The Body Deck

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

This is the body deck, a deck of playing cards where each card is a coronal slice of a human body. We made it because everything's better with a skinless man inside, and because poker's more fun when you're learning anatomy. Go Fish is more fun when you feel like Victor Frankenstein. You'll be getting one soon if you're subscribed to the Curiosity box.

But this began as an idea I had a few years ago when I was trying to visualize a fourth spatial dimension. I can turn a shape into its mirror image by rotating it in a higher dimension, but I can't rotate this guy in a higher dimension because I can't access the fourth. However, a higher dimension rotation is like taking something's front and back and smashing them through each other.

I can do that with this guy because he's sliced. Right now, his left arm is raised, so his reflection's right arm will be raised. Now see that his back is on top? Well, if I reverse the order of the cards, I will be putting his back on the bottom and his face on the top. Without turning him around, he is now raising his right hand. He can become his own mirror image in real life. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah! By the way, the hearts do contain the heart.

Limitations of GDP | Economic indicators and the business cycle | AP Macroeconomics | Khan Academy

The Butterfly Effect

View All

Mapping shapes

We’re told that triangles. Let’s see, we have triangle PQR and triangle ABC are congruent. The side length of each square on the grid is one unit, so each of these is one unit. Which of the following sequences of transformations maps triangle PQR onto tri…

Howard Marks: A Once in a Lifetime Financial Event is Here

Last 14 years were really quite idyllic, um, in the economy and in the market. We had the longest bull market in history, the longest economic recovery in history. Uh, we set a lot of records in many ways. Living was easy, interest rates were low, and com…

Biogeochemical cycles | Ecology | Khan Academy

Talk a little bit about biogeochemical cycles. The term “biogeochemical” sounds very fancy, but really these are just cycles that involve different molecules that are essential for life and how they circulate through an ecosystem. And really, how they cir…

Going Solar in NYC | Years of Living Dangerously

I’m meeting Richard Kaufman, who’s the Czar in charge of New York’s energy. “Hi, I’m Cecily.” “I’m Richard, nice to meet you, Leslie.” So we’re at Jet Row. It’s a restaurant supply store; it’s one of the largest solar-powered buildings in New York. “T…

The procrastination cure you don't want to hear

I think one of the most common problems that people have is not that they don’t know what to do to dramatically move their life forward in a substantial way. Like, you know exactly what you need to do right now. There’s probably something that you’ve been…

Is Time Travel Possible?: Mind Blow (Special Edition)

John tier claims to be a time traveler from the year 2036, and his time machine kind of looks like a certain DeLorean whose parts you can actually buy. Vauce Kevin here; this is Mind Blow: Time Travel Edition. This is a real time machine, sort of. Dr. Ron…

The Body Deck

More Articles