SEMantics and SEMiotics: A Lousy View from Different Perspectives

    Juxtaposing close-up views from a Scanning Electron Microsope (SEM) with views from space is this week's Partial Ellipsis of the Sun topic. Throw in some SEMantics or semANTICS and we've got some fun words to go with those images. And, a little venture into SEMiotics will round out today's blog.

     Firstly, guess what's in this SEM image:

    Hint: Hair is involved. Yes, it's a louse egg or nit clinging to a human hair. No wonder nit-picking takes so much focused time and energy!

     Here are eyelashes and human skin:

     How about this SEM image?

     It is an image of the surface of a strawberry.

     Lego brought up the surface of a tongue last week. Here's a human tongue in a SEM:

     And lastly,

    Any ideas? Hair? Fur? Origami? Fiber optics? Wild psychedelic drug images? 


     It's an SEM image of a caffeine crystal(!). . .which should provide enough energy to rocket into space via NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman to view this Pacific Coast sunset: 

    How about this image? Are we looking at a close-up of a spider on the right side of the image or is this an image of solar flares . . .or something else?  Not always easy to tell from what perspective you are seeing, is it?

     I promised semANTICS. Here you go:

    It's an SEM image of a wood ant with a microchip. Wonder what sort of semiotic message this image is sending? 

    According to Wikipedia "Semiotics is the study of meaning-making, the philosophical theory of signs and symbols. This includes the study of signs and sign processes of indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. As different from linguistics, however, semiotics also studies non-linguistic signs and symbols."

       In semiotics news last month, New York state announced that is will be updating the handicapped symbol (and accompanying verbiage to read "Access") on signs to reflect a more active, moving person in a wheelchair. It's the first major symbol update in over 45 years:

Semiotic update to handicapped sign

        
       I'd relish hearing your perspective on these images and words from SEMantics to SEMiotics.

It's a small (and large) world after all.

Signed ;-),

Steph

(Word Woman)

Here's the mystery sign. What does it mean?

Semiotic shoes at the edge of the Blue Danube (see description in comments section from 08/06/14):