Intellectual Colognes

Cologne is nonessential in my life; never feel any need of it.  I was never attracted to it until now.

Inspired by New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter’s cologne, Driven, Steve Mirsky wrote a humor column in the November 2006 issue of Scientific American with a title of Uncommon Scents.  He makes up 18 colognes, each honoring or ‘exploiting’ a scientist.  I’ll mention a few here and say a few things to make it more educational; so you would have fun while learning something.  The aim of my blogging is to educate, enlighten and entertain, after all.

I wonder how Avon would market Driven in the Red Sox Nation? Big Poppi and Manny Ramirez, lovable though they may be, probably not fit to sell cologne.  I think the best answer from Boston to the New York Yankees' Jeter would be Patriots’ Tom Brady.

Alessandro Volta’s Charge   (Charge is the name of the cologne to be marketed)

Ingredients:  Cat hair, amber, balloons.

Slogan:  Make sparks fly.

Volt (unit of electric potential) and voltage derives from him.  If your name became a unit of scientific measurement or a constant, you are a scientific great or a Nobel laureate.  But, Volta (1745-1827) was in pre-Nobel era.  His Voltaic pile is the forerunner of modern battery.  He used copper (or silver) and zinc (this is what we learn in high school chemistry—electrochemical cell) to produce electrons (of course, we have to wait another 100 years or so to learn that it was electrons flowing that does the trick)

My slogan to sell Alessandro Volta’s Charge  would be “When 陰 (Yin) and  陽 (Yang) meet, let it spark!”

陰 (Yin) is female or negatively charged, and  陽 (Yang) is male or positively charged.

Antoine Lavoisier’s Chemistry

Ingredients: Hydrogen, oxygen.

Slogan:  When the elements come together, you may lose your head.

Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry (included in the Britannica Great Books) is very modern; no wonder he is touted as the Father of Modern Chemistry.  Many concepts are credited to him:  hydrogen combines with oxygen yields water, Laws of Conservation of Mass, diamond is the crystalline form of carbon, and role of oxygen plays in combustion.  Lavoisier (1743-1794) was beheaded during the French Revolution.  When he was sentenced to death, he requested time to complete some scientific work, the presiding judge was said to have answered “The Republic has no need of scientists.”  This judge symbolizes the collective French National Disgrace and Shame.

The slogan of ‘you may lose your head’ was twisted into somewhat different meaning that is fitting for selling cologne.

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Cataclysm

Ingredients:  Desert sand, enriched geranium.

Slogan:  Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, but with a delicate floral hint.

I read Oppei’s biography: American Prometheus this past summer.  On his reflection of seeing the mushroom clouds rising from the first test explosion of atomic bomb (code name Trinity), he wrote, quoting from the Hindu sacred Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One." and “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."

My campaign slogan for Cataclysm  would be: Let this American Prometheus steal fire and passion to stir your static mind, so when the moment is right, you will be ready!  (I must have watched too much Cialis TV commercial)

The following colognes are my own invention.

Kary Mullis’ Flamboyant Flame

Mullis’ polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is simplistically beautiful, matching that of DNA structure—the best tool we ever had in propelling the genetic science to the one as we come to know today.  I am still trying to understand this flamboyant ‘playboy’ Nobel laureate (1993, Chemistry)

My slogan to sell Flamboyant Flame:  Get out of Lab, play the game, not necessarily by the rule, be uninhibited and outrageous, explore the world, get a life, be all you can be.

Hwang Woo Suk's Blind Ambition or Cheating Heart

When the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk announced his creation of many new lines of embryonic stem cells last year, critics claimed the American counterparts had fallen behind because of President George Bush's stem cell policy.  Then the superstar scientist fell like a rock after his fraudulent scheme was exposed.

Shortly after the Blind Ambition or Cheating Heart was launched, it was discovered all the ingredients are fake, so the product was quickly pulled out of shelf and its marketing slogan was deleted from this page