“11 meter-long gypsum megacrystals discovered in caves near Chihuahua, Mexico. The massive crystals were formed over the last 200,000 years due to climate change.” (via)

What technique! What perspective!

Is that a faint sea monster (in the best style of fantastic medieval maps and illuminated manuscripts) I spy in the bottom right corner?

View the rest of the illustrated diary here, and browse the blog for the best of the rest. There are so many gorgeous engravings, sketches, paintings and documents I’m not sure where to begin. I have about 20 tabs open right now, just from the thumbnails of recommended posts. I also have a soft spot for 1700s political and social cartoons, medieval illuminations, and anatomical diagrams, so I’m looking forward to probing this treasure trove.

“Swine flu has been sequenced. More out of curiosity than anything else, I wrote code to translate a key gene into a piece of ambient music.”

A sign depicting a kissing zone was pictured at Warrington Bank Quay train station in Warrington, England, Wednesday. A railway station in northern England has imposed a kissing ban on passengers being dropped off, in a bid to cut delays in certain zones. (Andrew Yates/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

I’m a big fan of neighborhood-specific signage, and I am amused by the idea that, instead of successfully controlling normal social behavior in this way, it could instead become a government-designated space whose inhabitants must show affection for fear of penalty. “Quickly, the police are coming…hug me so I don’t get a ticket!”