bioephemera
Posts by this author
August 12, 2009
I missed a few weeks of Jon Stewart while we didn't have cable, so many thanks to David Bruggeman for pointing out this awesome Daily Show clip of scientists failing to communicate. I'm still chortling.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Human's Closest Relative
www.thedailyshow.…
August 12, 2009
Japanese artist Kawano Takeshi's 2007 rendition of global warming is simple, a little funny, and a lot sad.
For another version of the same theme - using a real child's toy - check out Ours (the Bear), a video by French artist Simon Dronet. I'll try to embed it, but the link's wonky, so you…
August 11, 2009
Remember the first time you learned sterile technique, or how to make a bacterial spreader, or how to blow up a distillation apparatus? Well, now you can relive the disorientation and anxiety nostalgic fuzzy feeling with benchfly.com, a site that offers video tutorials on various lab tasks, like…
August 9, 2009
R-Evolve, 2009
Jud Turner
To complement my previous entry on bikes with an anatomical inspiration, here are some bike-and-bone inspired sculptures from Jud Turner, who is currently showing work at Device Gallery in San Diego.
R-Evolve, the sculpture above, was created for a group show, Joyride,…
August 8, 2009
Le Boson de Higgs, 2008
Korner Union
Gaussian Goat , 2008Harm van den Dorpel
Both artworks via today and tomorrow
August 7, 2009
Reviewer Jerry Coyne appears to have some of the same reservations I do ("Mooney and Kirshenbaum also fail to support their contention that the knowledge gap between scientists and the public is increasing") - but he ends up voting thumbs down:
No matter how much atheists stifle themselves, no…
August 7, 2009
Father Heart, 2006
Black Nickel on Rolled Steel; Glass Tank - 80cc with pedalJosh Hadar
It's always puzzled me that bicycles don't take better advantage of the gleaming potential of curvacious, polished metal. Why are most bike frames so boring and triangular? Fortunately Josh Hadar has come to the…
August 6, 2009
The initial reviews of Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum's new book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens our Future produced a small blogospheric kerfuffle last month. But I think Unscientific America has much more constructive and useful things to offer than provoking more…
August 5, 2009
The Bipartisan Policy Center's Science for Policy Project, co-chaired by former Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), past chair of the House Science Committee, and Donald Kennedy, former editor of Science, and directed by David Goldston, former chief of staff of the House Science Committee, released its…
August 5, 2009
So on my return to regular Scienceblogging, I see that Mike the Mad Biologist and Razib are taking exception to a point made by Megan McArdle in the Atlantic. McArdle observes that the heritability of weight is quite high - almost as high as the heritability of height:
Twin studies and adoptive…
August 4, 2009
Smarthistory is a wonderfully simple concept: landmark artworks presented with conversational narration (sometimes audio, sometimes video) by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. Sometimes they focus on a single work, as a professor would in a lecture; in other tracks, they stand in a murmur-filled…
August 4, 2009
Check out this clever riff on vintage science books by Nate Wragg, one of a group of Pixar illustrators who teamed up to create the forthcoming Ancient Book of Sex and Science. Wragg says,
A favorite series of mine is "The How and Why Wonder Books." These were informational books that would focus…
July 27, 2009
. . . as soon as possible. As you may have noticed, Scienceblogs is having a few hiccups as it transitions to new servers. I'm having a few issues myself as I transition to a new apartment this week, so the blog will be fairly dead until everything gets straightened out.
In the meantime, here's a…
July 23, 2009
"O.K., let's slowly lower in the grant money."
Todd Bearson
Arlington, Mass.
This cartoon in the latest New Yorker gave me a (cynical) guffaw this morning. Nice caption, Todd Bearson. . . do you work in science? ;)
July 22, 2009
Do You Like My Hat?
Lori Field
Lori Field uses mixed media, including encaustic, to create collage dreamscapes inspired by medical and botanical illustrations. Apparently two-headed kittens are also a theme. See more at the artist's gallery website. Check out The Little Death and Frog Princess.…
July 20, 2009
Reader Mike sent me the link to this Coke commercial a while ago. I love the exasperated brain pulling himself around - he's like a mob boss driven crazy by his stupid henchmen. Their other ads aren't quite as funny, because they make you overthink the situation (if the eyeball can't drink Coke…
July 19, 2009
Ethan at Starts With a Bang has promised to shave his head if 100 commenters promise to give at least $10 to charity or volunteer for 4 hours. So naturally, I had to chip in. Wanna help?
July 18, 2009
While browsing etsy this weekend, I was impressed with some of the unusual pieces from seller 19moons. These salvaged, chimeric pieces look much more expensive than they are.
from their etsy profile:
19 Moons is an eco-conscious creation of San Francisco Bay Area native Niffer Desmond. Inspired…
July 18, 2009
Or is it Arma-goo-ddon?
For some reason, balls of unidentified biological goo have started showing up in the news. First we had the mysterious North Carolina sewer blob. It turned out that was just a colony of tubifex worms - yes, the same kind you feed your fish. But now we have a giant oceanic…
July 17, 2009
Alstroemeria, sp.
Robert Buelteman
One of my favorite short stories is Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter, in which an eccentric, Frankensteinian botanist breeds increasingly beautiful, increasingly deadly flowers. These images from Robert Buelteman remind me of Rappaccini's garden. His creative…
July 17, 2009
Janet has a very interesting post over at Adventures in Ethics, springboarding off Chris Mooney & Sheril Kirshenbaum's new book Unscientific America. She discusses a key concept that seems obvious, but constantly ends up being ignored by both pro-science and anti-science factions: scientists…
July 16, 2009
Check out these remarkable photos of patterns grown in Japanese rice fields using different strains of pigmented rice. A number of commenters on the thread at funster have suggested the photos are faked, so I found this Japanese news clip on YouTube. I like the art in the video clip even better…
July 15, 2009
"Vague Scientist," by the clever/hilarious Stephen Collins of coelecanth diaries
via lots of places (New Scientist, Wired, etc.)
July 15, 2009
. . .Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. According to editor Jason Rekulak,
I know there are a lot of vampire fans, but the genre feels exhausted to me. Whereas Sea Monsters allowed us to draw inspiration from so many rich and diverse sources--most obviously Jules Verne novels and Celtic…
July 15, 2009
Wow. Here's another inexcusable case of bad science journalism - one that clearly has political motives. This is the lede from a story by Amanda Carpenter in this morning's Washington Times:
President Obama's top science adviser has toyed with extreme measures of population control, even suggesting…
July 11, 2009
I've posted before that I'm a big fan of Garfield Minus Garfield, the alternate reality in which Jon Arbuckle's barely suppressed mental illness is fully revealed. Now we have Garfield: Lost In Translation, in which the dialogue is translated into Japanese and back into English.
Though not as…
July 10, 2009
Earlier, I blogged about the seriously flawed Telegraph article about rape. Now Carl Zimmer has discovered that the newspaper has yanked the article from its site. No explanation, no apology - it's just gone.
I feel silly that I didn't grab a screencapture of the original article. Although I'm…
July 9, 2009
Wow: it looks like PZ Myers and his fans are embroiled in a bit of a kerfuffle with Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum and their adherents over the new Mooney/Kirshenbaum book, Unscientific America.
First, PZ says the book is "useless." Chris says well, phooey, because plenty of other people like…
July 8, 2009
Readers, this week I had to do something I have never done before.
Specifically, I banned someone from BioE. Their comments will no longer appear here, and as the rest of you may notice when you comment, I've turned moderation on to enforce that. Unfortunately, that means everyone's comments will…
July 8, 2009
Opened the July 09 issue of The Scientist to find an article by Steven Wiley on why, contrary to popular belief, you aren't necessarily a failure if it turns out you're not suited for academic research:
There is no disgrace in failing to achieve a career as a scientist. Truly. Some of my students…