It's rare that I blog off topic - there's so much cool science in the world that I don't have much time for anything else. But my departure from Facebook has co-incided with something of a global trend, so I thought I may as well explore what people thought. In case you've been wrapped in roofing felt for the last few weeks, here's the scoop. After a series of embarrassing security flaws and anger over the company's attitude toward privacy, Facebook users are leaving in droves. Or at least, that's the claim - the reality is that there's no viable alternative yet, although some bright…
In 1926 German illustrator Fritz Kahn drew Der Mensch als Industriepalast, part of a series of artworks reinterpreting the body as a mechanical factory. Now fellow countryman and artist Henning Lederer has updated the the famous image, turning it into an interactive animation. He says: The visual crossover between industrialization and science in Fritz Kahn's artwork demonstrates surprisingly accurately how human nature became culturally encoded by placing the knowledge in an industrial modernity of machine analogues. He produced lots of illustrations that drew a direct functional analogy…
From the Department of Sensible Things That Are Still Quite Funny comes these life size testicles, made with BIOLIKE⢠synthetic tissue. Now you can fondle your balls in public without fear of prosecution! Yours for just $115. One happy customer reports: One of the best purchases that I've ever made! Several of my co-workers have thanked me for bring them in and sharing. I'm so glad to have them, then one model is attached to the rear view mirror on my VW Beetle. All I can say is stop playing around and get this real deal! The only downside is that there are two synthetic tumours embedded…
Over at Evolutionary Genealogy, Leonard Eisenberg has been thinking about how we're related to other animals. Not so much in the evolutionary sense, but in the familial sense. After all, if your cousin is simply the offspring of your parent's sibling, why not continue that logic back a few hundred millennia or so? To make a rough estimate of the cousin and removal relationship between you and any other living thing, all one needs to do is count up the generations back to the common ancestor. This sounds easy in theory but is complicated in practice. First, make an estimate of the number of…
NPR reports on the discovery of a bee that builds tiny, multi-coloured nests out of flower petals. The rare solitary bee Osmia avoseta creates the cocoons out of a mixture of mud, flower petals and nectar. Each case holds a single egg. The discovery by a group of scientists in Turkey co-incided with that of another team in Iran; the two groups published their findings together in the American Museum Novitae. More pictures and info on NPR.org.
Simple timelapse joy! via The Litter Box
On January 15, 1961, the US coastguard raced through the darkness toward a tiny point 84 miles southeast of New York City. There, 28 crew members of Texas Tower 4 were waiting desperately to be evacuated from their station. As huge swells and high winds pounded the hull of the ship, their radios picked up a frantic transmission from the tower: "We're breaking up". And with that, Texas Tower 4 and all of its occupants were pulled beneath the waves. Built in 1957, the five Texas Towers were intended to become part of the USA's advanced early warning system against Soviet bombers. Named for…
Rhizome has a cache of incredible 1980s-era Soviet animations of American science fiction stories. Quite fittingly for Earth Day, here is Ray Bradbury's "Here There Be Tygers" as imagined by Russian animators. The hyper-synth music is especially awesome. неимовеÑно! More wonderful animations of stories by the likes of Stephen King and Robert Silverberg can be found at Rhizome.
Setting nerdy hearts a-flutter across the internet is current rumour that Zooey Deschanel will play Ada Lovelace in an upcoming film about the world's first programmer. Gizmodo has the scoop: The casting of Zooey Deschanel isn't completely confirmed, with Production Weekly tweeting she's "in talks to play Ada Lovelace in "Enchantress Of Numbers," Bruce Beresford plans to direct the period drama this fall" Which is as good an excuse as any to take a few minutes and bask in the sublime wonder of this video: Hat tip: @carmenego
Journalist Michael Specter makes a erudite and impassioned plea for reason and critical thinking in this video from TED. It's a fantastic speech, and huge tracts could have sprung from my own lips (and probably have done on one occassion or another). He even paraphrases a favourite bon mot of mine: "science is a process not a pronoun". Check it out: Hat tip: Brian
Given that the much-reviled Digital Economy Bill has been forced through Parliament into law, I thought I'd share the very long and very thoughtful email I received from my MP Richard Younger-Ross after I wrote to him in protest of some measures included in this proposed legislation (particularly odious is making the account-holder responsible for whatever allegedly happens through their connection, a plan that will likely wipe out wifi sharing in this country). Ross doesn't seem to have turned up to vote on the bill, but I don't hold much of a grudge against him for that: scheduling a vote…
Next week I'll be in London to attend Bad Idea magazine's Future Human, part of a series of salons exploring themese of transhumanism. Wednesday's event looks at whether increasingly sophisticated software will render some clerical occupations obsolete. In the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries, it was the British working class who fell victim to the mechanisation of industry. In the Information Revolution of the 21st century, however, industrial productivity is increasingly driven by software algorithms and the exponential rise of computer processing power.Middle-class…
Last year Neatorama's Alex Zavatone happened to find himself near Angola on the African continent. While driving through Grootfontein, Namibia, he spotted a road sign that simply said "Meteorite." Later he decided to make a 170 mile pilgrimage through beautiful and wild landscapes to Hoba to see what it was all about. You'll have to go to the Neatorama website to see the money shot - but it's worth it! I've never seen such a well-presented interplanetary visitor. Read Alex's full tale here.
The Independent has revealed plans by CERN to build a new particle accelerator along London's 23km Circle Line. The use of supercooled magnets would make it London's first air conditined underground line. In related news, CERN have announced that yesterday's high energy collisions, the first to reach 7 TeV, have resulted in the creation of a 'paleoparticle' from the prehistory of the Universe, stating: "The physicists have nicknamed it the "neutrinosaurus" because of its repulsive appearance and prehistoric origins" Now that the world's first commerically-available jetpack has gone onto…
Some time back, I was researching a feature for Wired when I stumbled across the US Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration. One of the responsibilities of this office is to monitor workplace fatalities. Each week, a roundup of deaths in the workplace are posted online. They make for compelling reading. As Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis states on the site: "With every one of these fatalities, the lives of a worker's family members were shattered and forever changed. We can't forget that fact". Yet the lists only hold the briefest of details. The company…
I'm not really one for collecting things. The fact that I move around a lot twinned with the pathetic size of British homes, doesn't square well with building up much of anything. I finally dumped all my CDs last summer; I give away my books when I'm done with them. Plus, I always felt that collecting things was for people with more money than they knew what to do with. Nevertheless, my current bedroom is as anonymous as a hotel room, and so I thought I should do what every self-repecting gentleman scholar did in times gone by: build myself a cabinet of curiosities. As the name suggests…
Jim Tierney designed a beautiful set of covers for some of Jules Verne's most famous works. The project was carried out as part of his senior year thesis. He says: I'm a big Verne fan, but a chance to re-design any classic book is always exciting. Classics usually allow for a more personal interpretation, since most people are already vaguely familiar with the premise of the books, and I didn't have to compete with one well-known cover, as I might have with a more recent book. You can see the full set on the Faceout website.
Many thanks to Joseph Hewitt at Ataraxia Theatre, who has immortalised me and many other sciencebloggers in comic form. Finally my work is done. I'm especially happy that Joseph has drawn in me in a classy mesh number, as worn by the baddest of all badasses, Bennett from Commando: I think it's time to go shopping for chain mail!
A few weeks ago I was given a vintage camera that turned out to have a film hidden inside. On developing, I found the entire roll was dedicated to pictures of an old gravesite. Who was Edward Langan? Why had he been added to a grave with a man called James Ryan? And why (as the film dates from 1973) is the grave covered in flowers when the pictures were taken several years afer their deaths? All these questions, and more, answered after the fold. Outfoxed, I turned to the Liverpool & South West Lancs Genealogy Forums for help. They proved to be absolutely incredible at tracking down…
After a brief insurrection by their blue collar offspring, zombies, vampires have once more regained their prominence as the monster supreme, leaping out at us from every bookshelf, cinema screen and TV set. What better time then for Mark Jenkins to unleash his accomplished study of the bloodsucker legend, Vampire Forensics. Published through National Geographic Books and accompanied by a television documentary, Vampire Forensics delves into the long history of the vampire, one which began millennia before a certain Bram Stoker set pen to parchment. Drawing upon the latest research in…