How One Graphic Novel Looks at Anti-Asian Hate
In “Cyclopedia Exotica,” the artist and writer Aminder Dhaliwal created a fictitious community facing xenophobia, fetishization and media misrepresentation. It’s resonating with her thousands of Instagram followers.
“Cyclopedia Exotica,” out this month from Drawn & Quarterly, imagines a world in which cyclops are part of modern life.
In the new graphic novel “Cyclopedia Exotica,” immigrants with one eye coexist uneasily with their two-eyed neighbors.
Members of the cyclops community are targeted by curious online daters and porn addicts, as well as cosmetic surgeons eager to give them that desirable two-eyed look. They contend with xenophobes protesting mixed marriages, hateful comments from subway Karens and, in some cases, physical violence.
Why Nearsightedness Is on the Rise in Children
Decreased exposure to outdoor light appears to be a major factor in rising rates of myopia in young people around the world.
Credit.Gracia Lam
May 3, 2021, 11:55 a.m. ET
Look and you shall see: A generation of the real-life nearsighted Mr. Magoos is growing up before your eyes. A largely unrecognized epidemic of nearsightedness, or myopia, is afflicting the eyes of children.
People with myopia can see close-up objects clearly, like the words on a page. But their distance vision is blurry, and correction with glasses or contact lenses is likely to be needed for activities like seeing the blackboard clearly, cycling, driving or recognizing faces down the block.
A âFlying Ship,â and the Superior Mirage Behind It
âI told myself, âIt must be on water,ââ said a walker who took a picture that has since gone viral. âMy head doesnât want to understand that, but it must be on water.â
A picture appeared to show a ship hovering above the surface of the sea off southwestern England.Credit.David Morris/Apex
March 6, 2021
For David Morris, it was an ordinary stroll last month along the cliffs of Englandâs southwestern coast: his Terrier, a sunny morning, with ships passing on the horizon.
But one vessel seemed a little out of place. It appeared
How Do Blind Worms See the Color Blue?
Eyeless roundworms may have hacked other cellular warning systems to give themselves a form of color vision.
In an experiment, the blind roundworm C. elegans did not try to wriggle away from a beige version of the P. aeruginosa bacterium, which can kill it and is usually colored bright blue.Credit.Eugene L. Q. Lee
March 4, 2021
In the warm, fetid environs of a compost heap, tiny roundworms feast on bacteria. But some of these microbes produce toxins, and the worms avoid them. In the lab, scientists curious about how the roundworms can tell what’s dinner and what’s dangerous often put them on top of mats of various bacteria to see if they wriggle away. One microbe species, Pseudomonas aeruginosa,