Threadless is a democratic t-shirt company which prints shirts based on the number of votes user-submitted designs receive. But there are so many shirts these days its hard to find the sweetest and most stylish science apparel. So I decided to compile a list!

Keep in mind that a lot of these are currently sold out or only available in strange sizes but they are often reprinted so keep eyes peeled.

“Funkalicious” is one of my all-time favorites. Steve bought this one and I printed out a giant version to put on my wall. It doesn’t get much better than an astronaut bumping hot jams on his boombox with a funky rainbow trail. The real beauty of the shirt is that even though there is no propagation of sound in space the dude keeps bumping the beats likely by feeling the bass. Awesome.

What dog in its right mind would eat gross tasting homework? Maybe if you dipped the paper in bacon grease… But it’s hard for a teacher to believe you without evidence. “Homework Evidence” does exactly that and reveals the truth with a canine x-ray revealing math homework and a calculator strangely floating around in the dogs internal organs. The thing is, you could definitely fake a real x-ray like this by taping your homework to the outside of your poochie without having to use any of your precious bacon grease. Thanks Threadless!

Wouldn’t it be nice to colonize the moon? “Away From Home” depicts this glorious achievement complete with glow-in-the-dark stars. Unfortunately, not meaning to the bad mouth the science of all these t-shirts, it includes the all too common space blunder of showing fire in the oxygen-less vacuum of space. It’s sold out anyway

Combining everyones favorite tie pattern with everyones favorite unicellular organisms, “Paisley Paramecium” is a shirt for everyone. Steve even owns it!

“Playground Love” is the epitome of science on Threadless. It was a winner of the Seed Loves Threadless contest so you know it’s cool. The winner of the contest won an ant farm, a 60gb ipod stocked with science videos, a selection of signed science books and $1500. I can’t believe I didn’t submit a design!

I’m not too crazy about “Lab Partners”. Who would want to experiment on such cute test tube friends! I’d imagine you’d start seeing these little guys on those late nights in the lab.

I instantly bought “E=MC Escher” as soon as I saw it. The reason it’s named E=MC Escher is because it’s based on Escher’s painting Rind. You can’t go wrong when famous artists and famous scientists collide!

It would be self-deprecating for a scientist to actually wear but “Damn Scientists” is a Threadless classic so I couldn’t leave it out. The shirt should be called “Damn Government” because we don’t get enough science funding to make cool stuff like jetpacks!

“Tasty Table” is a nice take on the boring old periodic table which no one would want on a t-shirt. It doesn’t really make sense like the periodic table though. Hydrogen is alcohol yet half the blue things are alcoholic drinks. Some of the non-metals are mixes and some aren’t. And the Lanthanide/Actinide rows have been renumbered to follow the 7th period elements instead of being inserted into that little gap in the 3rd group. Technicalities aside, it’s a nice shirt!

Honorable mentions also goto the following awesome sciencey shirts:

• Fractions Speak Louder Than Nerds
• Bacteria
• Le Voyage Dans La Lune
• H2O’s Sacrifice

Here’s my morning routine on a school day like today:

• Rise by alarm
• Sift through my sock drawer for 5 minutes trying to find a matching pair
• Select outer layers of clothes
• Do hygienic things
• Eat cereal while I check my sites
• Exit house, hopefully dressed, and proceed to bus stop

Clearly the sock search is the weakest link! I know what you’re going to say, it’s my fault for not sorting them right out of the laundry but even in that case the problem still persists. How can I efficiently sort my socks, especially at 7:30 in the morning?

So heck, might as well make use of my university education and see if there is any research done in the cutting-edge sock sorting algorithm field. Sure enough, the internet provides:

Rohit Parikh, Laxmi Parida, Vaughan R. Pratt: Sock Sorting: An Example of a Vague Algorithm. Logic Journal of the IGPL 9(5): (2001)

My normal method of sorting is a greedy algorithm. I pick up the first sock I see and go one by one through the rest of my socks trying to find a match. If things go according to plan (since my socks are pretty unique in coloration) I can sort through them pretty quickly, but in the worst case this search algorithm has O(n²) run time. That is, if there are n socks I’ll have to make n comparisons with n other socks. This could explain my 5 minute sock search runtime. I just wish I had a faster CPU.

Parikh et. al. discuss a more interesting example in which socks can be matched vaguely based on their colors. For example, “suppose a dark gray sock will match either a dark gray sock or a charcoal gray sock and a black sock will match either a black or a charcoal gray sock”, which unfortunately opens up possibilities for free-loading unmatched socks. The unmatched sock is never desirable but may be necessary depending on your sock shade spectrum.

Taking vagueness into account, my normal greedy algorithm will still run in O(n²) time in the worst case but linearly on average. More advanced algorithms are also discussed by Parikh. et. al. which eliminate the possibility of unmatched socks at the expense of some additional calculations but who has time for that?

It really makes a lot of sense. If my sock matching criteria is vague enough, on average, I’ll find a match in linear time. The problem is that I just have such high standards. The solution to that is simple. I just have to consume alcohol in the morning in order to impair my judgment enough to get to class on time. Problem solved.

Here at Jacks of Science, we recognize that not all scientists (or science blogs) are perfect. That said, there is always room for improvement. So, in the spirit of the new(ish) year, we’ve come up with some new year’s resolutions to make Jacks of Science the best science blog it can be. Prepare for a seriously good year at Jacks of Science!
More regular posting – Steve
What can we say? We’ve been slacking off lately. We’re going to dust off the cobwebs this year and bring you the ZANIEST and MOST THOUGHT PROVOKING blog posts you’ve ever seen! Think we’re lying? Just look at our post archive! The zaniness quotient of each post has been increasing exponentially (or maybe logistically, I guess!)!
Science blog community involvement – Chris
90% of blogs are about Paris Hilton gossip and recycled tech news from Slashdot and Digg. In the same vein, 90% of blog readers probably don’t give a hoot about science. That’s exactly why it’s so important to nurture the tiny blogosphere we have and participate in the community. Engaging people in science is a goal of ours which extends much farther than the grasp of our lowly blog. Not to mention it’s a great way to steal readers from other sites.
Sustain and increase comedy/drama levels – Chris
Comedy levels have been pretty erratic on the site and drama levels are at an all time low. Come to think of it, I haven’t cried after reading a blog post since Bumblebees in a Plastic Box when Steve told me he had to rip off their wings to study them! So what we’re really striving for in 2008 is a nice dramedy.
More posts about peer-reviewed research – Steve
While comedy certainly has its place, one of the great things a science blog can do is bring science out of the ivory tower and into the salivating brain-mouthes of people around the world. Since we read many cutting edge research papers anyway, we fully intend to distill out the boring and bring on the sexy in the new year.