I'm on the road, first in Waterloo, Canada for the Perimeter Institute's Quantum 2 Cosmos Festival -- you can read about a couple of the highlights over on Twisted Physics -- and now in New York City for the Imagine Science Film Festival. Several blog posts are in the works, but in the meantime, I had to dash off a quickie. You see, over at The Crunchy Chicken, they're running a poll asking us to vote on the Hottest Man in Climatology. Apparently there were slim pickins':
I wanted to write a post about the Hot Men of Climatology, but when I went a huntin' for hotties, pretty much what I found were older men sporting a lot of hair or none at all. And, the only hot thing going on was more related to warming temperatures than chiseled abs. But, I've found the up and coming (well, under 50ish) "hot" men of climatology for your review. Let me know if I missed any :)
One of the candidates is Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State whom many of you might know from the RealClimate blog, which he writes with Gavin Schmidt. Michael is behind in the polls. In fact, he might even lose to Gavin, which really sticks in his craw. So I made him an offer: I would write a post asking people to vote for him on the condition that, should he win, he agrees to pose in a thong, preferably of the Borat variety -- although an S&M posing pouch would do just as nicely. :) He agreed (although I suspect now he hopes he loses)!
So head on over to The Crunchy Chicken and vote for Michael, who in addition to being a Hot Climatologist, is also pretty much a mensch. Tell your friends! And if you're in NYC, I'll be at the city's premiere of Randy Olson's SIZZLE! Friday night. Come down and say hi!
Hi there - I found your blog post from my stats software.
If Michael wins, I want a picture! And now I'm awfully tempted to rig the results :) Gavin better watch his back...
Seriously, we do have a 2011 Calendar idea brewing and will hopefully be taking nominations soon. Not sure if it will be completely limited only to climate scientists though so the competition will be tough.
Posted by: Crunchy Chicken | October 22, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Totally apart from my vote for Michael, I object to the overt age bias here! There are some (admittedly, not at lot, but some) men post 50's (and few post-60's) who can hold their own with the young 'uns in terms of 'upping' and 'coming'. Shame on y'all for limiting your horizons!
Posted by: Diandra Leslie-Pelecky | October 22, 2009 at 05:12 PM
Diandra, you naughty physicist, you. You're painting quite a graphic picture there. To be honest, my initial list of top 5 were almost all over 65. But I figured I was really stretching things with "hottest men in climatology" by having septuagenarians in there. It just wasn't as believable and the older crew is who you mostly hear about anyway when you talk about climate scientists. Which is why I ended up focusing on the under 50 group. Believe me, I was spending waaaay to much time working on the post by this point :)
Anyway, Michael is now in the lead so Gavin better get on top of things. Er, so to speak.
And, Diandra, after seeing your picture online, I think we'll have to do a hot women in science calendar next!
Posted by: Crunchy Chicken | October 22, 2009 at 07:23 PM