bioephemera
Posts by this author
March 14, 2010
One of my pet peeves is the idea that BMI provides an accurate indication of individual health. It doesn't. It's useful across populations (and may be useful to individuals to monitor progress), but when it comes to indicating which individuals are "healthier", BMI fails miserably - and our new…
March 14, 2010
Only National Geographic would dare cross The Amazing Race with the mystery of conception to get. . . The Great Sperm Race:
Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization. Millions of sperm compete while overcoming…
March 13, 2010
By Joseph Hewitt, who clearly understands the Sb atmosphere quite well.
March 13, 2010
For the annals of humorous translation mistakes, this package from a digital antenna we bought last fall promises to . . . do something. I'm not sure what.
For John O, who enjoys terrible advertising.
March 12, 2010
The cover of a 1922 issue of Life: it's a visual pun on at least one level, but it's also just pretty!
March 9, 2010
Update: welcome Consumerist readers! While I use my own experience to illustrate concerns about third-party online merchants, this post is mainly about the bigger long-term informational problems I see with reputation, reliability, and online communities. Please feel free to weigh in!
A few weeks…
March 8, 2010
A friend of mine recently turned me on to the great street art blog Wooster Collective. Check out this unexpected street art in Richmond, Virginia: pairs of old shoes dangling in trees seem mundane by day, but by night, they're like streetlamps from a Tim Burton cartoon. Solar panels inside the…
March 7, 2010
A blunt animated message for Surfrider's Rise Above Plastics, with Portland's Borders Perrin Norrander (full credits here)
Via Notcot and others.
March 6, 2010
An interesting post from Repository for Bottled Monsters gathers together a few links on art/exhibit censorship, like this opinion, "Why Some Art Should Be Censored," from the Shreveport Times: "Another sort of case concerns the use of human corpses in art. There is a venerable tradition of showing…
March 5, 2010
Campbell's is redesigning their iconic red-and-white soup packaging. Why? The answer's in your brain - or so they think:
Campbell's said traditional customer feedback wasn't telling the company why soup sales weren't doing so hot. "A 2005 Campbell analysis revealed that, overall, ads deemed more…
March 3, 2010
Google may have done Buzz all wrong, but they do Chrome right in these adorable, Rube Goldberg-style ads.
March 2, 2010
Jesse ("Jess3") Thomas's brand-new clip, like a slimmed-down, retro-styled, updated cousin of that ubiquitous "Right here, right now" video, is the perfect appetizer to complement the Pew's brand-new report on participatory news. Enjoy.
March 2, 2010
This may appeal to some of you:
The 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences (EAMHMS) will be held at the University of Copenhagen, 16-18 September, 2010. This year's conference focuses on the challenge to museums posed by contemporary…
March 2, 2010
A provocative post over at the Intersection.
I haven't had time to weigh in on the vitriol-slinging because I'm on blogcation - and honestly, the stuff Sheril describes is one of the very reasons I decided to take a blogcation. But knowing that I'll be attacked for saying it, yes, I agree with her…
February 28, 2010
From the Center for Biological Diversity, "Endangered Species Condoms":
To help people understand the impact of overpopulation on other species, and to give them a chance to take action in their own life, the Center is distributing free packets of Endangered Species Condoms depicting six separate…
February 27, 2010
A visualization from NOAA representing the dissipation of energy from the Chilean earthquake.
February 26, 2010
One of the reasons little liberal arts colleges are awesome: this course at Lafayette. It's part of their Values and Science/Technology Program.
February 25, 2010
A physicist with a baby iceberg in Qaanaaq, Greenland. (I think its enraged mother is just out of range of the camera, about to crush him.)
Via Armed with Science.
February 25, 2010
In Cambridge, at a "Wireside chat" on "Fair Use, Politics, and Online Video" by legal scholar, IP expert and corrupt-government critic Lawrence Lessig. He's comparing the addictivity/potential danger of wifi to smoking. Say it ain't so! I need my wifi!
February 24, 2010
Sad, weird, and odd: a 1kg spectacled owl attacked, killed, and ate (part of) a defenseless three-toed sloth. Apparently the owl stabbed its talons in the sloth's neck while it was on the way to the ground to defecate, and then pecked its organs out. I wish I was kidding.
February 22, 2010
So I flatter myself that you *might* be missing lil' ol' me during my blogcation. (Come on, throw me a bone here). But there's a new sibling who might distract you - Claire Evans, "a freelance science writer, science fiction critic, polymath, and musician," who also blogs about the intersection of…
February 22, 2010
Feb 23rd (tomorrow) is the last day to snag advance tickets to the Seven on Seven conference in NYC:
Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new --be it an application, social media, artwork,…
February 21, 2010
FYI: the winners of the AAAS Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge are up! You may recognize some of them - including PhD (Piled Higher and Deeper) cartoonist Jorge Cham. Check 'em out and share your opinions; I'll have more to say when I'm back from blogcation!
February 20, 2010
A quick follow-up to my mention of Edward Tufte last week: you should be aware that Edward Tufte's brief classic, Data Analysis for Politics and Policy, is available online as a PDF here. It's worth a skim in your spare time - and worth sharing with people who don't necessarily appreciate the…
February 17, 2010
Last week, I braved a nasty sleety Cambridge evening to see Rebecca Skloot read from her excellent new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I'm thrilled to tell you it's finally being released on Amazon tomorrow, so if you haven't already been to your local bookstore, go snag a copy (or…
February 15, 2010
I have my priorities!
Do I even need to comment on how awesome this is? Via iO9.
February 15, 2010
Hola BioE readers,
I've been blogging at Scienceblogs for two years this month, and prior to that, I blogged for another year at my own site. So it is not surprising that I am very, very tired.
Blogging uses up a big chunk of my dwindling free time, which I also need for such things as reading non…
February 15, 2010
Astro Rocket
I got my boyfriend one of these adorable Astro Rockets from cardboard safari for Valentine's Day. The large ones are frighteningly expensive, but the smallest one is cute, remarkably well designed, and despite being cardboard, has that pleasant burnt-wood odor of a carpentry shop.…
February 14, 2010
From the Cold Spring Harbor Archive (click for larger image). From Micklos, The Science of Eugenics, pg 116 (1930).
February 13, 2010
Upcoming at Observatory in NYC: Entomologia (Feb 26-April 4), a group show of art incorporating and inspired by insects. I'm particularly intrigued by the discussion scheduled for April 3, "Transgenics, Cybernetics, and Evolution:"
Silkworms engineered to produce pharmaceuticals and hormones,…