Science, Skin & Ink
November 9, 2011 5:58 AM   Subscribe

Science, Skin & Ink A slideshow of science tattoos from Carl Zimmer's new book Science Ink at the New York Times. See more at Zimmer's tattoo emporium. Carl Zimmer’s tattoo emporium previously.
posted by OmieWise (17 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
My profile picture has mine.

I once drunkenly showed it to Carl Zimmer at a bar after the San Diego ASM. I sent him a nice email with it to him afterwards, but he was a lot more drunk than I was and, looking back, a lot more interested in my female companion than my spiel about phage. I can't blame him, she is cute, but it must have annoyed him. Oh well.
posted by Blasdelb at 6:30 AM on November 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


I particularly liked the map in the last photo, and the bright neural tattoo on the Brazilian guy. Some of the others were based on neat ideas, but not fantastic as actual tattoos.
posted by Forktine at 7:12 AM on November 9, 2011


The map was my favorite.
posted by OmieWise at 7:17 AM on November 9, 2011


Well, if society ever collapses and Henry Rollins survives, we've got a head start on recording sound.
posted by griphus at 7:46 AM on November 9, 2011


I thought the darwin birds one out of the slide show was great, but there are many great tattoos in Zimmers actual site.
posted by garlic at 7:56 AM on November 9, 2011


Woo! I'm in this. Here's my page.
posted by supercres at 8:28 AM on November 9, 2011


supercres: link didn't work for me, but i found the pic of your tattoo through your page. very, very cool.

this is so much cooler than the tats i remember people having when i was coming up. most of them were unimaginative (a rose or a heart, a la janis, maybe a peace sign, but mostly canned art & boring) or just plain wrong (the 'mother' tattoos, naked ladies on arms & legs of sailors, etc.).
posted by msconduct at 8:43 AM on November 9, 2011


the buckyball one was pretty good since hexagonal shapes in general tend to drop me through a vortex back to some logan's run / space 1999 version of the future.
posted by SharkParty at 8:54 AM on November 9, 2011


Ooh! Ooh! I'm in that book! Or, at least, I think I am. I signed a form and everything. I'm not in the slideshow.

The unfortunate thing is that my tattoo is quite a bit cooler, now, (in both a visual and a sciencey sense) with some later embellishments, but when I proposed using a new picture in the book he didn't want to bother with it. Understandable, but it's so much better now!
posted by gurple at 8:58 AM on November 9, 2011


Aha. I found myself in the actual book (Amazon Look Inside, lots more tattoos there). Looks like I got relegated to a collage page for Chemistry.
posted by gurple at 9:05 AM on November 9, 2011


Can you point us to a pic of your embellished tattoo?
posted by OmieWise at 9:14 AM on November 9, 2011


Why, yes, I can! The two isotopic distributions are what it looks like when you use isotopic labeling to quantify the relative abundance of a peptide in two different samples. The ratio of the areas of the ovals (i.e., the ratio of the abundances of the peptide in the two samples) is the ratio of the birthweights of my twin daughters (one now deceased).
posted by gurple at 9:20 AM on November 9, 2011


Wow, that's incredible. Sorry to hear about your daughter.
posted by OmieWise at 9:28 AM on November 9, 2011


She died just a few days after I got the ink; I'm really, really glad I got it when I did. It would have meant something totally different a week later.
posted by gurple at 9:32 AM on November 9, 2011


One of my colleagues from grad school is in this! She's got a super sweet tattoo of the Black Skull. Based on my personal experience, physical anthropologists LOVE to get tattoos of their research topics. Never have I seen so many inked lemurs in one place.
posted by Polyhymnia at 9:49 AM on November 9, 2011 [1 favorite]


I'm in there too, but since the book uses my real name (unlike my anonymous photo on Zimmer's site), I won't link to it. I like my tattoo and I'm proud of my research discovery, but I'm wary of being too Googleable. Hi, Mom!
posted by Quietgal at 12:22 PM on November 9, 2011


My friend's binary tattoo is in there. Neat!
posted by slimepuppy at 1:07 PM on November 9, 2011


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