I’m a post-doctoral cognitive neuroscientist working in MR research at the University of Pittsburgh.  I stumbled across the Science Tattoo Emporium and wanted to share my own science based ink.

The attached image shows my second tattoo and the most directly science-themed ink (although the others are also peripherally linked to the career I love so dear).  The four hieroglyphic characters are the earliest written form of the word “brain” and are found in the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus.  Dating back to seventeenth century BC Egypt, the papyrus is perhaps the first neurological case study describing the symptoms of head injuries and the odd fleshy matter that was often visible in the most gruesome of head wounds.  These symbols and the story of the papyrus are the opening to the classic textbook “Principles of Neuroscience”, which I first came across when taking an undergraduate course in 2000.  In honor of starting my graduate research career in studying the brain, I got this tattoo while attending a neuroscience conference in NYC in 2002.

Anyway, hope you enjoy.  Thanks for putting together the gallery that lets me know I’m not the only geek crazy enough to make his passion a permanent part of his body.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

I consider that a conversation by telephone—when you are simply sitting by and not taking any part in that conversation—is one of the solemnest curiosities of this modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on in the room. I notice that one can always write best when somebody is talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way. A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put into communication with Mr. Bagley’s, down town. I have observed, in many cities, that the gentle sex always shrink from calling up the central office themselves. I don’t know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, and this talk ensued:—

Central Office. [Gruffly.] Hello!

I. Is it the Central Office?

C. 0. Of course it is. What do you want ?

I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please ?

C. 0. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone.

Then I heard, k-look, k-look, k’look— klook-klook-klook-look-look! then a horrible “gritting” of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: Y-e-s? [Rising inflection.] Did you wish to speak to me?”

Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this world,—a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked; you don’t hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise, or sorrow, or dismay. You can’t make head or tail of the talk, because you never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says. Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from the one tongue, and all shouted,—for you can’t ever persuade the gentle sex to speak gently into a telephone:—

Yes? Why, how did that happen?

Pause.

What did you say?

Pause.

Oh, no, I don’t think it was.

Pause.

No! Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I meant, put it in while it is still boiling,—or just before it comes to a boil.

Pause.

WHAT?

Pause.

I turned it over with a back stitch on the selvage edge.

Pause.

Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it ’s better to baste it on with Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. It gives it such an air,—and attracts so much notice.

Pause.

It ’s forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-fourth to ninety-seventh inclusive. I think we ought all to read it often.

Pause.

Perhaps so; I generally use a hair-pin…

You can read the rest of sketch online (horrors!) in the archives of the Atlantic.

[Image: Wikipedia]

Imagine: Silver Spangled Hamburgs of the Jurassic!

Image courtesy of National Geographic. Check out their 3-D version.

• Book
• Magazine/Newspaper
• Film/Radio/TV
• Online

The nominations are now open. More information can be found here.

So I was very excited to interview Rob Knight of the University of Colorado, a biologist who’s been co-authoring a string of stunning papers recently on the thousands of species that live on our skin, in our mouths, in our guts, and elsewhere on or in our bodies. Our conversation is now available on the latest “Meet the Scientist” podcast. We talk about how microbes help each other thrive in our bodies, the way bacteria in our guts release neurotransmitters, how microbes may regulate your weight, and much more. Check it out.

I also think their description of the Loom as “authoritative science writing” may be a bit of an oversight, too (as flattering as it maybe). I mean, really: Duck porn? Tattoo parlors? Cockroach zombies? Other adjectives come to mind…

When I would see Skloot again, I’d ask how the book was going. Still going. After a while, I stopped asking, because I know how irritating that question can get when the answer hasn’t budged for a while. When the book was done, it would be done.

A decade passed before the book was done. When Skloot sent me an advance copy of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a few months ago, I discovered why it had taken so long. She doggedly pursued the story, reconstructing a fifty-year saga intertwining the experience of a family struggling in Baltimore and the rise of modern biology. It was worth the wait, and I happily provided a blurb–

“Rebecca Skloot has written a marvelous book so original that it defies easy description. She traces the surreal journey that a tiny patch of cells belonging to Henrietta Lacks’s body took to the forefront of science. At the same time, she tells the story of Lacks and her family—wrestling the storms of the late twentieth century in America—with rich detail, wit, and humanity. The more we read, the more we realize that these are not two separate stories, but one tapestry. It’s part The Wire, part The Lives of the Cell, and all fascinating.”

Spending a decade working on her book, Skloot became a literary Rip Van Winkle. She started her book back before the rise of blogs, before the annihilation of book reviews in newspapers, before Kindles and Ipads. When Skloot started her book, the book tour was still a relatively common feature of the promotion of a new book. But Skloot discovered that book tours had pretty much evaporated by the time her book was coming out.

As I’ve published books of my own over the past decade, I’ve watched these same changes accrue, book by book. I’ve tried to take more control over the promotion of my work. I look for ways to spread the word about my books online, not just when they come out, but long afterwards. I am grateful to readers who spread the word further on their own blogs and tweets. But I have to say that publishing books gets more and more nerve-wracking as time goes on. Writing books is a slow process, but the publishing industry is changing fast. I feel as if I am at an archery contest. I take a long, long time to aim at a target, but by the time I let the arrow fly, someone’s moved the target away.

So I was curious to see how Skloot would contend with the challenge of publishing a book in 2010. Fortunately, she has comet it with great creativity and verve. One of the thing’s she’s done is crowd-source a book tour. She has sent out a call to everyone she knows for help in lining up talks across the US and beyond. I don’t quite know how the whole thing came together, but she is now starting a zillion-city, multi-month tour.

I offered my help for the Elm City leg of the tour, so let me just take a moment to send out a call to everyone in and around New Haven, Connecticut. Skloot will be talking on Monday, 2/8, at 4 pm at a Morse College Master’s Tea at Yale. Morse College is under renovation this year, so the students are staying at Yale’s Swing Space at 100 Tower Parkway (Map).

Skloot has also been lining up lots of other opportunities to talk about the book. Today (2/2) is the official date of publication, and the book is #11 on Amazon. That’s a great thing to see (even if Amazon’s on my blacklist at the moment because of their ongoing book-disappearing act). It may be too early to pass final judgment on the book’s commercial success, but I’m impressed so far.

I think Skloot’s experiences are worth studying, although they are no guarantee for every writer insane enough to write a book about science. For one thing, Skloot has an exceptional subject, which she has written about exceptionally well. What’s more, the odds are getting tougher for all authors. With more and more book titles in competition for the shrinking amount of time people spend reading books, a lot of disappointment is inevitable. Still, it’s a good idea for writers not to become recluses. Sure, spend time in the monastic solitude that books require, but then emerge and engage. You don’t have to tweet with Skloot’s hurricane-scale intensity, but do forge the relationships in which you can support fellow writers, and they can support you.

In November, when I visited the University of British Columbia, I gave a talk at their journalism school about how I became a science writer, and what it’s like for me today. It may not be interesting to people who are interested in science, rather than the business of science writing. But if you’re curious about this peculiar way of life, check it out.

This link takes you to the University of British Columbia on Itunes. Scroll down to find the podcast with my name on it.

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.

My new article is just one chapter in a multi-part story. Back in September, I wrote in the Times about how paleontologists developed this method and used it to determine the color of a 47-million-year-old bird feather. On the blog, I promised you here to stay tuned, and now here we are.

The new paper is important, but, as I note in the article, the scientists analyzed a single sample from each fossil. They didn’t look at a large number of samples from a single specimen. Such an analysis could give a broader picture of the color pattern of a dinosaur.

Again, you may guess where this is going. And so, again, stay tuned…

[Update: Times link fixed]