Art
pharyngula | January 16, 2009
Maybe not to everyone's taste, but Sigur Rós is just one of those bands I'd love to see live.
laelaps | January 14, 2009
In considering the history of science, it is easy to think of scientific discovery and debate as distinct from the rest of culture. Academics picked away at fossils and squinted at the eyepieces of microscopes in isolation, and only in exceptional cases did science jump the cultural barrier to challenge cherished beliefs. This is nonsense, and even though arguments over scientific minutiae may have been restricted to journals and learned societies, there have been many times when scientific discoveries have stirred great public interest.
One way to get at the interaction between science…
grrlscientist | January 13, 2009tags: Christopher Street, Sheridan Square, The Greenwich Village Murals, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC
The Greenwich Village Murals, 1994.
Artist: Lee Brozgold and the students of P.S. 41. Mosaic and ceramic tiles at Christopher Street/Sheridan Square (Downtown 1 train).
Image: GrrlScientist, 27 December 2008 [larger view].
This mural depicts people who were instrumental in establishing the Village, including an early land developer, the publisher of New York's first African-American newspaper, a muralist, and a novelist who immortalized Washington Square -- all…
pharyngula | January 13, 2009
Check it out — it's the Paleobet!
It is a little awkward to discover this late in life that the "p" is silent.
grrlscientist | January 12, 2009tags: Christopher Street, Sheridan Square, The Greenwich Village Murals, subway art, NYC through my eye, photography, NYC
Christopher Street/Sheridan Square subway tile art (1 train).
Image: GrrlScientist, 27 December 2008 [larger view].
This mural depicts people who were instrumental in establishing the Village, including an early land developer, the publisher of New York's first African-American newspaper, a muralist, and a novelist who immortalized Washington Square -- all gathered around the great arch.
I have photographed glass tile mosaic artworks from several NYC subway stations…
ddobbs | January 9, 2009The bloggers at the design firm Pentagram know how to write a lede:
During the financially dismal 2008 holiday shopping season, one product held up nicely: bras.
Some great design worth exploring there, from the outfit that did the signage for the front of the Times building and the Atlantic redesign.
ddobbs | January 7, 2009Always nice when a scene just jumps off the page.
Alice's tea party
Birds of the open forest dawn
Artist is Su Blackwell, whose site has a whole gallery of such enchantment.
Hat tip to my better half, Alice, who likes a) good art, b) cut-outs, and c) the Alice pictured.
chaoticutopia | December 29, 2008I always get plenty of books for Christmas--more than I’ll ever have time to read, certainly. So, this year, when I started to tear the paper from the corner of another heavy and flat rectangle, it was hard to get excited. But underneath the paper, I caught a glimpse of a cracked cobblestone. The surface of cobblestone was scratched white, as if the pale scratches were emanating from the crack in the stone. The crack seemed to extend to another scratched cobblestone, gently curving like the beginning of a gentle spiral.
Ooh! Oooh! Oooh! Could it be? I tore the paper, revealing the cover. YES…
pharyngula | December 29, 2008A reader sent me this photo of a lovely monument in Antwerp, and I just had to post it. You see, when you're a biologist, it's not just all about the squid and the barnacles, there's also all the hot babes.
The voluptuous young lady is, apparently, the personification of Nature. I just knew she was gorgeous, but I understand she also has a cruel streak.
To be fair, if anyone has a picture of, say, a Barbara McClintock monument with a nude Adonis snuggling up to her, I'll post that, too. Both sexes are equally attractive in this field, you know.
laelaps | December 27, 2008Eugene O'Neill's short play, The First Man, is a tale of birth, death, scandal, and family infighting, all involving an anthropologist set to scour Asia in search of the earliest humans. Collected with two other plays (The Hairy Ape and Anna Christie) in a 1922, the play contains a fleeting reflection of the scientific consensus at the time.
For a variety of reasons, from the pattern of fossil finds to racism and "pithecophobia", Asia was the preferred place to look for the earliest humans. (See Peter Bowler's Theories of Human Evolution for a survey, and Constance Clark's God - or Gorilla…
pharyngula | December 14, 2008John Holbo is determined — nay, obsessesed — to add a new holiday to the pantheon of midwinter festivals: it's Haeckelmas. I can actually understand this, since the artwork Ernst Haeckel masterminded is worthy of obsession, a beautiful celebration of life in a Victorian vein.
If you're tired of the traditional Currier & Ives, Holbo has put together a whole collection of Haeckeliana with a holiday theme.
pharyngula | December 9, 2008Here's an interesting example of genetic programming: use a program that slightly alters colored polygons, compares the results to a target, and selects variants that most resemble the Mona Lisa. After less than a million generations, a black square turned into this:
Not bad. The description of the algorithm is a bit thin, but he promises to release the source code soon. It sounds like a million generations is an overestimate, since his population size in each generation was 1, and it also sounds like his selection was far more stringent than you'd find in nature, but it's an interesting if…
aardvarchaeology | December 4, 2008
Here's something neat. Annika and Bengtowe Angare are photographers and digital retouch artists (check out their site and hover your cursor over each picture!). They've photographed the early-16th century sword I found at Djurhamn in 2007 and stuck it point first into the find spot on a vintage map of Djurö!
This post is timely as I have a short talk scheduled for tonight about my work at Djurhamn. Wish me luck!
Thanks to Annika & Bengtowe for permission to blog publish their © image.
zooillogix | December 3, 2008Ring in the holidays with yuletide logs... courtesy of the reindeer at the Miller Park Zoo. By combining two Christmas classics, reindeer and ornaments, and adding a twist - fecal matter - the zoo's marketing department may of stepped in retail gold!
In a nutshell, or a nugget if you will, keepers collected reindeer poop balls, rolled them in glitter, and allowed them to dry. The final product was then packaged in little boxes and sold with a certificate of authenticity, a move straight out of the Danbury Mint's playbook. Explains Susie Ohley, Marketing Director of the Miller Park Zoo, "Each…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2008
Offensive Christmas Ornament created by Seattle artist, Deborah Lawrence.
Image: Deborah Lawrence.
Seattle artist, Deborah Lawrence, was one of 370 artists who were given the honor of creating a Christmas ornament for the White House's official Christmas trees. This was after Laura Bush invited all 435 Congresscritters to choose artists from their congressional district to design ornaments for the White House Christmas trees. Unfortunately, Lawrence's 9-inch ball was the only one that was banned from the White House trees, even though it fulfilled all the requirements set out by the…
pharyngula | November 28, 2008Whoa. It's kind of a standing joke that when our presentation tools fail us, we'll have to fall back on interpretive dance to make our points. We never mean it seriously, though. Until now. Science magazine challenged researchers to actually illustrate their work with dance, and people did! There are four youtube videos at that link that show the winners. I liked the graduate student entry best, but I'll include this one because a) it was most comprehensible to me, and b) Laurie Anderson is wonderful.
You will never catch me doing this, though — I can't dance, and I'm too ungainly anyway.
aardvarchaeology | November 11, 2008
Last Thursday I went to Norrköping and checked out the Town Museum's collection of prehistoric metalwork. Most of it is decontextualised, but I did manage to collect some useful data on the movements of my 1st Millennium aristocrats across Östergötland.
Among the things I handled was, unexpectedly, the Tåby statuette. It's a stray find from a field near Tåby parish church. Arthur Nordén published it in Fornvännen 1924 and suggested a Late Medieval date about AD 1400. I don't know if the piece has been discussed in print since. It looks neither quite like Bronze Age figurines nor Early Iron…
aardvarchaeology | November 3, 2008
A year ago I showed some pictures of particularly cool finds that Claes Pettersson and his team from Jönköping County Museum had made in 17th century urban layers near their offices. One of them was the above clay mould depicting King Gustavus II Adolphus. Claes believes that it may have been used to make candy. Now he knows where the motif came from.
The mould is actually a contact copy of a 1631 royal medal used to decorate military officers. And among Claes's finds is a piece of yet another mould copied from a coeval medal, this one an equestrian portrait. Muses Claes, "What have they…
neurophilosophy | October 31, 2008
Netsuke are miniature Japanese sculptures which are most often carved from ivory or wood, and sometimes from other materials. They were first made in the early 17th century, and used to fasten a small box (the inro) containing medicines and personal belongings to the sash (or obi) worn around traditional Japanese garments such as the kimono. Later on they were made solely for ornamental purposes.
The ivory skull and wooden mask netsuke shown in the photograph above are on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which has a very nice collection of these delightful objects.…