bioephemera
Posts by this author
April 11, 2010
Something I ran across by accident, while perusing our latest copy of Issues in Science and Technology: currently, the National Academies are sponsoring a Visual Culture and Evolution Online Symposium. It runs through Wednesday. What that means, apparently, is their panelists discuss the…
April 11, 2010
Fellow lab rats, banish the lingering odor of LB broth from your nostrils and imagine how awesome research would be if these little cuties were your model organisms!
Buy them from Specimen7 on MakersMarket.
April 11, 2010
Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
There's a great article at the NYT on the Cocoon, a collection of natural specimens in London's Natural History Museum's Darwin Center. Check out the slideshow to appreciate the juxtaposition of Romanesque architecture with the space-age, egg-shaped exhibition…
April 10, 2010
Skeptvet has created a pithy, albeit cynical, table summarizing what scientists write, what it really means, and what the public thinks it means. I've clipped a little bit of it here, but go to Skeptvet for the whole thing. Nice work!
April 10, 2010
I perversely love attending conferences where traditional journalists complain that bloggers are evil. :) Yesterday I heard that line again (in jest, relax) at a great discussion about changing media practices and the legal implications of various forms of content reuse, sponsored by the Online…
April 9, 2010
A very cool addition to the NLM "Turning the Pages" virtual library, which I blogged about back in December: the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus. You literally click and drag to unroll the papyrus, and then toggle the annotations on or off. While it doesn't have the pretty pictures that some of their…
April 8, 2010
While I was guest-posting over at Collective Imagination last month, I suggested that while better public access to peer reviewed research articles is a priority for the scientific community, knocking down firewalls may not be sufficient to help many patients, who lack the scientific background to…
April 7, 2010
I blogged about Lisa Black's steampunk heart:
Fixed Heart
offal with mixed metal components
Lisa Black, 2008
I blogged about New Zealand artist Lisa Black before, but I can't get over this great piece of hers. What does it signify? Does it represent the gradual replacement of the natural world…
April 6, 2010
So the word among my friends is that the iPad, which, as Stephen Fry noted, may be the closest thing humanity has yet produced to a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, might just be worth buying -- if only as a stunningly cool toy and not, alas, the tablet many of us wanted. For example, I give you…
April 6, 2010
A fun poster by editorial artist Harry Campbell (you've no doubt seen his work in the NYT and elsewhere). Love the cut-aways and perspective changes - it reminds me of a children's book.
April 6, 2010
This week at Coney Island, the first ever "Congress for Curious People" brings together historians of science, artists, taxidermists, musicologists, and all manner of. . . curious people. It's part of the larger "Congress of Curious Peoples":
Every spring Coney Island USA convenes The Congress of…
April 5, 2010
This is kind of cool:
For the second year in a row, AAAS [the American Association for the Advancement of Science] will be arranging hands-on science activities for children attending the White House Easter Egg Roll.AAAS was invited by the Office of Science and Technology Policy to help infuse…
April 5, 2010
The new blog Kingdom of the Blind documents an ongoing collaboration between embroiderer/artist Melody Lord and neuroscientist Adam Hamlin. The title is from Jim Endersby's book A Guinea Pig's History of Biology: "Science is the kingdom of the blind: there are no sighted - or even one-eyed -…
April 4, 2010
Here's a pretty little visualization by Hybrid Medical Animation: a demo reel of clips portraying various physiological processes and medical devices in action, in various styles of animation:
hybrid 2010 reel from hybrid medical animation on Vimeo.
One of my frustrations with medical animations is…
April 4, 2010
Style Bubble has some snapshots of luxe skull- and carapace-inspired jewelry by Dominic Jones. You've just got to love a crocodile skull vambrace!
See more snaps at Style Bubble.
Via Haute Macabre - you musn't miss their other recent post on Dominic Jones' work for Vice Magazine. Here's a teaser:
April 2, 2010
C.B., circa 1708: "These color circles, from a 1708 edition, are the earliest published examples of Newton-style color circles in an artist's manual."
Moses Harris, 1766: "Mimicking the spread of light from a source, Harris places the pure colors at the center of his circle and the lightest at…
April 2, 2010
One of my fave April Fools' spoofs this week: Groupöupon, the high-end version of Groupon for the aesthetically pompous:
Make sure that your arms telegraph style and success with this indulgent line of Premium Sleeves designed by Fourth World, the designer brand renowned for combining the uncanny…
April 1, 2010
ChaunceyChristopher Conn Askew
Christopher Conn Askew's intensely graphic artwork is like military propaganda from 1984. Anthropomorphized, vaguely threatening domestic animals, particularly cats, mingle with children, nudes, badges, weapons, and typography for a sinister yet delightful effect. I…
April 1, 2010
This news item caught my eye this morning at the SEA (Scientists & Engineers for America) website:
Science Party 2012 all the way! And by "Science Party," I mean a festive event with free-flowing liquid nitrogen cocktails.
April 1, 2010
Nate Hill has a strong stomach and, er, unique artistic vision: he likes to cobble sculptures together out of dead animal parts. While his "New Animals" are the sort of clever, genteel, well-sealed artifacts you might find in a trendy loft belonging to a medical illustration enthusiast, his "ADAM…
March 31, 2010
With some portraits, you can feel the eyes following you around the room. With Sophie Cave's art installation make that fifty pairs of eyes - in fifty expressions ranging from disgust to shock to delight. All suspended above you in the atrium of a Victorian museum.
photo credits: Ashley R. Good…
March 31, 2010
Women have white matter, men have duct tape. Or so implies Louann Brizendine's latest book, the Male Brain, dissected in this post and comments at Language Log:
You may remember the controversy surrounding her previous book, the Female Brain, which (in the UK edition) depicted women's cerebrums as…
March 30, 2010
Slate asks,
"You rarely see women holding management positions in terrorist groups. Is there a glass ceiling for female Islamist terrorists?"
Um. . .
A. Did you just seriously ask that question?
B. Are we supposed to be surprised that Islamist terrorists don't respect women?
C. Are we supposed to…
March 30, 2010
Artists Bigert & Bergstrom create suspended globular clusters, reminiscent of molecular structures, with vinyl photographs on the outside and lighting within. The overall effect is a "luminous three-dimensional sculpture", light and airy as a memory, but distinctly industrial.
These…
March 29, 2010
Good idea: the National Zoo is letting us name its Giant Pacific octopus.
Bad idea: the names. All four are terrible:
Olympus: This octopus arrived at the Zoo just before the 2010 Winter Olympics, and for many zoogoers the octopus gets a gold medal for being a compelling animal.Ceph: Octopuses…
March 29, 2010
I don't think I've posted yet about Andrew Chase's graceful articulated metal sculptures. His cheetah is particularly stunning.
Click the image to watch it run!
Chase's mechanical sculptures have way more personality than metal should. The soulful eyes of his elephants and giraffes could reflect…
March 28, 2010
This poem by Rosemary Kirstein is truly a worthy successor to the classic by Wallace Stevens. (Thanks to Jen Ouellette for sharing.)
March 28, 2010
A recent CNN article points out that the Georgia Guidestones, a carved granite monument erected in 1980 by a mysterious donor obsessed with the possibility of civilization's destruction, wouldn't be all that useful to humankind's survivors:
The center column has a slot through which the transit of…
March 28, 2010
Jackrabbit #5
Joianne Bittle, 2009
Joianne Bittle has an awesome job (Exhibition Assistant at the American Museum of Natural History) where she gets to paint, draw and make dioramas. Wow. But she's also an accomplished artist in oil and wax, as these paintings attest. Her series of beetle paintings…
March 28, 2010
Doesn't that title sound weird - like an experimental film? It may help to know that House of Sweden is Sweden's embassy in Washington, DC - a lovely glass building on the Potomac. If you're in the DC area, you should get on their mailing list, because they host interesting science-related panel…