking his first look at the big, wide world, where, theoretically anyway, there are many insects for him to devour.

Meanwhile Ceiling, getting a whiff of the liberty that is the divine right of all mantids, tries to climb the sheer plexiglass walls of her enclosure.

“What is this strange thing I’m perched upon?” asks Snacks — his first encounter with Nature. Shortly after this photo was taken, Kit (5) asked if she could try to pick him up one last time, or “do you think he’s wild already?”

Out of her enclosure and a little spooked by the wide open spaces, Ceiling goes into a defensive “put up your dukes” pose. Note the super-aggressive “scorpion tail.”

The crickets did not miss out — predator and prey each gained their freedom on this day.

Ceiling, still asking for trouble, crouches on Sam’s hand and, like Sean Penn, dares the photographer to approach — for a fist full of knuckles.

Once on a leaf, Ceiling visibly relaxes. “I could get used to this,” says the enormous, voracious, meat-eating predator. Crickets of Santa Monica. YOU ARE DOOMED.

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An anatomist on The Dark Knight

Posted by on August 8, 2008 · 26 Comments 

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After seeing The Dark Knight, I had one burning question (sorry): were the depictions of Two-Face’s injuries anatomically accurate?

To answer this question, I turned to anatomist, choreographer and Bentfootes creator Kriota Willberg.  Kriota is the only person I know who has actually dissected a real live — er, I mean, real dead — human body.  This is what she had to say:

Harvey/Two Face’s anatomy seems pretty accurate, of course, and I liked the ooze that had seeped onto his pillow in the hospital. That was a nice touch. He probably would have been a bit more scabby and cracky and oozy, but it’s a family show, so I can forgive that. All in all, they did a great job (it reminded me of The Mummy a little in the way they rendered the face) but the problem of course was in the sound of TF’s voice. Frankly, if you have no lip on half your mouth, your pronunciation is going to be slurry. You won’t be able to hold air behind your tongue and lips and it’s going to present a problem. If you think about what it’s like to talk after dental procedures and anesthetic, you only have a partial inkling of how difficult TFs speech would be, unless the dentist accidentally removed one of your cheeks. Speaking, eating, drinking all get super difficult.
Speaking of cheek removal, salivation would be an issue and TF’s mouth would be pretty dry on the left side due to the lack of the left parotid. Of course, he’d still have use of the submandibular and sublingual glands, but there’d still be that wind whistling through the left side.
Speaking of salivation, I couldn’t tell if TF’s lacrimal glands were intact or not. The way the medial canthus of the eye was scarred up, I bethe couldn’t use the lacrimal canals of that eye in any case. This means that that left nostril, sucking up all that unfiltered-by-nose-hair-air wouldn’t be getting any moisture to it from tear drainage, which would make TF more likely to get nose bleeds and possibly infections. (Wait, if half his nostril is missing, would he still get nose bleed? How high up do those usually occur? I’ll ask a colleague.) So his eye could be as wet as it appeared, but it would be kinda drippy, or his eye would be pretty dry. Either way, w/o tearing or just w/o a lid, he’s going to be much more vulnerable to infection of the eye as well. Moving it might be pretty painful, too.

There you have it. Subtracting the pain and shock that would naturally occur in such an instance (or, as my wife put it, “you’d go insane” — to which I reply “well…”), The Harvey/Two-Face look is perfectly plausible (and, I’m sure, somewhere in this world there is someone, right now, surgically adapting their face to look more like Harvey Dent). Now, just imagine the final act of The Dark Knight with Aaron Eckhart not only looking like Two-Face but sounding like him too. With the uncontrolled saliva constantly roping off of his open jaw cavity. He’d have to wear a bib. I wonder if the Dark Knight folk considered addressing these issues, or if that would have made the movie a little too horrifying.

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