Anatomical paper craft

The method of creating this Anatomical Cross-Sections in Paper is quite fascinating:

These pieces are made of Japanese mulberry paper and the gilded edges of old books. They are constructed by a technique of rolling and shaping narrow strips of paper called quilling or paper filigree. Quilling was first practiced by Renaissance nuns and monks who made artistic use of the gilded edges of worn out bibles, and later by 18th century ladies who made artistic use of lots of free time. I find quilling exquisitely satisfying for rendering the densely squished and lovely internal landscape of the human body in cross section.

Check out all of Lisa Nilsson’s work in this series.

by Jonathan Frei

The constitutions of classic cocktails

Pop Chart Lab has this detailed diagram of many classic cocktails.

This definitive guide to classic cocktails breaks down 68 drinks into their constituent parts. Follow the lines to see where spirits, mixers, and garnishes intersect to form delightful concoctions. This massive movie poster-sized print contains over 40 types of alcohol (from distilled spirits to bitters), mixers from raspberry syrup to egg white, and garnishes from the classic olive to a salted rim. This obsessively detailed chart also includes the ratios for each drink, as well as the proper serving glass, making it as functional as it is beautiful. Over a year in the making, this is Pop Chart Lab’s most elaborate chart ever.

Check out the big version.

by Jonathan Frei

To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data

To Know, but Not Understand: David Weinberger on Science and Big Data

Science is producing more data than it knows what to do with.

[T]he creation of data galaxies has led us to science that sometimes is too rich and complex for reduction into theories. As science has gotten too big to know, we’ve adopted different ideas about what it means to know at all.

by Jonathan Frei

Everything old is new again

According to Eric Felten, in his WSJ.com review of the book New by Winifred Gallagher,

Creativity flourishes best when part of a tradition. The new ideas that succeed are those that stick around long enough to become old.

He sees what’s new as part of a long line of creative works, one springing forth from another. For all the interest our society shows for the new and improved gizmo, we still have a strong nostalgia for the old, for the traditional, for the new thing that reminds us of the old.

The iPod may have revolutionized how we listen to music, but many people are using it to listen to tunes that hit the big time half a century ago—or using their iPads to book tickets for a revived 1950s Broadway musical or for the latest movie based on a comic book from the 1940s. Nor is technological progress as rapid as we’ve come to assume. Take the ubiquitous Boeing 737, a plane that first took off more than 40 years ago. If the jet-setters of the 1960s had climbed aboard a plane designed 40 years before, they would have been getting into something with wooden wings. In many ways the world changed more rapidly and dramatically in our grandparents’ lives than in our own.

by Jonathan Frei