bioephemera | March 11, 2011On Wednesday, I gave a breakout session talk on science policy jobs at MIT. I love talking about science policy, so it's not too hard to get me to do it - it's harder to get me to stop - and we had a great group of Boston-area grad students who asked excellent questions. Very fun.
The talk did force me to reflect on how different things are in my life since I left the bench. I'm certainly working no fewer hours (apparently Scienceblogs has been experiencing a denial of service attack this week, and I did not even notice. Bad sign). I still often have to do things I don't particularly enjoy,…
bioephemera | March 11, 2011
David Clarke, president of the DC chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators (a great group that I considered joining once, long ago and several careers away), just passed along an invitation to an event next week. The artists who created the work in the Smithsonian's NMNH Hall of Human Origins will be talking about their process, the science behind it, the equipment they use and the working of their studios. While this is the DC GNSI meeting, they are graciously opening it to the public, so if you are in the DC area, consider attending.
More info about the event below the fold.…
bioephemera | March 7, 2011Scientific American does - and they have new info on whether pseudonymity really decreases blogger credibility.
A. I am so glad I was on hiatus during the whole Pepsigate thing. Whew.
B. I have been dying to write about blogger pseudonymity like, forever, and NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR IT. WAAAAAH.
C. Okay! All better now!
bioephemera | March 7, 2011
O designer-readers who like to work and play with Photoshop, this contest may be up your alley: Quirk Books, the outfit behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has joined with Bridgeman Art Library to invite submissions for its "Art of the Mash-Up" competition. Basically, they want you to prove you can do better than the Regency unmentionable pictured above:
The iconic "Zombie Lady" on the cover of the New York Times Best Seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies captured the imagination of readers around the world and has become one of the most recognizable book jackets in recent history.…
bioephemera | March 6, 2011
Lest any of my faithful readers think they're the only ones whose wonderful linky suggestions I don't seem to get around to posting, my boyfriend sent me this and I didn't post it, and apparently it's on the Daily Dish and 3QD today & he's all like "why didn't you post it sooner? Didn't you get my email??"
Sigh.
So for the record: Brian Dettmer is amazing. He makes these sculptures by carving away - not adding or repositioning - the pages of old illustrated books. And another thing that's really cool: letting the blogosphere (that's me!) disseminate and respond to his work is part of…
bioephemera | March 5, 2011Let's be honest: the past two weeks have been horrible. On Thursday and Friday, for example, I worked for over 24 hours straight (who needs sleep) on a single project. You may have noticed BioE's silence - no, when I don't have time to sleep, shower or go to the gym, I generally don't find time to post either. Yet during the past two weeks, or two years, I have never once wished I were back in the lab. This Experimental Error post pretty much sums it up:
Growing up, we were the smart ones. We were the valedictorians and the science fair champs, the celebrated nerds who read books for fun and…
bioephemera | February 21, 2011Perfect for a holiday* with big fluffy slo-mo snowflakes** and wintry, brittle light, Clemento's Macro Kingdom short films. The most recent one is below, and the two prior films are below the fold.
I love the incorporation of the fragile, distorted type, but can't resist observing that the words are more in the nature of a poem than labels. Don't expect clarity (or scientific accuracy) about what you are seeing - just enjoy the lovely juxtapositions. :)
macro kingdom III from clemento on Vimeo.
macro kingdom II from clemento on Vimeo.
macro kingdom from clemento on Vimeo.
*for many of you,…
bioephemera | February 20, 2011It's strangely artistic, like a Dutch still life: this disturbing short film by Sam-Taylor Wood defies our expectations of decomposition, as a rabbit churns with decay while a peach sitting nearby remains fresh. (Video below the fold, so as not to gross anyone out by surprise).
Via wouldn't you like to see something strange - there's a second video over there, though not as creepy as this one.
bioephemera | February 18, 2011I'm too busy to write anything remotely interesting right now, so thanks, NYT & Bay Citizen, for filling the gap with an article about how Eadweard Muybridge. Best known for photo sequences capturing running horses and athletes, Muybridge bridged (ahem) art and science in his work, in addition to having a peculiar name*:
Like the multitudes of misfits who have been flocking to the Bay Area since the Gold Rush in search of a fresh start, Muybridge lived a life of constant artistic reinvention. He changed his name several times (he was born Edward Muggeridge in 1830 and eventually became…
bioephemera | February 14, 2011A classic tale of love and sacrifice, illustrated by Sean Bieri:
While Bieri's artistry technically depicts a Christmas story, it also nicely captures the undying-even-while-decaying-putrefying-and-hemorrhaging-IQ-points nature of true love. What more could you want for Valentine's Day? (And let's face it, we've all had Valentine's Days that would arguably have been improved by a Zombocalypse.)
Speaking of which, I'm working on my review of Daniel Drezner's Theories of International Politics and Zombies. Short version: it's hilarious.
bioephemera | February 13, 2011The placebo effect, of course!
A video by Daniel Keogh (Twitterfeed) and Luke Harris.
h/t Ed Yong.
bioephemera | February 13, 2011We've been buried under ice, snow, and slush up here in Massachusetts for months, and the chlorophyll deprivation is brutal. The other day I was chatting with someone, and he suddenly tuned out of our conversation, gazing into the distance wistfully. "Oh, sorry," he said, "I just noticed I can see some grass over there."
If only I'd known months ago about Colleen Jordan. Her tiny plant necklaces are little green reliquaries of summer, so you can always look down and see leaves - even in February in Boston.
Sadly, the necklaces (which are 3D-printed polymer and start at $55) don't come with…
bioephemera | February 11, 2011. . . by Matt Nisbet, formerly of Framing Science, and now at at Big Think/Age of Engagement:
Too often art is viewed instrumentally by science, as a vehicle for gaining public support or promoting science. This is unfortunate. Science and art should be viewed as cultural equals with art an important expression of public appreciation but also concern over the nature and consequences of science.
bioephemera | February 10, 2011Okay, I knew that planets are big, intellectually, but a well-done graphic is worth a thousand words, and a pretty HD video is even better. Brad Goodspeed made this video to suggest what other planets would look like, if they orbited Earth at the same distance as the Moon does. I've embedded it, but you should seriously watch it in HD, full-screen for maximum effect.
Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.
I have nightmares like that. Seriously. But is the video accurate?
In addition to being full-on creepy, Brad's video produced a fascinating discussion in the comments and on various sites…
bioephemera | February 9, 2011I get mail with wonderful links in it, but I'm hard pressed to find the time to post them, so my apologizes to those who've sent me things and not heard back. I'm beyond swamped. In the meantime, perhaps you'll enjoy these two nontraditional takes on "mapping." First up, map as music (or is it vice versa?):
"Conductor" by Alexander Chen
Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA's actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop.…
bioephemera | February 9, 2011Don't look now, but the field of acoustic botany was just invented. It may take a while to catch on. Or grow. But it's a cool concept.
bioephemera | February 8, 2011Remember the synthetic biology documentary I blogged about a while back? Well, the filmmakers are still working toward their goal. They have a little less than a month left, and I just noticed that they've seriously beefed up the rewards you can get for funding them. There are some interesting gifts from $10 up, but now at $300$1000*, they will send you a rough cut, solicit your input, and credit you in the final version. For everyone concerned about how scientists appear in the film, this is an intriguing option!
*Correction -the cost is actually $1000. For some reason Kickstarter bins all…
bioephemera | February 7, 2011I think the Haptica, by David Chavez, is pretty awesome:
I've seen some criticisms that this watch is misguided, because you can already get affordable watches that speaks the time aloud. As far as I'm concerned, those criticisms miss the point (as does the Kickstarter video, somewhat, with its emphasis on the potential embarrassment factor of audible watches). This project acknowledges that to a blind person, reading Braille is not only less embarrassing, it's also faster, easier, and (for some) more dignified than being read to. It assumes the blind, like the sighted, deserve access to…
bioephemera | February 6, 2011"Association, juxtaposition, metaphor is how the poet can go further than the scientist in addressing systems. The poet can legitimately juxtapose kelp beds with junkyards. Or to get really technical, reflect the water reservoir system for a large city in the linguistic structure of repetitive water-associated words in a poem. And poets right now are the only scientist-artists who can do these sorts of associations and get away with them--all other disciplines, such as biology, oceanography, mathematics are obligated to separate their ideas into discrete topics. You're not really allowed to…
bioephemera | February 5, 2011
"we find ourselves constantly experimenting and pushing the boundaries. . . the really great thing about our business is the fact that we take raw materials, and we design, we color, we make. . . and we have complete control of the process. It's very gratifying."
Danny Cooke, maker of the short documentary about glass painting that I featured last October, has a new short film to distract you this Sunday. It's about a team of glassblowers, Mark Tranter, Patricia Tranter-Edmonds, and Lee James, who set up a small studio in a historic stableyard in Cockington Village, UK. The first three…