Tinselman

Cool Brains

Without a doubt, one of my favorite museums in all of Paris is the Galeries de Paléontologie et Anatomie comparée. I've really never seen anything like it... though I know it can't be true, there's a sensation it hasn't changed for 100 years, since it's inauguration for the Worlds Expo, in 1898.

Click on any of the photos to see them enlarged (via flickr), or, for more photos of the museum, go to this Flickr set.

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Russians Say Sky Dog Still Alive

Frank Sinatra sings of the stars (1943). Later, the Soviets show their stuff by sending a small, furry animal into space (1957)...

• Sputnik News Reel – 1957

Blue Dragon

photo copyright ©2007 the doubtful guest

Dragons really do live! Of course, all you long horse disbelievers will probably deny the existence of this little beauty (without a second's thought), but I assure you, it is oh-so-very real. And strange. And blue.

It's real name? The pelagic sea slug. For more info, and to look at larger versions of the above great photo, visit the doubtful guest on flickr.

(via: spy's spice)

Defining Our Future, Yesterday

On the left is HDTV. On the right, is the much beloved, piece-o'-crap TV (standard 525 scan lines). What's surprising is that these comparison photos were made in 1981, only a few years after HDTV was developed.

This fascinating Popular Science article (Nov,1981), describes the "cinerama-type" style HDTV sets and the "extraordinary clarity—more than five times the detail of television pictures you see on conventional home receivers."

Opportunity

This is definitely one of the coolest visuals Nasa has yet put together from Mars rover data. Wow! Now... when do we get to explore the crater ourselves, Google Earth style?

By the way, look closely. You just may get a glimpse of Mars rover opportunity.

• Flying over Opportunity's worksite - higher resolution
• Flying over Spirit's worksite

HANDLE WITH CARE!

I don't remember where I first ran across the glass creations of Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son, Rudolf (1857-1939). Their craftsmanship in glass was, and probably still remains, unparalleled.

(and yes, those plants are made out of glass).

Nancy Marie Brown explains a bit of their history in Flowers Out of Glass...

The flowers and plants they began making out of glass were not art, in intent, though breathtaking; they were a scientific undertaking: exquisitely accurate, exact in the replication of every last detail.

Prince Rohan displayed them in his castle. They were exhibited a year later at the Royal Botanical Garden in Dresden. Soon word of the Blaschkas' new work had crossed the Atlantic to George Lincoln Goodale at Harvard's Botanical Museum. Goodale had seen the squids and octopi. He decided to commission a set of glass flowers to be used as classroom aids, for teaching botany through a New England winter was the height of frustration. Specimens weren't readily to hand, except those pressed between herbarium sheets, the faded remains of glorious summer days spent botanizing. Flowers of glass would make an excellent alternative: "precise," "timeless," and "unparalleled..."

The Glass Flowers are now among the most popular exhibits at Harvard. TV and radio programs in four countries have featured them, as did a mystery novel in the Homer Kelly series by Jane Langton. Donna Tartt and other writers use the Glass Flowers as a Boston icon. Marianne Moore wrote a poem about them. And avant-garde photographer Christopher Williams turned them into symbols of human rights issues. Yet, "It took a long time for the faculty here to go from thinking about the Glass Flowers as a teaching collection to thinking about them as art objects," said Susan Rossi-Wilcox...

You can read more about their amazing history (which includes shipwrecks, Princes, and at least a few well-known historic figures) at the following pages...

• Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and Natural History (great)
• The Glass Aquarium
• Natural History Museum 
• Harvard's Glass Flowers

Or you can just blissfully gaze at these delightful glass jellyfish photos. 

Staring at the Sun

My colorized version of Lagault's photo.

So you say astronomy is no fun? Then take a look at this blow-your-mind shot of the space shuttle and space station, silhouetted by a gigantic yellow sphere (the sun).

Thierry Lagault, the amateur photographer who took the photo yesterday (in Normandy), definetely deserves a round of applause... what a photo!

(via: Wohba!)

Junk D.N.A.

Close up of hardware, looking down at DNA (click to enlarge)

My father in law was an inspiring guy to know. Most people are alive in the regular sense; he was alive in the sense that he squeezed every drop out of life. He was a professor and, though retired for a number of years, he felt an absolute bond with all students. Still at the age of 82, while hooked to portable oxygen, he continued to teach as a professor emeritus of physics at the University of Louisville. He continued teaching until just a couple of days before he died.

That was a little more than a year ago. Soon after that, my wife and I visited his small office at the school. His office expressed his varied eccentricities. No space was unfilled: piles of paper and stacks of books were shoved in every corner. There were strange silver bulbs, glass tubes, wires strewn across the room.

This DNA strand is one of the few things we took. I'd seen it once or twice before but my wife remembered it from time out of mind. As far as we know, her Dad threw it together from an odd assortment of junk – golf balls, garden hose, wire, brackets and whatever else he managed to scrounge up – and from all this he created his own DIY DNA: an inexpensive prop for his lectures.

It's strange (but not surprising) how this aged piece of what might be considered junk has taken on a sculptural quality here in our house. It seems to represent him so perfectly.  We can't help but see this aged, colorful, quirky DNA strand and see him.

• Low Resolution DNA Strand
• Med. Resolution DNA Strand
• Large Resolution DNA Strand

(With Firefox, zoom in on larger resolutions)

(cc) Robyn Miller, Some rights reserved.