bioephemera | June 23, 2008My friend Rhett alerted me to this little word game, which is kind of like Balderdash: you pick the correct etymology or definition from a group of fakes created by tricky readers. I did quibble with a couple of mistakes (one definition was off, one word was misspelled) but I tried three times and couldn't beat it. Can you?
Other wordy recreations:
this is my all-time favorite hard online word quiz. . . I scored 183 and broke a sweat doing it.
this is an addictive Boggle-style game from Flash By Night.
bioephemera | June 22, 2008
Here's a bit of weirdness I saw on Friday but didn't have time to blog - a Botticelli-inspired monument to the enema:
A health spa in Russia has unveiled a bronze monument of three cherubs carrying an enema, a design inspired by the 15th century Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli. (source)
What do you think? What other potentially embarassing medical procedures deserve their own tributes in bronze? (Endoscopy, you may be next. . .)
bioephemera | June 20, 2008
"Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment"
Jean Kaleba and family
Last Friday I finally made it to Artomatic, a month-long gallery event that colocalizes hundreds of local artists under one roof, together with musicians, poets, wine and beer. But the real stars of Artomatic were pastel marshmallows - yes, Peeps.
In conjunction with Artomatic, the Washington Post sponsors a Peep-populated diorama contest, Peepsomatic. The entries were creative, hilarious, and occasionally esoteric, like Jean Kaleba's entry above, "Peep Julius II Questions Michelangelo's Artistic Judgment" -…
bioephemera | June 18, 2008Okay. . . I know that bioephemera is not the most compartmentalized, well-defined example of "science blogging." Many of the subjects I blog about aren't science at all - which begs the question, what exactly is "science"? In my defense, I'm not the only one that's confused. Check out this story from today's NYT Arts section:
Pentagon to Consult Academics on Security
Eager to embrace eggheads and ideas, the Pentagon has started an ambitious and unusual program to recruit social scientists and direct the nation's brainpower to combating security threats like the Chinese military, Iraq,…
bioephemera | June 17, 2008
My friend John found these pavement neurons outside our building. What, you don't think they look like neurons? Well, then YOU haven't worked on the brain long enough to become afflicted with chronic neural pareidolia! For comparison:
bioephemera | June 16, 2008
Via Rag & Bone Blog
By Christopher Tovo
Are we falling out of love with books?
I realized a little while ago - when yet another book arrived from Amazon and was thrown on the to-read pile - that I'm no longer the bibliophile I once was. I love the idea of reading books, but I'm not making time to do it. Recent fiction isn't appealing - I don't seem to have the patience or interest. (I feel like Jessica Crispin in that respect). And nonfiction, which I have been reading occasionally, seems too much like a part of my job.
I'm really disturbed by this trend. I self-identify as a devoted…
bioephemera | June 13, 2008
Phobia
Joshua Hoffine
Joshua Hoffine's tongue-in-cheek riffs on Hollywood horror archetypes are the perfect post for Friday the 13th - a Friday which also happens to be the Ides of June. Beware!
According to Hoffine's website,
I stage my photo shoots like small movies, with sets, costumes, elaborate props, fog machines, and special effects make-up. . . My images are not photoshop collages. . . I use friends and family members as actors and crew. Everyone works for free. We do it for fun.
Staging scenes from imagined horror films is a pretty imaginative way to bond as a family, isn't it?…
bioephemera | June 11, 2008
My boyfriend, an uber-networked Congressional staffer, has fallen out of love with his Palm, and is counting the days until he can acquire a 3G iPhone. I'm trying to accept that I bought one half as good for twice the price a few months back. . . after all, I did enjoy the self-satisfied glow of the semi-early-adopter, fielding all kinds of covetous glances and inquiries from strangers on the Metro. ("No, it's not an iPod Touch.") But I can pass the techno-torch to the next generation gracefully. Maybe.
At least I can console myself with the wave of new third-party apps, many of which will…
bioephemera | June 3, 2008
I saw this adorable stuffed cephalopod, which I think is meant to be an octopus, at the gift shop in the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. I almost bought it out of sheer enthusiasm, but note that like many stuffed octopi, this cutie has only six legs. I've noticed that stuffed cephalopods frequently have six or even seven legs - what part of "octo-pus" is so hard to understand? Harumph.
bioephemera | June 2, 2008
Grand Ballroom ceiling
Duke Energy Center
I'm at the NIDA Blending Conference at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati for two days. Honestly, when I heard I'd be coming to Cincinnati for this meeting, I wasn't optimistic, and when I realized I'd be only 20 miles from the infamous Creation Museum, I was horrified. But it turns out that Cincinnati - at least downtown Cincinnati - is charming, especially on a sunny June day. After obtaining delicious, much-hyped Graeter's ice cream (try the tangerine!) at Fountain Square, I headed over to the Contemporary Arts Center (which is free Mondays…
bioephemera | May 30, 2008
I just watched X-Men 3 again on Sunday - how exactly is a detatched suspension bridge supposed to remain intact? Grumble, grumble. . . As a result, this story on the Golden Gate at Wired.com caught my eye - but I was more intrigued by this pictorial tour of beautiful bridges. Bridges truly are the jewels of human ingenuity!
The Magdeburg Water Bridge is pretty wild, but this one (above) is my favorite:
The Gateshead Millennium pedestrian and bicycle bridge crosses the River Tyne between Newcastle and Gateshead in northern England. It's both a cable-stayed bridge and a drawbridge. Completed…
bioephemera | May 27, 2008
White Plains Hospital Bus Wrap (detail)
Nick Veasey
Self-labeled "X-Ray Photographer" Nick Veasey created this life-size bus wrap by running a bus through a million-dollar device used to screen vehicles at border checkpoints, then superimposing individual radiographs of a single corpse posed in various attitudes. (If you look closely, you'll see that the passengers are morphologically identical - not as a bus full of men, women, and children of various ages should appear.) Veasey then patched the whole image together in Photoshop.
Originally deployed in New York, the bus wrap was withdrawn…
bioephemera | May 27, 2008After the long weekend, I'm catching up on links friends and readers have sent me. Artist Erik Nordenankar shipped a GPS device by DHL to create this giant tracking self-portrait (according to the project website, appropriately titled "biggestdrawingintheworld.com"):
This video shows how he did it:
My first question was prosaic: how could anyone afford to do this? I figured it was some wealthy Silicon Valley hobbyist's idea - how could an art student afford the shipping fees? Not unexpectedly, it turns out the project was conceived as both art and ad - Nordenankar describes it as "…
bioephemera | May 23, 2008
Chris Smith and Todd Redmond of Crowboy recently asked to use my painting Fly Away Home as the cover of their new alt-country album, Making Up for Lost Time.
This painting was inspired by a rusty aqua trailer that my dad bought and refurbished twenty years ago for use as a family vacation cabin in Idaho. My dad passed away in 2003, but I think he would have enjoyed Crowboy's music, so I was happy to give Chris and Todd temporary custody. They're both visual artists as well, and I think they did a lovely job putting their album together.
To celebrate the release of Making Up For Lost Time,…
bioephemera | May 22, 2008
(Index) Finger, 1997
Pens, Pencils & Polyester Resin
Tim Hawkinson
Ace Gallery
Tim Hawkinson's artwork is more than slightly disturbing to me. As part of his artistic quest to reimagine the body, he takes found materials like pencils and transforms them into distorted, dismembered parts like this giant fingertip. It's probably not Hawkinson's intent, but (Index) Finger reminds me of the classic quote by "Red" Smith: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein."
Hawkinson's Fruit is a sort of fractal series of hands-on-fingers that, when I look at…
bioephemera | May 15, 2008
How difficult life must be for expatriates. Moving from the West coast to the East coast has made it difficult for me to find certain brands of food, and foreign foods are doubly difficult to come by. This week, anticipating a recipe created by the fabulous Nigella Lawson, I ran out to the store to get Lyle's Golden Syrup. They didn't have it, which is weird, because they had it three months ago. I drove to another store. Same problem! In the end I had to use King Golden Syrup, which doesn't compare at all. If I'd had time for shipping, I'd have ordered Lyle's online - it would totally be…
bioephemera | May 14, 2008
Holiday of the Reindeer
Senya Koyakin
Watercolor on paper
The watercolor painting above is by Senya Koyakin, a middle school student in Zhigansk, Siberia. Senya's art, and that of other Siberian schoolchildren, is visiting AAAS in Washington, DC, as part of The Student Partners Project: Engaging Students and the Public in the Science of Climate Change.
AAAS hosts an opening reception tonight (May 14) at 6pm, featuring a lecture by Dr. Robert Max Holmes, Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Center, and a videoconference with the children. The artwork will remain on display until…
bioephemera | May 14, 2008
Plate XVIII, 2002
Selena Kimball
From The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz
More disquieting collage art - this time from Selena Kimball. Her collage illustrations from The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz by Agniezka Taborska depict the surreal, sinister visions of a fictional 18th century Carmelite nun. I feel like I should make a creepy sound effect of some kind, but the collages are so lovely, it seems disrespectful. . . check out the subtle use of biological imagery throughout.
Plate II, 2000
Selena Kimball
From The Dreaming Life of Leonora de la Cruz
bioephemera | May 7, 2008
Tomorrow and Friday I'll be attending the 33rd Annual AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC. According to AAAS, the Forum
is the conference for people interested in public policy issues facing the science, engineering, and higher education communities.
Gotta love those bold italics. Personally, I want to know what's going to happen to the penny that disembodied hand is dropping into the mysterious flask. Is the yellow liquid an acid? A base? A bodily fluid? Why do multicolored liquids in glassware scream "SCIENCE IS COOL!" like nothing else?
One of the highlights…
bioephemera | May 6, 2008
Figureight Knot Complement vii/CMI (Clay Mathematics Award)
bronze
Helaman Ferguson
"We are living in a golden age of science and a golden age of art, and I like to celebrate that." -Helaman Ferguson
Back in March, I attended a talk by mathematician/sculptor Helaman Ferguson. He's one of the so-called algorists, artists who create art based on algorithms of their own devising (Ferguson is a co-creator of the PSLQ algorithm, among others). The Clay Mathematics Institute describes the algorithm used to create the sculpture at the top of this post, Figureight Knot Complement vii, thus:
The…