Walk, 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: […]
Science Art: Beebe's Bathysphäre, 1934
This is an image of William Beebe’s bathysphere, as placed on Wikimedia Commons by ETH Bibliothek. It was creat…
Read moreScience Art: Power of RCA Electron Microscope, May 1955
These are diatoms, I think, seen by two different microscopes.
As the caption from Popular Electronics says…
Read moreScience Art: Red Pepper, 1910.
Red pepper (Cayenne pepper) will cure almost any case of la grippe within 24 hours, or so they say. At least no…
Read moreScience Art: Figs. 1315-1333 (Various rotary piston engines), 1890.
This is a page of figures from (deep breath) The engineer’s sketch-book of mechanical movements, devices, appli…
Read moreScience Art: Mirounga leonina 01, by H. Zell
This is a southern elephant seal, the largest marine mammal that isn’t a whale. They’re about twice as weighty …
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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 […]
Science Art: Some NACA Muroc personnel with snowman, 1949.
Click to embiggen In the good old days, computers looked like this. “Computer” was a job, not a tool, and it was often done by […]