Scientific wine tasting part V. The literateurs

After chemists, biologists, physicists and physicians, I continue the series... Well, literateurs are probably reciting poems like "Praise of Bacchus" (God of wine in Roman mythology) by Anacreon, and then discussing the accuracy of the traduction done by Thomas Stanley in 1651 - while enjoying a bottle of wine. I just decided to make this cartoon because my Dad and brother were seriously discussing a poem last time we had a meal together... (They tried to recite it, my Dad claiming that he is unable to memorize it, my brother proving once again his fantastic brain/memory capacity by doing it, although it is not a world-famous poem of a world-famous poet, just a poem with very deep thoughts he learned some 20 years ago. And no need to add - none of them are literateurs, they learn poems just for fun...)

The Scientific Christmas Tree...

Preparing for Christmas, we started to discuss the 'Christmas Tree Issue' with my hubby yesterday... So here comes a comic strip about how scientists can be difficult in some things and their choices, so how difficult it can be to live with us... (Some self-irony again...) One more thing, I do not want to be politically correct and use Obama's Holiday Tree expression, I am rather on Ben Stein's opinion on this issue... One last thing to be mentioned... I have observed that my blog has highest pageviews in September and December. I was wondering a lot about the reason of that, and I guess(ed) that in September many scientists were looking for safety signs and they found my comic strips related to them and their interpretation. Similarly, around Christmas my comic strip entitled Christmas (New Year's Eve) party at the lab - safety signs... was viewed a lot. So these are my most popular comic strips I think... But then comes the dilemma: shall I prepare comic strips to increase my pageviews and get more popular, or shall I produce comic strips I like myself or I can produce at the moment... Well, I think popularity is and was never very important for my life, I'll do it my way as usual...

Baby names for historians (ancient history, Egypt, Babylonia, Sumer)

Another one of this series this time. A little bit busy otherwise at the moment to prepare other, new, more creative things. maybe next week.

Inspirations in the kitchen - Baby Boo's first plant biology lesson

After all, being a scientific mother has also its advantages. First, I have a husband who inspires and helps me a lot. (Although he is not a scientist himself.) He was the one who told me while I was trying to understand one of the newest models about granum structure that it can be compared to fusilli in fact (that are interconnected in 3D with each other, but 1 granum is like 1 piece of fusilli). It was a great idea of him... especially because having small kids, you must be able to find out the easiest, most obvious explanations, metaphors and examples if you talk about science. This helps a lot not to be lost in too complicated nomenclature and models, not to be completely isolated from the rest of the world, and from everyday life, and to see just the most important things/patterns in everything. But such husband-, kitchen-, and kids-inspired examples can als help you to give challenging, down-to-earth and funny university and conference lectures. So, being a scientific mum is not that bad after all. I'll continue this series as well... There are also a lot of things to learn about pigments in vegetables in the kitchen and during cooking...

Scientific wine tasting part IV. The physicians

After chemists, biologists, and physicists I continue the series with physicians sharing a bottle of red wine on a meeting or party...

Scientific wine tasting part III. The physicists

After chemists and biologists, I continue the series with physicists and how they enjoy drinking wine. It is not only a joke, quite often it can be really observed how 'scientifically' different scientists talk about casual things of their everyday lives. Yes, it is sometimes difficult to get rid of the terminology...

Baby names for analytical chemists and/or people doing HPLC

Recently, I had to do some HPLC analyses, so I got some inspiration for baby names again.