Dmitry Morozov: Blood (and) Music

I mention The Rolling Stones’ “Let it Bleed” in a previous post (that wordpress ate an is now here), and so I began to think about music and blood. The word “blood” is often a flashy attention-grabber in any title, be it book, film, art, or piece of music. Does music explain blood or its relation to blood? Should it? In this post I look at some (in)famous examples of music about blood, and then discuss a new art installation that goes far beyond all of them. Continue reading


Blood on the Dance Floor: Hemonation and the Pulse Club

seeking refuge in music

Michael Jackson’s songs seem to tell of a different world sometimes, of the 1990s postmodern party, a time that seems somehow long ago, that now seems peaceful, where people didn’t get shot all the time…michael-jackson-32

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Trump’s Bloody Nose: Men and Assorted -struations.

What Trump Sees? (Source: Pinterest, Aela Gholizadeh)

Portrait photograph of Megyn Kelly

What we see.

I think it was Bubba Jefferson, Thomas’ lesser-known brother, who said that the tree of GOP primaries has to be watered with the tears shed for a candidate who drops out because of what he says about blood and women. And that is still true today.

Kidding aside, Trump’s blood comment should give us pause. In case you are lucky and still avoid the void of avoidable news, you may not have heard that GOP Presidential hopeful and front-runner Donald Trump received some pointed questions about his past comments about women (all disparaging, many shaming their bodies, some directly suggesting that submitting to sexual intercourse with Trump would be a good idea). FOX News anchor Megyn Kelly read some of his comments back to Trump, asking if he considers this in conflict with his electability for the office of the Presidency. And from there it went from bad to worse…


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Blood Majority? Transfusion, Language, and the Law in the Age of Hobby Lobby


Both the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby Opinion and Dissent point a warning finger at Jehovah’s Witnesses’ stance on blood transfusion. But what do we mean when we talk about religious objections to blood transfusion like those of the Jehovah’s Witnesses? What does this specific objection regarding blood show us about how we might want to think about the intersection of law and bodies?

You should read my whole piece on Jehovah’s Witnesses and blood transfusions below, but…

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Green Blood? Anthropocene, Hemoglobin, and the Politics of Plants

Nobody really knows why our blood is red.
That is a silly statement. Obviously since Swammerdam and van Leeuwenhoek we know that it is red, that red is the reflected spectrum of visible light on the surface structure of the red blood cell or erythrocyte. (Same reason, by the way, why our veins look blue…deoxygenated blood is dark red, oxygenated bright red, neither is ever blue.) Continue reading

Inaugural Post: Blood, Bibles, and Banknotes

On its internet presence, PerthNow, The Perth Sunday Times reports that ” two men, Axel Hofmann and Shannon Farmer” have received millions by the Western Australian Health Department to create a program called Patient Blood Management (PBM). According to AABB, PBM “is an evidence-based, multidisciplinary approach to optimizing the care of patients who might need transfusion. PBM encompasses all aspects of patient evaluation and clinical management surrounding the transfusion decision-making process, including the application of appropriate indications, as well as minimization of blood loss and optimization of patient red cell mass. PBM can reduce the need for allogeneic blood transfusions and reduce health-care costs, while ensuring that blood components are available for the patients who need them.” Now, that in itself appears harmless, but money changed hands, and both happen to be Jehovah’s Witnesses, which makes the entire affair a bit more complicated than your average hospital program. But what exactly happened, what is PBM, and did their religion play a role? Continue reading