bioephemera

On Tuesday my friend John O, neuroscientist and social media outreach officer, gave a five-minute talk called "You've Been Scienced: Communicating Military Science and Technology with Social Media" at Gov 2.0 Expo 2010. Take my word for it: some things that seem obvious to researchers (like…

Edge.org has invited comments on Craig Venter's synthetic bacterium from thinkers like Freeman Dyson, George Dyson, and our very own PZ Myers. Nassim Taleb is particularly pessimistic: If I understand this well, to the creationists, this should be an insult to God; but, further, to the evolutionist…

An email from reader Jake prompted me to repost this look at Peter Callesen, originally posted back in 2007. Enjoy! Angel, 2005 paper and glue in artist made frame Peter Callesen This beautifully written essay at Cabinet of Wonders, Mechanical Thinking and the Human Soul, includes some amazing…

Here's another interesting summer reading prospect for BioE-philes: Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom. From the New York Times review: The best chapter in "Still Life" by far is the one in which Ms. Milgrom visits with the fascinating and foul-mouthed British artist Emily…

Apparently the Republicans learned nothing from Change.gov and the White House's problematic experiments with crowdsourcing, because they've now invited web-based public input to shape their 2010 party platform. According to Dana Milbank, so far, the suggestions include such gems as "A 'teacher'…

Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority: this could be awesome, or very very bad. I can't wait to find out.

Seen in Cambridge, MA: it appears to be male and female symbols with radiation symbols inside them. Anyone seen anything like this around?

This is my current favorite song, by the underrated band Fanfarlo. The lyrics, which remind me of Roswell crossed with Spoon River Anthology, are a touching portrayal of the eternal plight of the social misfit. But the video is exactly what we'd have gotten if the Dharma initiative had set up its…

Ok, maybe we're not quite there yet - but Panda Bicycles is making bikes out of bamboo. These partly renewable, lightweight bikes are striking, to say the least - though they're not cheap. But if you really want to make a statement with your bike, this is one way to go. . . Thanks to reader…

As you may know, the Phylo (Phylomon) project is crowdsourcing a collection of ecology-based trading and gaming cards, in the hopes of supplying kids with a more engaging way of learning and thinking about their environment. And here's a timely addition: the Oil Spill, with very nice artwork by…

From a post by Erin Fitzgerald, a DoD Science Policy Fellow who consulted on the design of Mattel's new "Computer Engineer Barbie:" It might seem silly to get excited about a new Barbie doll. But, to me, she will help reinforce in math-loving little girls that they, like Barbie, can grow up to be…

This is the clever label for Chateau Skulls, a grenache blend from south Australia. Wikipedia sez, The label is an original artwork by István Orosz (b. 24 October 1951; Kecskemét) Hungarian painter, printmaker, graphic designer and animated film director, is known for his mathematically inspired…

From Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny by Edward Bateman In "Mechanical Brides of the Uncanny," artist Edward Bateman creates images that explore photography's role as historical evidence. Presented as a collection of discovered carte de visites, this book documents a forgotten age of mechanical…

Der Mensch als Industriepalast [Man as Industrial Palace] from Henning Lederer on Vimeo. So awesome! Fritz Kahn's poster reimagined as an animation by Henning Lederer. Via Bora.

They're using DNA tests for everything now - even to catch canine vandals and their miscreant owners. Robert Frost was right: good forensics make good neighbors.

Somebody in charge of pulling flickr illustrations for Wired's website has a good eye - they used this photo by Stephen Hampshire. A quick visit to flickr, and it turns out the photo is of Hampshire's homemade version of a DIY project originally described by Neil Fraser: a wooden cube brain map/…

Cornelia Hesse-Honegger's beautiful book Heteroptera is one of my most treasured natural illustration collections. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print now, but Wired recently compiled a gallery of her work, and I highly recommend a visit. The subtle and not-so-subtle asymmetries on Hesse-…

I ran across first one, then two articles on the scientific benefits of failure in the past few weeks: this one by Jonah Lehrer for Wired (originally out in December), and this one by W. Barksdale Maynard for the April issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Odd - or maybe not so odd; with the…

A German home improvement company turns an old apartment building into a modern wonder cabinet, as part of an ad campaign: first they covered the facade with a flock of shoes (Dr. Isis must have been their muse) and then they installed concept art throughout the whole thing (some of it nuts, and…

Now that's bioephemera: my friend Rhett sent me a link to the work of Fulvio Bonavia, who created a series of eighteen photographs of food reimagined as haute couture. My favorite? The glassy-eyed sardine-link belt. See all eighteen images, and his other work, at his website. Via Coute Que Coute.

Want to see how Facebook's deafult settings have crept over time from mainly private to overwhelmingly public? Matt McKeon's got you covered with a very nice year-by-year data visualization. By 2010, the only things that aren't public are birthday and contract information. Was this what Zuckerberg…

I spent some time today chatting with Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project. It occurred to me that some of you who are newer to blogging might not know they have an invaluable database of articles on legal issues related to online publishing - a good resource to bookmark! (See, for example…

Via Jennifer Ouellette, a wonderful TED talk by Dan Meyer, high school math teacher, which is about so much more than math or education. It's about how we think about problems in the real world, how we handle ambiguity, and the problem with impatient problem-solving: "what we're doing here is…

Fox News is taking quality to a whole new level this afternoon. (I know, I know, it's my fault for accidentally clicking on their site. I deserve what I get.) Regardless, congrats to the new Queen Minister!

My friend Jacob just sent this to me and I had to pass it along.: it's a Bag End dollhouse by Maddie Chambers, apparently one of the most patient people in the world. Amazing and adorable! Can I have a full-sized one please?

Recently a reader commented that my painting, Fall:The Cicada, is a little, um, insect-y. Yes, I have a propensity to paint insects-lots of 'em. I have a box of dead ones just waiting for the day I get around to painting them, so I thought I'd explain why. About the same time, I was encouraging a…

Via reader-musician John Danley, I learned of Lori Anne Parker's "Watersketch Prospectus," "a yearlong project and response to a personal health crisis requiring heart surgery." As Danley observes, "her work is related to aesthetic responses to trauma." After suffering a spontaneous coronary…

Civility: wow, everybody's concerned about it now! Here's our president a couple of days ago: The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning -- since, after all,…

So much to read this week! Here are a couple of quick links of interest: Carl Zimmer on comparing the E. coli genome to Linux code: A number of scientists have begun to compare natural and manmade networks. A lot of the same rules appear to be at work in the growth of the Internet, airport…

The UK History of Advertising Trust has initiated a ghostsigns archive to document old painted billboards - the kind you see on the sides of brick buildings, fading away unnoticed. These old signs are being destroyed daily (by gentrification, new construction, and new billboards being put over…