The New Yorker, 2006-01-09

[fiefoe]

"The Power of Hair" / Burkhard Bilger

• Some cells in hair follicles have a strange, polymorphic potency. Like stem cells, they can transform themselves and the tissue around them- becoming skin, bone, or cartilage, and inducing other cells to do the same.
• The implanted sheath cells, ... had performed a double feat of metamorphosis: first, they'd turned themselves into papilla cells, then they'd coaxed Reynold's epidermis into forming a follicle.
  
• His sandy ruff is a masterpiece of naturalism, as convincingly unkempt as the wheat fields in a painting by Millet.
  
• "There's a dermatological disease called uncombable hair syndrome."
  

"Animal Attraction" / Peter Schjeldahl

__ Henri Rousseau... this beloved customs clerk,
__ For the avant-gardists, his clumsiness lent hilarious glory to his passionate ambition to rival Salon stars like Gerome and Bouguereau.

'a state of suspended animation known as diapause - the insect version of hibernation'

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