likethebeer

It can clearly be challenging to convey the magnitude of loss after a tragedy, particularly when that number is in the tens of millions, yet that is precisely what The Fallen of World War II, a documentary (also available as an interactive graphic) that examines the human cost of second World War, sets out to do. Written, directed, and narrated by Neil Halloran, the elegantly animated data visualization lays out the human losses of the war, and it’s devastating.

The 15-minute video is divided into three sections: the first examines military deaths, while the second deals with those of civilians, including victims of the Holocaust. The third offers an illuminating, and ultimately uplifting, comparison between WWII and other world conflicts. One particularly striking moment: when Halloran depicts Soviet fatalities as a seemingly endless parade of tiny red soldiers.

The Chaos represents a virtuoso feat of composition, a mammoth catalogue of about 800 of the most notorious irregularities of traditional English orthography, skilfully versified (if with a few awkward lines) into couplets with alternating feminine and masculine rhymes. The selection of examples now appears somewhat dated, as do a few of their pronunciations, indeed a few words may even be unknown to today's readers (how many will know what a "studding-sail" is, or that its nautical pronunciation is "stunsail"?), and not every rhyme will immediately "click" ("grits" for "groats"?); but the overwhelming bulk of the poem represents as valid an indictment of the chaos of English spelling as it ever did. Who the "dearest creature in creation" addressed in the first line, also addressed as "Susy" in line 5, might have been is unknown, though a mimeographed version of the poem in Harry Cohen's possession is dedicated to "Miss Susanne Delacruix, Paris". Presumably she was one of Nolst Trenité's students.

.... As a scientist, I enjoy not only the broad theoretical questions of my field of biological anthropology—questions such as what it means to be human or what environmental pressures motivated our most interesting adaptations—but also the day-to-day fun of designing studies, collecting data, analyzing it in the lab, and creating statistical models to make sense of it all. My lab has freezers full of human piss and spit, my hard drive is full of ultrasound images of uteruses and ovaries, and I rub my hands with glee at the thought of buying both a new ultrasound machine and multiplexer—a piece of equipment that will allow my students to measure multiple hormones and biomarkers from a single sample at once—this summer. I am definitely a girl with toys.