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…

Scuba Bubble

November 21, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

Reptiles have always been spirit animals for The Incredible Shrinking Man research. From the shrinking iguanas of the Galapagos islands to the unsinkable Jesus gecko, reptiles often have something interesting to tell us about the consequences of size and the advantages of smallness. Cold-blooded reptile…

Dead End Kennedys

November 20, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

The title of the iconic punk band Dead Kennedys‘ last album “Bedtime for Democracy” (1986) is said to come from the film “Bedtime for Bonzo” starring Ronald Reagan and is an indictment of Reaganomics, neoliberalism, war, and infobesity. It also features the track “Shrink”. The…

The Dwarfs: Pataikos

May 22, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

A wisdom text of ancient Egyptian literature, Instruction of Amenemope, papyrus EA 10474, gives the following instruction: ‘Laugh not at a blind man, nor tease a dwarf’. This seems to indicate that while their differences could attract negative attention, they were to be treated with…

Seven-League Dolomites.

May 15, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

After spending many summer holidays trekking through the Swiss Alps, Dutchman Roel Wouters decided that perhaps it was time to take his walking boots to the Dolomites. Upon entering the Italian mountain range something seemed out of wack. Time and space behaved differently here. Roel…

Parable of the Poisoned Arrow

May 1, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

The parable of the poisoned arrow is a Buddhist teaching that illustrates the attitude of those who cannot distinguish between what is useful and what is not. “Suppose someone was hit by a poisoned arrow and his friends and relatives found a doctor able to…

Turtles All The Way Down

April 18, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

There exists an inescapable logic in the relationship between that which supports and what is being supported. The support should be strong enough to carry what is on top of it. In the logic of “Turtles all the way down” which states that the planet…

Japanese Miniatures: Sukunabiko

April 18, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

There is something majestic about the arrival of the shinto dwarf god Sukunabiko (AKA The small lord of renown) to the shores of Izumo province in Japan. Dressed in the wings of a moth and carried by a tiny boat made from a sweet potato…

Exponential Stairs

April 15, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

The Exponential Staircase (2013) was an artistic research project by students of the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, as part of a 3 day Shrinking Man masterclass that investigated the experience of becoming smaller. The daily topics evolved around the themes of food,…

Gravity is a Harsh Mistress

March 30, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

The Looney Tunes character Wile E. Coyote is based on Mark Twain’s description of a coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.” Twain then continues to make an unsavoury comparison between coyotes and native Americans. But this doesn’t take away…

Dino/Bird Maker Space

March 25, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

Birds evolved through a unique phase of sustained miniaturisation in theropod dinosaurs. They didn’t just shrink but continued to do so over long periods of time. Therefor we can conclude that long before their small descendents developed the ability to fly, smallness already had clear…

Cryptic Female Choice

March 4, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

One of the reasons why large mammals are shrinking is because smaller beings need less and are more resilient. In the light of threatening climate change the small have a greater chance at survival, which from an evolutionary perspective, makes smallness an attractive feature. People…

Okinawa Allowances

February 29, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

During a recent visit to the Japanese island of Okinawa in search of the secret of smaller we were lucky enough to end up at Marina’s Cafe. Not because the food was good (which it was), but because we met its owner Mariko, who explained…

Zen Road to Affluence

February 26, 2024 By arne hendriks Off

In 1966, Marshall Sahlins wrote an important and still quite sensational paper entitled “The Original Affluent Society”. In it he argues that the original hunter-gatherers did not exist, as was commonly believed, on the edge of famine but had a sufficient degree of material comfort…