blogosphere
bioephemera | December 14, 2009Hey readers, since blogging about my holiday educational fundraising push, I've noticed that clicks and views are up - thanks to everyone for helping out! All BioE traffic through the end of December will help benefit CEF, a scholarship and grant program for kids in Washington state, so keep sharing those links! :)
bioephemera | December 11, 2009Oooh, look! "Science Czar" John Holdren has recommended Chris & Sheril's Unscientific America in Foreign Policy Magazine's Global Thinkers Book Club.
It's so nice to see the two topics most likely to draw hecklers to my blog, brought together at last! Maybe all the angry right-wingers and New Atheists will cancel each other out. . . ? Nah, Santa's not that good to me. Sigh.
bioephemera | December 10, 2009
Albert Einstein has never reminded me much of Dr. Evil. Quite the opposite, in fact. But even Einstein occasionally had to ask for one MEEEEL-LION dollars - for a good cause, of course:
Dear Friend:
I write to you for help at the suggestion of a friend.
Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic power of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except…
bioephemera | December 7, 2009
Every year, I do my charitable giving at the holidays. It doesn't make much sense from a personal budget standpoint, since I'm always running out of money and time, but it just feels like a good thing to do. This year, I'm going to feature one recipient here on the blog, in the hopes of raising awareness of all the great local charities out there who don't get much press.
Unlike my perennial favorites Doctors Without Borders and DonorsChoose - both wonderful organizations who do a lot of good, and have been featured on BioE already this year - or media groups like NPR and Wikimedia, there…
bioephemera | December 5, 2009
The smallest orchid in the world (above) - only 2 mm across! (Thanks for the heads-up, Laura!)
Cassette-tape skeletons at Designboom.
Via Wired Science: Mini microbe portraits from the Micropolitan Museum
Dude - there are spiny, venomous catfish? Who knew?
Finally, an interview I did recently with Ava at Paw-Talk.
bioephemera | December 3, 2009Ever wonder what the pilot for "Gray's Anatomy:Uncanny Valley" would be like? Well, you're in luck!
If It Weren't For You (I'd Be Sued) from Justine Cooper on Vimeo.
Yes, that was a . . .
music video in which an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins used in medical simulation with an infectious rock ballad. Emoting on the depth of their relationship, the doctor or nurse apologizes to the mannequins for what they go through in the name of patient safety and the improvement of clinical skills, crooning the chorus "If it weren't for you, I'd be sued."
It turns out the video is just part of…
bioephemera | December 2, 2009The best Lady Gaga parody yet? Judge for yourself:
I lay it out like they do in magazines
check out this typeface it's like smoking nicotine (I love it)
using Adobe's not the same without a Mac
if it was lead it would be lined up on a track
Oh yeah! Via Jennifer Ouellette.
bioephemera | December 2, 2009As many of you know, I've been working for the past couple of years on youth internet health and education issues. While the stereotype is that younger = tech savvier, that's not strictly true. Younger kids may be better acquainted with the internet, may use it more, and may feel more comfortable with it, but that doesn't necessarily mean they have the cognitive skills or experience to differentiate between manipulative content, unreliable content, and good content.
How many of you, as adults, have been tricked into clicking on a deceptive banner ad that looked like genuine content? How many…
bioephemera | November 29, 2009
I really wanted to go to the D is for Digitize conference in New York. I couldn't go, but Harry Lewis did, and according to him, the star was Daniel Reetz of DIYBookScanner.org:
While everyone else at the conference was ruminating about whether Google had a library monopoly or whether Amazon or Microsoft might imaginably be able to compete, along comes this dude with his Rube Goldberg contraption and says, hey, let's all just start doing it, and we'll catch up eventually. (source)
Reetz made the book scanner above from "trash and cheap cameras." Very impressive. But what does it mean for…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009I encountered this jaw-dropping story, by one Emily Miller for AskMen.com, as the top "health link" on FoxNews this afternoon:
It seems like a reverse sexism started to take hold as the feminist movement came about and equality for women began gaining ground. Some women use their girl-power solidarity to come to a consensus on what's socially acceptable for women to do to men in a relationship. They've agreed among themselves that these behaviors are perfectly justifiable regardless of how they play with a guy's emotions or ego. With that, we've compiled a top 10 list of cruel things women do…
bioephemera | November 27, 2009
A few of my favorite holiday shopping suggestions from the past year of blogging. . .
#1. Pandemic, the Board Game. Turn H1N1 into holiday fun for everyone! (Already have Pandemic? Z-Man games has an upgrade pack.)
#2. Blue Barnhouse letterpress. Yeah, they're artistic and individually pressed, but these are not your parents' greeting cards. In addition to their Happy Colonoscopy cards, they have many more offensive yet hilarious greetings - these invites were perfect for a certain unexpurgated physiologist of my acquaintance. . .
#3. Like some paper with your science? Ork posters' heart…
bioephemera | November 5, 2009Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.
Last week, at the imagine science film festival in New York, Magnetic Movie won the Nature Scientific Merit Award:
In 2009, the Nature Scientific Merit Award went to the film judged to be not only the most deserving but also the most scientifically accurate, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhard's Magnetic Movie.
I love Magnetic Movie, too - but what think you about the scientific accuracy angle? See what I had to say about it in my Art vs. Science series, earlier this year:
Art vs. Science, Part One: Semiconductor
Art vs. Science, Part Two: You want raw data…
bioephemera | November 4, 2009Since I posted last night, DrugMonkey, Dr. Free-Ride, and the Intersection have also checked in with their POVs on this issue. I particularly liked this comment from Dr. Free-Ride:
We get to foot the bill for the effects of other people's "moral failings" here as it is. Why, then, should it be so objectionable to consider spending some public money to figure out how to help people stop? Is it so important that people be punished for their moral failings that we're willing to sustain large-scale societal collateral damage just to enact that punishment?
DrugMonkey linked to a list of talking…
bioephemera | November 3, 2009My mom, like millions of others in the U.S., has been a smoker for decades. She's tried to quit a few times, but it's been hard for her. The thing that's helped the most so far? The nicotine patch.
While the patch is not a universal cure - see the Mayo Clinic's analysis here - physicians back them because, well, the long-term cost of remaining a smoker is too high (for the smoker, the smoker's family, and society). We all know smokers, and love them, and want to help them quit. Right?
But there's a huge double standard in the media, and in society in general, when it comes to drug abuse…
bioephemera | November 1, 2009*That's the Amazon rainforest - not Amazon.com!
Check out this interview from MAKE with Google's Rebecca Moore, who helped an Amazon chief use Google Earth to fight illegal logging.
Lots more here.
bioephemera | October 29, 2009
From the wonderful blog Letters of Note: in 1957, schoolboy Denis Cox generously shared his rocket blueprints with "A Top Scientist" at Australia's Woomera Weapons Research Establishment.
The important stuff (Rolls Royce jet engines, "Air Torpeados") is all there, although Denis explicitly gave the Top Scientists his permission to "put in other details" themselves, no doubt due to the lack of space for more detailed blueprints on his lined notebook paper ("I have discovered a truly marvelous proof, which this margin is too narrow to contain. . . ") Denis says modestly, "I thought it would…
bioephemera | October 25, 2009OK: I'm female AND a biologist, and looking at this one freaks ME out!
I'm all in favor of appreciating the beauty of female anatomy and miracle of childbirth and all, but this pasty, long-limbed newborn doll with a detatchable umbilical is nothing compared with its laboring parent, who, in this photo from its etsy creator CozyColeman, looks a lot like Grendel's mom. It's as NSFW as crochet gets, I guess, so it's below the fold.
Yikes! Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think if you want to make the thought of pregnancy and childbirth horrifying yet eerily fascinating to your pre-teen…
bioephemera | October 25, 2009
"Mechanical heart"
Bill McConkey
Collage of a digitally enhanced pencil drawing of the human heart and photographs of different brass instruments. Digital artwork. From the Wellcome Image Awards 2009 - see the other winners here.
Last week was Open Access Week, which meant I got to hear a great talk from John Wilbanks of the Science Commons (you should subscribe to their blog!) I've been thinking a lot this week about the legal challenges of data sharing, which is giving me a headache. But there's an easier way to celebrate Open Access Week: by visiting the Guardian's a multimedia show about…
bioephemera | October 20, 2009
To follow up on my post on Kevin Van Aelst, here's an anatomically-inspired artwork by Heather L. Johnson, whose new show, "Air and Blood", opens this month in NYC:
Using the Holland Tunnel as a point of departure, the artist investigates the way in which anatomical processes are mimicked in the transfer of people, objects and ideas in the urban environment.
I think that's a motorbike in that circulatory diagram - which of course invites comparison with the work of Josh Hadar.
For more on Johnson's new show, check out readymade blog.
bioephemera | October 18, 2009
From the NIDA media guide
Jared Diamond and the New Yorker's parent company have denied all charges in the "Vengeance is Ours" scandal:"
The defendants' attorneys listed 34 reasons, called "affirmative defenses," why they should prevail in the lawsuit. Among them are the contentions that the plaintiffs were not defamed and had not suffered any harm or actual injury to their reputations; that Diamond and The New Yorker had not acted with "actual malice" or with knowledge that The New Yorker story was false; that the article was "substantially true" and thus protected under the First and 14th…