Yikes!
bioephemera | February 11, 2010
Just in time for Valentine's Day: the "Copulating Earthworm Necklace," from heronadornment on etsy.
Also love her anatomical heart locket.
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 31, 2010Okay, so between vampires and zombies, the undead have officially conquered pop culture. It's not really new - I was fascinated when young by Michael Jackson's Thriller and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles - but it does seem a bit out of hand.
With the release of "Robin Hood and Friar Tuck: Zombie Killers," I feel like we have slalomed down the slippery slope marked by "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," ducked under "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters," and smacked a tree with our collective faces. From the synopsis:
Soon after 'twas apparent that the fate
Of all on Earth--the evil and the…
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 20, 2010
Camille Allen's tiny baby sculptures have been all over the blogosphere. Contrary to popular belief, though, they're not made of marzipan (almond candy) or icing - they're polymer clay and mohair. So you're not supposed to eat them - thank heavens. Still amazing, though. (And a perfect counterpoint to the giant baby sculptures by Ron Mueck - or the giant baby I just posted by Parmigianino.)
bioephemera | January 18, 2010
A Journey Round My Skull uncovered this DISTURBING children's book about anthropogenic talking fruit who appear to be suffering from a contagious respiratory disease.
I'm not sure why I find it so disturbing, but I do. It makes me feel like I'm on some sort of mind-altering substance. (I know many children's books can have that effect - and the Spongebob movie, too - but for some reason this fruit book is just creepier than usual).
Is anyone else reminded of Henry Darger's work?
Check out more illustrations at A Journey Round My Skull. You can use them to frighten vegetarian children.
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 1, 2010According to Christina Warren at mashable.com, the switch to allowing non-Latin alphabet characters in web domains could give scammers a brand new toolkit. That's because browsers can't render many non-Latin characters, and the approximations may be doppelgangers for trusted sites. Alternatively, an address in an alphabet like Cyrillic, which shares certain letterforms with the Latin alphabet, can appear indistinguishable from pre-existing Latin-alphabet addresses:
Uh-oh.
It's only fair that users of different alphabets get to register their own addresses, but clearly there needs to be some…
bioephemera | December 31, 2009
With the Mallard Heels from anthropologie, you can say "Yes, I'm wearing a 3-inch high duck decoy!" with confidence. But alas, I waited too long to blog these - they're out of stock. :( Sorry, Isis.
bioephemera | December 31, 2009
This explanatory video from Wired/the Exploratorium shows how "Dr. Megavolt" (Austin Richards) created a birdcage-topped stainless steel bodysuit, so he can play with the giant Tesla coil he built. This guy knows how to have fun, man.
bioephemera | December 30, 2009
If you've ever worked in a bio lab, you know what I mean: these look too real!
Yes, I know Pharyngula and BoingBoing already got to them early this month, while I was in the middle of finals, but I just had to blog them anyway. They're too bioE. Besides, you can use them as a New Year's diet aid.
bioephemera | December 29, 2009There are two contradictory headlines today on Google News, both regarding someone I couldn't care less about. However, they nicely illustrate one of my key concerns about the internet: the pervasive illusion that the "wisdom of crowds" is in fact wisdom, or in fact fact.
Both stories involve the heinous Jon Gosselin, who as far as I'm concerned is a waste of attention. You may have heard that the former reality TV star had his apartment trashed over the holidays, and that no one knows who's responsible. But if one turns to Google News, one can see that People Magazine appears to have an…
bioephemera | December 13, 2009
Okay, so these tricks aren't rocket science. But I think lighting and extinguishing candles remotely is a pretty entertaining diversion - definitely for an audience experiencing a post-holiday meal food coma. You can lecture them all about chemistry, and they won't be able to flee! Bwahahahahaha! Good stuff.
Then I found this "Extreme Physics Party Trick". . . and I'm still laughing.
EXTREME!
bioephemera | December 3, 2009Ever wonder what the pilot for "Gray's Anatomy:Uncanny Valley" would be like? Well, you're in luck!
If It Weren't For You (I'd Be Sued) from Justine Cooper on Vimeo.
Yes, that was a . . .
music video in which an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins used in medical simulation with an infectious rock ballad. Emoting on the depth of their relationship, the doctor or nurse apologizes to the mannequins for what they go through in the name of patient safety and the improvement of clinical skills, crooning the chorus "If it weren't for you, I'd be sued."
It turns out the video is just part of…
bioephemera | November 4, 2009Since I posted last night, DrugMonkey, Dr. Free-Ride, and the Intersection have also checked in with their POVs on this issue. I particularly liked this comment from Dr. Free-Ride:
We get to foot the bill for the effects of other people's "moral failings" here as it is. Why, then, should it be so objectionable to consider spending some public money to figure out how to help people stop? Is it so important that people be punished for their moral failings that we're willing to sustain large-scale societal collateral damage just to enact that punishment?
DrugMonkey linked to a list of talking…
bioephemera | November 3, 2009My mom, like millions of others in the U.S., has been a smoker for decades. She's tried to quit a few times, but it's been hard for her. The thing that's helped the most so far? The nicotine patch.
While the patch is not a universal cure - see the Mayo Clinic's analysis here - physicians back them because, well, the long-term cost of remaining a smoker is too high (for the smoker, the smoker's family, and society). We all know smokers, and love them, and want to help them quit. Right?
But there's a huge double standard in the media, and in society in general, when it comes to drug abuse…
bioephemera | November 2, 2009
The very epitome of bioephemera, from Microbial Art:
Artist JoWOnder presents a pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia created with bacteria. The demise of the painting is filmed using time-lapse photography, showing a story of death and creation of new life. The colors and animation for '6 Days Goodbye Poems Of Ophelia' were created in a laboratory at Surrey University UK with the help of microbiologist Dr. Simon Park. When displayed in 2010, this will be an outdoor video installation of Ophelia with poems submitted from the public. Composer Milton Mermikides will be producing a sound track…
bioephemera | October 30, 2009One of the coolest, weirdest, worlds-colliding Day of the Dead artworks I've ever seen is this sculpture of a skeletal Teddy Kennedy. He's at a podium, open-jawed (no doubt haranguing other late Senators), accompanied by a skeletal dog.
The paper in his hand says "Health Care: The Cause of My Life." I realize this is a terrible photo, but in person, I actually found it pretty moving.
From the window of Nomad on Mass Ave in Cambridge, MA - they have an extensive Dia de los Muertos folk art collection.
Happy Halloween!
bioephemera | October 25, 2009OK: I'm female AND a biologist, and looking at this one freaks ME out!
I'm all in favor of appreciating the beauty of female anatomy and miracle of childbirth and all, but this pasty, long-limbed newborn doll with a detatchable umbilical is nothing compared with its laboring parent, who, in this photo from its etsy creator CozyColeman, looks a lot like Grendel's mom. It's as NSFW as crochet gets, I guess, so it's below the fold.
Yikes! Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but I think if you want to make the thought of pregnancy and childbirth horrifying yet eerily fascinating to your pre-teen…
bioephemera | October 23, 2009Has your week been like this, too? I'm just checking. . .
"Fish in a squirrel suit" by Slightly Curious.
Via Regretsy.