Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.
Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.
This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.
SCIENCE
thank you
this is one of the best comments this post has recieved
I have witnessed:
Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”
Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”
A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”
Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.
Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”
Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.
A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.
I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…
Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.
– I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”
– Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night.
– A whole swarm of older women – and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs – all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.
– At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road.
– “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”
– Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it.
a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work
“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”
The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”
I then let her into her office.
“Security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit.” I would bet anything this has happened to Dr. Medievalist.
Semi-related non-academic anecdote: The concert hall security guys tried to throw out our violone player in between performances this spring because they thought he was a homeless guy. Despite the fact that he was wearing concert black… and carrying a violone. There is no more obvious instrument.
One of my English Professors admitted that sometimes “you just have to do a soliloquy” and would phone up the main office of the department on the internal phoneline to recite a Shakespearean monologue at them. No greeting, no warning, just “To be or not to be”.
every time i read this stuff i think about how upset vulcans would be to meet earth’s greatest scientific minds
I’m so fascinated by the unisex Ambystoma and y’all should be too!!
The Unisexual Ambystoma is an all female group of salamanders native to the Great Lakes and the North Eastern United States. They are most commonly a triploid species (but they can have multiple variations of polyploidy). But what is SO COOL about them is they steal genomes from males of 5 other species (A. laterale, A. barbouri, A. tigrinum, A. texanum, A. jeffersonianum)!!
The unisexuals pick up and use genomes of sexual species every time they breed, but those genomes do not pass onto the next generation. The genes they “steal” are adapted to the conditions of the local sexual males. They’re like the ninjas of the world of herpetology!!
Imagine that! A lineage made up of only women that, generation after generation, collect genetic material from males of other species that they can distribute to their offspring in pretty much any configuration. Science still doesn’t know how the mother “chooses” the genes she gives to her daughter, and that is FASCINATING!
And this has been going on for millions of years! It is hypothesized that the Unisexual Ambystoma comes from a cross between A. laterale and A. barbouri.
But those two no longer have the same geographical range. This means that the production of new Unisexual Ambystoma populations is not ongoing. This group of female salamanders have been surviving solely by stealing genes from other species!! That’s so freaking cool!!!!!!
the universe: okay, you’re a human. I gave you free will and a conscious mind, so you’re free to do whatever you want. So what do you wanna do?
human: GO FAST
the universe: well, you’re a perfect pursuit predator but if that’s the way you want to evolve, go ahead.
human, climbing on a horse: GO FAST
the universe: wait what
human, inventing the carriage, the car and the bullet train: GO FASTER
the universe: I IMPLORE YOU TO STOP
human, trying to figure out lightspeed travel: FAS T ER
human:
THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST
the universe:
How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?
Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.
it works like this
Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.
A WRINKLE IN TIME IS COMING TRUE
We gonna be surfing gravity waves!!
COWABUNGA SPACE DUDES!
I love how mankind’s solution to ftl is just to bend to rules of reality a little.
Universe: ok human, with the physical laws as they are you can’t go faster than the speed of light.
Humanity: ok, let me just figure out how to manipulate space time so I can go FASTER!
Seriously, it kills me when I see people hold scientists up as pinnacles of logic and reason.
Because one time the professor I was interning for got punched in the face by another professor, because mine got the funding, and told the other professor his theory was stupid.
This same professor told me to throw rocks to scare the “stupid fucking crabs” into moving so we could count them properly.
SCIENCE
thank you
this is one of the best comments this post has recieved
I have witnessed:
Two professors hiding around a corner and snickering, “Shhh, here she comes!” While a female professor approached and, when she finally found them, she proceeded to scream while pointing from one to the other, “You! I called your office but you weren’t there! So I tried to call YOUR office to figure out where HE was but YOU weren’t there!”
Two grad students standing outside a closed and locked door yelling, “Come out of the damn office. You haven’t left for days. If you didn’t have a couch in there I’d be concerned as to where you were sleeping!”
A religious studies professor apologizing for being late to class because, “security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit”
Watched a professor snort the results of my experiment to determine if I had the right final compound.
Two archeology professors toss priceless fossilized teeth back and forth in an attempt to figure out who is smarter by “guessing the type of tooth and species of animal before it lands”
Multiple fully degreed individuals throw dry ice at one another in an attempt to be first to use the lab/get that piece of equipment/or change the iPod song.
A genetics professor build furniture out of stacks of paper and planks of wood because she is that far behind in grading papers/responding. One of the impromptu furniture pieces housed a fish tank.
I could go on but I think that covers the larger portion of the insanity…
Every time it comes around on my dash, it gets better.
– I have had a professor buy a huge fuckoff bottle of rum during fieldwork in Costa Rica and let the undergrads get wasted because “you’re not underage in Costa Rica and we’ll be up all night with the bats anyway!”
– Same professor hung a bat from her headlamp and wore it as a decoration for an entire night.
– A whole swarm of older women – and these are women with PhDs and world-renown bat experts, the bigwigs – all, to a woman, go to the formal charity dinner at an international research symposium in Toronto in late October dressed in skimpy Batgirl costumes. Because Halloween was that weekend, you see.
– At a different conference, a professor get blackout drunk and pass out on the side of the road.
– “Yeah, we have to say we did it properly for the grant but to be really honest, Miracle-gro works better.”
– Teaching lab: we had liquid nitrogen for a demo, and after class the professor, the other TA, and I spent a good two hours freezing and breaking things in it.
a chemistry class begins with 30 students nine months later just six of us left sitting on tables dipping paper into contaminated chemicals to see what happens when we burn it teacher making idle suggestions while he marks our work
“go to the fume hood thing, yeah now put some potassium in chlorine” can i burn the results sir? “fuck it sure whatever its tainted anyway”
The prof I’m working for just asked me if I knew how to pick a lock, and when I responded “yes” she replied, “see, this is why I hire the former delinquents instead of the suck-ups. You’re actually useful.”
I then let her into her office.
“Security stopped me because I’m dressed like a hobbit.” I would bet anything this has happened to Dr. Medievalist.
Semi-related non-academic anecdote: The concert hall security guys tried to throw out our violone player in between performances this spring because they thought he was a homeless guy. Despite the fact that he was wearing concert black… and carrying a violone. There is no more obvious instrument.
One of my English Professors admitted that sometimes “you just have to do a soliloquy” and would phone up the main office of the department on the internal phoneline to recite a Shakespearean monologue at them. No greeting, no warning, just “To be or not to be”.
every time i read this stuff i think about how upset vulcans would be to meet earth’s greatest scientific minds
rip tumblr 