The Short Date Paradox

March 8, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Incredible Shrinking Man has advocated the idea that it would be a positive thing if more women feel attracted to shorter men, much in the same way most men feel attracted to shorter women. Eventually this would result in shorter offspring. But here’s the…

Mandragora

February 6, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

The Incredible shrinking Man desires a more ecological human existence. We’ve outgrown our naturally given space on Earth and experience the consequences, or even consider exit strategies. But rather than fantasizing about a departure from the planet that designed us, we investigate the possibilities to…

Minidampf Monorail

January 25, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

One of the most straightforward consequences of shrinking the human species is that most of our built environment would have to be re-designed. Our cities, production facilities, agriculture and transport systems would all need to be downsized to fit our down-sized needs. And some things…

The Simple Growth Obsession Test

January 15, 2015 By arne hendriks 0

We’re obsessed with growth. The Simple Growth Obsession Test is a simple test to check for yourself how much growth and our deeply embedded sensitivity for signs of growth create an emotional response when confronted with signs of its absence or presence. The test itself is…

2000+ Genetic Factors

December 9, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

Since 2007 researchers of the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) consortium are quickly uncovering the polygenic traits that influence human height.  Recently they analysed data from the genomes of another 253,288 subjects and were able to identify 697 gene variants, the pieces of DNA that…

Abundance Fantasies: Fish Story

December 6, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

In our series on Abundance Fantasies we explore how a deeply rooted desire for abundance manifests itself in our vocabulary, our myths and legends, and our cultural artefacts. The question is how we can activate these cultural pathways to initiate the desire to become smaller,…

Non hopping Kangaroo

November 24, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

When asked what defines a kangaroo, most people would probably say it’s the fact that they hop. Christine Janis of Brown University was studying a species of giant kangaroo, the Procoptodon goliah when it occurred to her that its weight of 240 kg, it’s bone…

Japanese Miniatures: Hara Hachi Bu

November 20, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

In the west we start a meal by saying  “Have a nice dinner” or “Bon appetite”. We refer to the quality of the eating experience but never to the quantity. In contrast, on the Japansese island of Okinawa, they say “Hara Hachi Bu” which means…

Savage Scale Models

November 16, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

In his structuralist anthropological study The Savage Mind Claude Lévi-Strauss writes: ” To understand a real object in its totality we always tend to work from its parts. Reduction in scale reverses this situation…in the case of scale models, in contrast to what happens when…

Females to Mars

October 28, 2014 By arne hendriks 1

Kate Greene took part in a NASA-funded research project called HI-SEAS (Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation). It required that she and five other crewmembers live as astronauts on the surface of Mars. For four months they were cooped up in a geodesic dome on…

Co-Ex Interface

September 27, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

When first confronted with the idea of a human species with an average height of 50cm, initially most people express their fear for cats and dogs and how our diminutive size might affect our relationship with them. The Incredible shrinking Man doesn’t deny that this…

The Baby Illusion

September 16, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Dr. Jordy Kaufman, senior researcher at the The Swinburne BabyLab, asked himself why many parents, after the birth of a second child report that their first child appears to grow suddenly and substantially larger? Is it simply because of the contrast that stems from the comparison of the…

Desiccation Tolerance

September 15, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Small people have more skin than tall people, in relation to body volume. With every 10% decrease in body height, body volume decreases with 27%, while skin surface decreases with only 19%. This means, among other things, that smaller humans dehydrate more rapidly. There’s more evaporation…

Small Fork Interface

July 11, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Tiny cutlery can function as an effective shrink experience machine. Eating a normal sized meal with a small fork gives its user a real sense of abundance. Not only will the tiny fork interface prolong the time of having a meal, it also functions as…

Catch-Up Growth

July 8, 2014 By arne hendriks 2

Catch-up growth is the accelerated growth of an organism following a period of slowed development. Such slowing down is most often the result of environmental influences such as food scarcity, sudden changes in temperature, or other environmental stress factors. After the situation is normalised, growth…

FOXO3a

June 20, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

Recent studies have identified the FOXO3a (Forkhead Box 3a) transcription gene as an important regulator of morphological scaling. It’s a key regulatory gene in a nutrient- and energy-sensing biological pathway (insulin/IGF-1 signalling pathway),that throughout our evolution was conserved from yeast to humans. FOXO3a anticipates food scarcity…

Japanese Miniatures: One Rice Sushi

May 25, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

The Japanese have a natural pull towards miniaturisation that never seizes to inspire our investigation into smallerness. Our series on Japanese Miniatures zooms in on this special quality. It articulates a sensitivity for smallness that, through a process of abstraction, may ultimately help us attain…

The Curious Case of Adam Rainer

May 10, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

When he was 18 years old, Adam Rainer was 138 cm’s tall, which classified him as a dwarf. Around that time however he developed a benign tumour in his pituitary gland which stimulated the excessive production of growth hormone. As a consequence he started to increase…

Voluntary Simplicity

April 23, 2014 By arne hendriks 2

Voluntary simplicity is characterised by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than what they want. Simple living movements testify to the mindset and behaviour needed for humanity to make drastic changes. Its many secular and religious manifestations function as a source of how to…

Towards the 6th Stage

April 1, 2014 By arne hendriks 0

An often heard criticism of the theory of shrinking ourselves to reach a sustainable human presence on Earth is that in the long run we’ll fill up the space we’ve created with more people and that, even at a much smaller size, we may be worse…