jonathan.beaton » Photography

bornean beards

Jonathan — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 10:54:21 +0000

Borneo is home to the bearded pig. Via Tetrapod Zoology blog

saturn abides

Jonathan — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 23:56:49 +0000

If you look to the top left of Saturn, seen here eclipsing our sun, you can see the planet Earth as a tiny white dot in the background. The perfect order of such a massive object and the debris bound by it’s pull, and the perfection in turn of its alignment in space, is glorious.

From Nasa’s image of the day September 04 2011.

phone sex

Jonathan — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:58:01 +0000

polystyrene foam macaroon of ginger with smoked coconut butter

Jonathan — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:51:39 +0000

The restaurant El Bulli is cataloguing its dishes online. I can’t stop looking and marvelling.
Above: ‘polystyrene foam macaroon of ginger with smoked coconut butter’.

More here.

1896 olympic marathon

Jonathan — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 23:31:32 +0000

Wikipedia via kottke

people and places

Jonathan — Sat, 14 May 2011 12:27:53 +0000

Photo by Jasper James

bike chain wall clock

Jonathan — Sat, 14 May 2011 11:31:52 +0000

By Andreas Dober (via designsquish).

the tabacco hornworm & bioaccumulation

Jonathan — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:52:11 +0000

The Tabacco Hornworm or Manduca Sexta. Photo: Daniel Schwen.

Some animal species exhibit bioaccumulation as a mode of defense; by consuming toxic plants or animal prey, a species may accumulate the toxin which then presents a deterrent to a potential predator. One example is the tobacco hornworm, which concentrates nicotine to a toxic level in its body as it consumes tobacco plants. Poisoning of small consumers can be passed along the food chain to affect the consumers later on.

Other compounds that are not normally considered toxic can be accumulated to toxic levels in organisms. The classic example is of Vitamin A, which becomes concentrated in carnivore livers of e.g. polar bears: as a pure carnivore that feeds on other carnivores (seals), they accumulate extremely large amounts of Vitamin A in their livers. It was known by the native peoples of the Arctic that the livers should not be eaten, but Arctic explorers have suffered Hypervitaminosis A from eating the bear livers (and there has been at least one example of similar poisoning of Antarctic explorers eating husky dog livers). One notable example of this is the expedition of Sir Douglas Mawson, where his exploration companion died from eating the liver of one of their dogs.

Bioaccumulation @ wikipedia.

in brainbows

Jonathan — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 12:19:36 +0000

Proto magazine has some gorgeous images and representations of brain structures. Above is “Broad Overview [of a Human Hippocampus],” Tamily Weissman, Jeff Lichtman and Joshua Sanes, 2005.

It was the hippocampus as no one had ever seen it, illuminated in radiant hues. The image is called, aptly, a Brainbow, the colors serving a scientific purpose by highlighting specific neural structures. Yet their choice also reflects an artistic bent; scientists display the brain not the way it is (an undifferentiated gray) but the way we want to see it, “painted” with bursts of fluorescent color.

Below is “Olfactory Bulb [of a Dog],” by Camillo Golgi, pen and ink on paper, 1875.

More at Proto magazine.

an example of making anything signify anything

Jonathan — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:12:08 +0000

For much of his long and largely secret career, Colonel William F. Friedman kept a very special photograph under the glass plate that covered his desk. As desks go, this one saw some impressive action. By the time he retired from the National Security Agency in 1955, Friedman had served for more than thirty years as his government’s chief cryptographer, and—as leader of the team that broke the Japanese PURPLE code in World War II, co-inventor of the US Army’s best cipher machine, author of the papers that gave the field its mathematical foundations, and coiner of the very term cryptanalysis—he had arguably become the most important code-breaker in modern history.1

At first glance, the photo looks like a standard-issue keepsake of the kind owned by anyone who has served in the military. Yet Friedman found it so significant that he had a second, larger copy framed for the wall of his study. When he looked at the oblong image, taken in Aurora, Illinois, on a winter’s day in 1918, what did Friedman see? He saw seventy-one officers, soon to be sent to the war in France, for whom he had designed a crash course on the theory and practice of cryptology. He saw his younger self at one end of the mysterious group of black-clad civilians seated in the center; and at the other end he saw the formidable figure of George Fabyan, the director of Riverbank Laboratories in nearby Geneva, where Friedman found not just his cryptographic calling but also his wife Elizebeth (flanked here by two other instructors from Riverbank’s Department of Ciphers). And he saw a coded message, hiding in plain sight. As a note on the back of the larger print explains, the image is a cryptogram in which people stand in for letters; and thanks to Friedman’s careful positioning, they spell out the words “KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.” (Or rather they almost do: for one thing, they were four people short of the number needed to complete the “R.”)

The photograph was an enduring reminder, then, of Friedman’s favorite axiom—and he was so fond of the phrase that some fifty years later he had it inscribed as the epitaph on his tomb in Arlington National Cemetery.2 It captures a formative moment in a life spent looking for more than meets the eye, and it remained Friedman’s most cherished example of how, using the art and science of codes, it was possible to make anything signify anything.

More at cabinetmagazine via 3qd.

designer snowstorm

Jonathan — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 10:19:24 +0000

“A careful study of this internal structure not only reveals new and far greater elegance of form than the simple outlines exhibit, but by means of these wonderfully delicate and exquisite figures much may be learned of the history of each crystal, and the changes through which it has passed in its journey through cloudland. Was ever life history written in more dainty hieroglyphics!” (Duncan Blanchard, 1970)

There’s a whole database of meticulously catalogued snowflake forms at the Schwerdtfeger Library

(via designsquish).

look at the size of that sensor…!

Jonathan — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 08:48:56 +0000

The Phantom HD GOLD High Speed Digital Cinema Camera from Tom Guilmette on Vimeo.

Camera porn: Tom Guilmette explores the features of one of the most powerful (and expensive, at $2,500 to rent for a single day) digital movie cameras, the Phantom HD. (via petapixel)

basket and broom

Jonathan — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:05:24 +0000

This vendor doesn’t only sell baskets and brooms (箒), but also brushes, sieves (笊), ladles (杓) and more, all piled up high on his cart, called a daihachiguruma (大八車). To protect himself from the elements, he is wearing a broad bamboo hat, known as a bachoukasa (バッチョウ笠). Vendors like him used special calls to make potential customers aware of their arrival.

Photo of a basket and broom seller, Japan 1890s (via Old Photos of Japan).