bioephemera

A few weeks ago, I was notified that if I wished to continue blogging at Scienceblogs/National Geographic, I'd have to agree to new terms. After considering these terms, as well as the decision to ban pseudonymous blogging, I don't feel that the new management and I are on the same page. I have…

A few months ago I got an email from Zachtronics, creators of the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, about the new indie game called SpaceChem. It was billed as "an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science." What's not to love…

Check out this great slideshow of fascinating advertising novelties from 1911, over at Scientific American.

Recently, Scienceblogs/National Geographic decided it would no longer host pseudonymous science bloggers. As a result, many of my former colleagues have left. I think this decision was wrong. Read on for my reasons. One: simple fairness. Several well-established pseudonymous bloggers had been…

This video from Xperia Studio very effectively conveys how data visualization can both leverage and challenge our conceptions of "reality." The night sky we've seen since childhood, like everything else we see, is just a tiny slice of the spectrum - only what we can perceive with our limited…

Entangled, 2010 handbuilt porcelain, cone 6 glaze Kate MacDowell sculpts partially dissected frogs, decaying bodies with exposed skeletons, and viscera invaded by tentacles or ants. It's the imagery of nightmares, death metal music videos, or that tunnel scene in the original Willy Wonka (not a…

Photo of Vermont highway courtesy of Kyle Cornell Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days…

Etsy seller bullseyebeads makes glass acorns and tops them with real acorn caps. I think they're adorable.

Gold Cortex 16 x 20, 2010 Greg Dunn I used to have a beautiful gold Japanese folding screen, which was purchased by my great-grandmother's feisty sister on a trip in the 1920s. I loved the gold patina and the surprisingly modern impact it had on my wall. At the moment, it's loaned to a friend,…

Two very BioE-esque images spotted in Portland, Oregon:

Under glass, a bare forest of pins held down an army of insects in ragged rows. . . --"The Expression of Emotion in Man and Insects," by Debora Greger (read the full poem at the Atlantic)

Chalk Outline Tree Armando Fontes (graffiti) and Catia Rissi (photographer) Armondo Fontes and Catia Rissi call their chalk outlines of cut urban trees a "collective denunciation as an environmental graffiti." Fontes, who lives in the city of Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil, saw that trees…

In a guest post at Scientific American, Rebecca Jablonsky says, Kuhn de-legitimized the understanding of science as implicitly including objective reality, leaving room for theory to de-stabilize rituals of practice and produce authentic innovation-something that is certainly prized in both…

L'Automaton #06, 2010 Paolo Ventura (zoom view available here) Artist-photographer Paolo Ventura constructs and photographs miniature, dreamlike scenes. His Winter Stories represent the reminisces of an old circus performer. Above, a scene from the Automaton series captures a mysterious, half-…

From 1810-11, architect and amateur naturalist George Perry published The Arcana, a lavishly illustrated, serial natural history magazine. Although Perry intended for the serial issues to be assembled by his subscribers into a book, only thirteen complete copies are known to survive today. More…

"Magnetic Field Outflows from Active Galactic Nuclei" P.M. Sutter, P.M. Ricker, H.-Y. Yang, G. Foreman, D. Pugmire/ORNL Wired has an article/webgallery of award-winning scientific visualizations which is worth a lunchtime visit. (Having trouble with Wired's interface? The videos collected there…

Annalisa Crannell, a professor at Franklin & Marshall, has a great essay at Inside Higher Ed on the math of perspective. Crannell, who thinks her students are generally more scared of drawing than they are of math, uses the "fencepost puzzle" to get her students working through the proportions…

This little video from Abebooks is the closest I've ever gotten to flipping through a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus. What a truly weird book. I particularly love it when the staid narrator reveals his "favorite" illustration - a roller skater murdered by a monstrous pen. What?! The Codex…

FYI: longtime blogger-artist Glendon Mellow has teamed up with Kalliopi Monoyios to start a new artscience/sciart blog, Symbiartic, for Scientific American's blog hub. For a taste, check out this post on why cameras won't replace artists anytime soon.

What with all the buzz surrounding Bjork's Biophilia project, science films are so hawt right now! Don't know what I'm talking about? Then check out this weirdness: Yeah. . . okay! Anyway, some other science/film folks, the crew over at Imagine films, reached out to ask me to remind you that the…

The New York Times did a special Sunday supplement on graduate programs. The editorial graphics they commissioned have much truth to them, grasshopper.

Untitled, from "The Others" Jordan Tiberio My favorite thing about the internet is serendipity. Click here, click there, and the next thing you know you're scrolling down the gallery of an 18-year-old photographer whose artistic sensibility seems equal parts 1970s fashion magazine, pre-Raphaelite…

Note: except for the fact that it was in Washington DC, I don't remember where I took this photo. . . :)

Nick's Luncheonette Randy Hage Via the eye-candy blog How to Be a Retronaut (thanks Miles for first sending me a link there), the painstakingly accurate miniature Manhattan streetscapes of LA artist Randy Hage are half-toy, half-historical document - a wonder cabinet of urban curiosities. Hage's…

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. Albert Einstein Ideas and Opinions, New…

From the Smithsonian, a short video about using technology to virtually reassemble ancient art from fragments long carried away and dispersed: Majestic sixth-century Chinese Buddhist sculpture is combined with 3-D imaging technology in this exploration of one of the most important groups of…

If this luminous, high-definition, time-lapse film of Arctic skies and seas by Norwegian photographer TSO (Terje Sorgjerd) doesn't vaporize your stress in under three minutes, I don't know what will. Be sure to click the video controls to view full-screen - this one is worth it. Via Andrew…

Amy Stewart's new book Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects takes a fairly trivial concept - a collection of historical anecdotes and icky factoids about dangerous insects - and executes it remarkably well. The book is well-written and has a non-…

This 1967 IBM propaganda film, "Paperwork Explosion," couples an eerily deadpan refrain of "more time on paperwork," with a creepy pseudo-country neighbor* urging us to embrace Progress. The film's frenetic soundtrack and abrupt transitions embody the familiar hysterical nervousness of an…

. . . they could have. Or pretty darn close, at least - they just needed to visit one of the many European cabinets of anatomical curiosities, to see the work of anatomists like Honore Fragonard. Fragonard's eighteenth-century ecorches were the clear precursors to Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds…