bioephemera
Posts by this author
May 1, 2009
Circling Around, 2008
Jean Gumpper
Jean Gumpper's woodcut prints are mesmerizing. At first glance, the crisp edges and intricate detail are reminiscent of watercolor. But the works are actually pieced out of flat spots of block color, which gives them a stylized, minimalist, modern flavor - like…
April 30, 2009
I promised you some updates on the Google Books Settlement, so here you go. Things are definitely getting interesting.
First, I mentioned earlier that I was going to attend a panel on the Google Book Search Settlement here in DC, featuring representatives of Google, the publishers, and the…
April 29, 2009
Let etsy seller foliage help you fight swine flu with this bagful of handmade soaps in "skin-ish colors"!
I vascillate between finding them cute, and thinking they resemble a crowd of damned souls reaching out for help from my soap dish. Weird.
Dedicated to John O., who truly appreciates…
April 29, 2009
Mark Buchanan, quoting Lee Smolin, on how big science may be biased against innovative iconoclasts:
Some scientists, he suggests, are what we might call "hill climbers". They tend to be highly skilled in technical terms and their work mostly takes established lines of insight that pushes them…
April 29, 2009
Check out Brian's new review of A History of Paleontology Illustration (Life of the Past) by Jane Davidson, in Palaeontologia Electronica:
It is rare for fossils to be featured in fine art, but in the 15th century painting A Goldsmith in His Shop, Possibly Saint Eligius by the Flemish master…
April 28, 2009
How much more successful would Gravity's Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box?
Want to become a high-profile Twitter superstar? McSweeney's tells you exactly how. Maybe Google is making…
April 28, 2009
Just as an FYI, Sheril at the Intersection has created this extremely helpful list of policy fellowships for scientists and engineers. It's definitely worth bookmarking if you have any interest in exploring science policy. The fellowships on this list range from weeks to years, and placements are…
April 28, 2009
Birth of the Gastric Brooding Frog
Photo Mike Tyler
Unfortunately, species are the ultimate bioephemera.
Amphibians in particular have been declining at an alarming rate over the past several decades; some estimates suggest that a third of amphibian species are on the verge of extinction. My…
April 27, 2009
I'm off to visit the Supreme Court tomorrow, so I thought I'd share some law news for a change. In a landmark patent decision, Federal Circuit Judge Richard Posner has ruled that the sex toy shown above is "obvious."
You can read the explanation at Patently-O, but suffice it to say that the gap…
April 27, 2009
Simple, but surprisingly charming - and somewhat reminiscent of an ant colony or other biological collective:
Fluid Sculpture (click for larger video) from Charlie Bucket on Vimeo.
April 27, 2009
An interesting perspective from today's WaPo: David Kessler, doctor, lawyer, and former FDA commissioner, argues that the food industry manipulates the neurological impacts of fats and sugars to program consumers to eat more than we need or want.
"The food the industry is selling is much more…
April 27, 2009
This air purifier ad from Sharp is a little creepy, in a Spongebob Squarepants way. I love how you can see their fluorescent organelles! Unfortunately I don't see anything here that resembles a virus, but with swine flu all over the news, this serves as a good reminder to wash your hands.
Ad by…
April 26, 2009
One of the sucky things about viral interest in offbeat art from small vendors is that it always immediately depletes the supply. Like this fabulous minimalist plywood octopus from inthewoods' etsy shop. Sure, you can still get a plywood squirrel with a plywood acorn, but where's the sinister,…
April 25, 2009
Check out this concept artwork called "Office Grass". What is it good for? Well, for one thing, to patch its apparently coincidental inverse artwork, "Dead Pixel in Google Earth:"
April 25, 2009
Christmas greeting card, school unknown, circa 1920.
Dittrick Medical History Center
from Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930
Slate has an intriguing new review by Barron Lerner of a book called Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American…
April 23, 2009
LevitationsJohanna Mueller, 2004
Artists I'm looking forward to seeing at the 10th annual Artomatic, #1: printmaker Johanna Mueller, whose woodcuts resemble the illustrations from a dark and hallucinogenic children's book. No wonder her blog is called "Feverish Art."
April 22, 2009
The Independent Film Festival Boston kicked off today, and this was their ad campaign. Nice use of anatomical imagery!
April 20, 2009
Light is an ephemeral but powerful artistic medium. This commercial for the Belgian energy company Electrabel captures the whimsical charm of fireflies on a warm summer night:
You can view a stunning higher-res version of this video here, with slightly different music. There is also a making-of…
April 19, 2009
We all know Twitter can be annoying, but is it really evil? During the past week, you may have heard that there is brand-new neuroscientific evidence proving exactly that. But the hype turns out to be just that: hype.
It all started with a press release from USC about an upcoming PNAS paper by Mary…
April 19, 2009
C.P. Snow fans, prepare to head over to the Intersection to partake in an upcoming online discussion of Snow's famous "Two Cultures" address. In their new article, "The Culture Crosser," Sheril and Chris portray Snow as a sort of science policy prophet:
It helps to think of Snow as an early…
April 18, 2009
In her recent TED talk, JoAnne Kuchera-Morin described UCSB's AlloSphere, a new project that enables scientists to literally stand inside a three-story projection of their data:
The AlloSphere space consists of a 3-story cube that is treated with extensive sound absorption material making it one…
April 17, 2009
Jewelry designer Delfina Delettrez is young, a fourth-generation member of the Fendi family, and apparently obsessed with anatomy. Her most intriguing creation is a Skeletor-like carpal gauntlet:
The silver hand will cost you about $24K. If you haven't got that much disposable income, she also…
April 16, 2009
You've never heard "in real time" screamed with so much passion. Not just one, but two big-haired metal-band bio-rock videos after the fold. . .
(sources: here and here)
April 15, 2009
This chart shows where your federal tax dollars go, based on Feb 2008 budget numbers (note: this shows discretionary budget, or appropriations, only - go here for more details, or look at the inset in the lower right corner to see where the other two-thirds of the budget are).
Visit wallstats.…
April 15, 2009
If you enjoy bioephemera, you should take a moment to check out Scienceblogs' new blog, Photo Synthesis:
While doing our usual browsing of the blogosphere, we've become aware of the vast number of excellent blogs featuring science imagery, from neural networks captured with a light microscope to…
April 14, 2009
No, it's not how evolution really works, but it's awfully cool anyway.
The Experiment from Colin Trenter on Vimeo.
I love Photoshop, but am I the only one who thinks this resembles a cross between a Rorschach test and a SyFy Channel commercial?
April 14, 2009
As I put it at a blogging panel last fall, "in science, it is normative to be not sure." It wasn't my most eloquent moment, but at least AAAS' president-elect Alice Huang agrees with me that one of the biggest challenges to public science literacy is understanding the contingent nature of…
April 13, 2009
NightPeeps
Melissa Harvey (after Edward Hopper)
It's that time of year again! As I roasted blue Easter Peeps over the gas stove yesterday, I eagerly awaited this year's collection of Peep dioramas from the Washington Post - and here they are! View the complete Peeps Show here.
Be sure to check out…
April 12, 2009
Zombie Stomper by Iron Fist, via Haute Macabre
Yup - Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is the project the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is doing next. While my review of P&P&Z was pretty positive, I'm not sure I can in good conscience encourage this trend.
Also, note that while P…
April 12, 2009
This detailed medical illustration by the late Duncan Winter shows the advantages of a good medical illustration over a typical photograph. There are no problems with over- or under-exposure, no depth-of-field issues, and the salient features are subtly emphasized. The underside in particular is…