bioephemera | 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.
bioephemera | 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 monolithic silver robots assembled of found objects by sculptor Clayton Bailey:
Check out Bailey's gallery of robots here.
The robots were followed by display upon display (all in acid 50s aqua, naturally) of vintage board games, toys, costumes, primitive robots, remote control aircraft, cap guns…
bioephemera | January 3, 2009If 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 and ethics (like the use of DNA for racial profiling, and questionable studies of fake blood), as well as science writing, the ethics of science book reviewing, and anything I stumble on related to the history of science.
(I first read her blog title and thought "Cool! she dishes about culture!" The…
bioephemera | 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're given colors, not names, though you can guess at an ID based on the games' illustrations; one is clearly a bacillus, another is a filovirus). The players have to cooperate and pool their resources to treat and control local outbreaks, while searching for cures for all four diseases. The surprising…
bioephemera | January 2, 2009Dude, 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 in blog posts will be broken, and the posts will cease to be useful. The internet is too young to have accumulated much urban blight, but eventually a Google search is going to be choked by abandoned crap. That is, unless the Google of the future designs its engines to filter out old content, in…
bioephemera | 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
bioephemera | 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.
bioephemera | December 31, 2008In 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.
bioephemera | December 31, 2008My annual list of words I learned in 2008:
alexithymia
exabyte
heteroskedasticity
semordnilap
petrichor
tsuris
picayune
fissiparous
fescennine
ceteris paribus
mutatis mutandis
Mamihlapinatapai
bioephemera | 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 surrounded by a twinkling LED installation by artist Leo Villareal. When you stand or walk in the tunnel, more than 40,000 LEDs sparkle in synchronized and random patterns all around you.
Villareal says the patterns in his art are inspired by nature:
I'm very interested in rules and underlying structures,…
bioephemera | 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.)
bioephemera | 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 remixes twenty-five pop hits into a concoction that makes just as much melodic sense as most hits do. Frightening.
When music is this interchangeable, you know you've got a dangerous genephonic bottleneck on your hands. . . and that's a recipe for extinction, baby. Just sayin'.
bioephemera | 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.
bioephemera | December 28, 2008The 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 leeches" which make you bleed. Scientists point out that diet alone cannot remove toxins and that blood itself is not a toxin, and even if it did contain toxins, removing a little bit of it is not going to help.
bioephemera | December 27, 2008Dan 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 for geeks to possibly live up to.''
Hey!
From the NYT.
bioephemera | December 27, 2008Assuming 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 ignorance, the Krampus is a grotesque devil figure that abuses young children as part of traditional Christmas festivities in Germany. Yikes!
Speaking of children, these vintage illustrations are, um, shocking:
From "30 ways to die of electrocution" flickr set by bre pettis.
Erratic Phenomena has…
bioephemera | December 26, 2008"it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles."
see full story here.
bioephemera | 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
bioephemera | December 24, 2008Just 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 one of the projects I contributed to during my DonorsChoose Challenge, and it was adorable. I also received a generous gift in my name from one of my readers - thank you! - so I get to look forward to even more thank-yous down the line. It's a feel-good experience all around.
PS. no, they totally do…
bioephemera | 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