What-If Modelling

March 27, 2012 By arne hendriks 2

Within the overpowering global manifestations and materialisations of the desire for bigger and more, there exists precious little space to cultivate a desire for smaller and less. Few, and far between are the safehavens where dominant growth ideals are challenged and replaced by its opposite.…

A Puzzle with 300+ Pieces

March 19, 2012 By arne hendriks Off

Medical science should approach every single form of dwarfism as a genetic miracle and not, as is often the case, as a genetic defect. We are in danger of throwing away the baby with the bathwater. A negative approach makes it difficult to see the…

Parental Height Minus 10

March 14, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

In an exiting paper by S. Matthew Liao,  Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache, it is argued that human engineering may well be a reasonable tool to achieve a sustainable relationship between the planet and its human population. One of their more intriging suggestions is the possibility…

Overcoming the Uncanny

March 12, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

People are often disturbed by the idea of shrinking the human species. The confrontation with unusually small-sized adults sometimes triggers a psychosomatic sensitivity  also known as the uncanny. The uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same…

Messengers of the Small Truth

March 4, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Growth is a human default mode. Every individual, every reproduced cell and in fact every selfish copy of our DNA, intends to proliferate. From an evolutionary perspective such a default mode made perfect sense in the year 4.000 BC when the world population of Homo…

Height Tax

February 27, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Being tall is expensive. You need more of everything just to sustain yourself, and for most of it either you pay or the environment does. Tall people are an increasing burden on the planet. A 20% increase in height equals a 73% increase in weight. And all…

Benito’s Rodents

February 20, 2012 By arne hendriks Off

During the Second World War Mussolini’s government urged Italians to keep guinea pigs to supplement their meager meat rations. Rodents are the world’s most widespread, adaptable, and prolific group of mammals. They reproduce well, grow fast, and can adapt to a wide variety of local…

Complex Desire

February 19, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Since growth is a function of the fundamental desire of DNA to replicate itself, it is very difficult to obstruct. Any genetic mutation that surpresses this fundamental desire can be considered a revolutionary force. The refusal for increased growth goes against the system. Unlike the…

Trijntje Keever / Groote Meidt

February 13, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

With a height of 260cm Trijntje Keever from The Netherlands may well be the tallest woman ever. Although she lived in the 17th century, when records were scarce and giants often exaggerated height for financial gains at the funfair, there is evidence that she was…

Poultry/House

February 11, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

If we decide to shrink the human species our livestock may need to shrink with us. We’ll only consume about 2 to 10% of the food we consume today. The meat of one chicken could easily feed 100 people and one egg alone would be enough to…

The Shortlist

February 7, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

With an unprecedented adult height of only 54,6 cm a Nepali man has been recognized as the shortest man in recorded history. Despite his relatively old age of 72 years Chandra Bahadur Dangi never made it into the Guinness World Records list because he’s from a…

High on Cheese

January 29, 2012 By arne hendriks 1

In the mid 19th century the Dutch were among the shortest people in Europe. 150 years later they are the tallest in the world. Perhaps not coincidentally this is precisely the period in which the Dutch consumption of cheese started its significant growth. Cheese contains…

Krill Adaptations

January 28, 2012 By arne hendriks 0

Because environments vary with both predictable patterns and with unpredictable but recurring events, ecologists have long been interested in the ecological adaptations that organisms use to survive periods in which the environment may be exceptionally harsh. One of the most interesting adaptations observed in the…

Somatostatin Zebrafish Farm

January 18, 2012 By arne hendriks 2

One of the most promising consequences of downsizing the human species is the change in space and time it’ll take to grow food. In several research installations at Food Forward (a look into the future of food) The Incredible Shrinking Man investigates new possibilities. Like the…

Outgrowing Life (Robert Wadlow)

December 31, 2011 By arne hendriks 3

Robert Wadlow was the tallest person that ever lived. He suffered from a rare condition known as Acromegaly where the anterior hypophysis produces excess growth hormone after the epiphyseal plates close. At the time of his death at only 22 years of age Wadlow measured 272…

GH Resistance

December 26, 2011 By arne hendriks 1

Stature is a highly heritable trait controlled by genetic and environmental factors. Pygmies display a remarkable and inspiring resistance to growth hormone (GH). African Pygmies represent a paradigmatic example of non-disease-related idiopathic short stature. Even if large quantities of GH are administered to them, they simply ignore…

Ostrich BBQ

December 10, 2011 By arne hendriks 4

One of the most promising advantages of shrinking the human species would be the abundance of food. A single chicken could feed up to 100 people. But perhaps it’s not just a matter of abundance. We might encounter some unsuspected differences in the way we…

Hhp (Human Height Print)

December 5, 2011 By arne hendriks 2

Tall people need more resources than short people. That’s why it’s rather alarming that the human species continues to grow taller. In fact our increasing height puts more pressure on the ecosystem services than the total population growth. If people become 20% taller this creates over…

The Rescale Archive

November 28, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

Rescaling something always has effect. It makes us notice things. It changes the way we perceive, and it reinstates a certain autonomy of the object. But what happens if the rescaled object is the human body? How would we perceive reality if everything around us…

Medicalizing Short Stature

November 17, 2011 By arne hendriks 0

The US market for growth hormone is estimated at 22 billion dollars. But it wasn’t always so big. Two growth hormone producers, Eli Lilly and Genentech worked hard to medicalize short stature and convince children and their parents that being short is a disease rather than a natural…