Mixing science with love

Oh come on now. I thought the Marie Curie "We've got Chemistry" and the "Sagan all my love for you" cards were priceless.

The Sagan one was fabulous!

Oh - that's easy. Digital Cuttlefish had them nearly a month early... because such a romantic little Cephalopod!

http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2008/02/valentines-day-is-almost-…

My favorite by DC:

A rat cadaver's donor heart
Is stripped of every cell
The protein fiber matrix left
Looks like a ghostly shell;
This matrix, in a sterile flask,
Is bathed in rat-heart goo
With both adult and baby cells,
And starts to grow anew.
In only days, the growing heart
May beat, or merely twitch,
Then work, at roughly two percent...
Like yours, you heartless bitch.

Painful? Perhaps. But beats what the Saudis have done:

Religious police in Saudi Arabia are banning the sale of Valentine's Day gifts including red roses, a local newspaper has reported.

The Saudi Gazette quoted shop workers as saying that officials had warned them to remove all red items including flowers and wrapping paper.

Why? Because it is an "un-Islamic" holiday, of course.

Jim D.

Remember The Fifties?

Take my love and shove it up your heart!

At long last, the religious cops in Saudi Arabia are good for something. What other holiday causes so much misery, both in single people and in non-single people who are plagued with expectations and resentments regarding those expectations?

Ah, Valentine's Day. There's nothing quite so North American as decrying the Hallmark Holiday while simultaneously trying to make last minute reservations at some over-priced fusion-cuisine bistro.

Unless of course, it's decrying how we've lost the 'true meaning of Christmas' while simultaneously reaming out some poor department store clerk for wishing you a 'Happy Holidays' after you've just elbowed some fat nerd out of the way for the last Wii on the shelf.

Then again, maybe I'm just cynical.

Arrrrrgh! He beat us to the punch!

http://www.jacksofscience.com/art/bring-love-to-the-lab-with-a-science-…

My wife, often the very essence of practicality and frugality, has told me of her secret desire for a heart-shaped box of candy. Can I do other than comply gladly? I think not.

I guess this is more G-rated than the old:

"I wish I were DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes."

That one might go better with Crick or Watson.

I guess one of the discoverers of DNA helicase would be most appropriate for that one, but Mahmoud Abdel-Monem, Hartmut Hoffmann-Berling, and Hildegard Dürwald (I had to look them up) might not be famous enough for non-molecular biologists for it to work.

The term "non-molecular biologists" should be "people who aren't molecular biologists" to avoid ambiguity. My apologies if any other types of biologists thought I was singling them out. ;)

Kieran: Nice stuff, particularly, the photos of Al and
the Universe!

Dan Barker wrote a song to the effect of that Darwin Valentine: "It's Only Natural."

Well, let's just say that if I designed a world intelligently it would be totally, like non-molecular. Molecules are icky! You never know where they have been.

Those are appropriately goofy for HersheyHallmarkDeBeers Day™ (thank you SomeWoman), a non-holiday holiday which demands not to be taken seriously...

Getcher blood diamonds and chocolate made by child slave labour heeeeere!

I initially read it as, "I select you, Naturally!" That is, with a comma instead of a period, such that:

Naturally = by (biological, animal) nature

instead of

Naturally = of course; as would be expected; needless to say.

Not necessarily as romantic, I admit... unless of course your significant other is a bio-nerdette like mine. :)

Jeez, didn't Chuck D write an entire (half of a) book arguing that sexual selection is an entirely separate dynamic than natural selection, and often at odds with it (resulting in such extravaganzas as the peacock's tail)?

Chuck's argument is updated in semi-popularized form by Geoffrey Miller, THE MATING MIND, who isn't shy about possible psychological implications. Fun read.

Not exactly apropos of Valentine's day, but I'm now considering sending my parents a card emblazoned "You've really left Lamarck on me".

When you care enough to send the very best...Hallamark!

What, I write a lousy joke about a discredited scientist, and nobody's gonna Haeckel me?

If I get my fiance the Curie card with a magnetic Marie Curie attached, I will radioactively glow with nerdom. And it will rock so hard.

Receiving that Carl Sagan valentine would rock my world. So I'm sending it to all my friends, selfishly hoping they'll send one back to me.