Promos

In today's mail, a special offer from scientific supplier Fisher. Free, with your $500 (!) order of chemicals, you get a free copy of the classic board game Monopoly. But not just any copy of Monopoly, but a special edition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the company.

While I have no intention of ordering all those chemicals just to get the game, I am very curious about what it looks like. The picture of the game box on the flyer appears to show tokens in the shape of a microscope and a flask. I wonder if you build research labs on Oxford instead of hotels on Boardwalk. Is there a card in "Chance" that says, "Your research grant is funded! You get $100,000!" or "You are found guilty of plagiarism! Go to jail!" The mind boggles...

There's a bigger point here, though. I've had a fair number of students ask me, "What can you do with a degree in biology?" The possibilities they can see are medicine, maybe research, and not much else. They don't realize that science is Big Business. Advertising is indicative of that: small companies with no competition don't have their own customized games made for their customers.

;;;;;

And here we are in the middle of summer, with weeks of 30-40 degree C weather on either side of today...

And I have a cold! The sore throat became a cough which became the runny nose and I don't like it at all.

Pout.