Wise old recycled owl

Posted on January 26, 2008 by cicada

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Great Horned Owl
Kathryn Spence

Kathryn Spence’s owl sculptures work on several levels at once. This Great Horned Owl is a Lear of birds, ragged but regal. Like an impressionist painting, up close, he’s a bundle of discordant rags – old clothes, bits of recycled cloth – but back away and the illusion of life kicks in. The tilt of his head is pure predator.

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The most delicious thing to me is that a recycled cloth owl is cuddly and cozy (mmmm, soft), but also a brutal representation of the biological food chain. His flesh is made of shredded Beanie Babies! Which means he’s just like a real owl – or any carnivore. We’re Nature’s recycling.

More of Kathryn Spence’s work is at the Stephen Wirtz gallery.

via ULLABENULLA

Posted in Artists & Art, Biology | 2 Comments

Empty houses, blind eyes

Posted on January 21, 2008 by cicada

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Photo by Eugene Richards
From “North Dakota, The Emptied Prairie”
National Geographic Magazine

These photos bear an eerie, graceful, painful resemblance to the country where I grew up.
The year I finished high school, my parents left “town” (7,000 people) for twenty acres outside a decaying farming village of 50 people (more or less). Over time, the village lost its school, its church, its general store, and its gas station; the only amenities left behind in 1994 were a post office and a cafe.

I always thought it was a terribly sad place. It lies on a high plateau, with little to break the weather. In the winter, snowdrifts render the whole country featureless and disorienting. In the summer, wind ripples incessantly across the empty fields, pries wide the gaping sideboards of empty houses, erodes gentle mounds that one only recognizes as former farmsteads because they’re covered with tenacious yellow roses.

Supposedly, an entire neighboring community has completely vanished in this way, plowed under wheat and shrouded in roses. In the early morning, coming home from the night shift at the vegetable packing plant, I used to take random dirt roads through the farmland, looking for this ghost town. I never found it, but then I’m not sure I would have known if I did.

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Photo by Eugene Richards
via

Posted in Artists & Art, Department of the Drama, Destinations, Photography | 6 Comments

Seriously, now. . .

Posted on January 19, 2008 by cicada

OK – enough frivolous posts for the moment. There’s an election in the offing, and I want to address those of you who care whether the next President is science-and-technology-literate. Which should be ALL of you, right?

Sciencedebate 2008 (of which I am a supporter, along with a zillion other science bloggers) wants to give us an answer to that question. Express your support here, or if you have questions, listen to this NPR interview with Shawn Otto about the process of setting the debate up. Seriously, kids. Support this one.

Unfortunately, until a science-centric debate materializes, you have to retro-engineer the candidates’ science platforms based on what they have said and done in other contexts. SEA (Scientists and Engineers for America; yeah, I’m also a member of this) is contributing to this effort via the SHARP Network (Science, Health, and Related Policies), a Wiki-based platform for tracking the candidates’ positions on key issues. It’s a great idea, but as they note, Wikipedia often falls victim to partisan sabotage, so I’m holding my breath to see if they can keep it cleaned up. If you like Wiki-ing, consider helping out.

Finally, AAAS also has an S&T election website, which although not a Wiki, does cite Wikipedia (is that okay with everyone now? I missed the memo.)

Darn, I wish I was at the science blogging conference right now! Hopefully next year. . .  have fun in NC, y’all.

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Science, Science in culture & policy | Comments Off

Tentacle Arm

Posted on January 19, 2008 by cicada

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What more is there to say, really? It’s a tentacle arm.

A friend of mine told me I need “at least two” of these. . .

. . . at LEAST two???? What??

And once the first one’s on, how do you get the second on. . . ?  Do I want to know?

Tentacle Arm from GaiaStore.com

Posted in Cephalopodmania, Conspicuous consumption, Frivolity | 1 Comment

Who’s your daddy? Ask PCR

Posted on January 17, 2008 by cicada

Ah, I have the warm fuzzies now for my eppendorfs and thermal cycler. . . but I’m sure it will pass.

Posted in Biology, Film, Video & Music, Frivolity, Science | Comments Off

Because science teachers don’t get enough respect

Posted on January 17, 2008 by cicada

FYI: AAAS will award a $1,000 prize this year to a high school science teacher, for “leadership in science education”. Candidates must be nominated by their chairs or administrators, and must complete an application by March 2:

Entries must be able to demonstrate the results of an inventive teaching strategy designed to encourage a diverse range of students to become motivated, successful learners of the ideas and skills that are critical to science literacy.

Reading about their 2007 winner, chemistry teacher Chris Kennedy, made me smile – and miss teaching.

More info: AAAS Leadership in Science Education Prize For High School Teachers

Posted in Education, Science | Comments Off

3-D Textual Spirographs!

Posted on January 17, 2008 by cicada

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. . . or something like that. Courtesy of JK Keller, these Volumetric Redundancies represent the number of times a word appears in a given text.

Red cubes represent non-unique words, with size depending on number of occurrences; blue cubes are unique words. The X-axis represents the order of the text, from beginning (top) to end (bottom). The diameter of the column is determined (somehow) by length of paragraph.

As to why The Art of War looks so different, I can only guess it’s because it’s shorter, and thus the blue cubes – which ought to be equivalent in size in each text, since they represent single occurrences – appear bigger merely because we’re zoomed in on a smaller virtual object. But really, I have no clue. They’re just real durn pretty, ain’t they?

Via Moon River

Posted in Books, Frivolity, Words | 3 Comments

This would be my third-favorite show

Posted on January 17, 2008 by cicada

Geoffrey Chaucer is back on his blog after a hiatus almost as long as Lost‘s, with a comment on the television writers’ strike. He proposes some shows of his own which sound a tad familiar, perhaps – but in literature, what is wholly new? And the first proposal in particular is oh so tempting:

Sectes in the Borough: This hot and explicit showe wil handle religious dissent yn a more free and open way than evere bifor. Carrie Baxter is an underground writer of Lollard tractes in Norwich and the oonly thynge she loveth moore than questioning the validitie of the institucional church is her III best freendes: sexie Samantha, who seduceth many a preeste, intellectuale Charlotte, who speketh out ayeinst women being unable to preche, and Miranda Kempe, who receiveth visiouns from God. Thei meet every week to rede of the Bible in Ynglisshe and talke smacke about pilgrymage sites. Carrie is alwey resistinge the temptaciouns to submit to the orthodoxie of the Church, personifyed by Archbishop Thomas Arundel, whom she clepeth “Mr. Big.” (Paraventure for a cabel network, by cause main-streme audiences aren not redi for frank depicciouns of heretical practice?)

Cashmere Mafia begone! What could a heretical city girl enjoy more, than talking smack about pilgrimage sites? (If “pilgrimage sites” means “happy hour venues,” and I think it must, I did that every day last week!)

Posted in Blogs and Blogging, Frivolity, Littademia | 2 Comments

The Bowes Silver Swan

Posted on January 16, 2008 by cicada

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The Bowes Swan; silver fish detail
from timetravel-Britain.com

There is something primally captivating about the successful reproduction of life in art or technology. The Bowes Silver Swan is a wonderful example, dating back to the 18th century. To the accompaniment of a tinkling music box, the life-size swan moves its head, preens, and appears to catch a silver fish (which is really concealed in its throat) out of the glass “stream” it rests in.

This YouTube video captures the swan in surprisingly good resolution, but even better, it captures the genuine childlike enthusiasm of the rapt museum-goers watching the swan’s performance. Apparently we haven’t been totally jaded by CGI – not yet, at least!

John Bowes bought the Swan for 200 pounds in 1872; the Swan is first recorded in an account from 1773, and was made by, I kid you not, someone named John Joseph Merlin. Normally, the Swan performs once or twice daily at the Bowes Museum, but on Friday, Jan. 25, 2008 it will be taken off display for an expert analysis of its three clockwork mechanisms. It is expected to return to catching fish the following day.

Ironically, real swans eat insects, tadpoles, and vegetation, but not fish, so far as I know.

Posted in Biology, Museum Lust, Retrotechnology, Wonder Cabinets | 6 Comments

Virginia battles indecent trucks

Posted on January 16, 2008 by cicada

Tragically, the epidemic of hanging artificial genitalia from truck hitches has spread, prompting still more state legislation, this time in Virginia (as I posted in 2007, Maryland already tried to ban them).

We are a really bizarre species to find this sort of thing amusing, aren’t we?  I’m at a loss whether to be exasperated that artificial body parts are seen as so horrible and indecent they must be banned, or to be exasperated that people think putting artificial body parts on machinery is funny. Trucks don’t even reproduce sexually. Duh.

Posted in Frivolity | 5 Comments