Double Helix

When Bill O'Reilly said that you "can't explain tides" I laughed. Why did I laugh? Because if he wasn't such a dumb-ass he could have EASILY named a dozen thing that science claims to "know" that a reasonably good rhetorician could convince the average Tea Bagger that science really can't "know" because it can't really "see" them. The tides have been understood not only by science by by a lot of regular working class potential Republicans (though many are not) who eek out their living on the shores of the briny sea. Bill O'Reilly must have looked like a complete idiot to them. Meanwhile,…
On July 25, 1920 the English biophysicist Rosalind Franklin was born. She was instrumental in discovering the molecular structure of DNA, though her vital contributions were only posthumously acknowledged. After receiving her PhD from Cambridge in 1945 she worked as a research associate for John Randall at King's College in London. Beginning in early 1951 she took X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA that showed a helical form of the molecule, a finding confirmed by James Watson and Francis Crick who subsequently won the Nobel Prize for their DNA research. In lecture notes dated November…
This photo was ultimately rejected for a journal cover (it was the wrong shape!) but I shot it to accompany a research article that used museum specimens of midwestern bumblebees to compare current levels of genetic diversity with previous decades.  Since this image won't appear in print anytime soon, I thought I'd share it here instead. photo details: Canon 35mm f2.0 prime lens on a Canon EOS 20D ISO 200, 1/125 sec, f/5, indirect strobe