bioephemera
Posts by this author
February 11, 2010
Just in time for Valentine's Day: the "Copulating Earthworm Necklace," from heronadornment on etsy.
Also love her anatomical heart locket.
February 11, 2010
Year of the Tiger, 2010
Chris Jordan
Depicts 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970.
SEED has put together a slideshow of works by Chris Jordan, an artist I…
February 10, 2010
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, National Geographic Explorer will be devoting an episode to "Vampire Forensics." You can preview a brief clip below the fold, but I'll warn you now: it's not CSI. It's more scientific ("unfortunately this evidence is inconclusive" LOL) and less sexy (inexplicably, Emily…
February 9, 2010
It literally took me a good 20 seconds to figure out what was. . . off. . . about the first photo in this great post by Emily at SheChive. Sigh. ;)
Thanks to Jake for the heads-up!
February 8, 2010
Okay, so most people don't even bother to read EULAs. But I'm glad we glanced at this one, by Ben Long for his Photoshop Action Pack:
You can use these actions for anything you like, and you can give them to your friends and co-workers (or even your enemies, if your experience of the actions leads…
February 8, 2010
Well, not quite. I got an intriguing abstract in my inbox earlier today, to this new paper from BMC Neuroscience:
Here using a new conditioned suppression paradigm, we investigated whether the ability of a foot-shockpaired conditioned stimulus to suppress chocolate-seeking behavior was antagonized…
February 7, 2010
This is. . . .
A. The gills of a tropical fish.
B. A satellite photo of the Bahamas.
C. A blue-green fungus sometimes called Green Stain.
D. A UV photograph of the center of a miniature carnation.
E. Algae along the edge of a geyser.
F. A Cirque de Soleil costume.
It's actually B, a satellite…
February 6, 2010
Those of you who like to play with color may be interested in the newColoRotate interface, designed to make editing color palettes more intuitive. This tool was produced by the same team that made the useful educational website Causes of Color, which I've blogged about before. It explains the…
February 5, 2010
An interactive flowchart/concept map from Berkeley's Understanding Science project. Click around a while, and tell me what you think of it. Accurate? Too simple? Useful?
February 4, 2010
Seaweed Picture No. 31
Alyson Denny
Photographer Alyson Denny's closeups of seaweed and jellyfish couldn't be less like your usual natural science documentation. Often, very little of her subject is in focus; she's more concerned with how the forms and colors blur and overlap as the field recedes.…
February 3, 2010
Modeling the flight of a bat (click to enlarge)
Dave Willis et. al., Brown University and MIT
Visual complexity is a paradox. On the one hand, complexity is a compelling feature known to capture a viewer's attention and stimulate interest. . . . On the other hand, complexity only arouses curiosity…
February 2, 2010
Why time goes slower when we get olderRhonald Blommestijn
for Douwe Draaisma interview, Audi Magazine
Dutch graphic designer Rhonald Blommestijn's illustrations play with medical and technical themes in unexpected ways. Check out his blog, and his series of concept illustrations for the…
February 1, 2010
Matthew Albanese makes miniature dioramas out of everyday materials and photographs them, producing Uncanny Valley landscapes that seem almost, but not quite, real. His Paprika Mars, above, is made of 12 pounds of charcoal and spices (paprika, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder). Fields, After the…
January 31, 2010
Thanks to reader Laura for this treasure.
January 31, 2010
Another clever use of the periodic table in design: Washington State's Wines of Substance, who won Seattle Magazine's "Coolest Wine Label" Award in 2008.
According to Substance, "wine is as much an art as it is a science. What better way to express this basis than a Periodic Table of Wine with…
January 31, 2010
Okay, so between vampires and zombies, the undead have officially conquered pop culture. It's not really new - I was fascinated when young by Michael Jackson's Thriller and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles - but it does seem a bit out of hand.
With the release of "Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie…
January 30, 2010
This is apparently a real ad for the hotly contested Orleans Parish Coroner's race:
Poor Dr. Frankenstein Minyard. This takes negative campaigning to a whole new level.
January 30, 2010
"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them."
-John Updike
January 28, 2010
Virtual reality trailblazer Jaron Lanier has a somewhat curmudgeonly, critical new book out called You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Here's an excerpt:
If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of to musicians…
January 28, 2010
Via my friend Sylvia, here's an old (2008) but interesting post arguing that over time, the quality of medical illustrations have declined. From Artemy Lebedev.
January 27, 2010
I came across this lovely beach in Maine a few months ago, near Bar Harbor. The remarkable thing here is that the beach is very far down - about fifty feet - yet the rocks so strongly resemble typical landscaping gravel that the beach seems to be at the level of the observer. Unfortunately, the…
January 26, 2010
When I dared my friend John to make "You've Been SCIENCED" into a pop culture tagline, using his science radio show as a platform, I didn't think he'd actually DO it. But he did:
I just wish Drew Carey had used the "Pigs In Space" intonation of "You've been SCIENCED."
January 26, 2010
This is the best blog post ever. And read the comment thread - it's totally worth it.
Via many people.
January 26, 2010
Suppose you have a question about a new medication your doctor has prescribed to you. How do you find out more about it? You probably Google it, right? But what do you do with the list of results that come up, which is likely to include a Wikipedia page, a blog entry or two, some posts on e-patient…
January 25, 2010
A quick plug for Fashion For Nerds, a fun blog by a San Francisco biologist with an eye for mixing thrift store finds. See? Living in the lab doesn't mean you can't have style.
January 25, 2010
Yoda Borguereau
Mandrak
An old link, but still a good one - the "Star Wars in classic art" digital fx (advanced) contest from Worth1000.com. And the sequel contest (not as good). And the third contest. (Let's hope they're more prudent than George Lucas, and stop at three!)
January 24, 2010
"There is no rest, really, there is no rest, there is just a joyous torment all your life of doing the wrong thing."
poet Derek Walcott, 1982
excerpted in Harper's Magazine, February 2010
January 23, 2010
Jorge Cham's PhD skewers the "wisdom of crowds" - and poorly done stats.
January 23, 2010
Peacock Backpiece
Paul RoeBritish Ink DC
From the files: one unfortunate consequence of trying to cover all of last year's Artomatic event in a single visit was that I didn't get to explore British Ink's faux-Victorian tattoo parlor. I don't do tats myself, but how awesome is this?
PS. This was not…