Mixing science with love

The other big holiday coming up is Valentine's Day … so how about some appropriately silly valentines?

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Warning: that one is the best one. If it makes you groan, the others will be pure torture. But they do beat out the sappy things we used to hand out in fifth grade.

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Two years ago, The Scientific Activist introduced the world to valinetines, scientifically-themed valentines named after the amino acid valine. Last year, I recycled the same valinetines from the first year, but today--on this Valentine's Day 2008--I bring you all new material: Your nuclear pore…
Last year's Valentine's Day entry was quite a hit, so here it is again. (13 February 2006) We all know how normal people celebrate Valentine's Day: either going out on a hot date or, more likely, sulking alone at home and possibly crying themselves to sleep. Many of you, though, may wonder how…
tags: nerds, valentine's day, comedy, funny, humor, parody, offbeat, music video, education, streaming video I did what this guy suggests and went one further: I married a nerd (but not on VD). It's kinda hard being a nerd on Valentine's Day. Cause Statistically ladies don't feel the same way. So…
It's clear from the treacly ads that are clogging the airwaves that Valentine's Day is near. For those of us who tend to find Valentine's Day (and, even worse, that knockoff holiday Sweetest Day) annoying, it's a bad time of the year, particularly since in these parts February is the most…

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.

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!

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!

By Interrobang (not verified) on 12 Feb 2008 #permalink

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.

By Michael X (not verified) on 12 Feb 2008 #permalink

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.