Author: Lori Jia
I think that the next time I’m asked to talk about human evolution at 7:38 a.m. on a news show, I’m going to shave my head the night before. Nothing undermines the authority of a science writer like a serious case of bed head. See it here (or paste this address into Windows Media Player’s URL), and take pity.
Originally published August 12, 2007. Copyright 2007 Carl Zimmer.
Jessica Pikul writes:
I am a Chemistry PhD student at University of Washington. My research is in bioinorganic chemistry, specifically modeling non-heme iron-sulfur metalloenzymes. I am also a Celiac (autoimmune disorder triggered by ingesting gluten). The tattoo on my leg is one of the segments of the gluten protein that I can not digest. The ball and stick molecule is of a Proline-Serine-Glutamine-Glutamine peptide that I can’t break down which then stimulates T-cells to start the fun chain reaction that ends in my small intestine villi being attacked by antibodies. The background to the molecule is an artsy spacescape.
I’m finding that my post on science tattoos is getting troublesome now that I’ve added in so many images. Slow to load, easily bugged.
Update: Ignore the stuff below about Picaca. I’m going to Flickr. The home for the set, with comments, is here. And you can subscribe to an RSS feed of sciencetattoo tagged images here, to keep up with the collection’s additions.
So I’m experimenting with an album on Picasa. I will continue to add images to it as people send them in, and will include captions from the comments that come with them. If you click on an individual image, you get the caption with live links back to their source. Let me know if you have any tech problems on either end…
A reader writes:
This is my friend, Ira Klotzko, he’s got a doc. in Physics and a great sense of humor.
I won’t share his original plan for the depiction of Uranus…
One we can share is how he jokes that the tattoo is really accurate because, as is the case with his waistline, the universe is always expanding.
Into the science tattoo hall of fame it goes…
Okay. So, the other day I asked an innocuous question about whether scientists get scientific tattoos. I also invited people to send in their own example. I didn’t quite bank on this site becoming a clearinghouse for science tattoos. The traffic of readers coming in from reddit, etc., is startling enough. But the stream of tattoo pictures coming into my inbox is causing me to freak out, ever so slightly. Seriously, think about this: people with Ph.D.’s, who study esoteric aspects of physics and insect neurology are baring flesh, snapping pictures, and sending them to me, a stranger.