Thursday coffee break: big pictures, big eclipse

Shots of the longest solar eclipse of the century. (Boston.com's Big Picture series)

Duck and cover: ASME's Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years

On October 17, 2005, the 40 greatest magazine covers of the last 40 years were unveiled at the 2005 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in Puerto Rico, by Mark Whitaker, Editor of Newsweek and President of American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), and AMC Chairman Evan Smith, Editor of Texas Monthly.

URMA'09 pics from Cap'n Frank

Your incoming president decrees that if you have your own photos from URMA'09, post them here. (Or send them to Jason, who will post.)


On the bus and off to lunch.


Doug Smith, Caltech.


Diane Boudreau, Arizona State.


Melissa Lutz Blouin, Arkansas.


Kicking off the videoconference with Endeavors folks.



Beth, Neil, Mark, Margarite, and Susan via videoconference from North Carolina.


Disaster City (where the grass is green and the girls are pretty).


Your incoming and outgoing presidents.

Thursday coffee break: the big picture

Human landscapes from above (from boston.com's Big Picture series)

Earth Day 2009

More at boston.com's Big Picture series

Friday coffee break: infinite photograph

Friday coffee break: Recent scenes from Afghanistan

Another set of amazing shots from Boston.com's Big Picture series

Gadawan Kura

Check out photographer Pieter Hugo's series of portraits of the Hyena Men, a group of entertainers who wander around Nigeria with three hyenas, two pythons, and four monkeys.

Scenes from a recession

A few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession." (boston.com)

Friday coffee break: mothballed

The storage closets of the American Museum of Natural History (photo essay, seed magazine)

Tuesday coffee break: Digital Dark Age

Will today's digital documents be accessible in the future? Jackie Esposito predicts that "30 to 40 percent of this information will be available" in the future. (ResearchPennState)

Monday Coffee Break: Violent Death in the Insect World

"Death in the domain of the insects can be swift and cruel but retains a magnificence and beauty that is somehow at odds with the brutality of what is happening..." (scienceray.com)

Monday coffee break

Hours of fun from Sleeveface: "one or more persons obscuring or augmenting any part of their body or bodies with record sleeve(s) causing an illusion."

The Year in Pictures, Part 3

The third and final in boston.com's series

The Year in Pictures, Part 2

From boston.com's Big Picture series

The Year in Pictures, Part 1

From boston.com's Big Picture series

The Big Picture: riots in Greece

"On the night of Saturday, December 6th, two Special Guards of the Greek police clashed with a small group of young men... This incident sparked an immediate and widespread response in the form of angry demonstrations and riots..." (boston.com)

LIFE photos

LIFE magazine and Google have teamed up to make a searchable archive of millions of LIFE photos, most of which were never published. Check it out here.

(At right: Encased in plaster from neck to waist, children suffering from tuberculosis of the spine relaxing in the sun outside mission hospital, where they will stay for two years. 1949.)

Monday inspiration

Black and white photography (Smashing Magazine)

An open letter (rant) to photographers, art directors, and editors

I've yet to visit a lab where the walls and equipment were glowing purple. Or red. Or blue. Or fuschia....

So why do we continue to run pictures of labs bathed in colored light that makes them look like Willy Wonka threw up in them?

We've all done it. We've overdone it. It's cliché. It doesn't make the researcher or the lab look high-tech; it makes them look like a bad music video from 1982.

The culprits are called color gels. The photographer tapes a few onto his lights, and presto! Instant scientific credibility:

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This orange fluid I'm putting in this beaker sure looks high-tech. And maybe hazardous. I hope I don't drop it.

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Now that my office is purple, I can really get some stuff done. Like posing for this picture. Is my smile okay? Is it?

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Is THIS what's causing my ceiling to be purple? Here, let me turn this damn thing off.

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The Teknai EDAX X-ray spectrometer. Without purple lights: expensive. With purple lights: priceless.

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The man who took this photo was planning to become a scientist, until he found out that the labs look like this. He killed himself four months later.

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So next time the color gels come out, remember this: