bioephemera
Posts by this author
June 20, 2009
Manfungus series 1.2
Christian rex Van Minnen
Christian rex Van Minnen paints rather creepy portraits reminiscent of the Old Masters. At first glance, they look human - but these faces are mushrooms, entrails, garbage and tumorous growths. Disturbing, but fascinating, examples of pareidolia.
Via…
June 19, 2009
An amazing find from Street Anatomy. Vanessa's team has outdone themselves scouting this one - wish we knew more about its creator!
Update: Vanessa at Street Anatomy did find the creator, Elmer Preslee Industries. And you can view their flickr set here (thanks @TheDarkEngine).
June 18, 2009
If you read my February piece for the SEED website on art, science, and synesthesia, you'll remember Christopher Reiger's intriguingly ambiguous painting Synesthesia #1. I'm very pleased to report that it is now available as a limited edition print. I'd also like to call attention to Christopher's…
June 18, 2009
Joanna of Morbid Anatomy is on a quest to locate private collections of medical oddities. She's already sussed out fourteen such hidden wunderkammern and photographed their treasures, but she wants to find more:
"Who are these private collectors, and what sort of treasures do they possess? How…
June 17, 2009
New: SEED is giving away books, mostly on science. Enter the drawing here.
June 16, 2009
A beautiful anatomical ad campaign for the Zurich orchestra, via fubiz via Notcot.
Of particular interest I think is this comment on the thread at fubiz, from kmaz: "Music, and overall classical music, plays on emotion, not on the nervous system. instead of putting the music emotion above all, it…
June 16, 2009
Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace)
Fritz Kahn, 1926
Pintura/Anatomias, Sintonizando
Fernando Vicente, 2000
The suddenly blogospherically ubiquitous pinup-artist turned anatomical illustrator Fernando Vicente is clearly influenced by German artist Fritz Kahn. If this is your…
June 15, 2009
Dahmen Art Barn, Uniontown, WA
While I was growing up, we used to drive past the Dahmen farm every few months. I would always look up from whatever book I was devouring at the time and intently try to count the iron wheels in the fences (there are over a thousand).
The barn, which lies just…
June 14, 2009
Curious Expeditions has a great interview with Jennifer Angus, the artist who recently redecorated the Newark Museum's Victorian Ballentine House with dead insects in an installation called "Insecta Fantasia." Wow!
The Museum restored the elegant abode to its original dark wood and horror vaccui (…
June 13, 2009
I blogged previously about Jan Vormann, who went around medieval villages near Rome patching holes with Lego. Now Vormann has moved on to Berlin, where he's filling World War II bullet holes with multicolored patches. That's just awesome, on many levels. More photos here.
Vormann is represented by…
June 13, 2009
In a new post, scibling Bora asks whether science blogs are "real" publications and should be cited in other publications - like research articles. That's an interesting debate, and I encourage you to participate. I'm not going to get into it right now. Instead, I want to quote this section of his…
June 13, 2009
As a fan of maps, typography, and anatomy, I think this is a pretty sweet mashup.
From orkposters.com via Street Anatomy.
June 12, 2009
Turns out DC has, or once did have, a hidden subterranean labyrinth - and you thought it was just a plot device from last fall's South Park election special! Even better, it was dug by a lepidopterist. Take that, you engineers!
ONE of the oddest hobbies in the world is that of Dr. H. G. Dyar,…
June 12, 2009
Maybe you can't leave town this weekend on vacation, but you can take an awesome behind-the-scenes video tour of UC Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, which is closed to the public, courtesy of Wired Science:
Officious handwritten tags tell the story of each and every animal's capture. In a…
June 12, 2009
Sometimes art doesn't need to be complicated. Shawn Knol's simple videos of oil in water capture fascinating patterns reminiscent of dividing cells, budding spores or lava lamps, depending on your mood. His newest, Psycho Bubble (above), was just released a few days ago.
"A lot of people are…
June 10, 2009
One of the challenges we faced with our new blogosphere initiative, Silence is the Enemy, was how to mobilize people to do something about the plight of rape victims. It's not that people don't have empathy for rape victims; it's that the experience of living in a war-torn nation where rape and…
June 10, 2009
While I was out of town this weekend, one of my friends lost her dog. As I read over the many caring comments on her Facebook page, it struck me how difficult it is to express condolences - especially on the loss of a pet. Like many others, I ended up simply saying "I'm sorry."
The significance of…
June 5, 2009
Thanks to SEED's matching Bloggers Challenge funds and some generous donors who gave me DonorsChoose gift certificates for Christmas, I got to push several worthy projects to completion this winter (by "topping off" their funding). That meant that I got real, snail mail thank-you packages from…
June 4, 2009
Wound Man (click for larger image)
Wellcome Library
Operation Board Game
Hasbro
June 3, 2009
Japanese graphic designer Takashi Okada (hybrid graphic) does awesome things with black and white, digital ink and typography. Like this awesomely cryptic video clip, or this one.
Via NotCot and flylyf.
June 2, 2009
Evolve
Electroformed Copper, Vitreous Enamel, Sterling, Pearls, Lens, Feathers, Steel, Worm
Photo: Courtney Frisse
Last week I featured electroformed copper pendants by Kristina Glick Shank. I also found another outstanding electroformed copper artwork, this one by Kristin Mitsu Shiga. I think it…
June 1, 2009
A sexual violence victim recovers in Goma, Congo
photo by Endre Vestvik
A few weeks ago, the NYT published a horrifying account by Nicholas Kristof of the pervasive sexual violence left over from Liberia's civil war. A major survey in Liberia found that 75% of Liberian women had been raped - most…
May 31, 2009
"The cat has too much spirit to have no heart."
Quote by Ernest Menaul, via A Blog Around the Clock
Chromogenic print by Hirsch Perlman: An Animus Cat Antagonist, 2008. Via 3quarksdaily.
May 31, 2009
If you've been following the Jared Diamond/New Yorker controversy, or my ongoing posts on journalism vs. blogging (here, here, here, here, here), you might be intrigued by this conversation about the culture of fact-checking in journalism, between journalism professor Jay Rosen and programmer Dave…
May 30, 2009
I finally got around to reading my backed-up RSS feeds, and had the chance to peruse these, well, demented 1970s biology textbook illustrations uncovered by Crooked Timber. I mean, what? No - what??! Crooked Timber calls it a "Groovy Prog Rock Wannabe Biology Text." I don't know what to say,…
May 30, 2009
In the June Atlantic Monthly, Joshua Wolf Shenk has a long, moving article about what may be the longitudinal study of all longitudinal studies - the Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), begun in 1937. Its creator Arlie Beck planned to track 268 "healthy, well-adjusted" men from their…
May 29, 2009
Thank goodness Science has finally given us protection against. . . Kooties!
Kootie Killer promises to "kill 99.9% of germs & Kooties without water!" This claim is clearly rigorously lab-tested and evidence-based, but although I wouldn't dream of questioning its veracity, it does invite the…
May 28, 2009
It is no secret that 3 Quarks Daily is one of my favorite blogs. It's the first blog I told my boyfriend to put on his Google Reader (he'd already added BioE, but still). Which is why I'm overjoyed to announce that 3QD has created its own prize for blogging. It's called a Quark. Oh, how I covet the…
May 26, 2009
This would be funnier if it weren't so painfully true. Also see the sequel.
I didn't get to this for a few days because I was working too hard to blog last week. In the meantime, Language Log responded with an especially egregious example of this sort of oversimplification.
Cartoon by Jorge Cham,…
May 25, 2009
Just when I was wondering why there hasn't been more mainstream coverage of the Jared Diamond/New Yorker lawsuit I blogged about at the beginning of this month, Columbia Journalism Review has an update. And in a recent article in Science, Diamond commented, saying "The complaint has no merit at all…