My New Favorite New Artist Ever For Right Now

Winter Plant Composition I

Jennifer Scott McLaughlin

I gasp at every work.

Your Gods Are...With All Due Respect...Pathetic

Biologists have constructed a usable genome and inserted it into a genome-less bag on potential cellular activity.

And it reproduced.

All the gods of humanity weep, for we are closer to needing them less.

Who was closer to the truth: the religious who believed that lightning was the arrows of Zeus or the philosopher who honestly acknowledged that lightning was inexplicable?

Gods explain nothing, but they excuse every kind of debase human psychology and behavior. Can we, as a species, self-actualize just long enough to stop our self-destruction?

Another Link Found

Marvel at your ancestor, and at the genetic and natural processes that work on we the living

Of course, The Discovery Institute provides many superstition-based excuses for embracing their obscurantisms.

Fancies and excuses are the weapons of the deluded and simple. They call their cosmic conceits "family values." To reject them is your primate, individual right. And reject them you should...

The Greatest Exhibits I've Ever Seen

Chicago's Field Museum: Evolving Planet.

Go there if you can.

Outbreak!

Swine flu is spreading. Bad.

"We are worried and because we are worried, we are working aggressively on a number of fronts," said Schuchat, the interim deputy director for the CDC's science and public health program.

"It is clear that this is widespread. And that is why we have let you know that we cannot contain the spread of this virus."

Wash your hands and avoid people at all costs. And if someone coughs around you, hold your breath and run in the other direction.

For the readers of this blog, that means business as usual...

AKA: Waterbears

Tardigrades In Space (TARDIS)

Tardigrades In Space or "TARDIS" is the first research project to evaluate the ability of tardigrades to survive under open space conditions. TARDIS is one of the projects within the Biopan-6 research platform provided by European Space Agency (ESA), and will be sent into space with the russian FOTON-M3 mission.

Tardigrades Goldstein Lab, UNC, Chapel Hill

Reflections On The (Evolved) Eye

Scientists discovered that the brownsnout spookfish, a deep-ocean denizen, uses mirrors to focus its eyes.

"In nearly 500 million years of vertebrate evolution, and many thousands of vertebrate species living and dead, this is the only one known to have solved the fundamental optical problem faced by all eyes - how to make an image - using a mirror," said Professor Julian Partridge, of Bristol University, who conducted the tests.

This unique system was adapted to enhance the fish's ability to detect bioluminescence in the abyss. Remarkable...

For GateTree.... (hands off the pets, Dr. Frankenstein)

Biohacking: The Open Wetware Future
Ronald Bailey | December 26, 2008, 11:40am

Much of the infotech revolution erupted from garages (Hewlett Packard, Apple, Google), and the same thing is beginning to happen with biotech. Biohacking is in its infancy, but the tools and knowledge to make novel organisms is becoming cheaper and more widely available all the time. Open wetware is the wave of the biotech future. For example, the Associated Press reports....

New Old Ant Found

Of course, EO Wilson is pleased.

So Pretty

New game: name that [very, very pretty] biological function.

No gods needed.