Migikata Sagari!

April 26, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

Migikata agari is a Japanese phrase that means right shoulder rising. Frequently used at the end of business meetings this rallying call is physically expressed by trusting the right shoulder up. In so doing the shoulderline creates an upward slope that symbolizes a growth chart.…

Palaeoloxodon Falconeri

April 19, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

During periods of low sea levels around 500,000 years ago, full-sized straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), which stood roughly 4 meters tall and weighed up to 10 tons, migrated to several Mediterranean islands. The elephants trapped on these islands started shrinking. On the mainland, being very…

D(r)airy

April 19, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

The ideologies of economic and physical growth are inextricably linked with our food system. The bigger we are, the more we need. Hence the taller person is by default a more prolific consumer. Dairy products stimulate greater height and as such condition the body to…

mTOR Off

April 2, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

At the center of The Incredible Shrinking man’s belief that we should and can become smaller is its most obvious component: the body. Human bodies, especially in the west, have become alarmingly tall in a relatively short period of time since the mid 19th century.…

20% Ma

March 30, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

The Incredible Shrinking Man has long been fascinated by Hara Hachi Bu, the practice of eating until only 80% full. This discipline does more than just limit intake; it creates, and honors, a 20% void. This intentional emptiness relates to the Japanese concept of Ma.…

Bonsai at 14

January 24, 2026 By arne hendriks Off

Bonsai are an ongoing fascination of The Incredible Shrinking Man. They both show the resilience and beauty of smallness and represent some of the paradoxical aspects of human/nature relationships. Bonsai are creatures that teach us ways forward while reminding us of the delicate relationship between…

Ozempic Meals

December 26, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

How to sell (almost) nothing. Approximately one in eight American adults are currently taking weightloss drugs. As the popularity of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy leads diners to eat and drink less, restaurants across the U.S. are shrinking portion sizes and redesigning menus. “I…

Zero Sum Autobesity

November 18, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

Cars produced in 2024 are on average 5% taller than cars in 2016. The average car length in 2016 was 420cm, in 2024 it was 441cm. In the same period car width has also increased from 176cm to 182cm, and quite a few recent models…

Growth Plate Micro-Climate

November 15, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

Much of human height is determined by the micro-climate in the Epiphyseal plates of the long bones in our legs. They are size-relational wonderlands and the specific climatological conditions within these wonderlands decide if, when, and where, growth happens. The growth plate consist of translucent…

Abundance Fantasies: Canoe-sized Banana Peels

November 14, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

In the Abundance Fantasies we explore how to activate a deeply rooted desire for abundance to unlock a desire for less. Rather then grow towards scarcity we could shrink towards abundance. In a subplot to the 1973 Woody Allen dystopian scifi-comedy Sleeper, our hungry protagonists (Woody…

Tithonus the Cicada

October 5, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

Tithonus was a hero of the Trojan war and boyfriend of Eos, goddess of the dawn. Since Tithonus is mortal and she’s not, Eos convinces Zeus to grant Tithonus eternal life. Unfortunately, in the spur of the moment, she forgets to also ask for eternal…

Don’t Mistake a Short Man…

August 23, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

There is an interesting South African proverb that says: Don’t mistake a short man for a boy. This proverb implies that we consider size to be an indication of characteristics that are associated with children (inexperience, lack of strength, naievity, playfulness, innocence, dependence, curiosity, unconditional…

Wide Brimmed Hats

July 18, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

Before Edward Bernays taught people to consume things we don’t need, fashion and it’s ideologies of constant change and replacement already inspired artistic response. La Moda Vuole L’ala Larga (Wide Brimmed Hats are Fashionable, 1912) starring Ernesto Vaser, is an early cinematic and funny critique…

Schubert’s Subverse

July 7, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) is one of Franz Schubert’s most powerful and disruptive ballads, even in its German to English translation: Into the gloomy light, the mountains are already disappearingOn flat sea waves floats a boat:on board are the queen and her dwarf. She gazes…

Box Stories: Too Small to Lose

July 5, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

It seems boxes have a specific connection to smallness and shrinking. One of the more, if not most, surreal box stories can be found in the novel The third Policeman by Irish writer Flann O’Brien. In the book retired policeman MacCruiskeen has an interest in…

Countersnapping

July 2, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

Observations of snapping-based prey capture strategies of the Venus flytrap and mantis shrimp have inspired research to design materials with exotic and programmable functions. At AMOLF, researchers expanded this repertoire by demonstrating countersnapping, where a combination of geometrically nonlinear building blocks cooperate to suddenly shrink…

Biology of the Army

June 23, 2025 By arne hendriks Off

The Crazy Ape (1970) is a critical and pessimistic commentary on science and the prospects for human survival by Nobel prize winner Albert Szent-Györgyi. In the book he writes: “One of the main biological characteristics that armies share with cancer cells is that they continue to grow, even…

Power Amplification

November 28, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

Several species of small animals have evolved bio-mechanical power amplification to overcome the disadvantages of being small in a world dominated by bigness. Power amplification increases power beyond regular muscular levels through an elastic medium (e.g. tendons) able to catch and store large amounts of…

One and a Half Head

November 28, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

How does a real small difference in height turn into a fictional much larger difference and why? The measured global difference in average male and female height is about around 7 centimeters. However, in fiction on tv or in film it is almost codified to…

The Giants: Bolster

November 27, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

Contemporary man can be considered a giant. As far as we know the human species has never been taller. We became the giants we fantasized about in legends and fairytales. To find a way out of this predicament perhaps it helps to understand how giants…