Books & Essays
bioephemera | January 8, 2009Ok - so Nancy Drew was never into string theory. But parents and teachers, take note: the Magnet Lab website at FSU mantains a list of books that incorporate painless, plot-relevant science lessons:
Take as an example the below excerpt from one of our featured books, Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster. Enterprising middle school teachers could use this story as a jumping-off point for a discussion about superconductors. "Don't you see?" said the Professor. "It's a superconductor."
"But that's incredible!" Dr. Fenster said. "At room temperature?"
"So it appears. There's no other explanation."
"…
bioephemera | December 31, 2008My annual list of words I learned in 2008:
alexithymia
exabyte
heteroskedasticity
semordnilap
petrichor
tsuris
picayune
fissiparous
fescennine
ceteris paribus
mutatis mutandis
Mamihlapinatapai
bioephemera | December 22, 2008
I'm snowed in here with the staffer in Washington state, but our luggage made it and we have Wifi, so it's all good. For your pre-holiday enjoyment, here's a treasure from an old book - "Pepper and Salt" by Howard Pyle. Click the image for a larger, more readable version.
bioephemera | December 18, 2008
Vireo bellii nest with newspaper
Rosamond Purcell
Egg & Nest
"It seems the bird had confiscated a shredded detail from a story involving Adolph S. Ochs, newspaper baron and one-time owner of the New York Times and Chattanooga Times. . . since the story is from Tennessee but the nest was found in Texas, I wonder if the newspaper had been transported by the vireo across state lines."
Photographer-artist-naturalist Rosamond Purcell has a new book out, in collaboration with Linnea Hall and Rene Corado. Harvard University Press describes Egg & Nest as "a tribute to the natural wonders…
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 | 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 16, 2008
Next week, PBA galleries in San Francisco will be auctioning rare books, prints, and ephemera from the medical library of Gerald I. Sugarman, MD. Joanna at Morbid Anatomy has distilled some of the best medical illustrations from this collection into two posts here and here. Thanks, Joanna!
This is wonderful stuff. I think Dr. Sugarman must have been an interesting character. . . the kind of guy I wish lived down the hall from me so I could borrow his books.
From "A System of Anatomy" by Samuel Collins, 1685
From "Anatomia Corporum Humanorum" by Joannem Arnoldum Langerak, 1739
bioephemera | November 3, 2008In the current New Yorker, Margaret Talbot summarizes the gaping chasm in attitudes toward teenage sex in Red and Blue America:
Social liberals in the country's "blue states" tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter's pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in "red states" generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn't choose to have an…
bioephemera | October 13, 2008
The National Library of Medicine just opened a new exhibition, "Harry Potter's World: Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine."
"Harry Potter's World" explores the plants, animals, and magic featured in the Harry Potter book series and their roots in Renaissance traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science. The exhibition incorporates the works of several 15- and 16th-century thinkers mentioned in Harry Potter and looks at topics such as alchemy, astrology, and natural philosophy, as well as the ethical issues faced by both the fictitious characters from…
bioephemera | October 3, 2008
fanfin seadevil
The Deep: Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian
photographed by David Shale
For anyone who does not yet have a copy of Claire Nouvian's beautiful book, The Deep, here's a chance to win it - through Oceana's Freakiest Fish of 2008 contest. The book also has the Dumbo octopus in it. Is the Dumbo octopus' cuteness the perfect antithesis of the fanfin's hideousness? Would they annihilate each other if they collided? Discuss!
dumbo octopus
The Deep: Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
Claire Nouvian
photographed by David Shale
bioephemera | September 22, 2008For the past two years, Scibling Bora has shepherded the creation of an anthology sampling the best of science blogging, called The Open Laboratory. Blog posts written since December 20, 2007 are eligible for consideration; you can nominate your own posts, as well as posts by other bloggers. The rules are here.
My first nominee? This smashing post by Mo on Wilder Penfield, the man who mapped the brain. It's incredibly long, though. Perhaps Mo should write his own book. . .
Things to consider:
-The deadline is December 1, 2008.
-Multiple submissions are okay - in other words, don't worry if…
bioephemera | August 24, 2008
A great gift for the medical history junkie, from Manifesto Letterpress: twelve "Dreade of Death" letterpress bookplates ($9.95 on sale). The designs are also available as coasters.
Manifesto also has skeleton and microscope letterpress postcards for the scientist in your life.
bioephemera | August 13, 2008
Le Corbeau Volant, 1875
Edouard Manet
While in NYC last weekend, I squeezed in an hour at the MoMA to see their exhibition Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities (July 30-Nov 10, 2008). It's really phenomenal. The main criticism I heard as I wandered the gallery was that the collection was perhaps a bit incoherent and scattered, and that may be true, but order barely imposed on a chaotic diversity of specimens is the essence of a wonder cabinet - isn't it?
This was one of the specimens that caught my eye: a simple, fluid lithograph of a flying raven by Edouard Manet. It's from the…
bioephemera | July 30, 2008Following up on last month's buzz about the Internet killing literacy, this NYT article baldly states,
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author's vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.
Yes, internet reading is nonlinear. Yes, it may be tied to some disturbing trends in youth literacy (the article cites the same National Endowment for the Arts data and Atlantic…
bioephemera | July 24, 2008For those of you frustrated with the "Top 100" book meme in my previous post, here's a post summarizing six alternate "Top 100" lists. You may find one you're happier with! Or at least, one lacking The Da Vinci Code. Hallelujah!
bioephemera | July 24, 2008Woo hoo! I've been tagged with a book meme!
The rules: boldface the books on this list that you've read, and italicize books you started but never finished.
Okay. . .
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte~
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee~
6 The Bible - I think I've read over 75% of this, so I'm going with it. The begats don't count.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens~…
bioephemera | July 23, 2008Today FAS put up an online public archive of documents produced by the Office of Technology Assessment.
As you may know, the OTA was a legislative office authorized in 1972 to produce comprehensive nonpartisan reports for Congress on a variety of scientific topics. It was defunded and closed in 1995, and the bulky paper reports it produced have been rather hard to find. Although these reports no longer represent the state of the science, they are remarkable, often prescient time capsules - a fascinating look at how teams of experts tried to predict the trajectory of new technologies we now…
bioephemera | July 18, 2008If you think that one inanimate shark is as good as another, your understanding of the art market is, as they say, dead in the water. Mr. Saunders's piece just didn't have the same quality or cache. (Although Mr. Saunders did claim his shark was more handsome.) Most important, it's not just about the work of art; rather, the value placed on a particular work derives from how it feels to own that art. Most art dealers know that art buying is all about what tier of buyers you aspire to join.
From The New York Sun's amusing review of Don Thompson's upcoming book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark:…