Frivolity
bioephemera | December 26, 2008"it's definitely illegal in California to use human medical waste to power vehicles."
see full story here.
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. . . 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 19, 2008Apparently Winston Churchill was not the greatest poet at 15 (but then, who is? Keats churned out some horrible clunkers[1] when young). In this month's BMJ, Angus Nicholl and colleagues call our attention to Churchill's classically influenced poem "The Influenza". (No, it's not actually called "Ode to Flu" - but it might be cooler if it was).
Nicholl and colleagues give Churchill credit for accurately reflecting the geography and seasonality of the 1890-1 Russian flu pandemic. Churchill's teachers at Harrow School gave him a prize. I give him a big eye-roll, and that's generous ("And now…
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 15, 2008Some Monday randomness: a living kaleidoscope of domestic animals.
Seriously, why does everyone like that corner so much?
I laughed, then felt a little bad about laughing - given the repeated collisions with the walls, other animals, etc. Hopefully they took everyone out for a nice pile of grain afterward.
Via a pretty cool typeface blog, monoscope. (I see they also liked the Studley toolchest!)
bioephemera | December 15, 2008You know those packaged toolchest gift sets that stores relentlessly market as holiday gifts for "Dads"? Well, none of them can hold a, er, socket wrench to this object of beauty from the 1800s, customized by a piano tuner named Studley. Wow.
Via Boing Boing
bioephemera | December 11, 2008The physicists are getting rather jubilant over the selection of Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy. Sure he's the Director of LBNL. Sure, he has a Nobel Prize in something involving lasers (ho hum - I don't know any physicists that don't work with lasers). But I'd like to point out that he also has a cross-appointment at my old stomping grounds, Berkeley's Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. And he's like the father of optical tweezers (for which he won the 1995 "Science for Art" Prize!) So we biologists should be a little smug too!
I will not exploit this opportunity…
bioephemera | December 10, 2008full-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 10, 2008Word of the day: emoluments.
The House appears to have just addressed Hillary's emoluments problem, by passing S.J. Res 46 "ensuring that the compensation and other emoluments attached to the office of Secretary of State are those which were in effect on January 1, 2007." This undoes a 2008 cost-of-living increase of $4,700 in the salary of the Secretary of State, enacted when Hillary Clinton was a Senator. I think it already passed the Senate, so now it just needs to be signed by the President.
For those of you who haven't been following this story, there's an interesting constitutional law…
bioephemera | December 8, 2008Are your kids bouncing around on a holiday sugar high? Send them off to brainstorm names for NASA's new Mars Rover. Winners can send a "special message to the future to be placed on a chip" on the Rover, so when they finish with the name, they can start working on their message, and who knows - they might be distracted for a full hour! The contest runs through Jan 25.
NASA's Name That Rover Contest
PS. It's co-sponsored by Disney, so be prepared for your kids to return convinced that Wall-E is the best thing evah.
PPS. It's open to kids in grades K-12 only (sorry, 30-something geeks)
bioephemera | December 8, 2008
These anti-drug ads featuring risk-taking vermin, by Above the Influence, are rather clever, don't you think?
I'm trying to figure out the aesthetic - the grungy clothes could be contemporary, 80s, or 90s, but the interiors seem older - like 60s. (Check out the rotary phone in the teenager's room!) Anyway, it's the sort of cultural/temporal mishmash you see on a sitcom set, where all the elements are so familiar, they fade into the background in a vague approximation of "American Life." It's kind of a neat effect.
bioephemera | December 7, 2008UK 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 6, 2008
How much do you love your significant other? Enough to crack your chest open? "True Love Tattoos offer you the ultimate way to express your love for that special someone, they open you up and ink your loved one's name on your heart."
Then, since it's not exactly the type of tattoo you can easily show off, you get a Polaroid and a romantic video of the procedure to give your SO. Nice!
Thankfully, this is just a faux advertising campaign for band Vikunja (myspace). The True Love Tattoos website and video are nicely done, although the band members themselves don't look nearly Goth/emo enough…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008How much do I love this mashed up, remixed version of the standby "Did You Know"? So much that I couldn't help rocking out to it a little during the talk I gave today at work on Web 2.0. I heart fatboy slim.
I'm not getting into the question of how reliable these stats are - while many of them (especially the computing power ones) are obviously speculative, the demographic stats in the original presentation by Karl Fisch were sourced. Of course, it's been through several iterations since then. C'mon, just enjoy the music.
I really do never get tired of watching this.
PS. And it's way…
bioephemera | December 5, 2008I snapped this pic for my friend John O, connoisseur of weird photos. And he goes and gets on Failblog with it! What gives!
Anyway, help him out if you have a moment and vote for it before it disappears into the ether. Because totally misrepresented not-so-cutting-edge technology deserves its place in the limelight just like everything else. And because I just gave a talk today on the power of social media and bookmarking and blogs!
note: you may have to scroll down a bit to find the pic - apparently I can't link directly to it, only to the page. But I'll try to update this link if it gets…
bioephemera | December 1, 2008Smithsonian Castle
The US Botanic Garden is once again having its annual holiday exhibit, "Windows to Wonderland." There are two parts to this exhibit: first, there's a collection of adorable replicas of the monuments made out of bark, pinecones, leaves, gourds, etc. Second, there's a delightful room of trains running across elevated bridges and through fantasy villages with names like "Gremlin Corner" and "Caterpillar Garden."
The Capitol
The mini Capitol was pretty impressive, but it lacked its north and south wings, which went on at the same time as the current dome. So historically, it…
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…