bioephemera
Posts by this author
January 11, 2009
"I Want You To Want Me"
Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar
commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for their "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition
Mining data from online dating profiles, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar have created a romantic, bittersweet peek into the human psyche. This video…
January 11, 2009
Okay, there are only a few days left to vote for Curious Expeditions in the 2008 Weblog Awards! M and D really deserve recognition for their amazing, eclectic travelogues, so if you're a fan, please go vote for them - and if you're not a fan yet, check them out.
January 9, 2009
I'm not sure how I feel about this. . . the Doctor should not be younger than I am!
January 9, 2009
Orlando
Antique brass findings and hardware, leather, velvet, wood, tacks, cast/painted plastic, glass eyes
Jessica Joslin 2008
This weekend, some work will be done on Sb, so no posts (or new comments) will be updated for a day or so. I'll post to let you know when the drought is over. :)
In the…
January 8, 2009
Ok - so Nancy Drew was never into string theory. But parents and teachers, take note: the Magnet Lab website at FSU mantains a list of books that incorporate painless, plot-relevant science lessons:
Take as an example the below excerpt from one of our featured books, Danny Dunn and the Swamp…
January 7, 2009
Without Hope
Frida Kahlo, 1945
Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, Mexico City
I ran across an extremely interesting article by Richard and Maureen Park in the December BMJ. It focuses on the decidedly unfestive procedure of force-feeding via funnel, and how that medical procedure has been represented…
January 6, 2009
Neuroskeptic has written a great post evaluating the much-hyped 2008 study that showed people will more readily accept information if a neurosciency-explanation is attached - even if the neuroscience is irrelevant.
If this effect is real, it has big implications for those of us involved in science/…
January 6, 2009
To all those who were expecting to see me at SfN, the DC bloggers meetup, or the upcoming ScienceOnline09, I apologize: I am really sick. And it all started, as catastrophes always do, with a cat.
Shortly after Election Day, my feisty tortoiseshell cat (above, looking angry as usual) was…
January 6, 2009
Via Scibling Corpus Callosum comes this story of a photographer arrested for taking this photo of an Amtrak train. . . in order to enter Amtrak's own "Picture Our Trains" contest. Uh, PR snafu, anyone?
This is especially annoying because it's been an ongoing problem in DC for some time. Tourists…
January 5, 2009
I love reading DCist's collections of overheard quotes. This week they have a great indicator of poor science literacy among the DC public:
On the Corner of 13th and F last week:
Guy 1: "You know who's frozen?"
Guy 2: "Who's that?"
Guy 1: "Walt Disney. As soon as he died, they froze him using…
January 4, 2009
Is it a small torpedo? A thermos? A shiny handbag? Who cares, it's adorable!
Metal purse by Frank Strunk, who has also created some really uncomfortable-looking "industrial chic" outfits and men's ties. Uh, I'll just take the purse, thanks.
Via Haute Macabre via Coilhouse.
January 3, 2009
Coming through SFO last weekend, I encountered a wonderful exhibit of classic science fiction toys entitled "Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture." Tired and sick as I was, it made me wish I had more time to kill in the airport!
The show opened with two…
January 3, 2009
If you have a moment, please pop over and welcome new Scibling Rebecca Skloot of Culture Dish:
I blog about whatever catches my attention, which makes Culture Dish hard to categorize (though the tagline "Science, Writing, and Life" pretty much covers it). Generally speaking, I post about science…
January 2, 2009
We spent most of last night playing a very cool board game, Pandemic. It's sort of like Risk, but instead of fighting opposing players' armies, you're cooperating against a global wave of infections.
In the game scenario, four different diseases break out in different regions of the world (they'…
January 2, 2009
Dude, I knew gecko feet had some amazing physical properties, but I didn't know they bent backward! Check this out:
The video is by John Stevens by way of Heather at Cabinet of Wonders.
(While writing this post, I got a little sad: someday YouTube will cease to work, and all YouTube links embedded…
January 1, 2009
Artist Kim Boske's photography captures disturbing moments of predation - moments from which most of us would rather avert our eyes.
Via IBL3D
January 1, 2009
Fox Fur, A Unicorn, and a Christmas Tree
R. Jay Gabany
via Astronomy Picture of the Day
Tomorrow, Jan. 2, Robert Nemiroff will be giving a public lecture on " The Best Astronomy Pictures of the Day 2008," based on the wonderful Astronomy Picture of the Day. It's at 6:15 pm at AMNH.
December 31, 2008
In honor of yet another pi x 10^7 seconds of my life evaporating, here's a sign from our hotel in Idaho:
"Temporally out of order" just seemed like an extremely fortuitous typo. . . happy new year.
December 31, 2008
My annual list of words I learned in 2008:
alexithymia
exabyte
heteroskedasticity
semordnilap
petrichor
tsuris
picayune
fissiparous
fescennine
ceteris paribus
mutatis mutandis
Mamihlapinatapai
December 31, 2008
Multiverse
Leo Villareal
National Gallery of Art
Visitors familiar with the National Gallery of Art know that its East and West wings are connected by a subterranean passageway (and a cafe with yummy gelato, and a cool waterfall, but I digress). The moving walkways in that passage are now…
December 30, 2008
We had a bit too much snow (4+ feet) while in Washington state last week, but darn, I'd forgotten how beautiful a snowflake is. (And hard to photograph.)
December 30, 2008
I've been a big fan of mashups ever since Freelance Hellraiser superposed Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" on the Strokes' "Hard to Explain." But what happens when the pop music monoculture becomes so homogenous, you can mash just about anything together? In this track/video, DJ Earworm…
December 28, 2008
These charming photos by bre pettis capture a lovely, detailed diorama at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's very cool.
December 28, 2008
The Guardian calls out celebrities who made scientifically illiterate statements in 2008:
Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all espoused the idea that you can detoxify your body with either diet (scientifically unsupportable) or, in the case of Moore, products such as "highly trained medical…
December 27, 2008
Dan Sarewitz, a professor of science and society at Arizona State University, said calling Obama a geek is unfair both to the president-elect and geeks. ''He's too cool to be a geek; he's a decent basketball player; he knows how to dance; he dresses well,'' Sarewitz said. ''It's too high a standard…
December 27, 2008
Assuming you have some downtime to digest, vegetate, and recover from the holidays, here's a cookie plate of links. Enjoy!
Boing Boing Gadgets presents "How it works. . . The Computer." Hilarious.
Via Morbid Anatomy, I found Monster Brains' repository of Krampus ephemera. For those in blissful…
December 26, 2008
"it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles."
see full story here.
December 25, 2008
Something Rich and Strange
Jessica Palmer, 2008
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from Bioephemera!
A big thank you to everyone who reads and comments on my blog - you are why I do this. Enjoy your holiday and have a wonderful New Year!
Jess
December 24, 2008
Just FYI: a DonorsChoose gift card is a great idea. The recipient gets to browse teachers' projects and pick one to fund, and when the project is complete, several weeks to months later, they'll get a letter from the teacher and thank-you notes from students.
I just got the thank-you package for…
December 23, 2008
This cake, complete with circulatory and musculoskeletal diagrams, is pretty amazing. (I'd like to give one to my friend Rhett to celebrate his admittance to an excellent medical school.)
Via shewalkssoftly