http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16
/science/16gene.html?incamp=article_popular
So the diabetes world just got a little more interesting. Another gene associated with a predisposition to DM 2 has been identified. I can see the pharmaceutical giants licking their fingers at the possibility of a new target for therapy. The world of diabetes therapy already has such a bewildering range of drugs many of them entire new groups that came out in the last decade. If a disease has many possible treatments it usually means that none of them present a clear advantage and less is known about the disease itself. So basically in medicine choice is bad. And so it is with Diabetes.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Monday, January 16, 2006
MoMa.
Couldn’t they have abbreviated it to something else. Anyways the museum of modern art or MoMa, is free Friday nights. The whole of New York turns up there Friday night 4-8 pm. Nice because everyone is well dressed and all the girls are lovely. Quite a young crowd for an art museum. But MoMa has an entire floor dedicated to Pixar, so prepare to be surprised.
The first and ground floor are dedicated to Pixar. Going through the exhibits really gives you a sense of the imagination these guys have.
I missed the Prints section on the 2nd floor and the sculptures in the garden. For some other Friday I guess.
The 3rd floor has the photographs and design section. The design section was nice, there was these models and photographs of a ‘house of spiritual something’ which caught my eye. It has a two walls meeting each other at right angles, with the main living area located underground within the right angle. The walls just serve as the doorway into the underground dwelling. Kind of looks like a wing. And the photographs of the house and the area surrounding it are marvelous.
The Robin Rhode media exhibits are a must see. He takes what is a simple idea [his works are basically graffiti on a wall and his interactions with them, to depict motion, caught as stills either as photographs or a movie of stills] and runs with it. The photographs of him catching fridges, furniture, and even an automobile as they appear to fall out from the sky are amazing. I mean you can’t help but feel good at the end by the childish spirit in his art.
The Odilon Redon exhibit is strange. His charcoal and pencil work are undoubtedly beautiful. The images he conjures up are fascinating. I didn’t understand his interpretation of Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’ but his vision of Berenice is apt. The Masque of Red Death is about the princes who with his courtiers enclose themselves in a castle to escape death from a plague epidemic that rages outside the walls. The ball that they have is unfortunately intruded upon by a masked stranger, who at the stroke of midnight reveals himself to be the plague. And everybody dies. Redon’s interpretation is like a mangled face in a red vista. I imagined it as an encounter between the prince who stares in stark horror at death. Anyways Berenice makes up for it. This is a story of a man infatuated with this lady. He loves everything about her. But most of all he is tortured by visions of her beautiful teeth. Classic Poe. Driven by the visions when the lady dies, He goes in and retrieves her teeth. I like Poe because of the way he minutely describes every scene, every person, and their strange obsessions. And the painting captures this quite aptly. When Redon goes color, his visions just explode with paint. ‘Roger and Angelique’ for example the blues of the rock face and the brilliant white of the surf are astounding. The main protagonists Roger and his hippograph, Angelique and the sea monster are faintly drawn into the grand image. Green Death is astounding because of the sheer contrast between red and green in the painting. ‘http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html’ will take you through the collection.
The fourth and fifth floor has art. Some of it beautiful. Some strange. But that’s the way abstract art is. Sometimes you get the feeling that these artists’s get genuine pleasure from signing their names on crap, which is then highly valued by their patrons.
MoMa redefines what collectible art is. The building itself is astounding in that there are several corridors that feel like balconies opening out into open spaces.
Went on the same day to the International Center of Photography, which is down the same street. Wasn’t impressed as the collection is small and just too focused on a few topics. Definitely avoidable.
The first and ground floor are dedicated to Pixar. Going through the exhibits really gives you a sense of the imagination these guys have.
I missed the Prints section on the 2nd floor and the sculptures in the garden. For some other Friday I guess.
The 3rd floor has the photographs and design section. The design section was nice, there was these models and photographs of a ‘house of spiritual something’ which caught my eye. It has a two walls meeting each other at right angles, with the main living area located underground within the right angle. The walls just serve as the doorway into the underground dwelling. Kind of looks like a wing. And the photographs of the house and the area surrounding it are marvelous.
The Robin Rhode media exhibits are a must see. He takes what is a simple idea [his works are basically graffiti on a wall and his interactions with them, to depict motion, caught as stills either as photographs or a movie of stills] and runs with it. The photographs of him catching fridges, furniture, and even an automobile as they appear to fall out from the sky are amazing. I mean you can’t help but feel good at the end by the childish spirit in his art.
The Odilon Redon exhibit is strange. His charcoal and pencil work are undoubtedly beautiful. The images he conjures up are fascinating. I didn’t understand his interpretation of Poe’s ‘The Masque of Red Death’ but his vision of Berenice is apt. The Masque of Red Death is about the princes who with his courtiers enclose themselves in a castle to escape death from a plague epidemic that rages outside the walls. The ball that they have is unfortunately intruded upon by a masked stranger, who at the stroke of midnight reveals himself to be the plague. And everybody dies. Redon’s interpretation is like a mangled face in a red vista. I imagined it as an encounter between the prince who stares in stark horror at death. Anyways Berenice makes up for it. This is a story of a man infatuated with this lady. He loves everything about her. But most of all he is tortured by visions of her beautiful teeth. Classic Poe. Driven by the visions when the lady dies, He goes in and retrieves her teeth. I like Poe because of the way he minutely describes every scene, every person, and their strange obsessions. And the painting captures this quite aptly. When Redon goes color, his visions just explode with paint. ‘Roger and Angelique’ for example the blues of the rock face and the brilliant white of the surf are astounding. The main protagonists Roger and his hippograph, Angelique and the sea monster are faintly drawn into the grand image. Green Death is astounding because of the sheer contrast between red and green in the painting. ‘http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2005/redon/redon.html’ will take you through the collection.
The fourth and fifth floor has art. Some of it beautiful. Some strange. But that’s the way abstract art is. Sometimes you get the feeling that these artists’s get genuine pleasure from signing their names on crap, which is then highly valued by their patrons.
MoMa redefines what collectible art is. The building itself is astounding in that there are several corridors that feel like balconies opening out into open spaces.
Went on the same day to the International Center of Photography, which is down the same street. Wasn’t impressed as the collection is small and just too focused on a few topics. Definitely avoidable.
Friday, January 13, 2006
The Met
Went to the Met yesterday. Wonderful experience. So much to see and ponder about. Easily could spend a week in there and still be unsatisfied with the experience.
Truly need to go back to look at the entire upper floor again. Just managed a cursive look. Lots of Bodhisattva statuettes in the Asia section. Maybe that’s all the stuff that they could get out. But truly gives an idea of how important Buddhism was and is to Asia. Makes you wonder how Hinduism managed to win the encounter in the Indian Peninsula.
Lasting impressions,
Salvador Dali’s Crucifixion – He plays with light and distance, orientation, to give the impression of a levitating Christ superimposed on cross of cubes.
Calatrava’s exhibit – He gives such a sense of balance to his ideas that some of them actually seem to float. And most of his creations are functional. Not just art. His versions of the human head on the spine, and the spine in itself make you rethink all the anatomy that you are so sure of and have accepted as too complex to represent, in straight lines. Beautiful. The whole exhibit makes you think about lines of weight transmission and tension, and the way he makes them come together in magical sculptures.
Ah and all the nudes, easily the reason I missed seeing so much of the other art on display.
Truly need to go back to look at the entire upper floor again. Just managed a cursive look. Lots of Bodhisattva statuettes in the Asia section. Maybe that’s all the stuff that they could get out. But truly gives an idea of how important Buddhism was and is to Asia. Makes you wonder how Hinduism managed to win the encounter in the Indian Peninsula.
Lasting impressions,
Salvador Dali’s Crucifixion – He plays with light and distance, orientation, to give the impression of a levitating Christ superimposed on cross of cubes.
Calatrava’s exhibit – He gives such a sense of balance to his ideas that some of them actually seem to float. And most of his creations are functional. Not just art. His versions of the human head on the spine, and the spine in itself make you rethink all the anatomy that you are so sure of and have accepted as too complex to represent, in straight lines. Beautiful. The whole exhibit makes you think about lines of weight transmission and tension, and the way he makes them come together in magical sculptures.
Ah and all the nudes, easily the reason I missed seeing so much of the other art on display.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Hi
Hoping for a peaceful and happy New Year world. Will set of on a new trail. But at least I am secure in the knowledge that I chose education over everything else. For a guy who ultimately wants money so as just to be able to afford a paraglider and float of into the sunset, that isn’t strange. I hope that India will one day be able to accommodate another specialist, and disappointment be damned.
In the mean time, I intend to live and learn and fly when I can, physically and spiritually, and enjoy every part of it.
Peace.
In the mean time, I intend to live and learn and fly when I can, physically and spiritually, and enjoy every part of it.
Peace.
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