bioephemera

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May 21, 2011
One of the much-hyped benefits of social networking is that it provides a way to get personalized recommendations about businesses from a wider network. If I want to tell the world that the coffee place in my neighborhood has the best cappuccino this side of Seattle, I can do that (and it does)!…
May 21, 2011
Via Alexis Madrigal's Mississippi explainer at the Atlantic, this beautiful map of the Mississippi's historic meanderings is like a carelessly draped cluster of silk ribbons. Madrigal says, If the Mississippi were allowed to do what it wanted, what is now the Atchafalaya River would become the new…
May 20, 2011
Cell Division IV Michele Banks DC area artist Michele Banks has donated one of her cell division watercolors to raise funds for art outreach. Check out the online auction - the painting is matted and framed and currently going for only $52. Michele is not a biologist, but she's been on a sci-art…
May 20, 2011
A CSPO webcast entitled "New Tools for Science Policy" asks an interesting, if somewhat odd, question about science and art: "Can art and religion serve as methods for governing emerging science and technology?" More details: Tuesday, May 24, 2011, 5:30 p.m. EDT (webcast will be here) Participants…
May 19, 2011
minouette of magpie & whiskeyjack has posted an interesting meditation on the resemblances between Katie Scott's whimsical faux-botanical/biological atlas pages (above), the illustrations of Ernst Haeckel (whose portrait minouette just finished), and the Codex Seraphinianous. It's a harmonious…
May 19, 2011
The making of an hourglass: The Hourglass from Ikepod on Vimeo. "Director Philip Andelman traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to document the designer's modern take of the classic hourglass inside the Glaskeller factory. Each hand made hourglass comprises highly durable borosilicate glass and millions…
May 18, 2011
Former Scibling Sheril Kirshenbaum, late of the Intersection, has moved to a new blog: Convergence. Let's be honest: most of us are about intersections, convergences, confluences and whatnot; I've often described BioE as "the intersection of art & science." But Sheril's kicking the metaphor up…
May 18, 2011
Animated Anatomies, a new show at the Perkins Library at Duke University, explores the tradition of fold-out or pop-up paper anatomical diagrams: Animated Anatomies explores the visually stunning and technically complex genre of printed texts and illustrations known as anatomical flap books. These…
May 17, 2011
. . . let the table settings do the talking (and the grossing out) for you! These Consumption Dinnerware plates by Leah Piepgras "are a map of the digestive tract, from mouth to anus:" I'm trying to decide if these plates have a future as a diet aid.* Visualizing the eventual chyme-ish fate of a…
May 16, 2011
They're doing exactly what we always complain our brightest students don't do: eschewing the easy bucks of Wall Street, consulting or corporate law to pursue their ideals and be of service to society. Academia may once have been a cushy gig, but now we're talking about highly talented young people…
May 16, 2011
Physicists are ontological detectives. We think of scientists as wholly rational, open to all possible arguments. But to begin with a conviction and then to use one's intellectual prowess to establish support for that conviction is a methodology that really has worked for scientists, including…
May 15, 2011
Alienation often accounts for a macabre sense of the marvellous. At the entrance to "Savage Beauty," there is an evening gown conjured entirely from razor-clam shells. Antelope horns sprout from the shoulders of a pony-skin jacket, and vulture skulls serve as epaulettes on a leather dress. There…
May 13, 2011
If you haven't already seen the Photopic Sky Survey, you really should. Nick Risinger toured the world's least light-polluted sites to photograph and stitch together this 37,440 exposure, 5000 megapixel image of the night sky. I honestly don't think I've ever appreciated the sheer number of stars…
May 13, 2011
From instructables user Copper Twist, this impressionist masterpiece of bacon is both biological and ephemeral (euw). What would Van Gogh say? Why do I feel if Van Gogh were alive today, he might be Vegan? Via Chow Bella, via lots of people.
May 13, 2011
Yes, I cry at everything -- Love Actually, holiday commercials, abandoned furniture on curbs -- so what could I do to resist this little guy? Is he not adorable? He is also a letterpress card on sale at Blue Barnhouse. I just ordered several of him because I CAN'T HELP IT, he needs to be cuddled…
May 12, 2011
I was playing The Fracking Song last night about midnight, and my boyfriend was grooving to it. At the end he asked, "what was that about?" "Uh. . . fracking." "Which kind of fracking?" Yes, we are a BSG household. Anyway, it may be an explainer, but it's actually quite a nice little piece of…
May 12, 2011
Through the end of May, UMBC's Albin O Kuhn gallery is hosting a large exhibition of postmortem daguerreotypes, death masks, coffin plates, etc. from the collection of Dr. Stanley Burns. Medical ephemera always have an emotional valence, because they represent patients who suffered, struggled…
May 11, 2011
Earth Spirit, 2010 Enrique Gomez de Molina Reader Laura alerted me to this iO9 post I missed on taxidermy artist Enrique Gomez de Molina, whose work would be written off as bad Photoshopping - except it's real sculpture. The artist says, The impossibility of my creatures brings me both joy and…
May 11, 2011
Miracle of Science: the Cambridge bar around the corner from MIT, where the menu is a (pseudo) periodic table. May I recommend the grilled chicken salad with cilantro lime dressing, "Sc"?
May 7, 2011
Thanks moms! Slightly more than half of everything we are we owe to you. :) Song by cadamole - late of the St. Patrick's Day song.
May 6, 2011
An absolutely beautiful hummingbird illustration by paperfashion, AKA Kathryn Elyse: According to the etsy listing, it's pencil, ink and watercolor. That tickles me, because yes you can get those bold colors in watercolors, but few people do, and I thought it might be digital. As you can see from…
May 6, 2011
Daniel Margulies of the NeuroBureau, an open neuroscience community, shared this opportunity: The Brain-Art Competition 2011 Submission Deadline: 11:59PM CDT, Sunday, June 5th, 2011 Award Notification: June 28th, 9PM at the Cirque du Cerveau Gala (OHBM Annual Meeting), Musée National des Beaux-…
May 5, 2011
So I ran across this thread, and it made me sad. (And no, not because it wasn't Ed Yong's blog, although that too.) It started off as a happy post: the author, Paula Chambers, is a PhD who began her own online community for PhDs seeking jobs outside academia. That's awesome. But when Chambers went…
May 3, 2011
Ok, what are the people at Quirk Books on? I have to say, I love the cover of the book, and the typographical trailer is cute - but isn't this just blatant meme abuse? Quirk explains The Meowmorphosis thus. . . "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that…
May 1, 2011
Now this is just cruel: yesterday the Cambridge Science Festival kicked off - a week of science, sciart, sci-journalism and sci-education activities at MIT, Harvard, the Museum of Science, and surrounds. Am I going to be hanging out all day with my fellow-geeks in the sun (which finally came out a…
April 29, 2011
Thanks to Coilhouse, I just learned that artist Theo Jansen is producing 3D printed baby versions of his amazing strandbeests - wind-powered kinetic sculptures that "walk" on their own. If you don't remember Jansen, here he is with his eerie, lifelike beests, which he calls "new forms of life…
April 28, 2011
Scapular Art DressRachel Wright I'm about to go back offline again because I don't feel up to blogging, but I had to share this find from my friend Shana - she does know what belongs on BioE! These are one-of-a-kind art dresses by artist Rachel Wright (Toolgrrl Designs on etsy). Wright says, This…
April 28, 2011
Recently, IP scholar and government corruption critic Larry Lessig gave a talk at CERN in which he talked about the mismatch between the goals of copyright and scientific publishing. I was excited to watch it, but . . . well, I fell asleep partway through. (It's a long talk.) I haven't been well…
April 24, 2011
From Linda Holmes, a poignant post about how the deluge of information makes it impossible to scratch the surface in a single lifetime: there are really only two responses if you want to feel like you're well-read, or well-versed in music, or whatever the case may be: culling and surrender. Culling…
April 15, 2011
How do you get kids to master science, math, and engineering? Ask them to make a video game that teaches it to other kids. Check it out: One of these kids wrote a video game to teach himself his multiplication tables. Another calls his elementary school cousins his "user test group." I clearly am…