ephemera
bioephemera | December 31, 2008In honor of yet another pi x 10^7 seconds of my life evaporating, here's a sign from our hotel in Idaho:
"Temporally out of order" just seemed like an extremely fortuitous typo. . . happy new year.
bioephemera | December 30, 2008
We had a bit too much snow (4+ feet) while in Washington state last week, but darn, I'd forgotten how beautiful a snowflake is. (And hard to photograph.)
bioephemera | December 27, 2008Assuming you have some downtime to digest, vegetate, and recover from the holidays, here's a cookie plate of links. Enjoy!
Boing Boing Gadgets presents "How it works. . . The Computer." Hilarious.
Via Morbid Anatomy, I found Monster Brains' repository of Krampus ephemera. For those in blissful ignorance, the Krampus is a grotesque devil figure that abuses young children as part of traditional Christmas festivities in Germany. Yikes!
Speaking of children, these vintage illustrations are, um, shocking:
From "30 ways to die of electrocution" flickr set by bre pettis.
Erratic Phenomena has…
bioephemera | December 23, 2008
This cake, complete with circulatory and musculoskeletal diagrams, is pretty amazing. (I'd like to give one to my friend Rhett to celebrate his admittance to an excellent medical school.)
Via shewalkssoftly
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 22, 2008. . . at least according to XKCD:
(All right, fine: they're acknowledging cephalopods' supremacy, not biologists'. It's probably a ploy to lull us into complacency while they corrupt our cuttlefish minions and eventually wipe us out.)
bioephemera | December 17, 2008
I want them. They're backordered. I can't have them. Cry.
Mad Scientist Blocks from Xylocopa:
"At Xylocopa, we know that the key to a successful education is to begin learning at a young age. Like many of you, we are concerned about the state of science education in the public school system, especially in the lower grades. Specifically, we have noticed that there is absolutely no training in the K-6 grades that prepares students to become mad scientists."
bioephemera | December 16, 2008
When I met one of my stylish fellow-bloggers for the first time a few months ago, I was mesmerized by her gorgeous blown-glass bubble necklace - although the thought of klutzy me in such a necklace is a little scary. (Shards of glass + carotid artery = euw!)
Anyway, I was charmed to see a similar necklace in the Anthropologie holiday catalog - under the name "ephemera necklace," no less! BubbleEphemera!
@ Anthropologie.com
bioephemera | December 12, 2008
Emerald Damselfly
Martin Amm, 2008
Martin Amm's beautiful photographs are perfect bioephemera: insects bejeweled with droplets of dew. The crisp iridescence of these photos is simply mesmerizing.
Ugly Beauty
Martin Amm, 2008
I particularly love the way the droplets of water on the head of the red-veined darter below magnify the facets of its eyes (click on the link for a larger image). These photos look too good to be real!
Red-veined Darter II
Martin Amm, 2007
Martin Amm/Stephen Amm, Naturfranken.de
bioephemera | December 10, 2008
full-size ad
Mercury 360, Bucharest, Romania
Illustrator: Andrei Nedea, 2008
More anti-drug ads, this time from Romania. Note that these ads' message is a little less obvious than that of the last batch. There's also an optics problem with the perception of each object - its representation should be upside-down in the mind's eye, so to speak. I can see how that detail might have confused the layperson and detracted from the message, but it still bugs me. Also, I'm not quite sure why the ads need to look antiqued and da Vinci-esque.
Via adsoftheworld
full-size ad
full-size ad
bioephemera | December 7, 2008
UK Reef (detail) - with candy striped anemone by Ildiko Szabo (foreground) and anemone grove by Beverly Griffiths (background). Photo by George Walker.source
This afternoon at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, physicist Margaret Wertheim of the Institute for Figuring will be giving a lecture and workshop on crocheting coral reefs with the "hyperbolic crochet" technique. While her creations can't replace the real reefs that are rapidly disappearing, they are purdy, and some of the forms are remarkably similar to real species of coral, diatoms, and anemones.
More about the crochet…
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 30, 2008
"Please Hug Me"
artist: J. Keeler, 1987
Today is the 20th annual World AIDS Day. I can still remember when I first learned about AIDS, in the late eighties - it was an extremely scary and mysterious thing that the media seemed very uncomfortable covering. No one I knew was talking about it openly - family, friends, or teachers. That's why posters like this were so important.
AIDS awareness advertisements represent a history of creative and controversial images - largely because of their sometimes explicit* sexual content, but also because of the stigmas attached to STDs, casual sex, and…
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 26, 2008
The Noble Game of the Swan, 1821
While visiting Monticello recently I was struck by a 19th century example of "The Game of the Goose" lying on the floor, as if a child had just left off playing with it. It fascinates me that the board game, a staple of my childhood holidays, was also enjoyed by families (upper class families, at least) hundreds of years ago. Sixteenth century Italian households probably weren't quite as board-game-obsessed as my family becomes every holiday season - we still reminisce about great Pictionary moments, and I have many utterly useless Trivial Pursuit answers…
bioephemera | November 24, 2008
This peculiar little dude is a paper toy for children - and a great example of vintage advertising. "Le Pere Savon" is built of cubes of soap with "72%" embossed on them, indicating a composition of 72% olive oil - which is typical of the French soap savon de Marseille. I believe he is blowing a bubble out of a pipe.
"Le Pere Savon" was later rebranded "Persavon," and I don't find any recent examples of this character in advertising. But you can still build your own personal creepy soap-man using this pattern from Agence Eureka. They've helpfully split the full-size original pattern pieces…
bioephemera | November 20, 2008
Chesterfields ad, 1952
Today, November 20, is the American Cancer Society's 33rd Great American Smokeout. Now, be honest: did you even know?
The Smokeout doesn't seem to get as much attention as it used to, perhaps because the link between cigarette smoke and cancer is no longer surprising or controversial. After decades of anti-tobacco campaigns hammering the research home, no media-conscious American could plausibly believe that cigarettes are actually good for his or her health. Yet this is a sea change from attitudes in the first half of the 20th century, when cigarettes' health…
bioephemera | November 7, 2008
One of the odder perks of living in DC is viewing the strange Metro ads purchased by various lobbying blocs. Here, a rosy-cheeked child sucks down pasta, while the ad proudly tells us the main ingredient is fertilizer. Yum, yum.
bioephemera | November 6, 2008
Onlookers filed past the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday night, viewing approximately 80 front pages from U.S. and world newspapers - all of which paid tribute to President-elect Barack Obama.
Related:
Useful Post-Election Links
Wow.