bioephemera
Posts by this author
February 26, 2009
The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907)Children's Digital Library
The Children's Digital Library doesn't have a sleek interface and it can be a bit hiccupy, but if you poke around you'll find a surprising number of vintage children's books like The Cheerful Cricket and Others (1907) or The…
February 25, 2009
As a native of Washington State, where we could literally scoop white ash off the ground in handfuls after Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, I have one thing to say about Bobby Jindal's totally disingenuous dig at "volcano monitoring": if geoscience is such a big waste of money, sure, let's stop…
February 24, 2009
Update on the burgeoning Jane Austen massacre genre: you knew Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was coming out and generating unforeseen (at least by its publisher) interweb buzz. Subsequently we learned the book is to be followed by a movie produced by Sir Elton John, the amply titled Pride and…
February 24, 2009
My friend Nicole sent me this WSJ article about a month ago - it's about the sad reality that artworks made with nonarchival materials often don't outlive the artist:
Art is sold "as is" by galleries or directly from artists. (Can you imagine Consumer Reports reviewing art?) Still, dealers hope to…
February 23, 2009
The Shakespeare Insult meme takes a portable turn with the Shakespeare Insulter for iPhone.
This app is supposedly "official" (who says?) but strangely, it features an American voice, which issues from the nutcracker-jawed head of the Bard like that of a self-important postmodernist literary…
February 23, 2009
"On Divination by Birds"
I don't need that black
wind of crows kicking up from flax to tell
heavy weather coming, white days to drop
barricades across the interstate,
against two hundred miles of trackless white.
(The crows so obvious then against the miles
of trackless white!) More tricky the…
February 22, 2009
Essays are like cupcakes: they're tasty, abundant, idiosyncratic, and small enough to finish without feeling you've overindulged - which leaves you vulnerable to the self-deception that just one more is a good idea. So here are some weekend reading suggestions for a lazy Sunday.
--At SEED, Carl…
February 21, 2009
Smartcars are cute. But when you add a turning windup key, they're so cute it's almost wrong. I saw this specimen in a flotilla of Smartcars in Alexandria president's day parade last week - the custom license plate says "wnd itup". Nice.
February 20, 2009
San Francisco based company Cordarounds seems hell-bent on living up to every stereotype about that quirky city. Their store is online-only and features a trippy blog. Their catalog ads involve horizontal corduroy pants worn by attractive-and/or-grungy people drinking, eating, playing guitar,…
February 20, 2009
A clever ad seen in Washington, DC:
February 19, 2009
Because I don't think the creators of Guitar Hero World Tour quite get it. . .
February 19, 2009
For my DC peeps: I've been helping one of my colleagues with an event for college journalists, to be held next Friday at NIH (Bethesda, MD). It's a roundtable discussion on the challenges of covering addiction issues; scheduled guests include Lisa Stark of ABC News, Lauran Neergaard from the AP,…
February 16, 2009
While reading the New Yorker yesterday I came across this gem of a quote from the late John Updike, which eloquently expresses one of the ideas I was reaching for in my own Darwin Day post.
The non-scientist's relation to modern science is basically craven: we look to its discoveries and technology…
February 15, 2009
Lepidus timidusErica il Cane, 2007
Erica il Cane (AKA ericailcane AKA "Eric the dog") would be the perfect illustrator for that macabre children's book about vivisection that Edward Gorey should have written. In his etchings and drawings, adorable anthropomorphic creatures interact with labeled…
February 14, 2009
I look back over my life.
I try to find analogies.
There are none.
I have longed for people before, I have loved people before.
Not like this.
It was not this.
Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.
--from "Tag" by Anne Carson
read the whole poem at the New Yorker
February 13, 2009
These Periodic Table of Sentiments cards by Pink Loves Brown are the atom bomb. Happy Birthday is represented by element Hb, etc. So clever!
But why isn't there a Valentine's Day card suitable for telling that special geek about your deep chemical attraction? What could say "love" better than…
February 12, 2009
Yesterday I prepared to write my Darwin Day post by attending a panel discussion at the Center For American Progress here in DC. The discussion was ostensibly about "evolution, transcendence, and the nature of faith," which led my friend Colin and I to hope for a spirited debate - perhaps even a…
February 12, 2009
In this video, the independent publisher of the forthcoming novel "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" expresses confusion and surprise that his acquisition went viral! Look, dude: it's about zombies. Have you even been on the intertubes before?
February 11, 2009
Oh. My. Goodness! Read the full story here.
February 11, 2009
I'm working on my Darwin Day blog entry for the Blog for Darwin swarm/carnival. In the meantime, you can have a little Darwin Day frivolity of your own by devolving yourself into an Australopithecus, courtesy of the Open University.
I hope it goes without saying that this is definitely not a…
February 11, 2009
Leonotis nepetaefolia and Doctor Humming Birds, Jamiaca
Marianne North (1830-1890)
Kew Royal Botanic GardensSponsorship price: £1,000
832 paintings in the Marianne North Gallery at Britain's Kew Botanic Gardens are up for adoption. No, you don't get to name them or take them home - but you do get…
February 7, 2009
Courier
mixed media, 2007
Thomas Doyle
Thomas Doyle's miniature sculptures are dead ringers for the moldering houses and threatening forests of HP Lovecraft's Arkham. Each 1:43 scale vignette is like a scene from a horror film - if horror films were staged in the lovingly crafted O-scale…
February 6, 2009
Ready for the weekend? Having trouble focusing? Indulge yourself in this luscious nine-minute film from the National Gallery of Art about Vermeer's masterpiece "The Music Lesson." It leisurely unpacks the painting's geometry and shadows, showing a glimpse of the techniques that let Vermeer make…
February 5, 2009
I have two physics-based games to plug: Crayon Physics and Fantastic Contraption.
Crayon Physics is, well, just watch the demo:
Crayon Physics Deluxe from Petri Purho on Vimeo.
Cool, huh? The promo trailer reminds me of Line Rider (an online/iPhone doodling game) crossed with Fantastic Contraption…
February 4, 2009
One Seth Grahame-Smith appears to be - ahem - reviving the Austen oeuvre with his own personal touch: zombies.
Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful…
February 3, 2009
Artist Jason Freeny asks us to suspend our disbelief for this mashup of two of my favorite things ever: anatomy and Lego. Surprisingly, after ripping the interchangeable heads and legs off hundreds of Lego people during my misspent youth, I find I can almost believe they *are* alive.
You can…
February 3, 2009
In case you missed it, my Sciblings are abuzz about journalists' dismissal of Jill Biden's education.
From the LA Times:
Amy Sullivan, a religion writer for Time magazine, said she smiled when she heard the vice president's wife announced as Dr. Jill Biden during the national prayer service the…
February 3, 2009
Devana chasma
Peter Wasilewski
Dr. Peter Wasilewski, a NASA scientist, creates these beautiful photographs by passing polarized light through freezing films of water in Petri dishes. He calls the results "frizions":
The eye and brain combine the mixture of physical colors to produce a striking…
January 30, 2009
The Pigeon of PassageThe Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, 1754
Mark Catesby
Unlike Benjamin Button, he's not up for an Oscar, but he's also a film star - several hundred years late. Mark Catesby (1683-1749), a forerunner of Audubon, was the first European scientist/…