This afternoon I was perusing a National Geographic set of images entitled “Wide World of Color,” and I came across this beautiful photograph by Joshi Daniel of a rose peddler in Mumbai.  What is striking about the image is the contrast between the vivid color of the rose and the essential monochrome of the rest of the image as well as the contrast between the fragile youthful beauty of the rose and the gnarled hands of the peddler – and I will add that the hands too possess a natural beauty.

How is one to feel on viewing this image?  There are the contrasts that I have mentioned.  And then there is the beautiful simplicity of the image and the simple life that it portrays.  But it is also reminiscent of John Thompson’s “Street Life in (nineteenth century) London” and in particular the image of the “Flower Girls in Front of Convent Garden, 1877.”  We have spoken of Thompson’s work before.  The lives of the unseen bear little resemblance to that of George Bernard Shaw’s fictionalized “Eliza Doolittle.”   It is from this ambiguity that the power of the image of the Mumbai Flower Peddler emerges.

Figure 1- Mothers Day from the Wikimedia Commons by April 29, 2012 by Alfonsopazphoto at the Badoca Safari Park and place in the public domain under creative commons attribution license.

I found myself this morning scouring the web for an appropriate Mothers’ Day image.  Those of us whose mothers are no longer with them miss them dearly.  Those who still have them should hold them dearly.  The image of mother and child is so iconic as to be cliche. I am offering up as a Mothers Day card for my readers the image of Figure 1 which was taken on Mothers Day April 29, 2012 by Alfonsopazphoto at the Badoca Safari Park.  The unifying theme is someone to look up to, someoneone to care for, and a bond of love.  For me the ultimate Mother and Child image is that of Raphael’s “Madonna of the Chair.”  And really with this simple zebra image an identical theme plays out, and yes it is a cute cuddly animal picture.  My very point is the anthropomorphism.   Happy Mother’s Day everyone!

Those of us who were brought up watching the “Six Million Dollar Bionic Man” and the “Bionic Woman,” have been waiting patiently for the future, undeterred by Lindsay Wagner being reduced (?) to selling The Sleep Number Bed on television.  Actually, in truth not so patiently.  I am getting pretty imapatient about the promised man Mars landing! Still the future is all around us as we rocket headlong into it, towards what Ray Kurtzweil has called “The Singularity.”

As a result I was delighted, but not really surprised this morning, to read about FDA approval of Dean Kamen’s, the remarkable inventor who brought us the “Segway,” latest invention the DEKA Arm system, which is shown in this stunning photograph by HANDOUT/Reuters.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provided more than $40 million for the development of this device.  According to DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez: “It was designed to produce near-natural upper extremity control to injured people who have suffered amputations. This arm system has the same size, weight, shape and grip strength as an adult’s arm would be able to produce.”  The arm can perform complex actions simultaneously and is truly a quantum leap for amputees.

The arm is named for Star Wars character “Luke Skywalker” and is indeed so reminiscent of the prosthetic device that he is fitted with after his arm is cut off with Darth Vader’s light sword.  The photograph is excellent, conveying a beautiful bright translucence.  It is a translucence that enables us to make out the arms inner workings, albeit with a murkiness of vision that belies the cloudiness of the sight with which we must always see the future.

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“In the beginning there was only chaos. Then out of the void appeared Erebus, the unknowable place where death dwells, and Night. All else was empty, silent, endless, darkness. Then somehow Love was born bringing a start of order.”

These words describe the essence of the ancient Greek view of the creation.  They are, of course, much more than faint echos of creation myths from all over the world.  I have always liked the ancient Greek description because it anticipates and antedates our modern scientific concept of the beginning of the universe, the essential evolution of both physical and the biological order out of chaos.  Note too the role played by darkness and its evolution into light.

Now scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, using some of the fastest computers in the world,  have developed a computer program, the Illustris Simulation, that models.  The model inputs the fundamental laws of physics and outputs a simulated image of what the universe looked like at each stage of the thirteen billion years of cosmic evolution.   Be sure to watch some of the videos on the Illustris site. We watch the emergence of both light and matter out of bands of dark matter. What is quite remarkable is the success of Illustris in predicting, for instance, the forms of galaxies and a direct side-by-side comparison of what the universe should now look like and Hubble images of what it does look like. In this image the left hand side is from Hubble, the right hand side from Illustris.  You have to look hard to see the split. Such is the fidelity of the prediction.

We have spoken before about how computers can generate images that never really existed – of imagined worlds.  Placed in this scientific construction the split between reality and the imagined blurs.  What is real becomes imagined.  What is imagined becomes real.

I guess that hands down the image of week was taken on on April 30, 2014 and shows Hong Yaoming, who is  deputy headmaster of Xianning Experimental Primary School, fulfilling a promise to his students by kissing a pig. The previous week at the school’s weekly flag-raising ceremony Hong promised that he would smooch the porcine provided students stopped littering on campus. Hong said the inspiration came from the story of an American teacher who promised to kiss a pig if more than 80 percent of his pupils passed their math exam.

So the next question where did the piggy come from. The 40 kg porker was provided by one of Hong’s friends.  There are undoubtedly lots of jokes about a whole variety of movies, starting with Charlottes Web.  The pig could not be reached for comment as to whether Hong was a good kisser – which is just fine since she’s not a swine to kiss and tell.