To a cell biologist, they’re everywhere, an integral part of lab life. Used willy-nilly for all sorts of experiments. Poked, prodded, manipulated—and eventually autoclaved, incinerated or bleached. [pullquote]HeLa cells are the ‘anti-cell'[/pullquote]
It’s not that I “don’t really care for music”—I do, very much—it’s more that I have a serious lack of talent, or indeed understanding. I can read music, and at a push tune up my lovely (but seriously underused) Tanglewood and crank out a recognizable tune, given some sheet music and a following wind. Music…
It started, as many good ideas do, in a pub. Unlike most such ideas, this one went somewhere, culminating in a launch party at the Free Word Centre in Faringdon last night. I mentioned the Geek Calendar three weeks ago—but that was before I knew I was getting an invite to rub shoulders with the…
For this week’s Culture Friday, Jenny Rohn tells us what it was like to rap with Baba Brinkman. The intersection of science and art is an uncertain landscape, treading a fine line between asthetics, entertainment, education and outreach. Scoring high marks in all four is a rare success – and its failures can make you…
What do Jonathan Ross, Brian Cox, Simon Singh and Ben Goldacre have in common? Along with comic book artists, television presenters, astrobiologists, science journalists, chess champions and even an ex-Member of Parliament, they’re all featured in the 2011 Geek Calendar, a celebration of British nerdiness (and no, I’m not going to get in the geeks…
I think he sits at that strange table of Eddington’s, that is not a table at all, but nodes and molecules pushing against molecules and nodes; —from At It, R. S. Thomas It’s poetry time. A few weeks ago Boing Boing started an open thread for phylogenetic haiku, with the stated aimed that “if you…
Interactivity at the Natural History Museum, London Bob’s article last week about the wonderful paintings at the Natural History Museum attracted a comment from ‘Mary B’ in Cambridge, Mass., telling us about the glass sculptures at Harvard’s Natural History Museum. There are some lovely photos of the sculptures, some of which it’s difficult to believe…
Natural history painting have always had a singular effect on me. I find them at once relaxing and exhilarating. There’s something special about viewing scenes rendered by people who may have been among the first to record them with life-like fidelity. Feels like a special privilege. As you gear up (or wind down) for the…
Here in The Scientist‘s (virtual) office, we’re big fans of Isabella Rossellini, star of films such as Blue Velvet and Death Becomes Her. Recently, Rossellini has been directing and acting, and in a very strange and wonderful series called Green Porno:
One of my least favourite episodes in Australia was contracting pneumonia, with an associated pleural effusion. However, when they finally got around to sticking a tube into my chest to drain the fluid, I did manage to scrounge a CD full of MRI images of my own chest (I paid for them, after all). There’s…
