Color schemes inspired by various bruises all 'round the body. My fav is simply titled, bruised.

My colleague, Gene, is posting some great science poetry (aka sci-ku) over on our science blog, Science Buzz. This could be a fun activity for kids:

1. Read a science news story.
2. Write a haiku about it.
3. Include at least one relevant science link.
4. Post to Science Buzz and tag it sci-ku.

As if poems weren't nerdy enough!

I totally understand that Google's new browser, Chrome, is a beta piece of tech that shouldn't be criticized too heavily for any particular issues. Yet, accessibility is regularly overlooked in the web world. So, I think it is important to highlight that Chrome needs some big improvements before it is ready for those who use assistive devices or operating system settings to make their computer experience more usable.

The Paciollo Group's blog has an outline of the first discovered accessibility shortcomings of Chrome. If you notice these problems or others please submit a bug through the browser to let Google know that these issues are important to you.

It's heartbreaking to hear this story, and it leaves me confused. I would expect some rich collector to snatch this shit up in a sec.

PSST! Pass It On.... Original short films, made by collaborating artists and designers. I really like a boy blowing bubbles.

White Winter Hymnal a new video from Fleet Foxes. These guys are reminding me more and more of Crosby, Still, and Nash with the reverb turned up.

Start Seeing Art is some nice work by blogger, Kevin D. Hendricks, to map public art across the Twin Cities. While he has the obligatory Google Map, I appreciate that he's also gone to the trouble of making a printable PDF like the one pictured above. His first printable map is of art in downtown Saint Paul (PDF), just in time for the RNC.

I nearly peed my pants in the half hour I spent digging back through the archives of the Cake Wrecks blog: When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.

The Bell Museum of Natural History has a new web feature that lets you explore whats going on inside of their dioramas. These glass cases are some of the finest in the nation, and make a great back drop for some odd dinner parties as well.

The only upside to Pawlenty's short sighted cleavering of the Bell's new building budget, this year, is that these beauties will stay in their original position from just a little bit longer.

I just spent a while listening to all the different accents spread across the US on the Speech Accent Archive. This site features speakers from all over the country reading a single paragraph to highlight their different accents. It's fascinating to hear the Texan and the Quebecois along side each other.

When I first heard about this site I was real excited and must say it lived up to its potential. But wouldn't it be nice to a crowd-sourced approach to this project. You could ask people to read the same phrases and then upload their sounds to a community site. You could even track things about people's heritage. After all my accent is a mixture of splitting my life three ways between Tennessee, Texas, and now Minnesota.

Via stalking Zooey Deschanel

My pal Laura Allen works at the American Museum of Natural history on their Science Bulletins program but is also a freelance science writer. She's got a really nice website with a perfect design for her discipline. It's rare to see a portfolio site having anything to do with science and writing look this nice. Kuddos.

I take lots of screenshots and am in the habit of using Apple's Grab application. The problem is...this app only gives you the option of saving the screen shot as a TIFF, which is rarely what I need. But I tumbled across this little option in the Apple program, Preview just now.

Check it! All the normal functions available in Grab are also available in Preview. So next time I need to create a JPEG screenshot all I need to do it open up Preview, open the File menu, slip on down to Grab, and select my option. Then I can save this image as any type of file I want (usually JPEG). Fantastic.

version one where you use your imagination

version two where it's done for ya