bioephemera
Posts by this author
March 27, 2010
You may have heard from Slashdot that the University of Wisconsin is switching from Arial, a sans-serif font, to Century Gothic, a serif** font that uses 30% less ink, for default printing. The university hopes to save ink, which is both thrifty and eco-friendly. But you may not have seen this art…
March 26, 2010
I am glad I waited to buy a new version of Photoshop! This is. . . whoa. The desert and sky are particularly impressive.
Is there an Uncanny Valley for software?
March 26, 2010
Shauna Richardson crochets life-sized taxidermied animals - "crochetdermy". Because she can and because no one else thought of it first. Read more at Dazed Digital.
March 26, 2010
This beautiful photo by Kindra Clineff catches nature one-upping human craftsmanship. I can just hear that spider piping "neener neener neener". Also, it's a perfect follow-up to Christobal Vila's graceful animation about math in nature, which has now officially gone spiral-viral.
Buy a print…
March 25, 2010
I can't wait to get a copy of Jason Thompson's brand-new project, Playing with Books: The Art of Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book. Thompson, the founder and creative director of Rag and Bone Bindery, has long kept a blog featuring the best book and paper artists. Now he's edited…
March 24, 2010
This is weirdly awesome. It's the Google Translation of a short web essay by Franco Bolelli. Entitled "Farewell to the scientist with his head in the clouds, now prefer to surf: the science has become pop," the article is pretty awesome, but that's probably in part because it was translated by a…
March 24, 2010
"Companion Parrot": An incredible, though slightly macabre, necklace of bird entrails and skull by Tithi Kutchamuch. When not being worn, the necklace rests in the minimalist golden body, and it's a sculpture.
Via Haute Macabre
March 23, 2010
The Japanese have created some. . . disturbing. . . signage for the Tokyo subway. Not only are all the signs populated with pupil-less passerby-zombies staring with blank jealousy at the youthful protagonists, but the messages are a little mixed:
That's right - please go HOME to pass out in your…
March 23, 2010
Alan Jacobs finds a quote that beautifully expresses why I don't want a Kindle, and why I wish the iPad were a stylus-friendly Mac tablet:
Of course, you can't take your pen to the screen. When it comes to annotating the written word, nothing yet created for the screen compares to the immediacy and…
March 23, 2010
From Richard Waller, "A Catalogue of Simple and Mixt Colours with a Specimen of Each Colour Prefixt Its Properties"Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 6, 1686/1687 (London, 1688)
Noting the lack of a standard for colors in natural philosophy, and inspired by a similar…
March 22, 2010
A short, wordless film inspired by numbers, geometry and nature, and created by Cristóbal Vila. Thanks to reader Esmeralda for passing this one along!
March 22, 2010
I was reading through some back issues of Harper's and came upon an article by Rivka Galchen about climate change and meteorological engineering. I'm sick to death of reading about climate change, but I was immediately hooked by this article - her perspective is fascinating, and she is an excellent…
March 22, 2010
Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments: Cystic Acne, Back
Lauren Kalman, 2009
Metalsmith and mixed-media artist Lauren Kalman explores the nexus of body, adornment, and disease in her remarkable series "Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments". Yes,…
March 21, 2010
I know nothing proves you're old as thoroughly as bewailing the foibles of kids these days and complaining that they're not as hard-working as you were. But I have to note that this letter - from a disgruntled student who thinks he's the next Bill Gates - is beautifully indicative of everything I…
March 21, 2010
From iO9: the trailer for "The Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec," a new film directed by Luc Besson (the Fifth Element), which appears to be about a female French Indiana Jones in period costumes. With a dinosaur.
Adèle Blanc-Sec - Le film-annonce. sur Yahoo! Vidéo
iO9 promises that "a…
March 21, 2010
A little Sunday reading: "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store," one of several wonderful short stories by San Francisco writer Robin Sloan. It's sort of like magical realism for techies:
Back at Supply and Demand. The air is crackÂling with wi-ââfi; Kat and I are havÂing the only spoÂken…
March 20, 2010
"Television Tube and Cheeze Whiz Jar Lid Necklace Steam Punk Recycled," via Regretsy.
Help. Pleeze.
March 19, 2010
A slight science journalism FAIL in a story at iO9, originally from the New Scientist:
the Title: "First Quantum Effects Seen in Visible Object"
the Lede: "Does Schrödinger's cat really exist? You bet. The first ever quantum superposition in an object visible to the naked eye has been observed."…
March 19, 2010
A few thoughts on this ad I spotted last week in Boston:
1. Yes, that appears to be a giant gel electrophoresis. Geez, this town is nerdy.
2. I hope that attractive woman is supposed to be a genetics PhD. Because we're all supermodels.
3. Why didn't I ever think to do a random restriction digest…
March 19, 2010
--A great NYT article on science museums and cabinets of curiosities:
This antic miscellany is dizzying. But there are lineaments of sustained conflict in the apparent chaos. Over the last two generations, the science museum has become a place where politics, history and sociology often crowd out…
March 18, 2010
Artist S. Shelley Jones sent me a link to some digital art depicting the lowly cockroach, who turns out to be much more attractive with a psychedelic spin. Thanks, Shelley!
PS. "The Psychedelic Cockroach" is a great band name, isn't it?
top: Cockroach No. V, 2009; bottom: Cockroach No. VII, 2009…
March 18, 2010
Hi everyone,
I'm officially back from blogcation this week, so thanks for hanging in there while I was (mostly) off the grid! For the next couple of weeks, I'll be slowly wading through the emails and links I got during over the last few weeks.
Plus, I'll not only be posting at BioE, I'll also be…
March 18, 2010
When Google started "suggesting" the most popular search phrases below its query box, I was creeped out. Especially when I saw what it suggests for "is Obama". Yes, I was happier when I didn't know what other people were typing into Google.
However, the folks at HINT.fm took the opposite approach…
March 17, 2010
Mark Goetz makes me LOL:
Via lots of places, most recently Pollster.
March 17, 2010
While I was on blogcation, I got an email from the watchdog group Stinky Journalism, complaining that prominent science author and professor Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel) was in the hot seat again. (You may remember that Stinky Journalism broke the story about the lawsuit against…
March 16, 2010
Won't the dismal, subdued palette of winter release its hold on you? Never fear, a stripe of spring magenta is approaching! This infographic by Fernanda Viagas and Martin Wattenberg of HINT.fm depicts the dominant colors in flickr photographs of Boston Common around the year, starting with summer…
March 16, 2010
Polly Law's Word Project is a series of mixed-media illustrations representing obscure words like dasypygal and nidifice. Though Law has exhibited her work in galleries, she hasn't found a backer to publish them as a book. . . yet. So she's seeking help at the entrepreneurial startup Kickstarter.…
March 15, 2010
Delicious - and suprisingly convincing - x-ray images of animals with "skeletons" made of typography by Katerina Orlikova. Be sure to check out _Motion Picture, a running cat-like creature reminiscent of Eadweard James Muybridge's vintage motion photography.
Via Street Anatomy.
March 14, 2010
Print Magazine asked four designers to storyboard their own versions of Alice. I kind of like this script-rich lowbrow fantasy, with an anime-inspired Alice by Sebastian Onufszak: