bioephemera
Posts by this author
Circling Around, 2008
Jean Gumpper
Jean Gumpper's woodcut prints are mesmerizing. At first glance, the crisp edges and intricate detail are reminiscent of watercolor. But the works are actually pieced out of flat spots of block color, which gives them a stylized, minimalist, modern flavor - like…
I promised you some updates on the Google Books Settlement, so here you go. Things are definitely getting interesting.
First, I mentioned earlier that I was going to attend a panel on the Google Book Search Settlement here in DC, featuring representatives of Google, the publishers, and the…
Let etsy seller foliage help you fight swine flu with this bagful of handmade soaps in "skin-ish colors"!
I vascillate between finding them cute, and thinking they resemble a crowd of damned souls reaching out for help from my soap dish. Weird.
Dedicated to John O., who truly appreciates…
Mark Buchanan, quoting Lee Smolin, on how big science may be biased against innovative iconoclasts:
Some scientists, he suggests, are what we might call "hill climbers". They tend to be highly skilled in technical terms and their work mostly takes established lines of insight that pushes them…
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica:
It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master…
How much more successful would Gravity's Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box?
Want to become a high-profile Twitter superstar? McSweeney's tells you exactly how. Maybe Google is making…
Just as an FYI, Sheril at the Intersection has created this extremely helpful list of policy fellowships for scientists and engineers. It's definitely worth bookmarking if you have any interest in exploring science policy. The fellowships on this list range from weeks to years, and placements are…
Birth of the Gastric Brooding Frog
Photo Mike Tyler
Unfortunately, species are the ultimate bioephemera.
Amphibians in particular have been declining at an alarming rate over the past several decades; some estimates suggest that a third of amphibian species are on the verge of extinction. My…
I'm off to visit the Supreme Court tomorrow, so I thought I'd share some law news for a change. In a landmark patent decision, Federal Circuit Judge Richard Posner has ruled that the sex toy shown above is "obvious."
You can read the explanation at Patently-O, but suffice it to say that the gap…
Simple, but surprisingly charming - and somewhat reminiscent of an ant colony or other biological collective:
Fluid Sculpture (click for larger video) from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.
An interesting perspective from today's WaPo: David Kessler, doctor, lawyer, and former FDA commissioner, argues that the food industry manipulates the neurological impacts of fats and sugars to program consumers to eat more than we need or want.
"The food the industry is selling is much more…
This air purifier ad from Sharp is a little creepy, in a Spongebob Squarepants way. I love how you can see their fluorescent organelles! Unfortunately I don't see anything here that resembles a virus, but with swine flu all over the news, this serves as a good reminder to wash your hands.
Ad by…
One of the sucky things about viral interest in offbeat art from small vendors is that it always immediately depletes the supply. Like this fabulous minimalist plywood octopus from inthewoods' etsy shop. Sure, you can still get a plywood squirrel with a plywood acorn, but where's the sinister,…
Check out this concept artwork called "Office Grass". What is it good for? Well, for one thing, to patch its apparently coincidental inverse artwork, "Dead Pixel in Google Earth:"
Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920.
Dittrick Medical History Center
from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American…
Levitations
Johanna Mueller, 2004
Artists I'm looking forward to seeing at the 10th annual Artomatic, #1: printmaker Johanna Mueller, whose woodcuts resemble the illustrations from a dark and hallucinogenic children's book. No wonder her blog is called "Feverish Art."
The Independent Film Festival Boston kicked off today, and this was their ad campaign. Nice use of anatomical imagery!
Light is an ephemeral but powerful artistic medium. This commercial for the Belgian energy company Electrabel captures the whimsical charm of fireflies on a warm summer night:
You can view a stunning higher-res version of this video here, with slightly different music. There is also a making-of…
We all know Twitter can be annoying, but is it really evil? During the past week, you may have heard that there is brand-new neuroscientific evidence proving exactly that. But the hype turns out to be just that: hype.
It all started with a press release from USC about an upcoming PNAS paper by Mary…
C.P. Snow fans, prepare to head over to the Intersection to partake in an upcoming online discussion of Snow's famous "Two Cultures" address. In their new article, "The Culture Crosser," Sheril and Chris portray Snow as a sort of science policy prophet:
It helps to think of Snow as an early…
In her recent TED talk, JoAnne Kuchera-Morin described UCSB's AlloSphere, a new project that enables scientists to literally stand inside a three-story projection of their data:
The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one…
Jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez is young, a fourth-generation member of the Fendi family, and apparently obsessed with anatomy. Her most intriguing creation is a Skeletor-like carpal gauntlet:
The silver hand will cost you about $24K. If you haven't got that much disposable income, she also…
You've never heard "in real time" screamed with so much passion. Not just one, but two big-haired metal-band bio-rock videos after the fold. . .
(sources: here and here)
This chart shows where your federal tax dollars go, based on Feb 2008 budget numbers (note: this shows discretionary budget, or appropriations, only - go here for more details, or look at the inset in the lower right corner to see where the other two-thirds of the budget are).
Visit wallstats.…
If you enjoy bioephemera, you should take a moment to check out Scienceblogs' new blog, Photo Synthesis:
While doing our usual browsing of the blogosphere, we've become aware of the vast number of excellent blogs featuring science imagery, from neural networks captured with a light microscope to…
No, it's not how evolution really works, but it's awfully cool anyway.
The Experiment from Colin Trenter on Vimeo.
I love Photoshop, but am I the only one who thinks this resembles a cross between a Rorschach test and a SyFy Channel commercial?
As I put it at a blogging panel last fall, "in science, it is normative to be not sure." It wasn't my most eloquent moment, but at least AAAS' president-elect Alice Huang agrees with me that one of the biggest challenges to public science literacy is understanding the contingent nature of…
NightPeeps
Melissa Harvey (after Edward Hopper)
It's that time of year again! As I roasted blue Easter Peeps over the gas stove yesterday, I eagerly awaited this year's collection of Peep dioramas from the Washington Post - and here they are! View the complete Peeps Show here.
Be sure to check out…
Zombie Stomper by Iron Fist, via Haute Macabre
Yup - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is the project the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is doing next. While my review of P&P&Z was pretty positive, I'm not sure I can in good conscience encourage this trend.
Also, note that while P…
This detailed medical illustration by the late Duncan Winter shows the advantages of a good medical illustration over a typical photograph. There are no problems with over- or under-exposure, no depth-of-field issues, and the salient features are subtly emphasized. The underside in particular is…