{"id":685,"date":"2008-11-25T20:31:49","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T20:31:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/11\/25\/in_which_words_stick\/"},"modified":"2008-11-25T20:31:49","modified_gmt":"2008-11-25T20:31:49","slug":"in_which_words_stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/2008\/11\/25\/in_which_words_stick\/","title":{"rendered":"In which words stick"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nAttractive<\/strong> Cheap and cheerful public engagement magnets may inspire<\/em> <\/p>\n

\n“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.”<\/p>\n

\nAn 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<\/a> novels<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nAny resemblance to any persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/mindthegap\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}