Deadly plastic ocean.
Discovery brings up the grim possibility that we’re all doomed to die in an invisible toxic wave: Patterns in ocean currents create conglomerations of swirling […]
Science Art: What can make any tape recorder sound a little more like an Ampex?, 1963.
This is an ad for Ampex tape from the August 1963 edition of Electronics Australia, a magazine (which I found o…
Read moreScience Art: Cygnus region in emission lines, 2025
This is a photo of space with a bit of color amplification so we can tell what we’re looking at. Nebulas on the…
Read moreScience Art: Heart apical two-chamber view myocardial regions, by Patrick Lynch
This is an illustration of a particular perspective in a cardiac echocardiogram. An “apical view” is one of the…
Read moreSONG: Sleeping Cathedrals
SONG: “Sleeping Cathedrals”. (OGG version here.)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “World’s biggest whale g…
Read moreScience Art: Build Your Own Lie Detector, 1955
This is the opener for an article in the May 1955 issue of Popular Electronics. You can read the article here, …
Read moreScience Art: Collops bipunctatus, U, Back, SD, Pennington County, 2013
This image of a Collops bipunctatus, a beetle from the Melyridae family, was taken by Sam Droege from flowers …
Read moreWalk, don’t crawl.
Scientific American resets my priorities (or at least my metaphors) with anthropological research. You think in order to walk, you gotta crawl first? Not really: […]
Song: Close Your Eyes
SONG: “Close Your Eyes” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”) ARTIST: grant. SOURCE: “Scary music is spookier with eyes shut “, New Scientist, 28 […]
Science Art: Pioneer F/G Jupiter Missions, 1970.
Click to embiggen. A gorgeous vintage diagram of NASA’s deep space probe’s trajectory. The NASA image archive page says: This image, drawn in 1970, is […]
By definition, a crush must hurt…
The Telegraph provides insight into the genuine pain of a broken heart: Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has […]
We found the seeds.
Reuters carries the story of the first seed of life to be discovered on a comet: The latest findings add credence to the notion that […]
DNA evidence, made to order.
New York Times brings up the unsettling possibility that future biochemically savvy crooks will be capable of fudging DNA evidence: The scientists fabricated blood and […]
Smell of death.
Science Daily is hard boiled. As hard boiled as death. And death, they say, has a smell all its own: Speaking at the 238th National […]
Exposing the Seat of Wisdom.
The Times somewhat recently took a close look at our brains, particularly the parts that UC San Diego neurologists say are responsible for what we […]
Science Art: Baender der Hand, Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, 1932
These are the volumes of the hand, Babelfish tells me… although “baender” also means “bands” (like the FM radio band), or ligaments. Image found in […]
Monkey music.
OK, not monkeys, but apes, New Scientist says, have been caught making musical instruments: The orang-utan’s music, if you can call it that, is actually […]
Walking in the trees.
New Scientist goes out on a limb with a new study that hints that humans may have learned to walk up in the branches before […]
Wooden bones.
DiscoveryNews leaves me rooted to the spot with a sprouting fascination in the latest medical implant – bones made from wood: The researchers chose wood […]
Fixing Prisons.
PhysOrg has some advice from the American Psychological Association on how to make prisons actually work – by punishing less and keeping convicts from coming […]
Listen with your eyes closed.
New Scientist tells us the less you see, the more impact spooky music has: Sure enough, volunteers rated the eerie-sounding music – laced with staccato […]