Frivolity
bioephemera | September 14, 2011
A few months ago I got an email from Zachtronics, creators of the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, about the new indie game called SpaceChem. It was billed as "an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science." What's not to love?
Here's a preview. . .
Science!
Game reviewer Quintin Smith loved it:
SpaceChem is a game where you build fabulous contraptions. It's about getting stuck into a massive puzzle, laughing at the optimism of what's expected of you, and then finally applying what might be the finishing touch to your…
sb admin | September 6, 2011
Photo of Vermont highway courtesy of Kyle Cornell
Last week, I had my long-awaited vacation semi-ruined when, thanks to Hurricane Irene, my flight back from the West Coast was cancelled. I had to rent a car and drive across the country in a rush - not my favorite way to spend three and a half days. But based on what I saw passing through New York, and what I've heard about the damage in Vermont, I can't complain: flooding has overturned homes, isolated entire towns, and destroyed everything some families own.
Vermonters are a notoriously self-sufficient bunch, and I haven't seen that much…
sb admin | August 26, 2011
Gold Cortex
16 x 20, 2010
Greg Dunn
I used to have a beautiful gold Japanese folding screen, which was purchased by my great-grandmother's feisty sister on a trip in the 1920s. I loved the gold patina and the surprisingly modern impact it had on my wall. At the moment, it's loaned to a friend, but looking at Greg Dunn's artwork, I couldn't help but be reminded of the best aspects of my screen: the gold leaf, crisp black patterns, and way that the scene seemed half natural, half abstract.
The biggest twist Greg, a 6th year graduate student in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania,…
bioephemera | July 24, 2011The New York Times did a special Sunday supplement on graduate programs. The editorial graphics they commissioned have much truth to them, grasshopper.
bioephemera | May 26, 2011
Amy Stewart's new book Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon's Army & Other Diabolical Insects takes a fairly trivial concept - a collection of historical anecdotes and icky factoids about dangerous insects - and executes it remarkably well. The book is well-written and has a non-cloying sense of humor ("she's just not that into you," begins the section relating how female praying mantids eat the males). Briony Morrow-Cribbs lends her insect illustrations (see a NYTimes slideshow of her ink illustrations here), and Anne Winslow's design plays off the concept of a vintage…
bioephemera | May 13, 2011
From instructables user Copper Twist, this impressionist masterpiece of bacon is both biological and ephemeral (euw). What would Van Gogh say? Why do I feel if Van Gogh were alive today, he might be Vegan?
Via Chow Bella, via lots of people.
bioephemera | May 13, 2011
Yes, I cry at everything -- Love Actually, holiday commercials, abandoned furniture on curbs -- so what could I do to resist this little guy? Is he not adorable?
He is also a letterpress card on sale at Blue Barnhouse. I just ordered several of him because I CAN'T HELP IT, he needs to be cuddled! (Fortunately envelopes can do that.)
bioephemera | May 7, 2011
Thanks moms! Slightly more than half of everything we are we owe to you. :)
Song by cadamole - late of the St. Patrick's Day song.
bioephemera | April 13, 2011Oh, to be eight years old again, and oh-so-eager to suspend all disbelief. . . this video had me laughing in pure delight:
The baby T-Rex, which you can obviously tell is an actor (see the legs?) is touring Australian schools to promote the show "Walking with Dinosaurs." Don't get me wrong - the show looks as charming as a James Gurney musical - but I really love the expressions on the childrens' faces as they're alternately surprised, scared, and thrilled. I think I just saw four or five future paleontologists spring into being. . .
Via, like, everybody. It's dinoviral.
bioephemera | April 6, 2011Wait - did Peter Nowogrodski just shoehorn everything I love into one meandering, indulgent multimedia essay??*
Tolkien's Shire appears as a coherent ecosystem, cradled by productive fields and populated by abundant orchards, caches of edible mushroom, and even the fishable Bywater Pool, ornamented with an authentic churning mill. The land at Hobbiton is changing still: Jackson's crowning oak tree now sits in sun-scarred pieces behind a rotten wooden fence at the termination of Bagshot Row, a home for the welcome swallows that course through air above. In the pastures opposite Bag End, a…
bioephemera | April 1, 2011
It's the very last installment of Zombiefest - one more book review, this time for one I heartily recommend!
Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts, prefaces his new book about zombies with an unexpected vignette - a visit to Graceland:
By the time my tour hit the Jungle Room, it was obvious that the thirty-odd people walking through Elvis Presley's mansion fell into two groups. The first contingent was thoroughly, utterly sincere in their devotion to all things Elvis. They were hardcore fans, and Graceland was their Mecca, their Jerusalem, and their Rome. . . the…
bioephemera | March 29, 2011Shambling, slowly disintegrating zombies aren't good for much - but maybe they're helpful for teaching neurobiology?
The Zombie Autopsies with Steven Schlozman, MD from GCP authors on Vimeo.
It is all about braaaaiiiiiinnns, after all. . . .
Read all about Zombie Autopsies here, or head to Amazon.
bioephemera | March 28, 2011
The 2011 Congress of Curious Peoples, featuring, among other guests, Anna Maerker, author of Model Experts: Wax Anatomies and Enlightenment in Florence and Vienna, 1775-1815; Mike Sappol, author of A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America; Elizabeth Stephens, author of Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body from 1700 to the Present; and John Troyer, author of Technologies of the Human Corpse (forthcoming). Whoa.
Learn more here!
bioephemera | March 17, 2011
I guess it's not surprising, my dopamine is rising
And my glutamate receptors are all shot
I'd surely be bemoaning all the extra serotonin
But my judgement is impaired and my confidence is not
Allosteric modulation
No Long Term Potentiation
Hastens my inebriation
Give me a beer. . .
Physiology professors, I trust you know what to do with this holiday treasure by cadamole. Nothing makes neurobiology seem relevant like a beer.
bioephemera | March 15, 2011
When I was about eleven years old, I loved to draw intricate ornamental initials with sea serpents twining all over them and castles sprouting out of them, etc. Sometimes my friends would have me draw ink letter "tattoos" on them, but really, the only way I could get satisfactory resolution on my letters was to use a fine tip pen on a full sheet of paper. One letter = math class. (No wonder I don't know calculus).
That's why this new group show at San Francisco's Gallery Hijinks has me smiling with nostalgia - it's a full alphabet (plus) of letter-themed artworks. The organic,…
bioephemera | March 7, 2011
O designer-readers who like to work and play with Photoshop, this contest may be up your alley: Quirk Books, the outfit behind Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has joined with Bridgeman Art Library to invite submissions for its "Art of the Mash-Up" competition. Basically, they want you to prove you can do better than the Regency unmentionable pictured above:
The iconic "Zombie Lady" on the cover of the New York Times Best Seller Pride and Prejudice and Zombies captured the imagination of readers around the world and has become one of the most recognizable book jackets in recent history.…
bioephemera | February 14, 2011A classic tale of love and sacrifice, illustrated by Sean Bieri:
While Bieri's artistry technically depicts a Christmas story, it also nicely captures the undying-even-while-decaying-putrefying-and-hemorrhaging-IQ-points nature of true love. What more could you want for Valentine's Day? (And let's face it, we've all had Valentine's Days that would arguably have been improved by a Zombocalypse.)
Speaking of which, I'm working on my review of Daniel Drezner's Theories of International Politics and Zombies. Short version: it's hilarious.
bioephemera | January 29, 2011
I have no idea why there is a disembodied mannequin foot in a tree in Cambridge, MA, but so there is. Sort of gruesome, eh? Maybe io9 should do another post on severed limbs.
Update: my friend John O reminds me that he did a post on severed hands two years ago. He beat us all to the punch! (ha ha).
bioephemera | January 16, 2011
Caption for non-PhDs: aren't these sciencepunk brain ice cubes awesome? BRAIN FREEZE!
Caption for PhDs: Still hoping against hope to celebrate your thesis defense in style? Try cocktails with roughly anatomically accurate cortical ice cubes. [Look at it this way: even after six years of beating your bruised cerebrum against intransigent experiments and unsympathetic advisors, you can still out-think and out-publish a chunk of solidified H2O! Take comfort in that, have a stiff drink, be liberal with the bitters - and good luck with those postdoc applications.]
P.S.: They're on sale here, or…
bioephemera | January 12, 2011
A new biology game called EteRNA "crowdsourc[es] the scientific method" by inviting players to design their own self-folding RNAs. The best designs are synthesized and tested in the lab to see how well the predicted structure plays out in the physical world - an innovation the game's creators see as an improvement over other folding games like Foldit, where there is no experimental feedback.
"Putting a ball through a hoop or drawing a better poker hand is the way we're used to winning games, but in EteRNA you score when the molecule you've designed can assemble itself," said one of the PIs…