bioephemera | December 22, 2008At io9, Annalee Newitz asks, "can robots consent to have sex with humans?"
Do you think the blondie bot in Cherry 2000 was really capable of giving consent to have sex with her human boyfriend? Or did her programming simply force her to always have sex, whether she wanted to or not? And what about the Romeo Droid in Circuitry Man, or the Sex Mecha in AI, who live entirely to sexually please women, even when those women are abusing them or putting them in danger?
Obviously this isn't a urgent social issue. An insentient robot is just an appliance, not a person, and a truly sentient AI doesn't…
bioephemera | December 22, 2008
I'm snowed in here with the staffer in Washington state, but our luggage made it and we have Wifi, so it's all good. For your pre-holiday enjoyment, here's a treasure from an old book - "Pepper and Salt" by Howard Pyle. Click the image for a larger, more readable version.
bioephemera | December 22, 2008. . . at least according to XKCD:
(All right, fine: they're acknowledging cephalopods' supremacy, not biologists'. It's probably a ploy to lull us into complacency while they corrupt our cuttlefish minions and eventually wipe us out.)
bioephemera | December 19, 2008Apparently Winston Churchill was not the greatest poet at 15 (but then, who is? Keats churned out some horrible clunkers[1] when young). In this month's BMJ, Angus Nicholl and colleagues call our attention to Churchill's classically influenced poem "The Influenza". (No, it's not actually called "Ode to Flu" - but it might be cooler if it was).
Nicholl and colleagues give Churchill credit for accurately reflecting the geography and seasonality of the 1890-1 Russian flu pandemic. Churchill's teachers at Harrow School gave him a prize. I give him a big eye-roll, and that's generous ("And now…
bioephemera | December 19, 2008This Indonesian mimic octopus pretends to be other creatures in order to avoid predators:
bioephemera | December 18, 2008
Vireo bellii nest with newspaper
Rosamond Purcell
Egg & Nest
"It seems the bird had confiscated a shredded detail from a story involving Adolph S. Ochs, newspaper baron and one-time owner of the New York Times and Chattanooga Times. . . since the story is from Tennessee but the nest was found in Texas, I wonder if the newspaper had been transported by the vireo across state lines."
Photographer-artist-naturalist Rosamond Purcell has a new book out, in collaboration with Linnea Hall and Rene Corado. Harvard University Press describes Egg & Nest as "a tribute to the natural wonders…
bioephemera | December 17, 2008
I want them. They're backordered. I can't have them. Cry.
Mad Scientist Blocks from Xylocopa:
"At Xylocopa, we know that the key to a successful education is to begin learning at a young age. Like many of you, we are concerned about the state of science education in the public school system, especially in the lower grades. Specifically, we have noticed that there is absolutely no training in the K-6 grades that prepares students to become mad scientists."
bioephemera | December 16, 2008
When I met one of my stylish fellow-bloggers for the first time a few months ago, I was mesmerized by her gorgeous blown-glass bubble necklace - although the thought of klutzy me in such a necklace is a little scary. (Shards of glass + carotid artery = euw!)
Anyway, I was charmed to see a similar necklace in the Anthropologie holiday catalog - under the name "ephemera necklace," no less! BubbleEphemera!
@ Anthropologie.com
bioephemera | December 16, 2008FYI, to those in the DC area, tomorrow Dr. Bulent Atalay will be giving the monthly history of medicine talk at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda.
"Leonardo and the Unity of Art and Science"
Dr. Bulent Atalay, University of Mary Washington
The speaker examines science through art, and art through science, and approaches the larger goal of achieving a synthesis of the two fields. The qualities of timelessness and universality in Leonardo's miraculous works speak eloquently for themselves. With Leonardo's model providing the unifying thread, however, it becomes possible, first, to…
bioephemera | December 15, 2008Recently I've been lamenting that none of my friends, including my boyfriend, will listen to the Icelandic band Sigur Ros - an eclectic, idiosyncratic group I adore. Although I've noticed Sigur Ros' music infiltrating the mainstream recently, routinely appearing in commercials and soundtracks, surprisingly few Americans seem to know who they are. It's a shame - especially because their videos are incredible. This is what music video should be, but (as far as I'm concerned) never really was. Glosoli and Hoppipolla are so perfectly crafted of universal human emotions - daring, triumph, love,…
bioephemera | December 15, 2008Some Monday randomness: a living kaleidoscope of domestic animals.
Seriously, why does everyone like that corner so much?
I laughed, then felt a little bad about laughing - given the repeated collisions with the walls, other animals, etc. Hopefully they took everyone out for a nice pile of grain afterward.
Via a pretty cool typeface blog, monoscope. (I see they also liked the Studley toolchest!)
bioephemera | December 15, 2008You know those packaged toolchest gift sets that stores relentlessly market as holiday gifts for "Dads"? Well, none of them can hold a, er, socket wrench to this object of beauty from the 1800s, customized by a piano tuner named Studley. Wow.
Via Boing Boing
bioephemera | December 14, 2008
"Remains Benches"
Elyse Marks
@Behance Network
The inlay design on these wood benches depicts skeletal animals crawling among bare trees - with, according to the artist, "a noose thrown in for good measure." It's kind of a memento mori thing, I guess. What an unusual Christmas gift these would be!
Via designmilk; thanks to kattyface for the tip
bioephemera | December 12, 2008
Emerald Damselfly
Martin Amm, 2008
Martin Amm's beautiful photographs are perfect bioephemera: insects bejeweled with droplets of dew. The crisp iridescence of these photos is simply mesmerizing.
Ugly Beauty
Martin Amm, 2008
I particularly love the way the droplets of water on the head of the red-veined darter below magnify the facets of its eyes (click on the link for a larger image). These photos look too good to be real!
Red-veined Darter II
Martin Amm, 2007
Martin Amm/Stephen Amm, Naturfranken.de
bioephemera | December 11, 2008The physicists are getting rather jubilant over the selection of Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. Sure he's the Director of LBNL. Sure, he has a Nobel Prize in something involving lasers (ho hum - I don't know any physicists that don't work with lasers). But I'd like to point out that he also has a cross-appointment at my old stomping grounds, Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. And he's like the father of optical tweezers (for which he won the 1995 "Science for Art" Prize!) So we biologists should be a little smug too!
I will not exploit this opportunity…
bioephemera | December 11, 2008Last week, the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that retaining DNA samples from innocent individuals in a national law enforcement databank violates human rights.
The ruling is a direct blow to Britain's DNA databank, which holds samples and data for 7% of its citizens (4.5 million people, including children and crime victims). In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, police are authorized to collect and hold samples from citizens arrested for any recordable offense, whether or not the offense leads to formal charges or conviction, and hold them for the lifetime of the…
bioephemera | December 10, 2008
full-size ad
Mercury 360, Bucharest, Romania
Illustrator: Andrei Nedea, 2008
More anti-drug ads, this time from Romania. Note that these ads' message is a little less obvious than that of the last batch. There's also an optics problem with the perception of each object - its representation should be upside-down in the mind's eye, so to speak. I can see how that detail might have confused the layperson and detracted from the message, but it still bugs me. Also, I'm not quite sure why the ads need to look antiqued and da Vinci-esque.
Via adsoftheworld
full-size ad
full-size ad
bioephemera | December 10, 2008Word of the day: emoluments.
The House appears to have just addressed Hillary's emoluments problem, by passing S.J. Res 46 "ensuring that the compensation and other emoluments attached to the office of Secretary of State are those which were in effect on January 1, 2007." This undoes a 2008 cost-of-living increase of $4,700 in the salary of the Secretary of State, enacted when Hillary Clinton was a Senator. I think it already passed the Senate, so now it just needs to be signed by the President.
For those of you who haven't been following this story, there's an interesting constitutional law…
bioephemera | December 10, 2008
"Could you paint a replica of the Mona Lisa using only 50 semi transparent polygons? That is the challenge I decided to put my application up to. . ."
Art lovers & coders, get thee to Roger Alsing's weblog to see how he "evolved" an approximation of Leonardo da Vinci's iconic painting using a polygon rendering program. Very cool stuff.
bioephemera | December 10, 2008This coming June, the NIH Office of Medical Applications of Research is holding a three-day course entitled "Medicine in the Media: The Challenge of Reporting on Medical Research." The agenda is here. Amazingly, course registration is free, and meals and lodging are provided - all you have to do is get yourself to Bethesda, Maryland.
What's the catch? Well, the application process is competitive; only 50 spots are available, and in recent years, only 1/3 to 1/2 of applicants have gotten in. So if you're a science journalist whose "primary target audience is the general public" - and yes, that…