Yup, it's that time again! National delurking week.

(I had to choose carefully among the buttons...the one posted up there is my favorite. I would have taken the red one with the girl saying "Won't you comment" but I would have preferred two differences: first, the statement being "WHY won't you comment?" and the girl being shown a little teary (a la the Roy Lichtenstein posters of comic-book-like women, some of which have been reprinted and altered to say things like, "OMG! I forgot to get married and have children!")

So...like the cranky lady says: would it kill ya to comment? I mean, if you're lurky and stuff.

Another one I liked is the Smokey the Bear one:



We used to have a Smokey joke in my research lab when I was a grad student. You know how sometimes when good advice is applied to every conceivable situation, it becomes not so good? Well, that's actually how "only you can prevent forest fires" works. Preventing forest fires is very good advice when human life or structures are involved, or in habitats where fire was historically not a part of the picture (like, say, peat bogs). But in some forests - especially some of the southern pine forests and some of the oak hickory forests - preventing forest fires causes more problems than it solves.

Think of the massive Yellowstone fire of 1987. (If you are old enough to remember that...and it freaks me a little to think that there are probably people reading this who AREN'T). That was a situation where longtime fire suppression led to a big bad fire when it finally started. (Had smaller fires been allowed to burn and only stopped when they threatened structures or people, the big fire probably wouldn't have happened.)

One of my officemates, who is far snarkier than I ever will be (or ever want to be) planned on having t-shirts made up with Smokey's mug and the words "Only you....can prevent nutrient cycling" on them. He never did; I'm guessing it was more an issue of not having time than being afraid of Mr. S.T. Bear's lawyers coming after him.