Archives

Art

My Guide To The Doctors

I made this for my wife

I made this tongue-in-cheek guide for my wife’s amusement.

When I was a new fan of the British science fiction television show Doctor Who, I had a lot of trouble keeping straight all of the incarnations of the Doctor. This was because the Doctor had the annoying habit of regenerating into a different actor every so often as the series progressed over the course of 50 years. So I started giving each one of the incarnations a nickname just for my own personal use.

My conversations with my wife, Tamara, who is far more knowledgeable about all things Whovian than me, would then go something like this:

“Doesn’t the First Doctor look like Franz Liszt?”
“You mean William Hartnell?”
“I guess so. Which doctor is “Patches”?”
“What?”
“You know, the one that dresses like Patches the Clown.”
“You mean the Sixth Doctor, Colin Baker? And he does not!”

Eventually, like most things that I do in our marriage, her exasperation turned into amusement:

“So “Celery Man’s” daughter actually married “Lord Business” in real life?”
“Ha. Yes, the daughter of Peter Davison, who played the Fifth Doctor, married David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor. Her name is Georgia Moffett. You need to write this stuff down.”

She has been bugging me to make an image guide listing all of my nicknames for her Doctor Who Fans Unite fan club, so here it is. Feel free to copy it and share it. My fan-made guide is under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 license, so feel free to copy, modify, and share it so long as you give credit and it’s not for commercial gain. After all, I do not own the images and I am using them for fun as a fan.

Whether you are a fan of the older series or of the new, check out the Doctor Who Fans Unite meetup if you want to be a part of a local group who love the Doctor in all of his various forms.

Periodic Window Of Elements

My wife was dropping off our son Alton at his summer drawing class downtown and she saw this displayed in one of the campus buildings at a local private school. The periodic window of elements?

IMG_4234

Anatomies

I was familiar with Hugh Aldersey-Williams’ previous book Periodic Tales, so when I saw his new book Anatomies at our neighborhood library I was eager to read it. This time, the author offers his entertaining blend of science, history, and culture on the subject of the human body.

Aldersey-Williams tells an engaging narrative that spans from ancient body art to modern plastic surgery. He witnesses the dissection of a human body, tries his hand at drawing in an art class, and visits a morgue. His stories do not just come from science and medicine, but also from the works of artists, writers, and philosophers throughout history: Rembrandt to Frankenstein, Descartes to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like a good friend having a conversation over coffee, he shows how attitudes toward the human body are as varied as our postmodern culture, as he talks about fig leaves, shrunken heads, Einstein’s brain, bloodletting, tattooing, and fingerprinting, as well as other things.

I bought a copy for my own library.

Nobel Prize 2013

"Prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind."

“Prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”

The 2013 Nobel Prize awards for chemistry, physiology or medicine, and physics were recently announced as they are every year at around this time and posted here.

The Nobel Prize awards were established in 1895 according to the will of Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor Alfred Nobel and endowed by his estate. Other than the three natural science awards, Alfred also wanted awards for literature and peace. All five Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. In 1968, Sweden’s central bank established and endowed the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their 300th anniversary. This prize for economics in honor of Alfred Nobel was first awarded the following year.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences grants the prizes for chemistry and physics (and economics), while the Karolinska Institute grants the prize for physiology or medicine.

The Nobel Prize awards are presented in Stockholm, Sweden (except for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo, Norway) every year on December 10, which is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

The Nobel Prize science medals were designed by Swedish engraver Erik Lindberg in 1902. The Latin inscription on the medals is

Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes

and can be translated as And all who found new arts, to make man’s life more blest or fair. The inscription is from Book 6, line 663 of Vergil’s Aeneid:

And poets, of whom the true-inspired song deserved Apollo’s name;
and all who found new arts, to make man’s life more blest or fair;
(translation by Theodore C. Williams)

For the chemistry and physics medals, Erik Lindberg chose to show Nature being unveiled by the Genius of Science. For the medal for physiology or medicine, Erik chose to show the Genius of Medicine gathering water to quench the thirst of a sick child.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Chemistry: Genius of Science unveiling Nature

The 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to Université de Strasbourg scientist Martin Karplus, Stanford University School of Medicine scientist Michael Levitt, and University of Southern California at Los Angeles scientist Arieh Warshel for the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Physiology or Medicine: Genius of Medicine quenching the thirst of the Ill

The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Yale University scientist James Rothman, University of California at Berkeley scientist Randy Schekman, and Stanford University scientist Thomas Südhof for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Physics: Genius of Science unveiling Nature

The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to Université Libre de Bruxelles scientist François Englert and University of Edinburgh scientist Peter Higgs for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Nobel Prize 2012

"Prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind."

“Prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit to mankind.”

The 2012 Nobel Prize awards for chemistry, physiology or medicine, and physics were recently announced as they are every year at around this time and posted.

The Nobel Prize awards were established in 1895 according to the will of Swedish chemist, engineer, and inventor Alfred Nobel and endowed by his estate. Other than the three natural science awards, Alfred also wanted awards for literature and peace. All five Nobel Prizes were first awarded in 1901. In 1968, Sweden’s central bank established and endowed the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their 300th anniversary. This prize for economics in honor of Alfred Nobel was first awarded the following year.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences grants the prizes for chemistry and physics (and economics), while the Karolinska Institute grants the prize for physiology or medicine.

The Nobel Prize awards are presented in Stockholm, Sweden (except for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is presented in Oslo, Norway) every year on December 10, which is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.

The Nobel Prize science medals were designed by Swedish engraver Erik Lindberg in 1902. The Latin inscription on the medals is

Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes

and can be translated as And all who found new arts, to make man’s life more blest or fair. The inscription is from Book 6, line 663 of Vergil’s Aeneid:

And poets, of whom the true-inspired song deserved Apollo’s name;
and all who found new arts, to make man’s life more blest or fair;
(translation by Theodore C. Williams)

For the chemistry and physics medals, Erik Lindberg chose to show Nature being unveiled by the Genius of Science. For the medal for physiology or medicine, Erik chose to show the Genius of Medicine gathering water to quench the thirst of a sick child.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Chemistry: Genius of Science unveiling Nature

The 2012 Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to Duke University Medical Center scientist Robert Lefkowitz and Stanford University School of Medicine scientist Brian Kobilka for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Physiology or Medicine: Genius of Medicine quenching the thirst of the Ill

The 2012 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded to Gurdon Institute scientist Sir John Gurdon and Kyoto University scientist Shinya Yamanaka for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.

"And all who found new arts, to make man's life more blest or fair"

Physics: Genius of Science unveiling Nature

The 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded to Collège de France scientist Serge Haroche and National Institute of Standards and Technology scientist David Wineland for ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum systems.