Seeing the Bodies…The Exhibition in New York last November reminded me of how fascinating the body I inhabit is.

Featuring over 200 actual human bodies and specimens, meticulously dissected and respectfully displayed, the exhibition provides an intimate and informative look deep inside the systems of the body: Skeletal, Muscular, Nervous, Respiratory, Digestive, Urinary, Reproductive, Circulatory and the Treated Body.

Organizers used a revolutionary process called polymer preservation to permanently preserve the specimens. Through this process, all human tissue has been replaced with liquid silicone rubber. This prevents the natural decay process, making specimens available for study for an indefinite time period.

The exhibition is a great place to explore the wonders of the human form. As I walked from room to room, contemplating the specimens, I couldn’t help but take notes. Here are 65 facts about the human body.

Skeletal System

1. Our skeleton contains approximately 206 bones.
2. Children’s bodies grow faster in the springtime.
3. Babies have 300 bones, adults have 206.
4. Bone is a matrix of hard minerals built and maintained by bone cells. If you removed the minerals and kept the cells, you could tie your bones in a knot.
5. Bone is five times stronger than mild steel.
6. Bones make up only 14% of our total lean body mass.
7. The marrow inside certain bones of the adult skeleton creates about 2.5 million new red blood cells each second.
8. While standing, the bones of the foot lock together to form an unmovable pedestal. When walking begins, the bones unlock and change the foot into a mobile system of levers.

Muscular System

9. There are three types of muscle tissue: skeletal, cardiac and smooth.
10. Skeletal muscles move and support the skeleton. They make up about 50% of a person’s body weight.
11. There are 20 muscles in the foot that give it its shape and contract to relax and impart movement.
12. A stunning array of muscles, sometimes four layers deep, work together for bodily support and movement.
13. The muscles that run along the spine are some of the most powerful muscles of the body; they keep us upright and provide the strength for lifting and pushing.
14. Muscles produce heat to help maintain body temperature.
15. The largest muscles in your body are those in your buttocks.
16. The body’s smallest muscles are found in the ears; they are attached to the body’s smallest bones.
17. If all the muscles in your body worked together, you could lift more than 10 tons.
18. Every bodily movement and function – from breathing and digestion to running at top speed – depends upon the muscular system.
19. Muscles attach to bones via the tendons, which are often 500 times stronger than muscle and act to prevent strained muscles from tearing.
20. The most active muscles in the body are located in the eye.

If all the muscles in your body worked together, you could lift more than 10 tons.

Sensory System

21. The human body is made up of approximately 100 billion nerve cells or neurons.
22. The brain and spinal cord make up your central nervous system. All other nerves comprise the peripheral nervous system.
23. The brain’s right cerebral hemisphere governs artistic ability.
24. The brain’s left cerebral hemisphere is the center of logic and language.
25. Weighing only 1.4 kg in an average adult, the brain contains upwards of a trillion nerve cells, which are in constant communication with each other and the body. Some brain cells make connections with over 10,000 others in a split-second.
26. The cerebral cortex – gray matter – is responsible for the brain’s higher functions, such as thinking, speaking and storing memories. In fact, most of the information processing in the brain occurs in the cerebral cortex.
27. The total area of the brain is too large to fit in our uranium, so the cerebral cortex consists of folded bulges (gyri) that create deep furrows (sulci). The folds in the brain add significantly to its surface area, increasing the amount of gray matter and the amount of information we can process. It also gives the brain its “wrinkled” appearance.
28. Each of us has a unique wrinkled pattern.
29. Every person has a unique tongue print.

Nervous System

30. Faster than the world’s most powerful computer, the human nervous system uses billions of interconnected nerve cells to regulate all of the body’s vital fictions while also serving as the seat of all thought and feeling.
31. The adult spinal cord is roughly 45 centimeters long.
32. The limb system is a group of interconnected brain structures involved with different behaviors: the hippocampus, the amygdala, the seal area and the hypothalamus.
33. The hippocampus is an area buried deep in the forebrain that helps regulate emotion and memory. The hippocampus doesn’t just file away memories; it also connects related memories and gives them meaning.
34. The amygdala, which is located directly in front of the hippocampus, has a strong link to the olfactory system and is essential to the expression of emotions.
35. The seal area is a tiny region above the amygdala that is thought to be a pleasure and reward center and may be important in addictive behavior.
36. The hypothalamus, which is connected to all parts of the limit system, regulates the activity of he body’s organs and is responsible for the visceral changes due to the emotions, such as increased blood pressure.

Respiratory System

37. The alveoli are tiny air sacs within the lungs where the exchange of O₂ and CO₂ takes place. Each lung contains 300 million alveoli – if stretched out they’d cover a football field. The total surface area of the lungs is equal to a tennis court.
38. The lungs are actually divided into 20 functionally separate regions which receive their own blood supply and continue to operate if another segment is removed, this ensuring that breathing will continue if one region of the lung becomes diseased.
39. We speak by pushing air from the lungs into the larynx and vibrating the vocal cords. The more the vocal cords are stretched, the higher the pitch of your voice.
40. On average, a pack of cigarettes takes 3 hours and 40 minutes off your life.

On average, a pack of cigarettes takes 3 hours and 40 minutes off your life.

Digestive System

41. On average, adults have 22 feet (6.7 m) of small intestine, 5 feet (1.5 m) of large intestine.
42. To gain 1 pound (0.5 kg) you must consume 3,500 more calories than your body can burn.
43. To lose 1 pound (0.5 kg), you must burn 3,500 calories more than your body needs.
44. The heaviest single organ in the body, weighing close to 1.6 kg in an average adult, the liver is the largest organ inside the body as well as the one of the most important.
45. The liver is also the only organ that can regenerate itself in as much as 75% of the liver can be removed and it will still grow back to the same shape and form.
46. Gut theory stipulates that the gut organs of our ancestors used to be larger and required more space and energy. With evolution, the body began to divert more energy to the brain as it rapidly expanded, forcing the gut organs to become smaller and more efficient.
47. Humans eat far more meat than any other primate, which in turn has reduced the size of the human body’s digestive system.
48. The brain consumes between 20-30% of the calories you need.

Reproductive System / Urinary System

49. Every day, a person’s kidneys process about 200 quarts of blood to sift out 2 quarts of waste products and extra water.
50. The actual removal of wastes in the kidneys occurs in tiny units inside the kidneys called nephrons. Each kidney has about 1 million nephrons.
51. Though females are born with all the eggs they will ever have, men continue to produce sperm throughout their lives. The average healthy male produces between 1,500 and 3,000 sperm every second.

Fetal Development

52. Beginning life as a zygote in a single fertilized cell – the human body develops into a remarkably intricate system made up of an estimated 75-100 trillion cells.
53. After conception, everyone spends one half hour as a single cell. By the 11th week, all major organs have formed. The heart of an embryo begins to beat during the 5th week.
54. Human growth is divided into two stages: embryonic and fetal. Embryonic stage begins at conception and continues until week 8. It is characterized by rapid growth in which the external features of the embryo form.
55. Week one of the fetal stage begins around the 9th week after fertilization and ends at birth (which marks the 28th or 30th week of fetal growth). It is characterized by the development of the major organs and the systems of the body.
56. Fetal cells may remain within the mother decades after birth, helping her fight disease and stay healthy.

A heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day.

Circulatory System

57. No cell in the body lies more than a few kilometers from a blood vessel.
58. There are 100,000 miles (160,934 km) of blood vessels in the human body.
59. Pulse is an artery wall stretching with each heartbeat.
60. Every drop of blood in the body passes through the heart once per minute.
61. The brain requires 20% of the body’s total blood supply.
62. Blood’s red color comes from the hemoglobin in red blood cells, which turns red when it binds with oxygen.
63. A heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day.

Treated Body

64. Nerve cells create electrical impulses that reach speeds exceeding 270 miles per hour.
65. Many prosthetic implants are no longer solid but contain a honeycomb arrangement of open spaces coated with bone cells. This helps implants fit more securely into the existing bone.

On January 14, 2012, hundreds of people defied the rain and took to the streets of Beirut to protest against rape.

Protesters marched from Sanayeh to Riad El Solh square in Downtown Beirut, where security officers cordoned off the area to prevent them from reaching the Lebanese Parliament.

As the crowds gathered in the square, organizers read statements that called upon the Lebanese Parliament to:

1. Pass the draft law for the Protection from Family Violence as it has been written and with no delay.
2. Intensify punitive measures against rapists and those who attempt rape, amending the respective law.
3. Treat verbal harassment as physical harassment, especially in the work place, making it a crime subject to judicial penalties.
4. Deal with complaints related to sexual violence with rigor and consistency. The Interior Ministry and the Municipalities should also apply those measures. The three bodies should work to make the streets and neighborhoods safe, especially during the night-time, by ensuring proper street-lighting, and permitting women to carry tools of self-defense, like taser guns and pepper spray.

The march was organized by the Beirut-based feminist collective Nasawiya.

The Lebanese Parliament rejected a draft law to protect women from family violence last year. The bill, which would criminalize physical, mental, and sexual abuse, marital rape, and so-called honor crimes, was vehemently opposed by religious leaders and a number of MPs, who insist on the need to “keep the institution of the Family”, and not “question and challenge the authority of the Father.”

Since 2007, the organization KAFA (Enough Violence and Exploitation) has worked on drafting and promoting the family violence bill. A coalition of 41 legal and women’s organizations, including KAFA, has been pushing for legal protections against violence against women.

In Lebanon, which officially recognizes 18 sects,  religious courts deal with personal status matters such as divorce, custody, and inheritance, but are not mandated to protect women from violence.

Articles 503 and 504 of the Lebanese penal code allow for marital rape, or rather, do not even consider it as rape.

Article 522 of the Lebanese penal code stipulates that charges are dropped against a rapist if he marries the victim.

The sentence for rape, according to Article 503, is forced labor for at least five years or for at least seven years, if the victim is under 15 years of age.

Lebanon lacks legislations to protect women from sexual harassment wherever it may happen.

For a round-up of the analytical articles, op-eds, commentaries and background information on rape and sexual violence in Lebanon, click here.

Click here to view the Photo Gallery “Fight Rape Protest” on Flickr, or browse through the thumbnails below.

In search for a human connection, we lay our soul bare only to find that people’s interest in us is only skin-deep.

If I had the choice of taking a piece from the New York Museum of Modern Art‘s collection, it would be this chest of drawers made by Dutch designer Tejo Remy in 1991. Aptly called “You Can’t Lay Down Your Memory”, the dresser is featured as part of the Standard Deviations exhibition of objects and designs in the Museum’s collection that belong to families. It’s made from mismatched second-hand drawers held together by a rough belt. It looks a lot like a pile of suitcases bundled together for travel, the kind you’d use to keep tokens and souvenirs (all memore fragments) and carry them around from one place to the other.

Remy was one of the first members of Droog Design, the Dutch collective founded in 1993 by artist and designer Gijs Bakker and curator and critic Renny Ramakers. Many Droog objects celebrate ingenuity and an apparent poverty of means, elevating them to an aesthetic philosophy – a response to the exuberance and excess of 1980s design. Remy’s dresser has the visual impact and provocative intent of a Dada assemblage. “The chest can be seen as a statement targeted at profession, trade and public alike, putting our overproduction and over-consumption into question,” Droog founder Renny Ramakerssaid. “The chest is ‘formless’ and imperfect, a memorable presence in a world where all emphasis has been on form and perfection and still is.”

Soon after designing it, Remy (the most rebellious and idealistic of the group) left Droog Design in order, he has said, to maintain autonomy from the collective and “their power to decide which objects can see the light on the basis of marketing calculations.”

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.

One of my favorite galleries at the New York Museum of Modern Art were the Architecture and Design galleries. When I visited the Museum in late November 2011, there was an exhibition called Standard Deviations, which showcases objects and designs in the Museum’s collection that belong to families, including an important recent acquisition of 23 digital typefaces.

According to the curators, type design has undergone significant change over the last two hundred years – from the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century to the explosion of digital media over the last three decades – and its history, like that of industrial design and architecture, is a record of social cultural, and technological developments across time. Like them it has modern, postmodern, and digital phases.

The selection of 23 typefaces, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 2010, reflects typography’s digital phase: all are digital or designed in anticipation of the digital revolution, and as such they all respond to the technological advancements of the end of the twentieth century. Each one is a milestone in the history of digital typography. Interestingly, although they were created on screens using digital tools, most of the typefaces on display at the gallery were designed for print on paper, with the exception of Matthew Carter’s Verdana.

MoMA curators made their selection based on “the same criteria they use when evaluating objects, judging the designers’ aesthetics, historical relevancy, functionality, social significance, technological ingenuity, and economy, with an eye to the synthesis of goals, means, and elegance that they always seek in modern design.”

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.

This 1976 presentation board of the “I ♥ NY” logo by Milton Glaser is part of the exhibition, Standard Deviations, which showcases objects and designs in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s collection that belong to families, including an important recent acquisition of 23 digital typefaces, on view for the first time. The Architecture and Design galleries were some of my favorites at the MoMA.

Glaser compares this rudimentary rebus to a declaration of love carved into a tree trunk. At a time when fear of crime was depressing tourism in New York City, the New York State Department of Commerce (in particular Deputy Commissioner Bill Doyle), with input from Governor Hugh Carey, commissioned the advertising agency Wells Rich Greene to develop a positive campaign about the city and Glaser, a well known designer, to capture it graphically. Designed pro bono for a three-month campaign, the wildly successful design has been copied and reinterpreted millions of times all over the world. Glaser’s rebus became a particularly strong icon for New York City and one of the most frequently imitated logos in history, a template for declarations of love for multitudes of other people, places, and things. The design was copyrighted after about ten years of open use. – MoMA Caption

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.

Lunar Sentence II (1978-1979) by Leandro Kantz

The New York Museum of Modern Art recently acquired Leandro Katz’s 1978/1979 lunar photography (gelatin silver prints), through which he created an alphabet and a message.

The decoded sentence reads, “When we pulverize words, what is left is neither mere noise nor arbitrary, pure elements, but still other words, reflection of an invisible and yet indelible representation: this is the myth in which we now transcribe the most obscure and real powers of language.” – MoMA Caption

Leandro Katz is an Argentine artist born in 1938.

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.

Suited for Subversion – 2002
Nylon-reinforced PVC, padding, speaker, and pulse reader
Ralph Borland
South African, born 1974

Exhibited at the New York Museum of Modern Art, this civil-disobedience suit, to be worn by street protesters for protection against police batons, draws attention to the risks demonstrators face in order to defend their convictions. A wireless video camera mounted over the head acts as a witness, recording police action. A speaker in the center of the chest amplifies and projects the wearer’s heartbeat. In a group action, when many people are wearing these suits, the increasing heartbeats become audible as tension and excitement mount, like a natural soundtrack arousing the crowd. At the same time, the heartbeat exposes the vulnerability of the individual and the fragility of the human body exploited as a shield – almost as a weapon – against police munitions. – MoMA Caption

Suited for Subversion was part of the exhibition SAFE: Design Takes on Risk at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2005/2006. The exhibition featured several objects designed to protect body and mind from dangerous or stressful circumstances; respond to situations of emergency; ensure clarity and information; and provide a sense of comfort and security.

This article is part of a series of posts about my visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Click here to read the complete series.

On a recent trip to New York, I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). There I wandered the Museum’s various galleries of permanent collections, and exhibitions, covering paintings, sculptures, drawings, photography, architecture, design, and media. In a series of posts about my MoMA visit, I will feature some of the pieces that resonated most with me. First up is this installation by Senga Nengudi.

R.S.V.P. I - 1977
Pantyhose and sand
Senga Nengudi
American, born 1943

Acquired by the MoMA in 2011, R.S.V.P. I was included in Senga Nengudi’s breakthrough exhibition at Just Above Midtown Gallery in 1977. It is made of dark-hued panty hose that have been pulled, knotted, and filled with sand to create bulging, pendulous sacks and tautly outstretched limblike forms. “I am working with nylon mesh because it relates to the elasticity of the human body,” Nengudi has explained. “From tender, tight beginnings to sagging… The body can only stand so much push and pull until it gives way, never to resume its original shape.” – MoMA caption

To commemorate World Sexual Health Day (September 4), an art exhibit entitled “Good Sex/ Bad Sex/ No Sex/ Your Sex” was held at AltCity, in Hamra.

“Sexuality is such a profound part of our life. So is art,” explained event organizer Rola Yasmine, member of the Youth Initiative Committee of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS). ”What we did here is create a space for artists to express what I feel is a very profound part of who they are and who we all are. But maybe they can speak on our behalf in that sense. And I’m really glad that we have such great people who can come out and write exactly what they want to write, and say exactly what they want to say in all these forms for all of us.”

The event was an attempt to break the taboo on sex and sexuality in the Lebanese society. “People are afraid to express, afraid to indulge in their sexuality,” said Yasmine. “They’re afraid to experiment and discover. And some of them are even afraid to discuss it, and that’s the simplest thing we can possibly do.”

Sexual health is a state of physical, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality. It requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. – World Health Organization, Working Definition

The exhibit showcased various artworks related to sexuality, including paintings, installations, photography and short stories. In a painting entitled “Sexual Revolution”, Nisrine Chaer stressed that there’s no revolution without a sexual revolution. In another painting entitled “Beneath the Veil”, Dalia Chabarek used a covered up calligraphy of Surat al Nisa’ to reflect on how strict interpretations of the Quran are used to control women’s sexuality. In a two-piece photo set entitled “United Colors of Unequal”, Rayya Haddad questioned our pursuit of equality, using nudity. In a short story, Paolo Salwan shed light on the hypocrisy of the Lebanese society when it comes to sex. A section was dedicated to selected e-cards from the post secret-inspired column “Bayneh w Baynik” featured on Bekhsoos, the queer Arab magazine published by the LBTQ support group Meem. I contributed a piece entitled “Expressions of Sexuality“, a visualization of the World Health Organization’s working definition of sexuality in the form of an anagrams puzzle.

The event also included a short reading of the book Bareed Mista3jil, a collection of 41 true (and personal) stories from lesbians, bisexuals, queer and questioning women, and transgender persons from all over Lebanon.

Representatives of the Beirut-based Marsa Sexual Health Center were in attendance to talk about the importance of sexual health and the services offered by the center.

The purpose of this year’s World Sexual Health Day was to highlight the participation of young people in shaping their own sexual health and to encourage open and respectful discussion of their rights and responsibilities.