Messenger, a photo by Sultry on Flickr.
Multiple layers of images of dendrites, neurotransmitters, etc, tweaked and intensified in photoshop.

Illustration Friday - Swell, a photo by Sultry on Flickr.

Farmer and Mrs. MacDonald (not to mention their bull, Angus, wondered if the oil and gas fracking leases on the South forty were all that swell.

What fortune to find this quote at http://www.thinkexist.com/!!
The universe and it's contents are as close to infinity as I've ever been able to imagine.
And yet, from my decades of experience with people and with their blindnesses, bigotry, ignorance, inventions and fantasies I must agree with Herr Einstein.

Bread mold and you (and me).

I have just discovered a huge vast field of evolutionary biology. It has its own language but is amazing. Life forms (animal AND plant AND fungal, bacterial and others I cannot pronounce are all related. Really. It's science. There's evidence. I feel less alone already.
But I needed to look up these words to read an article called Molecules as Documents of Evolutionary History.
semantides aka semantophoretic molecules
phylogeny
aufgehoben (constantly abolished and simultaneously preserved)
episemantic molecules (which really don't have good on-line definitions)
asemantic molecules (which also don't have good on-line definitions)

Illustration Friday: Hierarchy

"The world of hierarchy
has come to an end.
Don't fight with it.
Let it disintegrate."
Eugene Kennedy

It is terrifying for most of us to see hierarchies disintigrate.

I like the one above (second rendering) better than the first (below).

IF-hierarchy
Originally uploaded by Sultry
It is probably a poor illustration (or piece of art) if you have to explain it. But I looked up the hierarchy/taxonomy of the animal world and included representations of the kingdoms of living things: bacteria, fungi, non-nucleated cells, plants and animals. Humans are among the most complex, least numerous and least sturdy according to many of the sources I've read.
And that doesn't even include viruses.
Best seen large.

IF- Intricate
Originally uploaded by Sultry


I can't believe how absorbing this piece was for me. The border is from Estonian Lace knitting.
The center is an image of "crack initiation," from an electron microscope photograph from the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency that I found on the web. The linear image was rotated, stretched and colored.
Holes in lace make for beautiful, miractulous intricate webs; holes caused by stress corrosion cracking cause failures, leakage and heartache for many quality assurance engineers. The crack in question was from a "real material," but the article was about developing computer programs which might be able to predict where, when and in what direction cracks would form in nuclear reactors.
Crack initiation is apparently still un predictable... but once one starts, it is easier (but challenging) to predict how and where it will advance.
This is from the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency. http://www.jolisfukyu.tokai-sc.jaea.go.jp/fukyu/mirai-en/2007/10_1.html