U.S. Medical Aid to Africa

Last week, the Obama administration announced that it will donate $130 million to African medical schools to improve medical education throughout Africa. This generous donation will be distributed over five years and will go to medical schools and teaching hospitals in a dozen countries, and to about 20 American medical schools that have agreed to collaborate with them. Doctors will be trained in all sorts of skills including childbirth and infant care – skills that are of crucial need in rural parts of Africa. Some of the money will also go towards buying equipment for laboratories and teaching tools.

This is a big step forward for the U.S. and its foreign policy. Bringing more focus to poverty-stricken parts of the world through foreign aid will have far-reaching results for the world’s poor. A couple of positive results from this kind of foreign aid are: ending infant mortality through better education and the subsequent reduction in population.

- Clare O.

SOURCE: NYTimes

Art Monday: Science Checkmate

A couple of days ago, I used Photoshop to edit my painting, Science Chess Accommodating Religion. I want to try changing the relationships of the pieces, and making the image more graphic and cartoony so it could appear on a t-shirt. I am thinking about captioning it "Science Checkmate".

Michael Barton, of The Dispersal of Darwin suggested placing the pieces around the fallen bishop. Great Idea, Michael! It changes the way they appear utterly. Finally, I will need to punch up the whites and reds so it can be printed on fabric with more vibrant and clear colour.
I have to say, I'm working with Photoshop Elements these days, a program that came in in the box with my Wacom Intuos 3 tablet. I didn't use it on my old computer, but Elements (so far) appears to be superior to me old Photoshop CS. The selection brush is one of the coolest things ever. I thought it was just for tracing and it took a moment after selecting the outline of the Mendel piece to realize it simply expands the selection field to wherever you've brushed! It was a magic moment.


I'll post the final cartoony image and t-shirt another day, once it's in the repro shop.

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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Science Checkmate

Using my oil painting Science Accommodating Religion, I've been noodling around with the image.

This might look good on a t-shirt if I punch up the colours to a less painterly, more graphic cartoony look. Hmm. I saved the image with all the pieces in separate layers so I can move them around and resize them easily. Now that I look at it, perhaps the pieces should not be so evenly spaced.

Looking for opinions: how should I tweak it for a shirt in my repro shop?

- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

Contest winner!

Winner of my first contest:

Coturnix!

Bora, you will receive a signed print of Science-Chess Accomodating Religion some time in the next few weeks.

Holy Monkey that was close.

I had to call in a second judge to weigh in accuracy factors and the timing of entries. I've also already, (appropriately, I think) tweeted the winning announcement.

Here are my original ideas, and a breakdown of how Coturnix won the print:
Pieces in the back, left to right:
-Darwin's tree of life drawing
-Wave-particle duality
-Kekule's dream of an ourobouros representing the benzene ring
-Mendel's peas
-Copernican heliocentrism
-Red bishop as religion, transparent, cracked, alone and with a halo, the halo being a symbol that most religions incorporate into their visual iconography
Toppled in the foreground, left to right:
-Stem cells
-Needle representing vaccines

But dude, this was close.

Basically, by mine and my second judge's tally, Scicurious actually had all of the correct answers - but the last after contest closing at noon today. Sorry Sci! I had to draw a line.

The piece representing wave-particle duality was the toughie - some of the answers had me scurrying to look up science concepts or history I was unaware of! Anonymous-Trish had it almost bang-on, but if I am looking at the difference between Coturnix's "radioactivity" answer and Anon-Trish & James' "Curie's theory of radioactive decay and using it for carbon dating", I chose the earlier answer.

Thanks to everyone who played along - this was fun. And I like Bora's suggestion to see this on a t-shirt. And I think I need to send Greg Laden a Mr. Bill made out of plasticine.

Thanks everyone!
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Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***

"Science-Chess Accommodating Religion"...contest!

"I'm thinking scientific accommodation of religion is akin to letting someone take your King's Rook off the board because you're winning."

This painting was originally created due to the above Twitter tweet I made, inspired by the writing of Jerry Coyne, Ophelia Benson, PZ Myers, Mike Haubrich, Stephanie Zvan, Greg Laden, Jason Thibeault, Russell Blackford and Richard Dawkins. This painting is an homage to your writing, and the other atheists out there unafraid to speak up (I am sure I have left many out). Mike liked it enough to add it to his rotating quotes, and that got me thinking about how I would visualize it.

Since I began blogging my art, I have struggled with themes of secularism and atheism without being cartoonish or overly mocking. Science and my surreal riffs are fun and fascinating for me, but atheist painting concepts have been a challenge.

The contest: identify all the pieces. I will give the first person to figure them all out a signed print from my reproduction store. Blog comments here at this Flying Trilobite post only to qualify (not Twitter or Facebook at this time, please, it will be hard to see who was first). A higher quality view of the image can be seen in my Reproduction Shop.

Let's say...in order of left to right, with the two toppled pieces in the foreground following the red piece in sequence? I will be away for my usual Art Monday, so let's leave this contest in its stead.
- - - - - - - -
Original artwork on The Flying Trilobite Copyright to Glendon Mellow
under Creative Commons Licence.
Flying Trilobite Gallery *** Flying Trilobite Reproduction Shop ***