Mercurial Me

I have been deluged with this Periodic Table, in which, if you look closely, you’ll see that many of the elephants girrafes elements relate to science bloggers or science websites (thanks to Bob O’Hara for alerting me to this and suggesting that I claim the element mercury – after the initials of my nom de plume, rather than my character, or my distinct un-resemblance to the late lead singer of Queen). Yes, it’s a bit of fun. But it’s also a concise solution to the problem of putting a lorra lorra links together in a teeny weeny space. Think of it, if you will, as a graphic blog carnival. Who knows? Perhaps this sort of thing might catch on: blog carnivals in the form of food webs or phylogenies, chemical reaction schemes or anatomical diagrams?

About cromercrox

Cromercrox is an author of the SF trilogy The Sigil and many other books, and an editor at a well-known science magazine whose opinions aren't necessarily represented on this page. You can visit his capacious backlist at Amazon at amazon.com/author/henrygee
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4 Responses to Mercurial Me

  1. Cath@VWXYNot? says:

    Cerium (Ce, my initials) was taken, so I snagged Einsteinium (Es, first and last letters of my surname). Score! It was either that or holmium, which would have been amusing.

  2. Barn Owl says:

    In grad school, we could buy Periodic Table of the States T-shirts from the lab general stores; I remember Oregonium and Texium in particular (hmmm, wonder why?). I'm very fond of the Periodic Table of Desserts/Flowers/Crafts, etc. meme.Best phylogeny I've seen is one of Matt Groening's, from his Life in Hell comics. It has TV evangelists evolving from tapeworms, parking meter attendants from stinging jellyfish, the French from poodles, etc. Edward Tufte has a very nice "evolution of rock 'n' roll" diagram in one of his books, but it's not designed as a phylogenetic tree.

  3. David Bradley says:

    Thanks for the shout out Henry. Glad you're happy with mercury, I can just imagine you strutting around with half a microphone stand and a yellow cat suit…or maybe not.Yeah, there are lots of PTs of other things. I bought my wife a PT of yoga (she's a teacher), but I think giving science bloggers/writers/twitters an element is much more appropriate, if not quite so much fun as PTs of pies, states, fonts, or even sexual positions.db

  4. cromercrox says:

    Thanks David – I was thinking more of the pre-Bohemian Rhapsody period (black nail varnish on one hand only).

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