blonde ambition oder i’m fantastic, made of plastic

Via the resplendent Nag on the Lake comes a look at the less wholesome inspiration for the Barbie franchise.
Barbie’s ingénue, a call-girl from a Hamburg tabloid’s funny-pages, had ambitions but rather than becoming a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut, the original Lilli character aspired to be a gold-digger and secure herself a sugar-daddy. Nonetheless, Lilli was quite liberated and had a keen fashion sense. The panel’s appeal led to novelty figurines that were marketed to adults, like pin-up girls and gag-gifts for bachelor parties. They also proved to be pretty popular playthings for children though they weren’t intended for that and most parents disapproved. Whilst touring in Europe, one of Mattel’s founding designers brought a few of these biker-bitch Barbies back to the States with her, and having purchased the rights from the German newspaper, began producing Barbie dolls in 1964.

litotes or b-sides

The unseen stacks and storerooms of museums around the world surely hold vast amounts of less interesting specimens and artefacts, not really fit to rotate them for display or loan—notably lacking artistic or scientific merit. It’s as if one could accuse museums of having hoarding-tendencies since these objects are unlikely to ever be disturbed from their slumber.
Thanks to BBC Radio Four’s Inside Science, however, I was introduced to a brilliant, sardonic little project of one curator to try to showcase these hopelessly neglected shelves of items in a blog called Underwhelming Fish Fossil of the Month, wherein keenly dull examples from the museum’s backroom collections are showcased and ridiculed—like in this preservation from August 2015 that’s compared to something as regal and fanciful as the Luck Dragon from The Neverending Story. It’s silly and absurd and sometimes overly generous with its praise. I noticed, however, that by browsing through these featurettes and their deconstruction of each fossil, I was actually learning far more about the evolution of fish and the methodologies of conservation and classification than I ever knew before. It’s really fascinating stuff, and I think one ought to rummage through their wardrobes, attics and junk-drawers to tease out some cultural merit of what’s been relegated to those dark corners.

missing-link or not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin

At first, I was a little sceptical about the claim and the mystery that the subject of the human race’s facial anatomy espouses, however, after reading the first few lines of this essay from The Atlantic, I began to really appreciate this puzzle.
Like those palaeontologists who are able to prestidigitate a complete dinosaur specimen out of a single length of bone, the subtle protrusion on our jaws that forms our chin has been pointing researchers in all sorts of different, wagging directions—and the question has been perplexing evolutionary biologists since the very beginnings. Not even our closest relatives—nor those branches of the family tree that withered away—possess the same sort of jaw-line (though some argue that elephants have a similar feature) and science, and not for a lack of speculation, chin scratching—has so far failed to deliver a plausible explanation. All the suggestions have been refuted—such a configuration would not have made it easier to chew or talk or act as an effective face-guard for cavemen fisticuffs. That last bit about duelling savages strikes me as particularly Victorian—like their unhealthy preoccupation with dinosaur husbandry and mating practises. What do you think? Chins couldn’t have become a dominate trait out of a need to stuff pillowcases or fold fitted-sheets, and the answer probably lies in a convergent constellation of factors that we’ve not yet untangled. It’s also funny how chins (as well with teeth for ducks) are one of those features we immediately anthropomorphise to the point where we’re blind to its absence.

xl

My birthday’s months off yet but Mental Floss gave me an early gift (quite a taboo thing to do in Germany but such superstitions are not universal—but still, no premature greetings please) in nice celebratory list of forty things that also turn forty this year. The compilation includes the debut of the Muppet Show, Rocky Horror cosplay, the meme in its current context, the phasing out of slide rule, anti-piracy and intellectual property, and Queen Elizabeth II’s first official e-mail on the ARPANET from a terminal at the Royal Signals and RADAR Establishment in Malvern, Worcestershire. A very merry unbirthday to us.

6x6

bleak house: a gallery of sad, ugly Belgian dwellings, via the Everlasting Blört

magick lantern: Richard Metzger curates a fascinating exhibition on occult works of art

iridescence: giant clams from the Indian Ocean could teach us how to better harness photovoltaic energy and make better displays

public-viewing: thanks to Boing Boing for reminding us about the network of museum open archives, Europeana Collections

fringe and flatland: an apology for outsider science, via Kottke’s Quick Links

wonderment: the entrepreneurial Scotsman who invented the mechanical television was real mad scientist