Swans on Tea

The List of N Things
Some of the work of reading an article is understanding its structure—figuring out what in high school we’d have called its “outline.” Not explicitly, of course, but someone who really understands an article probably has something in his brain afterward that corresponds to such an outline. In a list of n [...]

All Sorts: A Linguistic Experiment
All Sorts is a collection of collective nouns that may or may not have found their way into the Oxford English Dictionary. If you think that a charismatic collective is far superior to a dullard ‘bunch’ or ‘flock’ then this is the place for you.
It culls them from tweets, grabbing [...]

Chad’s guest post at the X-Change Files
Talking Incentives
[T]he first thing I want to do is take issue with the question’s phrasing. While it’s commonly believed that scientists lack communication skills, that’s very far from the truth.
It is almost impossible to be a successful scientist without also being a good communicator. Communicating results to other scientists, [...]

The Fruit Is A Lie
A fruit — a ‘true fruit’ — is one where all tissues are derived from the plant ovary and this alone. This includes peas. Whereas strawberries, for example, also include some of the flesh from the peg that holds the ovary, disqualifying them from fruit status. The apple gets its carpels [...]

5 Atrocious Science Clichés to Throw Down a Black Hole
After careful consideration and consultation with members of the local science writing community (only some of them were drunk), we have selected the five most annoying and ubiquitous clichés we think should be sucked into a black hole, forever banished from all future descriptions of science.

Funny [...]

Or acetylsalicylic acid, generic. You can get six hundred tablets of that for the same price as three hundred of a name brand.
Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief
Although cursing is notoriously decried in the public debate, researchers are now beginning to question the idea that the phenomenon is all bad. “Swearing is [...]

Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, 2009 results
An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is childishly simple: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for “The Last Days of Pompeii” (1834), [...]

Built on Facts: Failures of Cuteness in Physics
There’s a unit of cross-sectional area used in nuclear physics equal to a trillionth of a trillionth of a square centimeter. It’s roughly the cross-section of a heavy atomic nucleus, and it’s used to discuss interactions with incoming particles. You could say in some ways it’s a [...]

Apparently “Swan flu” is a common search term, supposedly a mistake by people researching swine flu, but I think we know what’s really going on.
You don’t have the flu. You’re just hot for this blog.

[finger, prick] ≠ 0
( … lots of George Carlin on HBO lately … )

Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News
It was on an average Wednesday that a very serious Israeli newspaper conducted a very wild experiment. For one day, Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent most of his staff reporters home and sent 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets to cover the day’s news.
[…]
Among those articles were gems [...]

Bally Jerry pranged his kite right in the how’s your father. Hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper’s and caught his can in the Bertie.
Oh, wait. Bacon in the Asteroid Belt is meant to be taken literally. Answering the timeless question of how [...]