heads of the dead

today's issue of Current Biology includes a special section on the "Biology of Death". My contribution was inspired by the recent exhibition "The Skull - Icon. Myth. Cult." which I saw at the UNESCO World Heritage Site Völklingen Ironworks near Saarbrücken, Germany, back in May, as well as by the famous shrunken heads at Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum, not far from our home. The feature rounds up various ways in which different cultures have preserved and manipulated the heads of family, friends and foes for various reasons.

Read all about it:

Heads of the dead

Current Biology Volume 26, Issue 13, pR544–R547, 11 July 2016

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The Latmul in Papua New Guinea honoured notable ancestors by sculpting a new, beautiful face onto their exhumed skulls, using clay and shells. This is an example from the Gabriel Max collection. (own photo)

ghost bikes

a couple of months ago, a student cycling right in the heart of Oxford, outside the Bodleian Library, was killed in a collision with a garbage truck. A couple of days later a bicycle spraypainted entirely in white turned up by the roadside, chained to a post. While I immediately made the connection with the accident, I didn't quite figure out who put it there and why -- whether it was some kind of religious tradition to paint an object relating to the death and use it as a memorial.

Now I've come across a mention of the group visual resistance which has been putting up such ghost bikes in New York for a couple of years:

"Beginning in June 2005, members of Visual Resistance have been creating small and somber memorials for New York City bicyclists killed by automobiles. Each time a biker is killed, a bicycle painted all white is locked to a street sign and a small stenciled plaque is bolted in place above it.

The installations are meant as reminders of the tragedy that took place on an otherwise anonymous street corner, and as quiet statements in support of bikers’ right to safe travel. It was inspired by Ghost Bike Pittsburgh, which was in turn inspired by a similar effort in St. Louis. In recent months, Ghost Bikes have appeared in cities across the country, as well as in the UK."

The Oxford ghost bike doesn't have a plaque, though. At least I haven't found any.

life and death

I read a feature this weekend about people who received sentences of life without parole for crimes committed when they were 13-17. Deeply depressing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2140431,00.html

Never mind that a few of the cases reported look like clear miscarriage of justice to me, the whole idea of spending 70 years in jail for something you did (or in a few cases, didn't stop others from doing!) when you were 13, looks perverted to me.

Although some people are apparently allowed to kill at random. Jean-Charles de Menezes did nothing wrong except looking a bit foreign. The inquiry into his death has now finished with essentially no consequences:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2140692,00.html