I do have a bit of a "Not my blood!" reaction to it.
But architecture students are working hard hard hard to make our cities hive-like.
Our lab is working with a type of trypanosome (causative agent of Chagas disease) and yesterday we watched a video of them infecting human cells and erupting out to reproduce. YYYEEEEAAARRRRGGGGHHHH
Even better, they're spread when a tiny bug bites you on the lips then takes a dump on the resulting wound.
i thought those were fish, i don't feel any aversion to it, just recalled it should be something like amphora looking, no? so too few bees resulted in less full amphora so it took this longish shape
sad that the bees died? or left, i didn't get
maybe they die usually in the winter then in the spring will revive, the colony
Belle appears to have a case of the heebie-geebies. IT'S SPREADING!
Ought I acquire a case of Bell's?
4. Christ, SP, now I'm going to have to wear insect repellent on my lips. Every day.
i thought those were fish
I had the exact same reaction.
MCMC - you only have to worry about it in the tropics.
SP- are you guys working towards a cure? Inquiring minds would like to know.
A whole case of whisky might be too much.
re: 13
You don't have to drink it all at once.
Yeah, my wife has this aversion. She once had to watch a video in which a frog lays eggs on another frog's back, or something, and the frog's skin grows up around the eggs, and then the tadpoles hatch, and bleagh. I'm grossed out, but it makes her curl up and shudder.
When I was growing up my parents kept five or six cases of gallon jugs of whiskey in the basement. I'm not sure why they had them; they were both beer drinkers. I started sampling in my mid teens. When I was 17 or so I spilled an entire gallon jug in the back of my car, a 1982 Honda Civic. The smell never went away.
I don't know what happened to all that whiskey. There was a hell of a lot of it.
5,9; Me too.
I had, in preparation for clicking on the link, already adopted my "y'all are just a bunch of wimps" pose. But having clicked, I have to say: Yeah, pretty creepy.
but instead of four they should have built only one normal looking hive, so yeah maybe this is abnormal
Hi, Charles. Wondered if you were going to show up.
5,9 - Me too. They look like fish hung up at the market.
I find those sorts of shapes (the ones that give Belle the Screaming Willies) quite pleasant and attractive. The shapes I don't like are strict rectilinear ones, though they don't give me the willies so much as a case of "meh."
Before I read Belle's original comment, I thought nothing of the shapes that bother her. After reading it in the first round of discussion, I started to find it a little creepy. Now I'm on the verge of sharing her phobia.
I think they are Hofstadter's Carp.
Oh my god if you think that is gross then you have got to watch/avoid this video on the parasitic cordyceps fungus. the montage at the end features some of the neatest sculptural forms I've ever seen.
10- That's the goal. This is early stage, we're running 350k chemicals against a culture of human cells and trypanosomes to see if we can find something that kills only the parasites or at least blocks infection. If we do find something, there's still the whole drug development process (~8-10 years, >95% failure rate.)
If we do find something, there's still the whole drug development process (~8-10 years, >95% failure rate.)
So what you're saying is, there's a chance.
24: there was a great x-files episode featuring a human version of the cordyceps fungus.
Klug, I know it's tough but you have to deal with your own trypanosomes right now instead of waiting for some theoretical deus ex machina.
This is reminding me of my friend Robert's crazy outsize sculptures, currently on display in City Hall Park. (Those aren't the best shots of them, but you get the idea. And he got a nice notice in the Times. Go, everybody!)
24: Was that the one where they were buried underground?
30: Depressing, isn't it?
You people are weird. Beehives are cool.
The shapes don't bother me as much as the thought that the bees might be exploited. The horror.
33: It's not beehives, which are inside something, a hollow tree or a box or something. It's weird naked outgrowths of comb, which is entirely different and wrong.
It's weird naked outgrowths of comb, which is entirely different and wrong. awesome.
Doesn't "hive" imply that the bees are inside something, rather than just building freestanding structures of wax?
I do have sort of a phobia of bees or any other sort of insects, roaches, ants, bugs etc. crawling all over me in a large swarm. If I'm in protective clothing I'm okay, but if too many get on my naked skin at once I freak out.
Which is part of the creepy -- the sense that the bees are doing something bizarre for bees.
the transition from the regular hexagons of the comb to wrapping around the tree-bark
That part is especially cool. Rock on, little apian engineers!
38: huh, I guess maybe it does. I always thought it just implied "place where bees live", but that could be wrong.
41 gets it right. However, those giant spiderweb thingies can fuck right off.
39: [bees or any other sort of insects, roaches, ants, bugs etc. ] but if too many get on my naked skin at once I freak out.
I'm not sure that this gets into "phobia" territory.
Does anyone remember the car totally filled with wasp-nest that Apo posted a couple of years ago? That made me unhappy as well.
['skip this comment if you have bug phobias']
39: Southern Africa suffers regular population explosions of Corn Crickets (that guy is about as big as your thumb). They emerge in huge swarms from nests in the ground and eat everything in sight. It's horrible if you're not phobic about insects, but the poor people who are pretty much have to stay indoors for a few of weeks. They gladly eat their own kind, so when one is squashed crossing a road his fellows come out to eat him and are squashed in their turn, leading to an ever expanding stain of bug mush on the road.
I was witness to the development of a phobia in a friend of mine who was not really phobic any more than most people are of creepy crawlies. He shot a corn cricket with an air rifle at close range, blowing off the back of its abdomen. The cricket kept crawling around oblivious and after a second or so turned around and began to eat its own mutilated viscera. Ed dropped the air rifle and ran inside, where he sat for some time rocking back and forth in a chair.
46: I've seen a shark do the same thing.
Sharks with air-rifles taking out their frustrations on insects...how soon before they target us?
44: well, by "phobia" I guess I meant I don't really evaluate/respond rationally. I just have a strong GET THE FUCK OFF ME NOW reaction.
I guess arguably that's a rational reaction if you're out in the wild--a lot of insects bite and sting. But it's happened to me twice in controlled situations--at museum/live insect show sorts of things. Once with some sort of (harmless) African roaches and another time with some sort of small (harmless) ants. Both involved variations of a contraption where you put your arm down in this glass tank full of thousands of the critters and then they crawl all over your arm. I thought the bugs were interesting and am perfectly happy to interact with them one on one, but getting more than a few dozen on my skin at once set off an almost panicky GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF! GET THEM OFF! response.
I'm generalizing to bees and other insects, but I'm pretty sure I'd have the same reaction.
Doesn't "hive" imply that the bees are inside something, rather than just building freestanding structures of wax?
I KNOW! I KNOW! Call on me, teacher!
Wild bees live in colonies. Domesticated bees live in hives.
It wouldn't occur to me to object to the form of the comb. The thing that does bother me in those pictures is that it looks like my Dad isn't pruning the fruit trees any more. I would like to see a vase-like upward growth, no crossing interior branches. Instead it looks all higgledy-piggledy, and I am forced to confront my parents' aging.
When I was growing up my parents kept five or six cases of gallon jugs of whiskey in the basement.
Were your parents wet Mormons? Did they also store a year's supply of food?
47: Shark Phobia is probably a good thing. Also phobias of Lions, Tigers, Bears, and the like. Pretty much anything that can eat you is good to be a little nervous about.
Sharks in the deserts of Namibia, even more worrisome. I thought once they started surviving on land they'd at least stick to areas with lots of lakes and streams nearby.
52: Pretty much anything that can eat you is good to be a little nervous about.
Like your family.
50: But don't even wild bees usually live inside something? Hollow tree, hole in a rock, something? Hanging out like that looks really strange to me.
Hm, this sort of thing doesn't bother me at all.
NEW PARADIGMS
PUSHING THE BOUNDARIES
GOOD FOR HUMANS, CREEPY FOR BEES?!?!?
LOOKS LIKE CAPITALISM IS ONLY ADMIRED IF YOU'RE A WINNER
Were your parents wet Mormons? Did they also store a year's supply of food?
Come the apocalypse, those gallon-jugs of whisky will be mighty useful for bartering, yup.
I have a phobia of skull fractures and spinal cord injuries which has mostly kept me out of extreme sports all my life. I also have a phobia of tropical reef creatures which hasn't ever forced me to change my behavior, since I've never been that close to them.
59: thanks. See that doesn't bother me, although I might be a little nervous getting too close in real life.
I think freehanging comb is disfavored, because it isn't sheltered enough and the bees don't make it through the winter. Like at my Dad's.
But there's another colony just like that in a walnut near my sister's house, and it has been going strong for years.
THEY'RE ALL AROUND YOU, LB.
I do understand what it is about this sort of thing that freaks people out, though. It just doesn't seem to affect me. Odd.
Interesting collaborative bee art.
Aganetha created honeycombed dresses for the different members of a wedding party with living bee hives attached to them. a plexiglas tube ran from the plexi boxed hive to the sky outside the exhibition space, so the viewers could watch the bees do their work.
64: what if it was a bird honeycomb?
I am with Teo. I can see why one might be FREAKED OUT by the BIZARRE AND DISTURBING SHAPES, but I'm just not. I do not like the eating of bugs (by me), but other than that, eh.
max
['You could be stabbed.']
66: Then the problem would be the bird, not the honeycomb.
I can relate to being creeped out by the unprotected wax structures. There is something disconcerting about it. Unheimlich. Because I am crazy, the geography of northern Canada freaks me out in a related (but not identical) way. It's so... broken up! And perilously NORTH!
Relevant bee link that's rather sad.
I'm not actually quite as freaked as I've been sounding -- I recognize Belle's phobia, but I'm not quite phobic myself about it. But I'm close enough to being phobic that I kept on going back to the picture to stare at it, which is why I eventually linked.
69: he geography of northern Canada freaks me out
Baffin Island intimidates me.
There was a picture of honeycombs under somebody's grill that I found fairly unsettling, but I can't link to it now.
Another Australian slideshow, showing a spider carrying out teofilo's wishes
Because I am crazy, the geography of northern Canada freaks me out in a related (but not identical) way. It's so... broken up! And perilously NORTH!
How do the various projections affect this?
The car-filling wasp nest is freaky to me mostly because the top of it looks like a ribcage.
The Canada thing does make sense to me as connected -- this is going to sound even screwier, but part of the problem with the honeycomb is a sense that it would collapse if you touched it, that it's barely strong enough to hold its own weight. The fading away into a big mess of islands thing Canada does up north feels connected.
75:
Joel Shakespeare, the head spider keeper at NSW's Australian Reptile Park, told ninemsn that the spider was a Golden Orb Weaver.
There are so many hilarious things about this sentence.
Because I am crazy, the geography of northern Canada freaks me out in a related (but not identical) way. It's so... broken up! And perilously NORTH!
Like... rocks and water? Or how it looks on a map?
81: WE'LL REMEMBER THAT ONE.
To trap a bird that size, the web must have been mighty strong, like Shelob-strong.
Somewhat relatedly, I was thinking about Cheney as Shelob recently. The most positive LOTR comparison that could be made for him would be to someone like Saruman or Denethor, driven mad and evil by his fear. However, he certainly operated like Shelob, that ancient evil, that "last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world."
In places, the tundra develops fracture patterns reminiscent of...honeycomb. [cue creepy theremin sound]
Oo, patterned ground.
The OED specifically says that a hive is " An artificial receptacle for the habitation of a swarm of bees; a beehive. Originally made, in a conical or dome-like form, of straw or the like"...; this dates back to c725; and the domes of coiled straw are still the models for the ribbing on plastic bottles of honey in the supermarket. That's not as good as the width of two Roman army horses, but it's pretty good.
I don't think it's unnatural for bees to build their combs free-hanging, because I've seen them off and on since the 1970s. It might be more common where it's warmer, or farther from snags. I quite like the radiator vane effect. Warm buzzing fuzzy bees, sunlight in the honey; needs to cool.
Like... rocks and water? Or how it looks on a map?
How it looks on a map, though some photos of far north places make me think too acutely about it, too. Some projections obviously exaggerate the effect.
That is to say it's the shape of northern Canada that freaks me out, not the terrain, as composed of rocks and water.
I always thought the organic growth component of HR Giger's work in Alien was what made it effective.
This one time I saw bees make a hive inside the decaying body of a dead lion. Fact.
69, 73, 88 et al.: "Now I shall go far and far into the north, tempting the Great Old Ones."
Some projections obviously exaggerate the effect.
The non-Euclidean ones offer a brief glimpse into the strange and terrible forces that shaped our insignificant orb in aeons as yet unknown to man.
More I cannot say, lest the doom that came to Sarnath afflict us all.
24 is exactly what I as a child imagined would happen if I ever accidentally swallowed a seed. My mother told me it would start growing in my stomach. (Old wives' tale?) My imagination took over from there.
in the matthew barney film about ("about") gary gilmore, he adds extra creepiness by using waxy beecells as the interior decor a lot of the time
It's disturbing to me because it looks like lungs or fish gills. Definitely alien-esque. Ick.
I find those sorts of shapes (the ones that give Belle the Screaming Willies) quite pleasant and attractive
Bees and wasps are my only phobia (and I'm not talking full on phobia, but definitely a disproportionate fear/hatred), but even so I too find those pictures aesthetically delightful, not disturbing, particularly the second one. Incidentally, if Belle doesn't like things that suggest bubbles, I suggest she doesn't visit the Selfridges in Birmingham (UK, not AL).
24 is one of the main exhibits in the lovely Museum of Jurassic Technology. Lawrence Weschler writes about seeing it there and being utterly disoriented as to whether it was truthful or not. The museum is good like that.
98: those look more like tiddlywinks than bubbles.
