A Bug on the Windshield : The Frontal Cortex

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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.

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A Bug on the Windshield

Category: Culture
Posted on: March 8, 2007 11:42 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

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Somehow, magnification makes the grossness disappear. The insect almost looks like a religious icon, an angel nailed to a cross. See more entomological splatterings here.

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Comments (1)

Jonathan Swift on the Brobdingnagians and the Lilliputians:

I must confess no Object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous Breast, which I cannot tell what to compare with, so as to give the curious Reader an Idea of its Bulk, Shape and Colour. It stood prominent six Foot, and could not be less than sixteen in Circumference. The Nipple was about half the Bigness of my Head, and the Hew both of that and the Dug so varified with Spots, Pimples and Freckles, that nothing could appear more nauseous: For I had a near sight of her, she sitting down the more conveniently to give Suck, and I standing on the Table. This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English Ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own Size, and their Defects not to be seen but through a Magnifying-glass, where we find by Experiment that the smoothest and whitest Skins look rough and coarse, and ill coloured. I Remember when I was at Lilliput, the Complexion of those diminutive People appeared to me the fairest in the World; and talking upon this Subject with a Person of Learning there, who was an intimate Friend of mine, he said that my Face appeared much fairer and smoother when he looked on me from the Ground, than it did upon a nearer View when I took him up in my Hand, and brought him close, which he confessed was at first a very shocking Sight. He said he could discover great Holes in my Skin; that the Stumps of my Beard were ten times stronger than the Bristles of a Boar, and my Complexion made up of several Colours altogether disagreeable[.]

Posted by: Steven Thomas Smith | March 10, 2007 12:16 PM