bioephemera | December 9, 2008
Colonial Intelligence 3/4 (detail)
Eshel Ben-Jacob
One of the things I love about SEED Magazine is its incredible design (and no, they are not paying me to say this - in fact, my respect for SEED was one of the reasons I moved to Scienceblogs last February!)
SEED's editors have collected the "portfolios" of beautiful science from each issue on the website, so you can browse them at your leisure. Be sure to check out Eshel Ben-Jacob's swirling bacterial colonies and Robert Hodgin's renderings of the Mandelbrot set:
Fractals Revisited 1/4
Robert Hodgin
You enter to win an image from one of…
bioephemera | December 9, 2008Bravo to the Brits' Channel 4 for coming up with this series of videos, which addresses kids' inevitable questions about whether their bodies (breasts, acne, periods, sex, penises, etc.) are normal. The take-home message of these educational videos? Almost certainly you are normal, so don't be ashamed of your body. And don't let embarrassment stop you from being honest with your doctor or asking questions.
It's refreshing to see internet videos depicting genitalia that AREN'T porn. Who knew they even existed? I just hope enough people eventually link to them that they'll show up in a Google…
bioephemera | December 8, 2008
This interactive climate change outcomes map is an ongoing project by the Center for American Progress. More on the rationale here and instructions for adding your own data points here. It's a nice example of an interactive online project that clearly cites scientific sources.
bioephemera | December 8, 2008Are your kids bouncing around on a holiday sugar high? Send them off to brainstorm names for NASA's new Mars Rover. Winners can send a "special message to the future to be placed on a chip" on the Rover, so when they finish with the name, they can start working on their message, and who knows - they might be distracted for a full hour! The contest runs through Jan 25.
NASA's Name That Rover Contest
PS. It's co-sponsored by Disney, so be prepared for your kids to return convinced that Wall-E is the best thing evah.
PPS. It's open to kids in grades K-12 only (sorry, 30-something geeks)
bioephemera | December 8, 2008
These anti-drug ads featuring risk-taking vermin, by Above the Influence, are rather clever, don't you think?
I'm trying to figure out the aesthetic - the grungy clothes could be contemporary, 80s, or 90s, but the interiors seem older - like 60s. (Check out the rotary phone in the teenager's room!) Anyway, it's the sort of cultural/temporal mishmash you see on a sitcom set, where all the elements are so familiar, they fade into the background in a vague approximation of "American Life." It's kind of a neat effect.
bioephemera | December 7, 2008
UK Reef (detail) - with candy striped anemone by Ildiko Szabo (foreground) and anemone grove by Beverly Griffiths (background). Photo by George Walker.source
This afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, physicist Margaret Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring will be giving a lecture and workshop on crocheting coral reefs with the "hyperbolic crochet" technique. While her creations can't replace the real reefs that are rapidly disappearing, they are purdy, and some of the forms are remarkably similar to real species of coral, diatoms, and anemones.
More about the crochet…
bioephemera | December 6, 2008
How much do you love your significant other? Enough to crack your chest open? "True Love Tattoos offer you the ultimate way to express your love for that special someone, they open you up and ink your loved one's name on your heart."
Then, since it's not exactly the type of tattoo you can easily show off, you get a Polaroid and a romantic video of the procedure to give your SO. Nice!
Thankfully, this is just a faux advertising campaign for band Vikunja (myspace). The True Love Tattoos website and video are nicely done, although the band members themselves don't look nearly Goth/emo enough…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008How much do I love this mashed up, remixed version of the standby "Did You Know"? So much that I couldn't help rocking out to it a little during the talk I gave today at work on Web 2.0. I heart fatboy slim.
I'm not getting into the question of how reliable these stats are - while many of them (especially the computing power ones) are obviously speculative, the demographic stats in the original presentation by Karl Fisch were sourced. Of course, it's been through several iterations since then. C'mon, just enjoy the music.
I really do never get tired of watching this.
PS. And it's way…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008I snapped this pic for my friend John O, connoisseur of weird photos. And he goes and gets on Failblog with it! What gives!
Anyway, help him out if you have a moment and vote for it before it disappears into the ether. Because totally misrepresented not-so-cutting-edge technology deserves its place in the limelight just like everything else. And because I just gave a talk today on the power of social media and bookmarking and blogs!
note: you may have to scroll down a bit to find the pic - apparently I can't link directly to it, only to the page. But I'll try to update this link if it gets…
bioephemera | December 4, 2008
Body Swallows World
Aurel Schmidt
Aurel Schmidt's ethereal drawings depict green-man like figures whose visages dissolve at a closer glance into writhing snakes, larvae, and beetles, disturbed landscapes, and birds. Haunting work.
Via IBL3D
Untitled
Aurel Schmidt
bioephemera | December 3, 2008In the December issue of Physicsworld, Rob Goldston reviews Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines. The book's not addressed to Obama, exactly; it's based on Muller's extremely popular course for non-science students at Berkeley. But it seems that in the wake of the last administration, more and more people are asking how science-savvy a president needs to be - I even tried to answer that question myself at the Apple Bloggers' Panel back in October. My top request? That a science-savvy President be comfortable with the provisional nature of truth in…
bioephemera | December 3, 2008
Illustration by John George
From Opera Chirurgica by Hieronymus Fabricius, 1684
From Sothebys via Bibliodyssey
When I saw this illustration over at Bibliodyssey, the first thing I thought of was the creepy Nazi henchman Kroenen in the film Hellboy. Shiver! But apparently it's a medical device - a full-body splinting apparatus. (At least, it's a concept drawing for such a device, since as Peacay points out, you probably wouldn't survive injuries extensive enogh to require full-body splinting in 1684.)
bioephemera | December 3, 2008Scibling Matt Nisbet will be giving a talk, "Communicating Science in a Changing World," this Thursday December 4 at NYAS. He spoke a couple of weeks ago at AAAS here in DC (thanks, Matt!). His talk generated excellent questions and discussion, and that was before last week's controversy about denialism! So go check it out.
bioephemera | December 1, 2008
Smithsonian Castle
The US Botanic Garden is once again having its annual holiday exhibit, "Windows to Wonderland." There are two parts to this exhibit: first, there's a collection of adorable replicas of the monuments made out of bark, pinecones, leaves, gourds, etc. Second, there's a delightful room of trains running across elevated bridges and through fantasy villages with names like "Gremlin Corner" and "Caterpillar Garden."
The Capitol
The mini Capitol was pretty impressive, but it lacked its north and south wings, which went on at the same time as the current dome. So historically, it…
bioephemera | December 1, 2008Today is World AIDS Day. Globally, 33 million people are living with HIV infection - most of them in developing nations. An estimated 2.7 million were infected with HIV in 2007 alone. In the United States, more than 1 million people are living with HIV. Still think AIDS isn't your problem?
If you're a blogger, consider joining BloggersUnite, an initiative to harness social media and spread the word about AIDS prevention. You can grab a badge to add to your blog like the one in my sidebar at left.
More on World AIDS Day 2008 and the state of the HIV pandemic here.
bioephemera | November 30, 2008
"Please Hug Me"
artist: J. Keeler, 1987
Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day. I can still remember when I first learned about AIDS, in the late eighties - it was an extremely scary and mysterious thing that the media seemed very uncomfortable covering. No one I knew was talking about it openly - family, friends, or teachers. That's why posters like this were so important.
AIDS awareness advertisements represent a history of creative and controversial images - largely because of their sometimes explicit* sexual content, but also because of the stigmas attached to STDs, casual sex, and…
bioephemera | November 28, 2008
Botanique Sciences naturelles (1951)
Via Agence Eureka, some lovely illustrations from a French science textbook. They're perfectly vintage-schoolbook yet also crisply contemporary. See more here.
bioephemera | November 28, 2008
Ephraim Chambers
Cyclopaedia, 1728
Via Morbid Anatomy, some beautiful detail images from Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia:
Cyclopaedia: or, A Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (folio, 2 vols.) was an encyclopedia published by Ephraim Chambers in London in 1728, and reprinted in numerous editions in the 18th century. The Cyclopaedia was one of the first general encyclopedias to be produced in English. (source: Wikipedia
Read more at Morbid Anatomy.
bioephemera | November 26, 2008
The Noble Game of the Swan, 1821
While visiting Monticello recently I was struck by a 19th century example of "The Game of the Goose" lying on the floor, as if a child had just left off playing with it. It fascinates me that the board game, a staple of my childhood holidays, was also enjoyed by families (upper class families, at least) hundreds of years ago. Sixteenth century Italian households probably weren't quite as board-game-obsessed as my family becomes every holiday season - we still reminisce about great Pictionary moments, and I have many utterly useless Trivial Pursuit answers…