word of the day: sally

The word of the day is sally:

noun

1. a sortie of troops from a besieged place upon an enemy.

2. a sudden rushing forth or activity.

3. an excursion or trip, usually off the main course.

4. an outburst or flight of passion, fancy, etc.:

5. a clever, witty, or fanciful remark.

6. Carpentry. a projection, as of the end of a rafter beyond the notch by which the rafter is fitted over the wall plate.

< Middle French saillie attack, noun use of feminine past participle of saillir to rush forward < Latin salīre to leap (dictionary.com)

"The pace almost equals that of Robin Williams doing standup, but Coogan and Brydon reprise their best sallies for rhythm and for emphasis, so you won't miss anything that matters."

 - David Denby, "Lasting impressions: 'The Trip to Italy'", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: querulous

The word of the day is querulous:

adjective

1. full of complaints; complaining.

2. characterized by or uttered in complaint; peevish: a querulous tone; constant querulous reminders of things to be done.

< Latin querulus, equivalent to quer(ī) to complain (dictionary.com)


"People are made for walking, but we are not very good at it; our backs and arches, like querulous cabinet ministers, at first complain and then resign."

 - Adam Gopnik, "Heaven's gaits: what we do when we walk", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: louche

The word of the day is louche:

adjective

1. dubious; shady; disreputable.

< French: literally, cross-eyed < Latin luscus blind in one eye (dictionary.com)

"When an impoverished student at Stanford, the first in his family to go to college, opts for a six-figure salary in finance after graduation, a very different but equally compelling kind of 'moral imagination' may be at play.  (Imagine being able to pay off your loans and never again having to worry about keeping a roof over your family's heads.)  William S. Burroughs, a corporate scion of elite genealogy, began reinventing himself at Harvard as a louche explorer of the underworld.  Why shouldn't someone who grew up in a crack-blighted neighborhood be equally free to imagine himself as a suit?"

 - Nathan Heller, "Poison ivy: Are elite colleges bad for the soul?", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: badinage

The word of the day is badinage:

noun

1. light, playful banter or raillery.

< French, equivalent to badin (er) to joke, trifle (verbal derivative of badin joker, banterer < Old Provençal: fool; bad (ar) to gape (< Vulgar Latin batāre) (dictionary.com)

"The old back-and-forth is still there, the old badinage, the old rapport; and with pleasure we finish our hamburgers and catch up on each other's news."

 - Joseph O'Neill, "The Referees", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: phragmites

The word of the day is phragmites:

noun

1. any of several tall grasses of the genus Phragmites, having plumed heads, growing in marshy areas, especially the common reed P. australis (or P. communis).

< Greek phragmī́tēs growing in hedges, equivalent to phrágm (a) fence, breastwork, screen (noun derivative of phrássein (Attic phráttein) to fence in, hedge around) (dictionary.com)

 

 

"At the Fire Safety booth, the firefighters Lois Mungay and Stephen Comer were remembering some notable urban brush fires.  'By Howard Beach, one time, the dry phragmites reeds were burning like crazy out beyond Cross Bay Boulevard, and we were hauling the hoses around back there in the brush,' Comer said.  'We couldn't even see where the fire was!'"

 - Ian Frazier, "Only you", 1 September 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: andesite

 The word of the day is andesite:

A gray, fine-grained volcanic rock. Andesite consists mainly of sodium-rich plagioclase and one or more mafic minerals such as biotite, hornblende, or pyroxene. It often contains small, visible crystals (phenocrysts) of plagioclase. It is the fine-grained equivalent of diorite. 
1840-50; named after Andes (dictionary.com)


"McInerney showed him pictures of andesite.
"'Local rock?' Ban wanted to know.
"McInerney and Maltz had a long conversation about wood, rocks, glass, sun, and snow, during which they excitedly presented Ban with images on cameras, phones, and an iPad, and in the project book for McInerney's site."

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 The New Yorker

word of the day: tatami

The word of the day is tatami:

noun

1. (in Japanese houses) any of a number of thick, woven straw mats of uniform dimensions, about three feet by six feet (91 cm by 183 cm), the placing of which determines the dimensions of an interior.

1895-1900; < Japanese, noun use of v.: to fold up (dictionary.com)

"Maltz, who was also living in Japan that year, in the only tatami room in the Bans' Western-style house, started to view him as 'the Pied Piper of architecture.'"

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 The New Yorker 

word of the day: plexus

The word of the day is plexus:

noun

1. a network, as of nerves or blood vessels.

2. any complex structure containing an intricate network of parts

1675-85; < Neo-Latin: an interweaving, twining = Latin plect(ere) to plait, twine + -tus suffix of v. action (dictionary.com)

 

 

"On August 9th, Ban will mark the public opening of the Aspen Art Museum, his first permanent museum in the United States.  The building, a glass box nested in a lattice screen made from resin-infused paper and topped with a timber truss roof, is an astonishing plexus of materials pushed to their limits."

 

 - Dana Goodyear, "Paper palaces: the architect of the dispossessed meets the one per cent", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: futhark

The word of the day is futhark:

n.

1851, historians' name for the Germanic runic alphabet; so called from its first six letters, on the model of alphabet. (dictionary.com)

"But I remember a seed,
a dandelion sphere, which I blew on once, and its
silvery runes poured forward.  It's as if -
until now - I thought that I would never
fade, or fail, or fall silent, or die.
I trusted that I had it coming to me,
without cease, the firework of language.
Futhorc!  Let me cry out, again!"
 

 - Sharon Olds, "Bop after hip op", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: panegyric

The word of the day is panegyric:

noun

1. a lofty oration or writing in praise of a person or thing; eulogy.

2. formal or elaborate praise.

< Latin, noun use of panēgyricus of, belonging to a public assembly
< Greek panēgyrikós, equivalent to panḗgyr (is) solemn assembly (pan- + -ēgyris, combining form of ágyris gathering) (dictionary.com)


"One evening, I went to see Aleksandr Prokhanov, a far-right newspaper editor and novelist, whom I've known since the late eighties.  In the Soviet period, he was known as the Nightingale of the General Staff, a writer commissioned to ride and chronicle the glories of nuclear subs and strategic bombers and to visit the Cold War battlefields of Kampuchea and Angola.  He was a panegyrist of Stalin's military-industrial state and the achievements of Sovietism.  'No one,' he told me, 'could describe a nuclear reactor like I could.'"

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: ressentiment

The word of the day is ressentiment:

noun

1. any cautious, defeatist, or cynical attitude based on the belief that the individual and human institutions exist in a hostile or indifferent universe or society.

2. an oppressive awareness of the futility of trying to improve one's status in life or in society.

 

1943, a word from Nietzsche, from German ressentiment, from French ressentiment. The French word also was borrowed as obsolete English resentiment (16c.) "feeling or sense (of something); state of being deeply affected by (something); resentment." (dictionary.com) 

 

 

"Nearly a quarter century after the fall of the empire, Putin has unleashed an ideology of ressentiment.  It has been chorussed by those who, in 1991, despaired of the loss not of Communist ideology but of imperial greatness, and who, ever since, have lived with what Russians so often refer to as 'phantom-limb syndrome': the pain of missing Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Baltic states; the pain of diminishment.  They want revenge for their humiliation."

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: Cheka

The word of the day is Cheka:

early Soviet secret police, 1921, from Russian initials of Chrezvychainaya Komissiya "Extraordinary Commission (for Combating Counter-Revolution);" set up 1917, superseded 1922 by G.P.U. (dictionary.com)

"By the late Soviet period, though, K.G.B. officers like Putin were nearly as dismissive of Communist ideology as the dissidents were.  'The Chekists in his time laughed at official Soviet ideology,' Gleb Pavlovksy, a former adviser to Putin, told me.  'They thought it was a joke.'"

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: retrench

The word of the day is retrench:

verb (used without object)

to economize; reduce expenses (dictionary.com)

"For Barack Obama, it is essential to end those two wars [Iraq and Afghanistan] and this retrenchment is in the national interest."

 - Michael McFaul, as quoted by David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: knout

The word of the day is knout:

noun

a stout whip used formerly in Russia as an instrument of punishment

from Russian knut, of Scandinavian origin; compare Old Norse knūtr knot (dictionary.com)

 

 

"He was determined to help establish liberal values and institutions - civil society, free speech, democratic norms - in a land that, for a thousand years, had known only absolutism, empire, and the knout.  'That's me,' he says even now.  'Mr. Anti-Cynicism.  Mr. It Will All Work Out.'"

 

 - David Remnick, "Watching the eclipse: Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia - and when it began to fade", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker 

word of the day: capo

The word of the day is capo:

noun

1. the presumed title of a Mafia leader

Italian: head (dictionary.com)

"Apparently, no one in Washington during that period found anything unusual about a Mafia capo openly discussing 'the needs of the family where government is concerned' and suggesting 'favorable business investments' for the politicians and regulators whom he was lobbying."

 - Malcolm Gladwell, "The crooked ladder: the criminal's guide to upward mobility", 11 & 18 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: spavin

The word of the day is spavin:

noun

1. a disease of the hock joint of horses in which enlargement occurs because of collected fluids (bog spavin) bony growth (bone spavin) or distention of the veins (blood spavin)

2. an excrescence or enlargement so formed.

 

Origin

Old French (e) spavain, esparvain swelling (dictionary.com)


"And that was when
the blighted times we live in first began,
the dying rivers and
the blackened vine,
the rain that rots the seed in its furrow,
the spavin, the sheep scab,
the empty hive."

 - Linda Gregerson, "Ceres lamenting", 4 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: panoply

The word of the day is panoply:

noun, plural panoplies.

1. a wide-ranging and impressive array or display

2. a complete suit of armor.

3. a protective covering.

4. full ceremonial attire or paraphernalia; special dress and equipment. 

 

Origin

< Greek panoplía full complement of arms and armor, equivalent to pan- pan- + ( h) ópl (a) arms, armor (cf. hoplite ) (dictionary.com)

 

"A burly man with a red beard and a regal manner—Henry VIII without the wives and the panoply—Cutler has a knack for eliciting his subjects’ candor."

 - Tad Friend, "Cry, Baby", 4 August 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: monopsony

The word of the day is monopsony:

noun

1. the market condition that exists when there is one buyer.

Origin

Greek mon- + Greek opsōnía shopping, purchase of provisions (dictionary.com)

"Right now, the U.F.C.’s chief competitor is Bellator, owned by Viacom. But Bellator remains a minor league, and it hasn’t done much to change the perception that the U.F.C. is something of a monopsony; for an ambitious fighter, a U.F.C. contract is the only one that really matters."

 - Kelefa Sanneh, "Mean girl: Why the world's best female fighter loves to be hated", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: chakra

The word of the day is chakra:

any of several points of physical or spiritual energy in the human body according to yoga philosophy (merriam-webster.com)


"In the minutes before Junoon's set, Raubeson was in the passenger seat of the S.U.V., softly chanting the sounds of the chakras with Ahmad."

 - Ian Parker, "The Band Played On", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


Is it possible he meant "mantra"?

word of the day: ormolu

The word of the day is ormolu:

noun

1. Also called mosaic gold. an alloy of copper and zinc used to imitate gold.

2. Also called bronze doré, gilt bronze. gilded metal, especially cast brass or bronze gilded over fire with an amalgam of gold and mercury, used for furniture mounts and ornamental objects.

3. gold or gold powder prepared for use in gilding.

 

Origin

< French or moulu ground gold, equivalent to or (< Latin aurum) + moulu, past participle of moudre to grind < Latin molere (dictionary.com)

"The previous week, another great Strad had gone unsold, at Christie's, despite considerable hype: the Kreutzer violin, part of the estate of Huguette Clark.  Sealed bids had also been invited for the Kreutzer, with an estimate of seven and a half million dollars.  The Carpenters had attended that auction, and had come away not with the Strad - it was overpriced, in their opinion, especially with the Christie's commission - but with an ormolu occasional table that had belonged to Clark, her rubber thimbles still in its inner compartments."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Musical gold: Can three ambitious siblings turn old violins into a new investment strategy?", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: Taylorism

The word of the day is Taylorism:

"System of scientific management advocated by Fred W. Taylor. In Taylor’s view, the task of factory management was to determine the best way for the worker to do the job, to provide the proper tools and training, and to provide incentives for good performance. He broke each job down into its individual motions, analyzed these to determine which were essential, and timed the workers with a stopwatch. With unnecessary motion eliminated, the worker, following a machinelike routine, became far more productive." (Encyclopaedia Britannica)


"Gardner said that a wearable computer terminal (Motorola, 2013) had made her and her colleagues think about Taylorism and scientific management."

 - Lauren Collins, "Very important objects", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


And here I thought Frank Gilbreth invented that.

word of the day: concertina

The word of the day is concertina:

noun

1. a musical instrument resembling an accordion but having buttonlike keys, hexagonal bellows and ends, and a more limited range.

2. concertina wire.

 

verb (used without object)

3. to fold, crush together, or collapse in the manner of a concertina:

verb (used with object)

4. to cause to fold or collapse in the manner of a concertina.

 

adjective

5. of, pertaining to, or resembling a concertina (dictionary.com)

"She is one of the four curators in the museum's Contemporary Architecture, Design, and Digital Department, which this month launched a project called Rapid Response Collecting.  Its stated goal is to demonstrate 'how design reflects and defines how we live together today.'  In practical terms, this means that the curators have been given carte blanche to scour the streets - in a global sense - for items of interest and get them into the museum as quickly as possible.  'It concertinas the amount of time that it takes to make an acquisition,' Gardner said, leading a visitor up the marble stairs of the 20th Century wing, where a gallery had been set up to display the Rapid Response unit's finds."

 - Lauren Collins, "Very important objects", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

word of the day: tabla

The word of the day is tabla:

noun

1. a small drum or pair of drums of India tuned to different pitches and played with the hands. (dictionary.com)

"Ahmad was preparing to go onstage at the first Louis Armstrong International Music Festival, to play guitar and sign with his band, Junoon - although this was not quite the Junoon with which Ahmad found fame, in the nineteen-nineties, in South Asia.  That band - Styx, in Urdu, with tablas - broke up in 2005."

 - Ian Parker, "The Band Played On", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker


No, I don't get it.

word of the day: sybaritic

The word of the day is sybaritic:

adjective

1. (usually lowercase) pertaining to or characteristic of a sybarite; characterized by or loving luxury or sensuous pleasure: to wallow in sybaritic splendor.

2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Sybaris or its inhabitants. (dictionary.com)

"Once the rebels break through, Bong and his production designer, Ondrej Nekvasil, provide them with a series of sybaritic astonishments: a sunlit greenhouse garden, a mahogany sleeper car, and party rooms in which toffs, dressed in gowns and rave wear, get stoned, drink, and dance."

 - David Denby, "Endgames: 'Snowpiercer' and 'Begin Again'", 7 & 14 July 2014 The New Yorker


"He was wearing a ten-thousand-dollar ivory-colored tuxedo with blue satin trim by Angelo Galasso, which made him look like a sybaritic sea captain."

 - Rebecca Mead, "Musical Gold: Can three ambitious siblings turn old violins into a new investment strategy?", 28 July 2014 The New Yorker

Recent blog post roundup and Sun letter on fetal learning

Recent posts for the ACS Chemical Biology Community have been on social taboos about discussing compensation, what to wear to work, and gender and scientific authorship.

The Baltimore Sun also published my letter in response to a pop science story they ran on fetal learning.  (The Sun's version appears to have fallen down the memory hole, but here's the original Reuters reports: it's very similar to the Sun story, except the Sun changed "babies in the womb" to "fetuses".)  The Sun has a pay wall, so I'm reproducing the letter here:

Your headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" (July 27) was inconsistent with the content of the story accompanying it.

The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant." In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means that the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or the other.

Scientist Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors would have to show convincing evidence that the earlier work was mistaken. But because their findings were not statistically significant, they can offer no such evidence.

Science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public. It is their duty not just to report recent findings but also — and more importantly — to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

The letter was edited somewhat: for brevity, I guess.  Here’s the original text:

Your recent headline "Fetuses show signs of learning at 34 weeks" was inconsistent with the content of the story.  The author admitted that the findings were "not statistically significant".  In layperson's terms, "not statistically significant" means "the evidence is not strong enough support a conclusion one way or another".  Carl Sagan famously said that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  To claim that fetuses show evidence of learning three weeks earlier than previously thought, the authors need to show convincing evidence that the previous work was mistaken: because their findings were not statistically significant, their findings are not such evidence.  The author was wrong to "cautiously" conclude, the reviewers were wrong not to insist on removing that conclusion, and the journal was wrong to publish that conclusion, but science journalists are the final interpreter of science for the public.  It is the sacred duty of a science journalist not just to report recent scientific findings, but also, more importantly, to critically evaluate them for their non-scientist readers.

word of the day: adjutant

The word of the day is adjutant:


a staff officer in the army, air force, or marine corps who assists the commanding officer and is responsible especially for correspondence (Merriam-Webster)


"Klay writes with a powerful restraint about the inversion of normal reality called combat, its permanent effects on bodies and souls, but the best stories in 'Redeployment' look at war from a slight distance.  The narrator in 'Unless It's a Sucking Chest Wound,' a battalion adjutant, has the inglorious job of writing up the heroics of other marines being nominated for medals...

"The adjutant is one among many troops−their numbers grew over time−who spent their war almost entirely within the confines of an American base."

 - George Packer, "Home Fires: How soldiers write their wars", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker

phrase of the day: scare quotes

The phrase of the day is scare quotes:


quotation marks used to express especially skepticism or derision concerning the use of the enclosed word or phrase (Merriam-Webster)


"'Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected,' Paul Fussell wrote in 'The Great War and Modern Memory,' his classic study of the English literature of the First World War...

"Here's Kevin Powers, who joined the Army out of high school and ended up as a machine gunner in the same region of Iraq as Turner: 'I had by then inferred that the military was where a person went to develop the qualities that I had come to admire in my father, my uncle, and both of my grandfathers.  The cliché, in my case, was true: I thought that the army would "make me a man".'  The scare quotes suggest Fussell's wised-up irony, but they weren't enough to keep Powers home."

 - George Packer, "Home Fires: How soldiers write their wars", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker

molecule of the day: lysergic acid

The molecule of the day is lysergic acid:

(PubChem)

"In the context of their species, these flamingos were like space voyagers, those who'd return with tales beyond telling.  Except that they'd never return.  You might as well have immersed the birds in a bathysphere and introduced them to the orcas, or dosed their food with lysergic acid."

 - Jonathan Lethem, "Pending Vegan", 7 April 2014 The New Yorker


Lysergic acid is closely related to lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

(PubChem)

Recent blogging activity

My most recent piece for the Transcript, the Hopkins Biotech Network's newsletter, is on non-competition agreements, and my most recent blog post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community on the ACS Network shares some statistics from my job search.

The Two-Body Problem

This week's post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community is up, on the two-body problem.

formatting the resume

This week's post for the ACS Chemical Biology Community is up, on what I've learned about how to format my resume.