Frivolity
bioephemera | June 26, 2008This is why I don't do digital art (click PLAY, or for a larger, higher-res version, go to the link below):
AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central
Higher-res version: "Animator vs. Animation" by Alan Becker
Sequel (via GrrrlScientist, thanks Bob O for the heads-up): "Animator vs. Animation II" by Alan Becker (this summarizes nicely why the second and third Matrix films were doomed to mediocrity).
bioephemera | June 26, 2008
Via the SEA blog: Jeremy Kalgreen at Amorphia Apparel has created some delicious t-shirts that help you advocate teaching your controversy of choice. Or, display your support for the amazing things Science has brought us - like giant guitar-playing robots and mechanical paramecia:
Rock on, Amorphia! We here at Scienceblogs understand that it's turtles all the way down. . .
bioephemera | June 23, 2008My friend Rhett alerted me to this little word game, which is kind of like Balderdash: you pick the correct etymology or definition from a group of fakes created by tricky readers. I did quibble with a couple of mistakes (one definition was off, one word was misspelled) but I tried three times and couldn't beat it. Can you?
Other wordy recreations:
this is my all-time favorite hard online word quiz. . . I scored 183 and broke a sweat doing it.
this is an addictive Boggle-style game from Flash By Night.
bioephemera | June 22, 2008
Here's a bit of weirdness I saw on Friday but didn't have time to blog - a Botticelli-inspired monument to the enema:
A health spa in Russia has unveiled a bronze monument of three cherubs carrying an enema, a design inspired by the 15th century Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. (source)
What do you think? What other potentially embarassing medical procedures deserve their own tributes in bronze? (Endoscopy, you may be next. . .)
bioephemera | June 20, 2008
"Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment"
Jean Kaleba and family
Last Friday I finally made it to Artomatic, a month-long gallery event that colocalizes hundreds of local artists under one roof, together with musicians, poets, wine and beer. But the real stars of Artomatic were pastel marshmallows - yes, Peeps.
In conjunction with Artomatic, the Washington Post sponsors a Peep-populated diorama contest, Peepsomatic. The entries were creative, hilarious, and occasionally esoteric, like Jean Kaleba's entry above, "Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment" -…
bioephemera | June 17, 2008
My friend John found these pavement neurons outside our building. What, you don't think they look like neurons? Well, then YOU haven't worked on the brain long enough to become afflicted with chronic neural pareidolia! For comparison:
bioephemera | May 27, 2008After the long weekend, I'm catching up on links friends and readers have sent me. Artist Erik Nordenankar shipped a GPS device by DHL to create this giant tracking self-portrait (according to the project website, appropriately titled "biggestdrawingintheworld.com"):
This video shows how he did it:
My first question was prosaic: how could anyone afford to do this? I figured it was some wealthy Silicon Valley hobbyist's idea - how could an art student afford the shipping fees? Not unexpectedly, it turns out the project was conceived as both art and ad - Nordenankar describes it as "…
bioephemera | May 15, 2008
How difficult life must be for expatriates. Moving from the West coast to the East coast has made it difficult for me to find certain brands of food, and foreign foods are doubly difficult to come by. This week, anticipating a recipe created by the fabulous Nigella Lawson, I ran out to the store to get Lyle's Golden Syrup. They didn't have it, which is weird, because they had it three months ago. I drove to another store. Same problem! In the end I had to use King Golden Syrup, which doesn't compare at all. If I'd had time for shipping, I'd have ordered Lyle's online - it would totally be…
bioephemera | May 5, 2008
One of the benefits (?) of being a biologist is receiving biotech spam in one's inbox, as this screenshot shows. I'm a little disturbed that the subject lines of emails advertising lab reagents are not readily distinguishable from those advertising adult pharmaceuticals.
bioephemera | April 29, 2008Remember that today, Tuesday April 29, is Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day! Regrettably, I will be nowhere near a B&J's. . . sigh.
bioephemera | April 27, 2008
. . . wherein whatsoever the hand of man by exquisite art or engine has made rare in stuff, form or motion; whatsoever singularity, chance, and the shuffle of things hath produced; whatsoever Nature has wrought in things that want life and may be kept; shall be sorted and included. . . [Bacon]
Welcome to the sixth edition of the Cabinet of Curiosities carnival. Whether your taste runs to Wunderkammern or Curiosities, blogs are treasure rooms for modern collectors of the strange and marvelous. Let's start with this perfect miniature cabinet of crochet motifs by JPolka at the oh-so-aptly named…
bioephemera | April 4, 2008
It looks like the British Museum has a good chance of keeping this medieval brass astrolabe quadrant on public display in the UK. The export license for the device has been delayed until June, giving the BM a chance to raise its 350,000-pound selling price - which should please retrotechnophiles and Chaucerians alike.
The astrolabe originated with the Greeks, but was popularized by Islamic astronomers and became widely used across Europe. The British Museum already has several, like this pretty one I saw last summer:
Brass astrolabe with silver inlay, 1712
British Museum
So why do they need…
bioephemera | April 2, 2008
Ok, I'm not sure if I should be pleased or not that my friends automatically send me links to stories about octopus courtship.
Apparently "marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex." Whoa! Why isn't this a reality TV show already?
Be sure to watch the video - an amusingly dry account of octopus relationships (at least in some species). These males give new meaning to the word "clingy." In addition,
size does matter - but not how you'd think. "If you're going to spend time guarding a…
bioephemera | April 1, 2008Yeah, yeah, I know I haven't been posting much lately. I'll remedy that shortly.
I was hoping Gmail Custom Time would enable me to post some things last week, but it appears Movable Type doesn't support the feature yet. . . so sad.
I knew all along Google had a flux capacitor. How else do they know so much?
bioephemera | March 28, 2008histoire(s) naturelle(s)
Petra Werle
Petra Werle's sculptures are fantasy, not science - nevertheless, she pins them in display cases like a butterfly collection. Their faces are molded breadcrumbs, and their bodies are made of feathers, beetles, moths, butterflies, shells, and moss.
histoire(s) naturelle(s)
Petra Werle
Like the work of Tessa Farmer or Brian Froud's Pressed Fairy Book, these are fairies and gnomes as pseudo-scientific specimens, their bodies offered as evidence of a fantastic, unseen world. But unlike Farmer's savage, wolflike packs of fairies, Werle's fairies are…
bioephemera | March 26, 2008I am normally the last person to find the wanton demolition of art amusing. But I just discovered that early this year, when a windstorm hit my alma mater, Whitman College, a falling tree broke this large metal sculpture by Ed Humpherys, known to generations of Whitties as "The Giant Paper Clip" (or some variation thereof):
The Paper Clip, in Happier Days
The Fallen Paper Clip. Alas!
To add insult to injury, I learned from the alumni magazine that the actual title of the Paper Clip was "Joined Together, Let No Man Split Asunder." Whoops! It's asunder now. (Apparently a tree doing so was…
bioephemera | March 25, 2008Have you heard the song about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Check out Jonny Berliner on yesterday's Guardian Science Weekly podcast:
Everett said that there are infinite realities
The Copenhagen explanations sound like insanity
With consciousness affecting wavy-particle dualities
The actualities are rather mysterious
bioephemera | March 25, 2008
Photo: John Downer
Trunk-cams and tusk-cams - apparently when they're not painting portraits of each other, elephants are film auteurs:
One carried a "trunk-cam" - a device resembling a huge log concealing a camera which could be held in its trunk and dangled close to the ground. Another had a "tusk-cam" hooked over its tusk. The elephants moved so steadily that the images are pin-sharp. Other log-cams were left on the forest floor. The high-definition cameras were created by inventor Geoff Bell for a documentary in the remote Pench National Park in Madhya Pradesh in the heart of India. (…
bioephemera | March 18, 2008Yesterday I alluded to the wonder cabinet aesthetic of retailer Anthropologie. I love that store, though I can't afford to patronize it (not that insolvency always stops me). But I'm sometimes ambivalent about their use of science as marketing tool.
Here's a screenshot from their latest web ad campaign, "It's elemental":
Ok. . . the "science behind our March outfits?" What does that even mean? And what do any of these outfits have to do with their respective elements? A few do use the "right" colors, but I feel like this collection was compiled by the contestants of Project Runway: "Your…
bioephemera | March 17, 2008
Nancy Fiddler with her mastodon skeleton
photo by Robert Galbraith
So apparently there's a week left to place your ebay bid on the Rustler Ranch mastodon skeleton. It's only $115K, and ebay helpfully notes that you can get "up to $25 back with ebay MasterCard"! So get out $114,975 (plus shipping) and start planning your new fossil decorating scheme.
The skeleton was discovered in 1997 by ranch hand Eric Pedersen on land belonging to Roger and Nancy Fiddler. But the Fiddlers are finding their fossil charge cumbersome:
The mastodon is so big that it's been separated into pieces and covered in…