Althouse: Anatomy of Love.

September 29, 2007

Anatomy of Love.

19 comments:

Brent said...: ULTRA High Definition TV.; 9/29/07, 11:18 PM
James M said...: Right underneath what looks like a book of scripture.; 9/29/07, 11:29 PM
James Wigderson said...: There are nights I'd trade love for decent air conditioning.; 9/29/07, 11:41 PM
halojones-fan said...: Radar love?; 9/30/07, 1:48 AM
blake said...: James,

I would've guessed "dictionary" but I guess that's scripture to some....; 9/30/07, 2:14 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Dick. Shun. Airy.; 9/30/07, 6:06 AM
Ruth Anne Adams said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/30/07, 6:13 AM
KCFleming said...: My thoughts are more pedestrian than metaphysical or poetic here.

The sublime solace provided by air conditioning, a milestone in the relief of human suffering little noticed anymore (read an account of the Scottsboro boys and ponder how the 100 degree heat in court affected things), requires its logistical demands be met.

And the apartment dweller, needing to prop up the Machine of Bliss, chose the two items in possession presumably least needed: a dictionary and a book on love.

Certainly, lose the dictionary; the computer will suffice. Anthropologist Helen Fisher's seminal 1994 book "Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray" was also chosen. Interesting. Why was it discarded? Intriguing. A divorce? A romance sought? A textbook for class? Belonged to a former lover?

At the time, Fisher was a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, right there in New York. In 2005, she was hired by match.com to help structure the pair-matching website. Currently she is is a "Visiting Research Professor and member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University" in New Jersey (pic)

Notably, the air conditioner was invented in 1902 by Willis Haviland Carrier, born in Angola, New York and a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca. Its first use was in a printing plant in Brooklyn that year, not for relief of suffering, but because heat and humidity at the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing and Publishing Company caused the the printing paper to warp enough that the expensive colored inks were often misaligned.

So the photo contains a whimsical juxtaposition of the elements, a circular reference about making books, a compelling question about the apartment dweller, and bragging rights to the state of New York.

Wow.; 9/30/07, 9:26 AM
Laura Reynolds said...: Isn't that an Alice Cooper song?; 9/30/07, 9:31 AM
Jonathan said...: Perhaps life for the AC owner goes so well that he no longer misspells words or needs love advice.; 9/30/07, 11:12 AM
EnigmatiCore said...: "Dick. Shun. Airy."

Certainly, if the owner shuns dick in her airy conditioned abode, she would have no use for the Anatomy of Love any longer.; 9/30/07, 11:26 AM
EnigmatiCore said...: Unless she's gay, of course.; 9/30/07, 11:26 AM
Chip Ahoy said...: Diction earache.; 9/30/07, 12:50 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: daschund hairy; 9/30/07, 12:55 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: dicks unhairy; 9/30/07, 12:56 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Decks on Harry; 9/30/07, 12:58 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Dykes and Ari; 9/30/07, 1:00 PM
blake said...: Trooper York didn't pop in here, so I'll just add:

"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater...than central air."--Azrael (Jason Lee), Dogma; 9/30/07, 4:31 PM
Trooper York said...: Sorry I was at the Atlantic Antic having a few beers at Pete's and at the Exit while checking out the bands. Dimitri was rocking and Sans Coulottes were as funky as ever. But as for air conditioning:

An engineer died and reported to the pearly gates. An intern angel, filling in for St. Peter, checked his dossier and grimly said, "Ah, you're an engineer; you're in the wrong place."
So the engineer was cast down to the gates of hell and was let in. Pretty soon, the engineer became gravely dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and began designing and building improvements. After a while, the underworld had air conditioning, flush toilets, and escalators, and the engineer was becoming a pretty popular guy among the demons.
One day, God called Satan up on the telephone and asked with a sneer, "So, how's it going down there in hell?"
Satan laughed and replied, "Hey, things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next."
God's face clouded over and he exploded, "What? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake; he should never have gotten down there; send him up here."
Satan shook his head, "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God was as mad as he had ever been, "This is not the way things are supposed to work and you know it. Send him back up here or I'll sue."
Satan laughed uproariously, "Yeah, right. And just where are YOU going to get a lawyer?"; 9/30/07, 6:48 PM