• I, Editor by Henry Gee

    This is the Nature Network and therefore Terribly Extremely Very Serious foothold for Nature Senior Editor Henry Gee. If you want fun and games, visit http://cromercrox.blogspot.com/

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    • Sign O' The Times

      Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 15:06 UTC

      This helpful message was to have improved the stiffness of upper lips during World War II

      but was never, in fact, used. It has, however, taken on a new lease of life in today’s climate of woe and universal brouhaha, according to this report .

      It certainly does a great deal more for me than this next specimen exhortation,

      which should be confined to daytime TV commercial breaks, interspersed with adverts for shady loan-shark deals, insurance services, incontinence products and laundry detergents.

      First Housewife No matter how much I try, I can’t get my soul washing really clean.

      Second Housewife ( retching reaching into handbag for book) Have you tried new, improved God Delusion?

      First Housewife No, I haven’t – let’s give it a go!

      later

      First Housewife Look! New Improved God Delusion has worked wonders on my husband’s underpants – and the kids’ football socks … Wow!

      Voice Over New Improved God Delusion. It’s … evolved.

      However, for my money, you can’t beat the following mantra

      So, friends, when you’ve been reposessed deleveraged thrown out of your home, made redundant, and even your dog no longer talks to you, and indeed when all seems hopeless and you want to end it all, remember that

      Chuckie D Says Embrace Your Inner Fish

      There.

      I feel better already.

      Last updated: Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 15:06 UTC

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      • Comments

        • Date:
          Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 15:21 UTC
          Kristi Vogel said:

          I love the first one; I would like to include a small version on each page of the neuroscience exams for medical and dental students.

          Except that I would replace the crown with a little drawing of a brain, or perhaps a Lone Star (not the beer).

        • Date:
          Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 17:55 UTC
          Caryn Shechtman said:

          The first one could definitely be a message for a graduate student. In fact, I think I m going to hang it right above my bench… with the words “they have to graduate you someday.”

        • Date:
          Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 18:30 UTC
          steffi suhr said:

          I don’t think it would work without the crown.
          I’ll go embrace my inner fish now.

        • Date:
          Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 19:13 UTC
          Henry Gee said:

          You do that, Steffi. This comment was brought to you by Descent With Modification™ – no other theory of evolution looks like it , or lasts like it. Descent With Modification contains no artificial additives, and is entirely free from vis essentialis , scala naturae , primum mobile , phlogiston or epicycles. All its ingredients are 100% naturally selected. (Fitness constraints may apply.)

        • Date:
          Wednesday, 04 Feb 2009 - 23:06 UTC
          Eva Amsen said:

          Wait a minute!! THIS IS NOT A POEM!
          And neither was the previous post! (And I only realized now)

          Did you stop 11 months early?

        • Date:
          Thursday, 05 Feb 2009 - 05:47 UTC
          John Church said:
          @Eva, at the risk of being told to shove off (again); I have to point out that MOST of Henry’s previous metered posts were technically doggerel. (Hence the “golden retriever” tag.) But seriously, folks… I detect a certain smugness of certainty in many of the previous posts and comments that I find bothersome. I suppose I expect it from the faith based crowd, but it seems strange coming from the people on this network; whom I tend to hold in higher intellectual esteem. @ Steffi-MOST people would try to rid themselves of a candirú.
        • Date:
          Thursday, 05 Feb 2009 - 06:26 UTC
          amy charles said:

          Oh, my parents brought those home from Japan, John. Mostly sugar cane anyway, stringy.
          Otherwise I feel clammy, with the fish, and would rather have the Christmas pudding after all.

          @Eva: Remember the kid who reminded the teacher about the pop quiz she was going to give? Remember?

        • Date:
          Thursday, 05 Feb 2009 - 06:50 UTC
          John Wilkins said:

          I doubt that WWII poster is original. Gill Sans was not popular back then…

        • Date:
          Thursday, 05 Feb 2009 - 08:15 UTC
          Henry Gee said:

          @ Eva – the poetry hasn’t finished, and even if it had, it would have lasted longer than most new-year resolutions. But I detect a certain adverse tone to comments about it, so I am less bothered than I was.

          @ John: Certainty? No way. As scientists we know that uncertainty is our meat and drink. What irks many of us is the smug certainty of the militant atheist tendency, not so much for their fundamentalist attitude towards faith (which they share with creationists) but for their failure to understand the nature of science. As for smugness – that’s in the eye of beholder.

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