Lonely hearts' ads in scientific journals - part three (last episode?)

No comments this time on the cartoon. For this summer, this is the last scientific lonely hearts' ad. But if you have any ideas or wishes or criticism about cartoons, please comment or contact me. And greetings to the 2000th page visit (last week) and to all of my readers... At the moment I gave up science and try being just a mum on holidays with kids, so I am not too much inspired by scientific problems.

Mash-up of the new Old Spice commercial

Scientists also go sometimes for holidays. So they relax, switch on the TV and forget about science. Maybe they even travel to nice countries like France... And now and then they have a look at their favourite blog (Stripped Science by Viktor S. Poór - http://blogs.nature.com/strippedscience/2011/07/27/microbiology-and-the-old-spice-guy-cartoon) and then they look at the TV and watch the stupid ad (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE) again while eating tons of extremely smelly cheese in France. And there is the result of all this... It is not scientific not even very nice, but just as it came to my mind... And Reblochon is really the best cheese ever, but smells like hell...

The Ultimate Game for Women in Science - The Baby Project...

Everyone's on holidays (at least on the northern hemisphere)... We experience all kind of games, so - inspired by 'The PhD Game' (http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/~kw10004/phdgam/) - I prepared this one. I hope it'll make everyone think a little bit about the life of women in science. Please read carefully and think it over... However and after all, this game is the best game I have ever played in my life, the only disadvantage is, that this game has some negative impacts on my career (and of course this part is outlined in this game). But I think that no Nobel prize or no promotion could ever bring such happiness to my life as Baby Boo, and that this is the Ultimate Experience that women should not miss if possible (even if they choose a scientific career). To start the game I advice you to throw away the insanity of believing that science is more important than love.

I deliberately did not use too much interrelations/logical links between the different independent "events" and decided to use mostly the option of missing turns to demonstrate how the presence of a baby influences your work. In fact, having a baby is only making your career develop slower, but is not a problem itself in other ways. If you are very determined (enthusiastic and workaholic) you will be able to make it (and probably you will not fail as a mum either). However, undeniably you will progress slower than your male colleagues. This is all that I wanted to show and to demonstrate (with the addition of some negative or positive points that I had also experienced). But if you have started the game, you have to be patient and determined to go through it. Try to relax, to accept this situation with all its advantages and disadvantages, laugh about it and enjoy being the mum of a small baby... Probably your child is the greatest achievement of your life. :-)

Great announcement on lab meetings... (and the consequences)... part 3

I just want to finish this series about great announcements... I know it is not really funny, nor really scientific, but it illustrates well the relationships of the different personalities/archetypical women in science. I promise to be back next week with something really special and completely different!

Great announcement on lab meetings... (and the consequences)... part 2

So let's come back to our archetypical women in science. Let's see what happens when Jane (Desperate-Housewife) announces that she is expecting a child, and what happens next... Please compare with things that happened when Amanda (Beauty) announced the same thing (but well, a minor difference, that her baby was from the boss)... And sorry, this is not a funny story, but REALITY :-(... or rather fears that become reality...

Lonely hearts' ads in scientific journals - part two

As far as I can judge from the statistical data of my blog, the readers are most interested in Lonely hearts' ads, cheerleading scientists and safety instructions for laboratories... So, I decided to continue my series with lonely hearts' ads... Greetings to all of my friends/colleagues who are working hard with proteomics... Especially to women who can do science with kids. (Actually I am close to give it up...)

Baby names for geologists

So... After the great announcement of expecting a baby the couple has to choose christian (given) names for the offspring... I think women like to collect names for boys and girls and to give the list to the man to decide - at least this is how we've proceeded with Baby Boo... I am not sure how much you will like this cartoon, in fact it's been rather a kind of linguistic game and mockery for me... Many parents think that the best thing to do with their child to make him unique is to give him an extraordinary given name referring to special events, the place of conception, the favourite actor or rock band or anything... So I put these phenomena into the scientific context and was thinking about different scientific terms from different areas (geology, informatics, physics, chemistry, informatics, biology...) as possible girl and boy names... If the text is not easy to read please make a comment and I will change the font type. And of course I'll be back with similar comic strips soon...