The image in this post is from a water chemistry book called Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles, by Elizabeth Kay Berner and Robert A. Berner (1995).

Tell me that you don’t see what I see. I mean, what graphic artist creates this, and then looks at it and says, “Yeah, that looks like sea salt particles being released into the air from bubbles on the ocean surface.”

Really??? It didn’t at least vaguely remind him (I am guessing it was a male) of something else?

I don’t know – a few of the people in my circle don’t see it as an ejaculating phallus with two white testicles. Maybe it’s just me, but I just think it is a bit too… detailed.

This is how facts and phalluses (phallii?) combine. In many places, in many ways. Almost too often in the world of scientific graphics, especially, it seems, in fields such as geology and meteorology. Or maybe those are just the ones I am most familiar with.