bioephemera
Posts by this author
April 15, 2011
Anatomical engraving from Henry Gray's Anatomy, 1858.
A month or so ago, Abrams books reached out to mention that they were releasing a new title, Human Anatomy: A Visual History from the Renaissance to the Digital Age. I said, "don't I already have this book?" It turns out I did - I had the…
April 14, 2011
"Reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments."
- Jonathan Haidt, "The New Science of Morality",
invoking the work of H. Mercier and D. Sperber.
(the whole talk is really interesting).
April 13, 2011
Oh, 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…
April 13, 2011
I've been remiss in not recommending my temporary Scienceblogs scibling "Art and Science Learning" to those of you who are, like me, interested in the sciart intersection. However, I have to say I am not 100% behind its latest (and quite popular post), by Robert Root-Bernstein. It starts,
Most…
April 12, 2011
Calling all dataviz peeps: you know you want to meet Stephen Colbert. All you have to do is win DonorsChoose's version of the Netflix Prize.
It's a contest called "Hacking Education". DonorsChoose explains, "We've opened up [our] data, and invite you to make discoveries and build apps that…
April 12, 2011
Yesterday, bioephemera got its one millionth visit.*
Thanks so much to everyone who reads, shares, and enjoys my posts - you're why I keep blogging, in whatever spare time I can find. There's just too much interesting stuff out there to keep it to myself when I find it, and I've met far too many…
April 11, 2011
Haute Macabre found artist Celina Saubidet on etsy, where she sells silver-plated bronze "osseous jewelry" from her shop Joyeria Osea. I think this skeletal hand is pretty over the top, but hey - sometimes you need a little drama. Check out her fingerbone rings for a more subtle anatomical…
April 9, 2011
Adam Winnik sent me this animation inspired by Carl Sagan's famous "pale blue dot" monologue. It's true to the serious implications of Sagan's words, yet wry and lighthearted (mostly). A lovely example of remix culture revitalizing a classic of biology.
Adam gives some background:
I've been…
April 9, 2011
At the moment, a few blocks away, a few of my friends are attending a Science and Technology Studies (STS) conference at the Harvard Kennedy School. I have no idea what they're doing, although I'm sure it's very smart. I'm only here to tell you they have THE CREEPIEST POSTER I have ever seen for an…
April 8, 2011
While we're on the bioanimation topic, I recently heard from Jess at Nervous System, who sent me links to some animations of their new jewelry line, hyphae, "growing" in virtual space. Check it out:
Hyphae - growth of the Vessel Pendant from Nervous System on Vimeo.
They explain,
Hyphae is a…
April 8, 2011
Remember when I said more bio grad students should play with coding and modeling? Here's an example of what I mean. Laurence Frabotta directed me to this animation by phylogeneticist/bioinformatics programmer Liam Revell, an assistant professor at U Mass Boston, who used the statistical package 'R…
April 6, 2011
Wait - 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…
April 6, 2011
Wow - my post about unhappy bio grad students is getting massive traffic. (Hi SlashDotters and StumbleUpon-ers!) Mike the Mad Biologist, my original inspiration, has responded here and here to all the buzz.
I pretty much said everything I wanted to say in the original post, and I don't pretend to…
April 5, 2011
The oral arguments in Monday's Myriad appeal are online here. (Scroll down and look for Association for Molecular [Pathology] v. PTO).
April 3, 2011
Tomorrow morning, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear arguments in the appeal of Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - better known as the Myriad gene patent case.* It has the patent and genetic blogospheres in a bit of…
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…
March 31, 2011
The myriad miseries of graduate school are reserved to no one discipline, but there may be something to the contention that biology graduate programs are particularly bad. Here's what Mike the Mad Biologist says, in response to Science Professor, and I think he's quite right:
The basic problem…
March 30, 2011
Here's Alexis Madrigal on why the slow loris' newfound YouTube fame could be the worst possible thing for the little primates:
Talk about a buzzkill: watching a video of a cute animal on the Internet may -- in some small way -- lead to it being ripped from its mother, abused, and sold on the global…
March 29, 2011
Shambling, 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.
March 29, 2011
The week of Zombiefest continues, with the photography of Danielle Tunstall, who calls them "life and death working together hand in hand." "Fragile," above, is available as a print.
via Haute Macabre.
March 28, 2011
In addition to all the obvious reasons, tech blogger Jillian York recently noted that some web filters use comments, and links in comments, to categorize sites as pornography. This means even a blogger who diligently refrains from any, er, PhysioProfisms, can be classed as offensive and filtered…
March 28, 2011
And I do mean Dreadful.
In honor of Zombiefest, which is a totally random blogholiday I made up, and all my awesome readers, the first person to email me their US mailing address gets a copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After. Wow - that took longer than I expected. :)
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;…
March 27, 2011
I have a copy of "Alternative Careers in Science: Leaving the Ivory Tower" (1998 edition) that I'll mail to the first person who emails me their (US) address. Sorry, It's taken!
March 26, 2011
I can think of a few answers, but the Name Inspector points out that naming food is one: apparently the Corn Refiners Association is trying to rename "high fructose corn syrup" "corn sugar."
it's gotten an especially bad rap lately, partly because it has a name so long and scientific sounding…
March 25, 2011
SOLAR from Ben Reubold on Vimeo.
Passed along by reader Miles, this visualization by Ben Reubold appears to depict a solar device patterned after a flower silently unfolding in space. I have no idea what the back story is, but it's very cool.
March 25, 2011
This is the biologist googly-eyed dazzled-with-biological-complexity effect that my friends and I used to describe as "because little fishes have eyes!" Be warned: once infected with the appreciation for biological beauty, there is no cure. :)
This is why I love xkcd. How is it possible I still…
March 25, 2011
A really interesting post from Deborah Blum on the "radium girls" who painted wristwatches in the 1920s - to fatal effect:
At the factory, the dial painters were taught to shape their brushes to a fine point with their lips, producing the sharp tip needed to paint the tiny numbers and lines of…
March 24, 2011
Christopher Reiger has a great post at Hungry Hyaena about public communication strategies used by scientific advocacy groups, and where artists should adopt similar strategies:
Most Americans see science as extraneous esoterica crafted by white-coated wonks. Similarly, contemporary art is seen as…
March 24, 2011
Reader Laura alerted me to a self-described "weird art & style blog" that many of you may enjoy - it's called Synesthesia Garden. A recent topic was custom lab-grown bone wedding rings (above):
Harriet Harriss, one of the participants, says: "I love the idea that it's precious only to us…