There is a tendency to interpret the phrase “hotly debate” in academic matters as a rather sedate sort of thing. Which is absurd, since scientists are, contrary to popular belief, still people. And that makes them just as prone to absurd drama as knitting enthusiasts and science fiction fans. Though maybe not quite as much […]
I’ve been pretty sick for the past week and a half, so we’re going with a really easy post today. Aka I am going to share a recipe. More specifically, I am sharing the recipe for the fudge that inevitably earned an excited “Margaret made fudge!” when I brought it to lab functions. This fudge […]
Welcome to the new Saturday posting schedule! In honour of that, today we’re talking about… spite! Spite is an amazing thing. It’s actually the reason that Diane Duane started writing for Star Trek, which is simply fantastic. It’s also one of many ways to pick a name for a species. You’re not supposed to pick […]
As a Terry Pratchett fan, I love a good footnote. Scientific footnotes are generally fairly dry things. However, every now and then you get a footnote that is in fact hilarious. I’ve already shared my favourite, which I love for its pure “Reviewer 3 made me do it” honesty. But there are several other great […]
In honour of Black Friday, I figured I’d do a post about crass commercialism in science. I’ve discussed the many ways species get their names in the past. But today we’re looking at some examples of species named for sponsors. There was a fine old tradition of naming species for the rich guy who coughed […]
Like many scientists, I love science fiction. While it hasn’t directly inspired a specific project or been honoured in my research’s nomenclature, it’s still part of why I went into the field in the first place. But occasionally, being a scientist and science fiction fan presents some unique challenges. Personally, I find it pretty easy […]
Angewandte Chemie is one of the top journals in chemistry. This means that knowing a bit of German is very useful for reading older papers (not bad considering I originally took it to be able to eat lunch!). For some reason, this also means that the entire chemistry community gets exposed to on average one […]
There are a lot of living things on the planet. This is probably pretty obvious, but the important part here is that it means they have to name a lot of species. I’ve discussed some of the science fiction and fantasy references in species names before. And of course, I’ve advocated for a strong liberal […]
They say there are two gateway drugs to science: dinosaurs and space. So it’s no wonder the names for astronomy related projects tend to be quite… romantic. We named what we saw in the sky after old gods, and we kept that theme going when we travelled to them. Often space projects are named for […]
Usually, the abstract of a scientific paper is quite a wordy thing. Shorter than the paper itself by a considerable margin, but it still says a lot. It gives a general overview of what the paper is about and what techniques are used. But every now and then you see an abstract where the authors […]