Things that cell biologists shouldn't say in public

From a post by Cath Ennis at Nature Network:

Actual conversation in a Glasgow pub during my PhD days:

Me:  How’s it going?
Friend:  Bad.
Me:  How come?
Friend:  Another bloody yeast infection.
Me:  Another one?! What’s going on?
Friend:  Don’t ask me, I wear gloves all the time and it just keeps on happening.
Guy at next table:  Snorrrrt cough cough

It suddenly dawns on us that most people don’t think of cell culture problems when they hear the words yeast infection…

A Problem with Peer Review

For an idiot, peer review means review by other idiots.

Language Evolution driven by Prudishness

The operators of online games that are used by children go to great lengths to prevent their young players from swearing.  However, these attempts are doomed when faced with the inventiveness of children when it comes to language.  Last night, I looked over Zoe's shoulder as she was playing Runescape and noticed that every third word that she and her friends were saying was aids.  She explained that as they weren't allowed to use proper swear words, and as AIDS was something bad, they used that instead.

Update on Fri 2008-03-07 by Tristram Brelstaff

There is a good precendent for using the names of a disease as a swear word.  Here is Paul Halmos talking about John von Neumann:

Once the telephone interrupted us when we were working in his office.  His end of the conversation was very short; all he said between "Hello" and "Goodbye" was "Fekete pestis!", which means  "Black plague!".  Remembering, after he hung up, that I understood Hungarian, he turned to me, half apologetic and half exasperated, and explained that he wasn't speaking of one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but merely of some unexpected and unwanted dinner guests that his wife just told him about.

Egyptian Geese Again

I went back up the University lakes this afternoon. Zoe pestered me to take her to see the goslings. I took some more photos including this one.

Egyptian Gosling

One of a brood of 7 Egyptian goslings (Alopochen aegyptiacus) that hatched out in the past week. Photo taken this morning beside the large lake in Reading University grounds.