bioephemera | March 22, 2010
A short, wordless film inspired by numbers, geometry and nature, and created by Cristóbal Vila. Thanks to reader Esmeralda for passing this one along!
bioephemera | March 22, 2010I was reading through some back issues of Harper's and came upon an article by Rivka Galchen about climate change and meteorological engineering. I'm sick to death of reading about climate change, but I was immediately hooked by this article - her perspective is fascinating, and she is an excellent writer who draws on a wide range of interdisciplinary elements. Equal parts science writing, memoir, self-reflection, tongue-in-cheek mockery, and elegy to her late father, meteorologist Tzvi Gal-Chen, this is a hell of a good article.
[F]unding far-fetched projects can be justified for reasons…
bioephemera | March 22, 2010
Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments: Cystic Acne, Back
Lauren Kalman, 2009
Metalsmith and mixed-media artist Lauren Kalman explores the nexus of body, adornment, and disease in her remarkable series "Blooms, Efflorescence, and Other Dermatological Embellishments". Yes, those faux-diseases are actually piercing the skin - but only temporarily: they're gold acupuncture wires modified into jewelry by the artist. The temporary/permanent nature of the piercings echoes the temporary visibility of the diseases she depicts, like syphilis and herpes, which eventually clear…
bioephemera | March 21, 2010I know nothing proves you're old as thoroughly as bewailing the foibles of kids these days and complaining that they're not as hard-working as you were. But I have to note that this letter - from a disgruntled student who thinks he's the next Bill Gates - is beautifully indicative of everything I think is wrong with education today:
You commented that I had probably the best example, to the assigned question, out of all the students participating. However, you also said that I did not complete the assignment as instructed, because I did not explain with the proper support from the text book…
bioephemera | March 21, 2010From iO9: the trailer for "The Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec," a new film directed by Luc Besson (the Fifth Element), which appears to be about a female French Indiana Jones in period costumes. With a dinosaur.
Adèle Blanc-Sec - Le film-annonce. sur Yahoo! Vidéo
iO9 promises that "a pterodactyl threatens steampunk Paris," and I certainly hope the film's got steampunk garnishes, although the usual trappings of steampunk aren't readily apparent in this trailer. But even if the only steampunky thing about it is the locomotive scene, it is certainly more steampunk than a Cheez Whiz TV tube…
bioephemera | March 21, 2010A little Sunday reading: "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store," one of several wonderful short stories by San Francisco writer Robin Sloan. It's sort of like magical realism for techies:
Back at Supply and Demand. The air is crackÂling with wi-ââfi; Kat and I are havÂing the only spoÂken conÂverÂsaÂtion in the entire place.She's wearÂing the same red-ââand-ââyellow "BAM!" t-ââshirt as yesÂterÂday, which means a) she slept in it, b) she owns sevÂeral idenÂtiÂcal t-ââshirts, or c) she's a carÂtoon character--all of which are appealÂing alternatives.
I don't want to come out and conÂfess…
bioephemera | March 20, 2010
"Television Tube and Cheeze Whiz Jar Lid Necklace Steam Punk Recycled," via Regretsy.
Help. Pleeze.
bioephemera | March 19, 2010A slight science journalism FAIL in a story at iO9, originally from the New Scientist:
the Title: "First Quantum Effects Seen in Visible Object"
the Lede: "Does Schrödinger's cat really exist? You bet. The first ever quantum superposition in an object visible to the naked eye has been observed."
the Discovery: "[researchers showed] that a tiny resonating strip of metal - only 60 micrometres long, but big enough to be seen without a microscope - can both oscillate and not oscillate at the same time."
the Wait, what?: "Alas, you couldn't actually see the effect happening, because that very…
bioephemera | March 19, 2010A few thoughts on this ad I spotted last week in Boston:
1. Yes, that appears to be a giant gel electrophoresis. Geez, this town is nerdy.
2. I hope that attractive woman is supposed to be a genetics PhD. Because we're all supermodels.
3. Why didn't I ever think to do a random restriction digest and blot on my own DNA back when I was in the lab 18 hours a day, so I could false-color it in Photoshop, hang it above the mantel, and brag about my trendy home decor? Bah! I suppose maybe there were rules about that sort of thing.
4. The loft development website asks, "What's your design DNA"?…
bioephemera | March 19, 2010--A great NYT article on science museums and cabinets of curiosities:
This antic miscellany is dizzying. But there are lineaments of sustained conflict in the apparent chaos. Over the last two generations, the science museum has become a place where politics, history and sociology often crowd out physics and the hard sciences. There are museums that believe their mission is to inspire political action, and others that seek to inspire nascent scientists; there are even fundamental disagreements on how humanity itself is to be regarded. The experimentation may be a sign of the science museum's…
bioephemera | March 18, 2010
Artist S. Shelley Jones sent me a link to some digital art depicting the lowly cockroach, who turns out to be much more attractive with a psychedelic spin. Thanks, Shelley!
PS. "The Psychedelic Cockroach" is a great band name, isn't it?
top: Cockroach No. V, 2009; bottom: Cockroach No. VII, 2009; by S. Shelley Jones.
bioephemera | March 18, 2010Hi everyone,
I'm officially back from blogcation this week, so thanks for hanging in there while I was (mostly) off the grid! For the next couple of weeks, I'll be slowly wading through the emails and links I got during over the last few weeks.
Plus, I'll not only be posting at BioE, I'll also be contributing over at Collective Imagination, which is focusing this month on technology and personal health, including data visualization and e-health. (These are big interests of mine that I occasionally touch on here at BioE, but are a squarer fit over at CI.) Please pop over and see what you…
bioephemera | March 18, 2010When Google started "suggesting" the most popular search phrases below its query box, I was creeped out. Especially when I saw what it suggests for "is Obama". Yes, I was happier when I didn't know what other people were typing into Google.
However, the folks at HINT.fm took the opposite approach: they created an interface that invites you to explore the most popular search phrases for any given starting words. I took it for a spin to see what the American public is asking about you-know-who: scientists. (You totally thought I was going to say Palin, didn't you?)
click image for a larger…
bioephemera | March 17, 2010While I was on blogcation, I got an email from the watchdog group Stinky Journalism, complaining that prominent science author and professor Jared Diamond (Collapse, Guns, Germs and Steel) was in the hot seat again. (You may remember that Stinky Journalism broke the story about the lawsuit against Diamond arising from his New Yorker piece on tribal violence in New Guinea; I blogged about the fallout of the controversy here and here.)
Really? I thought; what has Diamond supposedly done this time? Here's the scoop from Stinky Journalism:
[In] the February 18 issue of the journal Nature . . .…
bioephemera | March 16, 2010
Won't the dismal, subdued palette of winter release its hold on you? Never fear, a stripe of spring magenta is approaching! This infographic by Fernanda Viagas and Martin Wattenberg of HINT.fm depicts the dominant colors in flickr photographs of Boston Common around the year, starting with summer at the top:
It makes me wonder what similar graphics would look like for other geographic regions - or even for flickr photos in general across continents or hemispheres. Would seasonal trends be detectable? Do we compensate for the dismal palette outside by photographing lots of technicolor…
bioephemera | March 16, 2010
Polly Law's Word Project is a series of mixed-media illustrations representing obscure words like dasypygal and nidifice. Though Law has exhibited her work in galleries, she hasn't found a backer to publish them as a book. . . yet. So she's seeking help at the entrepreneurial startup Kickstarter.com:
The Word Project book will be a soft cover, 10"x10". Each piece will get its own spread accompanied by its meaning, pronunciation & an example of use. Since 2002 I have been raiding the attics, basements and dusty cupboards of the English language in search of intriguing, odd & obscure…
bioephemera | March 15, 2010
Delicious - and suprisingly convincing - x-ray images of animals with "skeletons" made of typography by Katerina Orlikova. Be sure to check out _Motion Picture, a running cat-like creature reminiscent of Eadweard James Muybridge's vintage motion photography.
Via Street Anatomy.
bioephemera | March 14, 2010Print Magazine asked four designers to storyboard their own versions of Alice. I kind of like this script-rich lowbrow fantasy, with an anime-inspired Alice by Sebastian Onufszak: