What fun: wikipedia posts a Picture of the Day, with high-resolution images often available.
Today's picture (link goes to July; scroll to the bottom to see) is a lovely shot of Mount Hood in Oregon. I've also found — and downloaded for my desktop — photos of hereford cattle; an upside down White-breasted nuthatch; a painting of Charlotte Corday (reminding me of the Al Stewart song of the same name, which it seems he recorded, or at least sang, with Tori Amos, but I digress); and some gorgeous Radiolarians (amoeboid protozoa) .
Ok, enough procrastinating. Back to work!
1 comment:
The radiolarians are indeed beautiful. (They are cousins to an equally beautiful group of amoebids-- foraminifera--which thoroughly occupied a couple of years of my life.) This plate embodies what I love about pre-photography natural history illustration, the "art" of it. The sort-of symmetrical arrangement of the tests on the page, the subtle shading, the perfecting of imperfect specimens-- certainly not what a modern scientist would produce. but then, we modern scientists are not usually illustrators, and we seldom have an artist to work with. If it weren't for the obstacles faced by 18th- and 19th-centry women scientists, I'd say I was born a century too late.
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