Oh boobs.

Thirty-year-old Lara Tait has launched Boobs for Science, a blog and Facebook page designed to call attention to developments in science. And women all over Italy are happy to contribute.

The blog carries the tagline “Where reason fails, boobs have a chance.” Women are asked to post pictures of their breasts along with signs about science which, to date, have included support for Rosetta, the European Space Agency, GMOs and others.

As to whether or not the effort might be seen in any way as sexist, Tait says, “A woman is free to do what she wants with her own body, also put it to the service of science if she wants.”

The effort was kicked off with an image and sign which read, “25 per cent of Italians deny the theory of evolution. In the US, it’s 60 per cent.” Many images include the hashtag #iostoconrosetta – meaning “I am with Rosetta.”

and while breasts are the central focus of the effort, men, too, have joined in and are posting images of their chests and butts. Yes, there is nudity.

So in Rhode Island there’s a department store chain called Ocean State Job Lot. It’s like Walmart but not. To hype themselves for the holiday shopping season, the store hooked up with Kindling Digital which created the elaborate prank which took shoppers on an adventure which involved Owen Van Winter, an elf, Santa and a guy claiming to be Santa who turns out to be an imposter.

The stunt grabbed a few shoppers at checkout and took them on an adventure to save Santa and, of course, win some free stuff. It’s quite well done actually and, so far, has received a lot of play. For Rhode Island. OK, not to jab a state within which I used to work at an agency I really didn’t like (or, more correctly, didn’t like me) because, all things considered, I like the stunt. And so do 18,000 other people.