Film, Video & Music
bioephemera | March 19, 2010--A great NYT article on science museums and cabinets of curiosities:
This antic miscellany is dizzying. But there are lineaments of sustained conflict in the apparent chaos. Over the last two generations, the science museum has become a place where politics, history and sociology often crowd out physics and the hard sciences. There are museums that believe their mission is to inspire political action, and others that seek to inspire nascent scientists; there are even fundamental disagreements on how humanity itself is to be regarded. The experimentation may be a sign of the science museum's…
bioephemera | March 15, 2010
Delicious - and suprisingly convincing - x-ray images of animals with "skeletons" made of typography by Katerina Orlikova. Be sure to check out _Motion Picture, a running cat-like creature reminiscent of Eadweard James Muybridge's vintage motion photography.
Via Street Anatomy.
bioephemera | March 14, 2010
Only National Geographic would dare cross The Amazing Race with the mystery of conception to get. . . The Great Sperm Race:
Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization. Millions of sperm compete while overcoming armies of antibodies, treacherous terrain and impossible odds to reach their single-minded goal. To illustrate the full weight of the challenge, Sizing Up Sperm uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg.
Obviously there aren't 250 million…
bioephemera | March 7, 2010
A blunt animated message for Surfrider's Rise Above Plastics, with Portland's Borders Perrin Norrander (full credits here)
Via Notcot and others.
bioephemera | March 3, 2010Google may have done Buzz all wrong, but they do Chrome right in these adorable, Rube Goldberg-style ads.
bioephemera | March 2, 2010
Jesse ("Jess3") Thomas's brand-new clip, like a slimmed-down, retro-styled, updated cousin of that ubiquitous "Right here, right now" video, is the perfect appetizer to complement the Pew's brand-new report on participatory news. Enjoy.
bioephemera | February 15, 2010I have my priorities!
Do I even need to comment on how awesome this is? Via iO9.
bioephemera | February 10, 2010
On Tuesday, Feb. 23, National Geographic Explorer will be devoting an episode to "Vampire Forensics." You can preview a brief clip below the fold, but I'll warn you now: it's not CSI. It's more scientific ("unfortunately this evidence is inconclusive" LOL) and less sexy (inexplicably, Emily Proctor is nowhere to be seen). Overall, the feeling I got from the clip was sort of "Wow, we're National Geographic Explorer, that's pretty great, but we really wish we were sexy, like CSI. Does this sinister music help?"
In conjunction with the Explorer episode, National Geographic is releasing a book…
bioephemera | January 30, 2010This is apparently a real ad for the hotly contested Orleans Parish Coroner's race:
Poor Dr. Frankenstein Minyard. This takes negative campaigning to a whole new level.
bioephemera | January 26, 2010When I dared my friend John to make "You've Been SCIENCED" into a pop culture tagline, using his science radio show as a platform, I didn't think he'd actually DO it. But he did:
I just wish Drew Carey had used the "Pigs In Space" intonation of "You've been SCIENCED."
bioephemera | January 25, 2010
Yoda Borguereau
Mandrak
An old link, but still a good one - the "Star Wars in classic art" digital fx (advanced) contest from Worth1000.com. And the sequel contest (not as good). And the third contest. (Let's hope they're more prudent than George Lucas, and stop at three!)
bioephemera | January 22, 2010Did you hear about the scio10 civility meltdown? More about that in a minute. As you may have heard, it got a bit. . . uncivil. I wasn't there, so you, like me, will have to get your impression from this highly realistic renactment, created by an attendee who witnessed the confrontation between Nature's Henry Gee and our very own Zuska:
Whoa. Do I detect some tension? I'm reminded of the classic post 7 reasons the 21st century is making you miserable, according to David Wong:
Some of us remember having only three channels on TV. That's right. Three. We're talking about the '80s here. So…
bioephemera | January 17, 2010
A short (~4 minute) sweet overview of the political power of data visualization, by Tufte disciple Alex Lundry. He says so-called "dataviz" exists (you guessed it) "at the intersection of art and science." Quite right, sir!
You'll note Lundry makes use of the classic pirates-global warming relationship, Tufte's "pie charts suck" message, and so on. It's one of several good videos from a great event I really want to get to - igniteDC. I'd also like to mention that I'll be reviewing Connie Malamed's new book, Visual Language, which appears near the end of the video, in about a week or so, so…
bioephemera | January 13, 2010
Light Writing Proposal, by Derick Childress. Via Good.
Congratulations, Derick and Emily.
bioephemera | January 12, 2010It's like an episode of Mythbusters!
Adam: "Is it really true that if a windmill spins too fast, it disintegrates?"
Jamie: "Apparently, yes. Now we need to make a dummy out of A) a pig carcass or B) ballistic gel, and see what happens when he's standing under a disintegrating windmill."
From Sheril at the Intersection.
bioephemera | January 12, 2010
What can scientists do about Hollywood's ongoing inability to depict science in a realistic manner, as depicted by xkcd? If you're interested in this question (or still angry that Scully was somehow able to complete a Southern blot on trace alien DNA over her lunch hour), you may be interested in tomorrow's Armed with Science guests: blogger Jen Ouellette, who's heading up NAS' Science and Entertainment Exchange, and the executive producer of SyFy's EUREKA.
Jennifer Ouellette, director of the National Academy of Sciences' Science and Entertainment Exchange, and Jamie Paglia, co-creator and…
