Last month I was asked to give a dinner speech for a Wellcome Trust/New Scientist shindig. A few days ago, when I was tidying up the house, I ran into the forgotten goodie bag that had been thrust at me on departure. Amidst the usual haul of marketing materials, pens and cheap gadgets, I discovered something truly intriguing: a sheet of science-y fridge magnet letters courtesy of the Trust’s broadcast division.
Attractive Cheap and cheerful public engagement magnets may inspire
“Science,” claimed the blurb on top, “is all about stories. Stories of the everyday as well as the extraordinary. See how many you can put together.”
An enormous amount of time-wasting ensued. This, I decided, was a fantastic way to stimulate people to think about the messy human endeavor behind the scientific profession. I was well stocked for lab-essential nouns like ‘experiment’, ‘research’ and the like, but there was a scandalous paucity of third-person pronouns and conjunctions. The most glaring omission was the word ‘scientist’ itself. Nevertheless, I finally managed to come up with a plot that would not be out of place in one of my own lab lit novels:
Any resemblance to any persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Ow ow ow ow ow… please to stop the laughing, it hurts.
Good clean fun for the entire family.
I was really needing the word ‘elusive’.
Good one, Jennifer! I like how ‘desire’ and ‘cure’ are thrown off to the side together (besides ‘death’, ‘frustrate’ and ‘mother’).
I wonder whether that last tag has ever come up as a typo in any press releases.
I would like to point out for the record that I did not add that tag!
Also missing from the words was kit: not a single piece of lab apparatus! Shameful.
The manufacturer must himself have had the “gene responsible for chronic love of art”, based on how the words are ordered on the sheet (3rd line)
Your novels become yet more intriguing if this is a similar plot line.
Eva, I didn’t notice that! Classic.
James, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
I want a fridge big enough for all those magnets,
That is excellent! I once got my hands on something similar from a company – Invitrogen I think – but it was too full of trademarked words (such as kit names – ProteinPrepTM kinda stuff) to be very useful. Some of the better words did make it onto our fridge though, mixed in with the magnetic poetry (erotic) words that my husband bought me for Christmas one year, and that we once forgot to disassemble from their drunken housewarming party state before my parents arrived. “Your friends are very… creative”, said my jet-lagged mother.
One of said friends even found a way to make pornographic rhymes from the magnetic poetry (religious) set that his mother bought him, so, yeah. Creative.
First prize for whomever can use the word “ProteinPrepTM” in an otherwise compelling lab lit sentence.
Your novels become yet more intriguing if this is a similar plot line.
Actually, it’s not far off being a plot summary for Experimental Heart.
You bastard Henry. I just snorted my martini.
Ow ow ow ow.
The thought of you with an olive stuffed up one nostril and a cocktail stick up the other … is … is… [collapse of stout party]
Hmmm…yes, after I posted the blog I realized it was rather reminiscent.
wow Jenny, are there more of those kits out there? I for one would like that :)
and it makes me even more intrested to read the book.
[and for the record, on a PC I couldn’t see the pics but now on a mac I can…. strange….]
There you go Åsa—the superiority of Macs.
@Henry, ‘stout’ is fair, I think. You’d make two of me.
Your PC can’t read jpgs, Asa? How deliciously primitive.
@Henry, ‘stout’ is fair, I think. You’d make two of me.
Yes, I thought so, too. Better than ‘lardy-arsed obese bastard’.
{looks for salon squirt gun…}
{fit of the giggles}
_wow Jenny, are there more of those kits out there? I for one would like that _
Alas, I think it was just a marketing exercise but, having said that, I can check with the woman who runs that division and see. I actually wouldn’t mind having a complete set; compared with novel writing, I’ve always found it rather soothing to be constrained to such a minimum of words.
I’ve always found it rather soothing to be constrained to such a minimum of words.
This reminds me of a passage up in Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct, which is probably the most laugh-out-loud funny book anyone’s ever written that mentions Chomsky.
In it, Pinker says that the average American teenager has a vocabulary of several tens of thousands of words. Pinker then says that this will come as a surprise to the parents of the average American teenager, who think that their offspring knows just two words, viz. ‘cool’, and ‘sucks’.
That reminds me of an article written by a friend who trained in academic linguistics and then went to teach Arabic, among other things, at a Boston inner city high school.
Then again, Pinker lives and works in Boston as well, so perhaps they’ve been a particularly good influence on the local fauna.
Heather, that is hilarious! And it isn’t a spoof?
Classic.
My favorite phrase was “-s excrescence”, which sounds like something in one of Henry’s novels.
On dogs, it’s the real thang, Jens.
You can tell by earnest sentences such as the following: “As is the case with any multilingual educational setting, speakers who are permitted to learn in their native language are much more capable learners than those who are forced to study through the medium of an official, but foreign, language.”
My favorite phrase was “-s excrescence”, which sounds like something in one of Henry’s novels.
As in
Jenny:yes, the PC can read jpegs but they come out as small …. and that made it hard to read the words.
Please ask and see if there is a possibility to buy them ;)
Happy Thanksgiving!
One can purchase magnetic sheets that can be printed on with an ink jet printer and which can then be cut into small pieces to make little sayings that can be stuck on a refrigerator. I have two children who were studying Latin in high school some years ago, so I searched the web for Latin sayings that they might (or might not) learn in school, down loaded them, printed them on a magnetic sheet and cut them into pieces. I have reproduced a few here. Some of these sayings might be useful to some of the bloggers here (Henry?) I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to translate them. I will post translations or at least what I was led to believe they mean when I copied them for those of you who are non-fluent in Latin.
Age. Fac ut gaudeam.
Aliis si licet, tibi non licet.
amare et sapere vix deo conceditur
asinus asinum fricat
aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Canis meus id comedit.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscripti catapultas habebunt
Dubitando ad veritatem venimus.
Dulce bellum inexpertis.
Dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem.
Fac me cocleario vomere!
Fac ut vivas.
Graeca sunt, non leguntur.
Hostes alienigeni me abduxerunt. Qui annus est?
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni!
Obesa cantavit.
parva leves capiunt animas
Prescriptio in manibus tabellariorium est.
vescere bracis meis