Sunday, January 25, 2009

Inked by science


I really want to get a tattoo, so today I started doing web searches for ideas and tips on what might work well. (I do know what I want to get, but not yet sure where or what the design will look like.) I found this website of scientific tattoos, which is good for at least 3 hours of time wasting. They all fall somewhere on a range of super-dorky to... well, super dorky but also really awesome.
I particularly like the one above, a picture of the phylogenetic family tree of HIV. On the back of a researcher looking into the origins of the virus. It reminds me of my work with rotavirus phylogenies, and a particularly zealous phylogeneticist. There were a lot of days when I'd come in, check my email, and find that this guy had poured hundreds of virus strains into a similar family tree -- because he thought it would be interesting. When he started color-coding, I considered blowing up the tree pictures and wallpapering my room with rotavirus. I never considered painting my skin with them, though.

2 comments:

Che said...

That's an amazing website :)

Rica said...

I knew you'd like it! So what's your next one going to be? A placenta, maybe?