bioephemera
Posts by this author
December 13, 2009
Okay, so these tricks aren't rocket science. But I think lighting and extinguishing candles remotely is a pretty entertaining diversion - definitely for an audience experiencing a post-holiday meal food coma. You can lecture them all about chemistry, and they won't be able to flee! Bwahahahahaha!…
December 13, 2009
Dress by Alison Lewis,
Photography by Carlos Linares III.
Read all about it at iheartswitch.
December 11, 2009
The National Library of Medicine's "Turning the Pages" gallery lets you turn the virtual pages of classic science/medicine manuscripts. Check out Hieronymus Brunschwig's Liber de Arte Distillandi de Compositis (1512):
Note that the NLM's copy is hand-colored; uncolored copies also exist, such as…
December 11, 2009
Oooh, look! "Science Czar" John Holdren has recommended Chris & Sheril's Unscientific America in Foreign Policy Magazine's Global Thinkers Book Club.
It's so nice to see the two topics most likely to draw hecklers to my blog, brought together at last! Maybe all the angry right-wingers and New…
December 10, 2009
Albert Einstein has never reminded me much of Dr. Evil. Quite the opposite, in fact. But even Einstein occasionally had to ask for one MEEEEL-LION dollars - for a good cause, of course:
Dear Friend:
I write to you for help at the suggestion of a friend.
Through the release of atomic energy, our…
December 8, 2009
Vintage Ray Gun Themed Christmas Gifts.
Enough said, I think.
December 7, 2009
Every year, I do my charitable giving at the holidays. It doesn't make much sense from a personal budget standpoint, since I'm always running out of money and time, but it just feels like a good thing to do. This year, I'm going to feature one recipient here on the blog, in the hopes of raising…
December 6, 2009
"Vegetables are all your body needs" ad campaign, via Laughing Squid (hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan)
December 6, 2009
Origami is as ephemeral as art gets - delicate paper, with no more than creases and physics to maintain its shape. It's also the ideal art form for blurring the boundary between art and science, because it's all about geometry. You could argue that the origami medium is math, just as much as it's…
December 5, 2009
The smallest orchid in the world (above) - only 2 mm across! (Thanks for the heads-up, Laura!)
Cassette-tape skeletons at Designboom.
Via Wired Science: Mini microbe portraits from the Micropolitan Museum
Dude - there are spiny, venomous catfish? Who knew?
Finally, an interview I did recently with…
December 4, 2009
Voss-Andreae is therefore either brave or foolhardy to try to represent quantum phenomena tangibly. Perhaps his greatest asset as a former physicist is that he realizes how much we don't know. In some of his works, the inverted commas of analogy are explicit to the knowing eye. Quantum Corral (…
December 4, 2009
An intriguing new exhibition featuring work by herbert pfostl at the Observatory (next to Proteus Gowanus gallery in NYC):
Small paintings as parables of plants and animals and old stories of black robbers and white stags. Fragments on death like mirrors from a black sleep in the forests of fairy…
December 3, 2009
Ever wonder what the pilot for "Gray's Anatomy:Uncanny Valley" would be like? Well, you're in luck!
If It Weren't For You (I'd Be Sued) from Justine Cooper on Vimeo.
Yes, that was a . . .
music video in which an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins used in medical simulation with an infectious…
December 2, 2009
The best Lady Gaga parody yet? Judge for yourself:
I lay it out like they do in magazines
check out this typeface it's like smoking nicotine (I love it)
using Adobe's not the same without a Mac
if it was lead it would be lined up on a track
Oh yeah! Via Jennifer Ouellette.
December 2, 2009
As many of you know, I've been working for the past couple of years on youth internet health and education issues. While the stereotype is that younger = tech savvier, that's not strictly true. Younger kids may be better acquainted with the internet, may use it more, and may feel more comfortable…
December 2, 2009
Product placement is old news, but just in case you're wondering how saturated films really are with implicit advertising, brandchannel.com's brandcameo-films index tells you which brands were featured where:
It's hard to make audiences feel okay, and even good, about innocent people being gored,…
December 1, 2009
Thylacine Dingo ComparisonCarl Buell
In Slate, Matt Gaffney explains how the constraints of a given system - in this case crossword puzzles - may lead to suspiciously similar yet independent solutions. Gaffney wrote a Poe-themed crossword with the elements BRAVE NEW WORLD, INTRAVENOUS DRIP,…
November 30, 2009
Via 1o9, a timelapse BBC video of hundreds of unbelievably colorful Antarctic invertebrate species swarming and devouring a seal carcass. It's beautiful but somewhat graphic - be warned, some people may find the giant worms in particular rather skin-crawling. (And I thought I overindulged at…
November 29, 2009
The beautiful 2009 Burning Man poster, by artists Corey and Catska Ench, portrays evolution as a fantasia of related patterns.
November 29, 2009
I really wanted to go to the D is for Digitize conference in New York. I couldn't go, but Harry Lewis did, and according to him, the star was Daniel Reetz of DIYBookScanner.org:
While everyone else at the conference was ruminating about whether Google had a library monopoly or whether Amazon or…
November 27, 2009
I encountered this jaw-dropping story, by one Emily Miller for AskMen.com, as the top "health link" on FoxNews this afternoon:
It seems like a reverse sexism started to take hold as the feminist movement came about and equality for women began gaining ground. Some women use their girl-power…
November 27, 2009
A few of my favorite holiday shopping suggestions from the past year of blogging. . .
#1. Pandemic, the Board Game. Turn H1N1 into holiday fun for everyone! (Already have Pandemic? Z-Man games has an upgrade pack.)
#2. Blue Barnhouse letterpress. Yeah, they're artistic and individually pressed,…
November 27, 2009
Apparently this toy company needs a zoologist on staff. (Parents: this is the perfect gift to seriously confuse your pre-adolescent wanna-be biologist, and derail them into a more profitable career in law!) From FailBlog.
November 25, 2009
fog 10Steven Hight
In the growling gray light (San Francisco still has foghorns), I collect the San Francisco Chronicle from the wet steps. I am so lonely I must subscribe to three papers - the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle. I remark their thinness as I climb…
November 23, 2009
There's a new humor presence on Twitter and Facebook: rejectedcards. The author says, "I'm a copywriter for a major greeting card company. I get bored and create cards I know we'll never print. These are those cards."
Cards like. . .
"Another Year, Same Birthday Question: (inside) Are you sure…
November 22, 2009
Pop quiz: this Google Trends chart represents searches for what word or phrase?
the answer? a word that the vast majority of people never use - except on Thanksgiving.
Go chemistry! :)
November 20, 2009
If I weren't so darn busy, I'd be tempted to read this book:
As you can tell from the photo, I've been spending a lot of time in the library. Sorry for the low post volume - I have quite a bit to write about the Harvard Lab opening and other things, and hope to get back on the blog in a few days.…
November 11, 2009
Talk about ephemera - Willy Chyr makes bioart out of balloons! Check out his installation Balluminescence:
Balluminescence - Lights, Balloons, Jellyfish! was commissioned by Science Chicago and was created for the program's finale signature event - LabFest! Millennium Park. An interactive…
November 9, 2009
Macro Detail from a print from Press NY.via Blue Barnhouse
Unfortunately the Press NY website appears to be defunct, but this image should be in the new letterpress book being compiled over at Blue Barnhouse. Check out their blog for more info on the book!
November 8, 2009
I'm currently attending the Grand Opening of the new Laboratory at Harvard University, "an exhibition and meeting space for student idea development within and between the arts and sciences," for a special colloquium on Art, Science, and Creativity featuring David Edwards (author of ArtScience),…