I'd planned to be out of town at a conference all weekend, so I didn't make any arrangements to attend NYC's World Science Festival, which is being ably chronicled over at Science Fair. Alas, the events I'd wanted to see are sold out, and in my infinite wisdom the very time I'd chosen to drop by the Street Fair at Washington Square Park was during the thunderstorm. Still, it was cool to see the little kids with their galactic face paint--as well as the Park's atheist protestor who, given the immediate context, seemed a bit redundant.

On the way to the Fair, I had a religious experience of another sort, this time at the Madison Square Park Kids Fest. The event announced as I walked through: Karma Kids Story Time Yoga. Which got me thinking of the question I'd ask if I were a precocious Karma Kid--namely, if reality is an illusion, why do I have to go to school?

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"Take a hit of God instead--do you think you can handle the high?" Turns out this mock Christian come-on in the musical Reefer Madness may have hit on a deeper truth about religious ritual. From Science Daily:

Religious leaders have contended for millennia that burning incense is good for the soul. Now, biologists have learned that it is good for our brains too. An international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

"In spite of information stemming from ancient texts, constituents of Bosweilla had not been investigated for psychoactivity," said Raphael Mechoulam, one of the research study's co-authors. "We found that incensole acetate, a Boswellia resin constituent, when tested in mice lowers anxiety and causes antidepressive-like behavior. Apparently, most present day worshipers assume that incense burning has only a symbolic meaning."

Posted by jat at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today's featured jewelry comes to us thanks to TrendHunters, which also spotted the NipTuck app below. It's the OctopusMe tentacle ring, part of an extensive collection of octo-themed offerings. As OctopusMe explains, "The Octopus is a symbol of Transformation and Regeneration."

Posted by jat at 12:25 PM | Permalink

The divine proportion has been a making a mark in the beauty industry, as plastic surgeons have been using it to persuade people to use their services to express God's ideal of beauty. Now the hit TV show Nip Tuck makes it possible for everyone to fuel their insecurities by analyzing their photos on Facebook.

Of course, not everyone is sure that God approves of plastic surgery . . . well, except for the work that they need done.

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Well, at least that's what the cover seems to promise, anyway. If, as it seems, Doctor Who is a symbol of both religion and science, perhaps we've finally found a solution to the age-old conflict.

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Yesterday I dropped by Barnes & Noble to pick up some books for school. As usual I decided to scan through the science section to see if there were any new must-reads.

And that's when I noticed something interesting.

Used to be it was loaded with a mix of hard science (with, you know, math and stuff) and solid popularizations by science journalists. That's still there--well, at least the popularizations--but there's also something else. Books on quantum spirituality, Eastern religion and science, technology and faith, alchemy . . . all from small religious publishers, such as Shambhala Publications.

B&N isn't known for squandering shelf space, so I imagine that this must be what sells. As for what it means of the future of science in America, we'll have to see.

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When I was a tyke, I was positively addicted to How and Why Wonder Books. Today a series on evolutionary science wouldn't include a book on religious history--and, in evangelical circles, vice versa. I'm not sure that's progress.

Posted by jat at 09:14 PM | Permalink

A sacrificial zinc anode dies so steel ships can live. And as a bonus, the cross on this example makes it a perfect candidate for an inspirational poem to accompany a line of branded Christian merch. Or maybe the ASA could open a gift shop . . .

Via the inerrant and ineffable Science Fair!

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The first picture below is "DJ Lea Luna - Pretending To Be Holy & In Control of Some Unknown Something or Other . . . ." When I saw this on FFFFOUND it immediately looked familiar, and then it hit me--it's a front-view echo of the picture that Erich van Daniken claimed to depict an ancient Mayan astronaut.

Posted by jat at 12:38 AM | Permalink

The following Bell Labs movie--directed by Frank Capra!--was a reliable way for my elementary & middle school teachers to kill time. What I'd forgotten about this classic film since then was how religion dominates it early on--the biblical reference at the opening to offset the science & paganism, Mr. Sun as a bitterly nostalgic dethroned deity basking in the memory of past adulation, the use of Father Time's forward focus to skirt explaining creation before the film had a chance to establish its cultural cred. The overarching narrative frame is fantastic as well--the meta-play of fiction and fact, with the text escaping control of its authors, illustrates a point with which I've annoyed any number of graduate seminars: there's precious little in postmodernism that hadn't already appeared in cartoons.

Anyway kids, roll up your nap blanket and get your milk & cookies, 'cuz here he is . . . Our Mr. Sun!

Posted by jat at 11:40 AM | Permalink

Sellers call this a "Fibonacci Fractal Chaos Math Pewter Pendant". But wait--isn't it tied by a string? So it really should be the Fibonacci Fractal Chaos Math String Theory Pewter Pendant. And the big circles turn into little ones . . . hmmm . . . maybe it's the Evodevo Fibonacci Fractal Chaos Math String Theory Pewter Pendant.

I'm all for the integration of science and design, but ya gotta be careful to do more than just follow fads.

Posted by jat at 11:17 AM | Permalink

Sustainability and spirituality--fossil jewelry has it all:

Our trilobite jewelry was created by taking a mold from actual trilobite fossils. Fossils are worn as amulets to promote longevity, for protection, and to increase spiritual energy. Fossils are symbols of time, eternity, evolution, and represent how nothing in nature is wasted.

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One old model of secularization theory posits that an abundance of choices in the spiritual marketplace can create a spiritual aporia--there are so many viable choices that it can be hard to pick just one, thereby leaving us with nothing.

Whatever the value of that theory in understanding society, it sure applies to this site in regard to the C.B. Gardner Witches Mill Collection that's been selling on eBay, which has so many cool pieces that I've been dithering over which one to post. Be sure to click over to another of my favorite daily reads--AltReligion--for the scoop.

Why did I pick the image above? Well, it's a magic square, a wonderful example of a spiritual icon now reincarnated in a pop secular form. For an illustrated history of the link between magic squares and sudoku, check out this article from Plus as well as this fun page from EMAS Portsmouth, which integrates mathematical training with cultural traditions.

Posted by jat at 12:24 PM | Permalink

"Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen."

Check out The Land Salmon for the original pic and more cool Hawking quotes.

Posted by jat at 09:45 PM | Permalink

Angela Gunn is a science writer whose informative and engaging Tech Space blog (inter alia) has been a daily read for a while now, not least of all because she has a sharp eye for cool stuff like what you see pictured above: an ID bracelet with a name encoded into DNA. Marshall McLuhan liked to quip that name is fate--our name, like any other medium, shapes who we are--but this takes it to a whole new level!

Posted by jat at 08:02 PM | Permalink

Although one might be tempted to think of mathematics as a wholly secular discipline, historically that's far from accurate.  

Today we have two different but essentially related perspectives on spirituality and math.  Pictured above:  math majors and professors from Asbury College.  On the "First Friday" of every month, they get together in thematically related costumes and jewelry, such as in the Star Wars pic above.  One math student explains her devotion as follows:

“I lot of people think I’m crazy for it,” said Kelly Christensen, a junior mathematics major from Canfield, Ohio. “They say, ‘Do you really enjoy pain?’ It is hard, but we like to think of math as the language of God. Mathematics can be seen throughout creation.”

Of course, some people extend the creation metaphor to the fullest.  Sharon Robbert, a professor of mathematics at Trinity Christian College, has placed on the web an array of math-related meditations.  Under such categories as "multivariable calculus" and "discrete structures" you can find such devotionals as "Secant Lines and Sanctification" and "God's Zero Tolerance for Error."

Posted by jat at 10:52 AM | Permalink

From the New Scientist "Flirt with Science" competition, in which readers suggested science-based pick-up lines:

"Looking at you, creationists may have a point after all."

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Honorable mention in the 2007 Benoit Mandelbrot Fractal Art Contest.

Posted by jat at 09:09 PM | Permalink

Over the past year, campaigns for internet censorship and intelligent design have not exactly helped foster an image of religion--and in particular the Christian faith--as a progressive force in technological advancement.

But it was not always thus.

Case in point: the world's first telephone book. Which, truth to tell, was just a telephone page, listing everyone who had a telephone connection in New Haven, Connecticut.

Loke closely and you'll see that the first person listed is the Rev. John E. Todd, pastor of the New Haven Church of the Redeemer. This prime page space was not given to Todd out of respect for his pastoral office. It's actually a nod to one of the weird facts of telephone history: for a while the good Reverend was the only person in the city willing to get one.

Really. The company distributed 1,000 flyers and was rewarded with only one subscriber, the aforementioned Rev. Todd. Thus encouraged the entrepreneurs pressed on, adding some doctors, a few dry goods merchants, a couple of stables (the transportation industry!) and the police. Cutting-edge journalists--the Yale News and the New Haven Register--and even a lawyer also got into the act.

The world's first commercial dedicated telephone exchange would be sustainable after all.

But it might have never happened if a forward-thinking pastor hadn't had pledged his faith in the future of an untried technology. Instead of imploding as Bell's folly, by March 1st, the phone company would have enough subscribers that it could afford to have operators make connections all night.

So remember--the next time you make a 3 a.m. booty call or phone a 1-900 sex chat, you can thank the Church of the Redeemer.

Posted by jat at 07:13 PM | Permalink

Y'know, I think I tripped over this woman yesterday. @#%^?! meditators in Times Square! Via TechSpace:

Click To Play

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About a block from my office is St. Paul's Chapel, "The Little Chapel That Stood" as the Twin Towers collapsed behind it. One day shortly after I started my current gig I popped in for a moment of reflection and discovered, much to my surprise, that the sanctuary has been converted into an all-out 9/11 tourist attraction. There's not just an exterior display noting the chapel's experience of 9/11; the inside is a veritable 9/11 pilgrimage site, replete with sacred relics and . . .

A gift shop.

Talk to folks who live in the City about the street vendors who surround the pit--as it's not so affectionately known around here by folks weary of the endless construction--and you'll inevitably hear a fair stream of invective against the commodification of 9/11 by soulless jackals profiting from tragedy.

But is it any different when the seller is a church?

Arguably yes, judging from the lack of any objections among the Chapel's visitors. Shoot, lack of objection is an understatement--today I had to stand in line to just to get a look at the display case, and to my left was another line snapping up literally boxfuls of the "The Little Chapel That Stood" children's book personally autographed by the author. The store is a testament to the power of transformative design--a vendor on the street is merely selling things, but a shop in a shrine is not commerce.

Posted by jat at 02:22 PM | Permalink

Mother issues are a sign of a healthy child. That, at least, is the conclusion of a recent university study, which found that children who openly resist their mother's command reflect an emerging mature sense of self. Children who merely comply, however, exhibit a lack of self-confidence and a proclivity toward depression, traits likely to have unfortunate ramifications throughout their adult lives.

Which raises an intriguing question about what the jewelry pictured here represents more generally about religious culture. It's a pendant of the Blessed Mother from the Synchronicity Foundation, a new age faith led by an initiated Vedic monk named Master Charles. MC claims to be experiencing unique visions of this divine figure, the maternal spirit that animates the world.

As Ellen Dissanayake astutely illustrates in Art and Culture, religion tends to embody values of maternal care-taking that have a distinct evolutionary advantage, particularly the importance of transcending a narrow sense of self. As intrinsic to our development as this is, what should we make of those who elevate the nurturing mother metaphor to the highest form of good? Are they creating a religion where the followers never grow up?

Posted by jat at 01:23 PM | Permalink

The cross pictured above is not sold in any store. It is the work of a Texarkana prisoner, one of many made and either worn by the inmates or given away as gifts--sometimes even to the sheriff and their jailers.

This article from a local paper points to why these religious crafts are so meaningful to those who make them. From the standpoint of modern network analysis and cognitive science, prison is arguably one of the most least effective ways to go about reducing crime. Detachment and sensory deprivation breed social dysfunction. The culture of religious crafts in this Texarkana prison, however, engages the inmates at the most fundamental level of what it means to be human: they connect, transform and transcend.

Posted by jat at 10:54 PM | Permalink

Elsewares recently featured this, the latest necklace in Anne Kiel's Curios series: "Meditation," a "reflective and tranquil image" of a person communing with nature. The light in the horizon; the spiraling tree of knowledge and life--the symbolic resonance is clear.

Yet nature has not always been viewed as a source of transcendental insight. Contrast the appealing imagery of "Meditation" with that of Tennyson's famous turn of phrase from In Memoriam:

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed.

Perhaps our image of natural harmony is as much a work of creative transformation as the city and machine.

Posted by jat at 11:43 AM | Permalink

A Christianity Today blog entry describes the Virginia Tech shooter as someone who left behind his family's Christian faith: 

McClatchy reporters talked with Young-Hwan Kim, president of the school's Korean Campus Crusade for Christ chapter. "No one knew him," Kim said. "We had no contact throughout four years. It's amazing. We could not reach out to him." It wasn't for lack of trying, Kim said.  Members of Korean Campus Crusade repeatedly invited him to meetings, he said, but Cho wouldn't even provide personal contact information.

New York Times op-ed writer David Brooks on the cognitive science of evil:

We’re never going back. We’re not going to put our knowledge of brain chemistry or evolutionary psychology back in the bottle. It would be madness to think Cho Seung-Hui could have been saved from his demons with better sermons.

Posted by jat at 11:12 AM | Permalink

Readers familiar with Genesis 25-7 will no doubt recall the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob had smooth skin; Esau looked like he was covered in red fur. Their mom favored Jacob, and the rest is history.

Why do I mention this? Today, Andrew Sullivan links to a report on a new scientific article that offers a new scientific explanation of why humans are not furry like other mammals. The family drama sounds all too familiar:

Harris' theory is that this kind of parental selection may have been an important force in evolution. If Stone Age people believed that hairless babies were more attractive than hairy ones, this could explain why humans are the only apes lacking a coat of fur. Harris suggests that Neanderthals must have been furry in order to survive the Ice Age. Our species would have seen them as "animals" and potential prey. Harris’ hypothesis continues that Neanderthals went extinct because human ancestors ate them.

Ouch.

Posted by jat at 01:54 PM | Permalink

New Scientist this week has a stellar (literally) cover article this week on the controversy over whether the universe is fractal:

Cosmology is founded on the assumption that when you look at the universe at the vastest scales, matter is spread more or less evenly throughout space. Cosmologists call this a "smooth" structure. But a small band of researchers, led by statistical physicist Luciano Pietronero of the University of Rome and the Institute of Complex Systems, Italy, argues that this assumption is at odds with what we can see. Instead they claim that the galaxies form a structure that isn't smooth at all: some parts of it have lots of matter, others don't, but the matter always falls into the same patterns, in large and small versions, at whatever scale you look. In other words, the universe is fractal.

Click the link above for more.   And if this theory's true, there's no better way to be in harmony with the cosmic sphere than by wearing fractal jewelry, such as this belt buckle by Allegria Designs.

Posted by jat at 12:55 AM | Permalink

The chart pictured above may represent one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 21st (or even the 20th) century:  the first solid evidence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle "thought to give everything in the universe its mass."

As this article in the New Scientist relates, the possibility that we may have proof of the existence of the Higgs boson has the science world buzzing.  The story unfolded last January, after John Conway presented his discovery on a physics blog and an Italian scientist blogged about data that also seemed to point toward the Higgs boson.  At present the statistical analysis doesn't allow formally classifying it as the God particle--there is at a present a 1 in 50 chance that the data reflects a random fluctuation, whereas a particle is typically recognized only when there's a 1 in 10 million chance.  Still,

"It's like the first few pages of a thriller," says (Oxford's John) March-Russell. "You get the first little hint that something strange is happening and that things are not quite what they seem. Then the evidence accumulates. We are turning the first few pages of this very interesting story."

Which got me thinking.  Nowhere in the New Scientist story do you see scientists hammering John Conway or the rest of the Fermilab/CERN teams for blogging about their discovery, for not waiting for peer review or for presenting a hypothesis based on what they admit is, if it stops here, a statistically insignificant deviation from the norm.  Everyone involved, even the skeptics, sees the observed data as something that merits further inquiry, and so the discussion proceeds.   

There's a lesson here for efforts to dismiss the latest inquiries into the Talpiot tomb as per se unscholarly or statistically irrelevant.  Whatever the ultimate determination, calling attention to a suggestive pattern & putting the data out for the world to examine is not inherently irresponsible.  It's what advancing knowledge is all about, especially in a field of study where some say a certain phenomenon is impossible. 

The supersymmetric Higgs, the ivory billed woodpecker, Jesus bones or life on Mars--"as with many groundbreaking discoveries, the initial evidence raises more questions than it answers."  But we'll never have the answers if we beat down those who dare to ask.

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A couple days ago I featured Evolving God, an engaging new book on the origins of religious sensibility.  Here's an interesting Chicago Sun Times interview with the book's author, Barbara J. King:

From what deep emotional well does the human impulse for religion spring?

Anthropologist Barbara J. King, author of the new book Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion, argues that religion is rooted in our social and emotional connections with each other -- connections that existed even in our ancient ancestors millions of years ago.

Today, she says, we can see and study these "foundations of religious behavior" -- qualities such as empathy and imagination -- in chimpanzees and gorillas. These distant cousins, she says, are "pretty good stand-ins" for our early human ancestors."

In a conversation with Salon writer Steve Paulson, King singled out a remarkable moment at Brookfield Zoo on Aug. 16, 1996, as evidence for her theory. Here's the exchange:

Q. Are chimpanzees and gorillas empathic creatures?

A. Yes, they are. Many people may remember an incident that happened 10 years ago at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. A female called Binti Jua was sitting with her gorilla family when a toddler tumbled into that enclosure, to the real horror of onlookers. Here's this little kid lying on the pavement with these large gorillas. Binti Jua had an infant on her body. She walked over, picked up this human boy, carried him to the zoo staff and got him to safety. This has been interpreted by primatologists as empathy. She's a mother who had youngsters; she saw that there was a hurt child and lots of very upset adults; and she solved the problem. There are also lots of examples in wild chimpanzees

Q. Tell me about one of those stories from Africa.

A. A chimpanzee female named Tina was killed by a bite to the neck by a leopard. She had been living in a community of chimpanzees for quite a long time. The group didn't just pull at her body or tug at it or ignore it. Rather, the dominant male of the group sat with her body for five hours. He kept away all the other infants and protected the body from any harm. With one exception. He let through the younger brother of Tina, a 5-year-old called Tarzan. That's the only youngster who was allowed to come forward. And the youngster sat at his sister's side and pulled on her hand and touched her body. I think this is not just a random occurrence. The dominant male was able to recognize the close emotional bond between Tina and Tarzan, and he acted empathically.

When I first read about that story, I was amazed. So I began to talk to people in the zoo world. And there has been a very interesting transformation lately in how deaths in great ape families are managed. When an ape dies, it's becoming a regular practice to allow the family to approach the body and say goodbye. If the ape simply disappears, it's much harder for them to cope.

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This is the Makapansgat Cobble, the oldest known iconographic object in the world.  Around three million years ago, an early hominid carried this stone around presumably because of the stone appeared to bear the image of a face.   "This, in a nutshell, is how what we call ‘art’ began. "

And it may also be how faith began.  William & Mary anthropologist Barbara King's engaging new book, Evolving God, examines how early art and social structures reflect the emergence of religious sensibility.  

Read it now, and when your friends tell you about next Sunday's New York Times Magazine feature on the evolution of religion you can act bored and tell them you knew all that before it was popular.

Posted by jat at 09:16 AM | Permalink

. . . and more in this new Science Times article on the all too human proclivity for finding patterns, particularly faces, in found objects.

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A while back a hurricane pendant inspired me to write about fractals and the ways people see God in nature.  Here's a sample passage:

Wanna impress your friends with your knowledge of linguistic arcana? Tell them you, unlike the King James Bible translators, recognize that "yom" in context here is not "day," but an archaic cognate of the Akkadian umu, or "storm."

Just like Campus Crusade quotes Ugaritic in The Four Spiritual Laws!  Anyway, from ancient Akkadian I went on to illustrate the similarity between turbulence topology and spiral galaxies, with a link to a fun fractal site called Fractaluniverse dot org. 

Or at least I thought it was fun.  A couple days ago I received the following email:

Please note:

My website is not about god.  Please remove your link to it at your soonest convenience.

Colin Hill, scientist

Which got me thinking about the current conflict between science and religion. 

As long-time readers of this site have no doubt observed, I view the hostile relations between the two as counterproductive.  The current assault on scientific insight by the devout misses the deep resonance between religious concepts and complex patterns evident in nature--a resonance that modern science can help us appreciate more now than ever before.  Even if one chooses not to embrace religious faith--and I'm not goint to tip my hand either way--that people express their perceptions in religious metaphors is an observable phenomenon worthy of, yes, scientific inquiry.

Exhibit A:  the old Bible frontispiece pictured here.  The image is a scan from that notorious book of religious proselytization, The Fractal Geometry of Nature by Benoit Mandelbrot, the scientist who coined the term "fractal" and whose writings on turbulence underlay my hurricane post.   If Benoit Mandelbrot is comfortable observing the connections between fractal and religious imagery, why not the Blingdom of God?

And I'm not alone.  Arthur C. Clarke's book and documentary The Colours of Infinity describes how some people have come to refer to the Mandelbrot set as "the thumbprint of god," while people have been using Mandelbrot iterations to create Buddhabrots for well over a decade.  The link between fractals and religious metaphore is so pervasive, in fact, that it inspired a successful April Fools hoax, "The Mandelbrot Monk," which purported to summarize a Harvard article on how a 13th century monk plotted the Mandelbrot set centuries before Mandelbrot himself.    

In the spirit of doing unto others--a good rule no matter one's personal beliefs--I guess I'll remove the link to Mr. Hill's site.  But if science is going to succeed in winning over the devout, it would do better not to mimic the obscurantist blindness we should all be striving to transcend. 

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For centuries spiritual meditation has been a leading path to inner peace.  Now that we know meditation releases certain chemicals that can induce calm, why not go straight to the source? 

Pictured left:  a pendant with the molecular structure of seratonin, accompanied by dopamine earrings.

Posted by Susan Scafidi at 10:56 AM | Permalink

Colored glass - Sainte Chappelle, originally uploaded by Arranging Matches.

This stained glass window of iconic scenes reminded me of standing in an Egyptian tomb, whose main underground chambers were walled with narrative images projecting a life for the soul. Before the book privileged letters as the rational communications medium, the West and its ancillaries seemed to abound in visual environments designed to externalize memory.

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Mathematical Jewelry, originally uploaded by TaranRampersad.

A meditation on fractals & adornment from Flickr.

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Hang out long enough with the B of G's Heavenly Host over a couple glasses of communal wine and you'll eventually hear him--err, me--spin on about the science of shiny things, what monkeys can teach us about the cult of celebrity and the roots of Ellen Dissanaye's theory of "making special" in what I call the ratio of difference.

All of which is a high falutin' way to introduce the videos below, ads for a tacky little product called "Bling It On!"  And by "tacky" I mean "sticky," of course--Bling It On! is a package of adhesive strips of printed glitter that you can use to adorn your cel, laptop or iPod.  Who needs a heroic quest when you can "go from ordinary to legendary in just seconds"?

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The first tropical storm of the season is moving toward the Florida coast.  Pictured above, to mark the occasion:  a hurricane pendant from Florida's Sanibel Island Goldsmith.

Storms have long loomed large in spiritual imagery.  Even today, people link hurricanes to the wrath of God or Nature on our sins (whatever they may be).  In fact, the appearance of God in the storm goes back as far as the Garden of Eden.

After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, they hear the voice of God l'ruach hayyom--in ancient Hebrew, "in the wind of the storm." The image in this passage is of God thundering out of a raging wind; no longer will Adam and Eve converse with their creator as of old, in the calm of an Eden at peace.  (Wanna impress your friends with your knowledge of linguistic arcana?  Tell them you, unlike the King James Bible translators, recognize that "yom" in context here is not "day," but an archaic cognate of the Akkadian umu, or "storm.")

The association of God with swirling storms points to an even deeper resonance between our perception of the divine and recurring patterns in nature.  Benoit Mandelbrot, for example, has described how the topology of turbulence can be explained using fractal geometry, an analysis that has shaped how meteorologists predict the course of storms.  We won't go into the math here--yet!  For now, here's another look at our old fractal friend, the spiral, itself a common image in spiritual adornment.  On the left, a spiral galaxy, and on the right, a hurricane--and for an accessible look at the underlying science, click the pic to visit [censored]. 

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Above:  arguably the world's smallest item of quality gold jewelry, a 16-atom configuration newly created by scientists but not yet available in stores.  As this article from the New York Times notes, 20-atom configurations of gold take a pyramidal shape, an array echoed in the golden sands of Egypt. 

Below:  a small, but not quite that small, merkaba from cosmic jeweler Ka Gold (HT:  Jennifer Emick). 

DA VINCI CODE EXTRA:  click the pic for Ka Gold's explanation of the mystical merkaba and you'll see a rather familiar figure, pictured here in a more family friendly version!

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San Mateo is Spanish for "Saint Matthew," but that's not the reason for this post.  San Mateo is also a city in California where I would be this weekend if I still lived on the West Coast.  "Why?," you ask.

Maker Faire!

Maker Faire is Geekapalooza--a gathering wholly dedicated to DIY tech.  Robots, crafts, animation:  what's not to like?

And of course, there's also jewelry--most notably, a fashion show marking the debut of Black Box Nation, the new venture by Emily Albinski and Diana Eng.  I had a chance to talk with Diana about BBN a little while ago, and what she has planned sounds amazing, not just in regard to their designs but the broader aim of building a tech-oriented design community.

To the left is the signature fuse necklace designed by Emily and worn by Diana on Project Runway.  And below (right):  a knit jacket with ruffles that use the Fibonacci series to create truly divine proportion!

Posted by jat at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Last week we featured the geocentric movement, so it's only fair that we give the other side a shot.  On the upper left is a grommet necklace designed to mirror the Copernican model of heliocentric revolution.

This, however, is but one of the many wonderful items at Individual Icons--Jewelry that Works.  Compass necklaces, ruler bracelets, level earrings, thermometer jewelry and much, much more, designer LeeAnn Herreid's creations are marvelous fusion of science and art.

SCIENCE AND RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS EXTRA:

The sun has long been a symbol of the divine in religious symbolism, including Christianity.  Below are couple of other images from nature appearing in Individual Icons jewelry that one can also find in religious contexts.  Click on the pics to see references familiar in the West.

Posted by jat at 12:01 AM | Permalink

This piece on the revival of Christian geocentrism has sparked the usual snark within the blogosphere.  But regardless of the shaky science, here at the B of G we're hard-pressed to deny the pop appeal of these geocentric knick-knacks.  So