Ph. Diva and the Mystery Band

So, there are a LOT of lab-life-themed music videos out there. Mostly, they are amateur things put together by groups of under-worked grad students, where they change the lyrics to some popular song, or "pop" song, as the kids say.

This is a whole different thing, with significant production value, which is what happens when a biotech company gets in the game.

It lacks some of the charm and energy of dorky grad students singing Lady Gaga off key. On the other hand, it lacks all of the dorky-grad-students-singing-Lady-Gaga-off-key-ness of dorky grad students singing Lady Gaga off key.



This is actually the second video in a series. The next two will be out later in the year. You can see the prequel here.

Google Maps Quest Easter Egg

So, here's the latest cool, cool thing from Google. Google maps has a new easter egg. Go there (http://maps.google.com) and go to the upper right corner, where you normally select between the "map" and "satellite" views. There's currently a third option, "quest," which gives you something that looks like this:

If you zoom in, you can see 8-bit representations of various landmarks, as well. Also, while you're in there, check out the street view.

Gender remixer will inspire all emotions simultaneously

So, here's an excellent thing that didn't exist, but now does, and the world is a better place. The Gender Remixer allows you to combine highly gendered advertisements aimed at girls and boys. You get the video from one and the audio from the other.

The experience is disorienting, enlightening, infuriating, and other stuff, all at the same time. The thing that surprised me most was how much I wanted to buy the hypothetical toys that my brain constructed during the experience.

Check it out!

via Boing Boing.

Kirkus Star review for Remarkable

So, regular readers here already know that my wife's novel, Remarkable, is coming out in April. On April 12, to be exact. That's two weeks from today, which means that the Kirkus review of the book just came out from behind their paywall.

Here's the review, which got a Kirkus "Star" for extraordinary awesomeness:

The title of this debut says it all.

In the town of Remarkable, so named for its abundance of talented citizens, everyone lives up to its reputation. Well, almost everyone. With a famous architect mother, an award-winning–novelist father, a photorealistic-portrait–painter older brother and a math-genius younger sister, Jane should be just as remarkable. Instead, this average 10-year-old girl is usually overlooked. With clever wordplay, the third-person account paints a humorous and vivid depiction of this unusual community. While the rest of the town’s children attend Remarkable’s School for the Remarkably Gifted, Jane spends monotonous days as the public school’s only attendee. Excitement suddenly enters her life when the mischievous Grimlet twins get expelled from the gifted school and sent to public school, not one but four pirates enter town and a search ensues for a missing composer. Mix in a rival town’s dispute over jelly, hints of a Loch Ness Monster–like creature and a psychic pizzeria owner who sees the future in her reflective pizza pans, and this uproarious mystery becomes—if even possible—a whole lot funnier. With the help of her quiet Grandpa John, who’s also forgotten most of the time, Jane learns to be true to herself and celebrate the ordinary in life.

Foley tightly weaves the outlandish threads into a rich, unforgettable story that’s quite simply—amazing. (Fiction. 8-12)

Now, go visit Kirkus, where they have links to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indiebound, and order the book!

Oh, and here's what it will look like when you get it:

And, you know, as awesome as the cover is, all those words on the inside are even better!

What's the plural of "octopus"?

So, how do you refer to more than one octopus? "Octopuses"? "Octopi"? "Octopodes"? In case you're uncertain which way to go, here's a handy guide from Darwin Eats Cake, which you can print out for easy reference.

The text may be a little bit hard to read here, but you can view a higher-resolution version here. More discussion after the picture.

Best URL for sharing: http://www.darwineatscake.com/?id=113
Permanent image URL for hotlinking or embedding: http://www.darwineatscake.com/img/comic/113.jpg

Some of you may recall this video from Kory Stamper, who argues that "octopuses" is fine, as is "octopi," as is "octipodes," for that matter, although, as she says, if you're going to use it, you'd better be prepared to explain and defend it.



I think that's all dead on, with one small addition. Stamper argues that when a word is borrowed into English, it gets the standard english pluralization, hence "octopuses." I feel like there actually is a living grammatical rule in spoken English, where you are allowed pluralize a word ending in "us" by changing it to "i" provided that the word is long enough, and especially if the word sounds sort of foreign-ish.

Now, I mean "allowed to" in a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive sense. That is, I take the viewpoint that if I say a word (or a phrase, or use a grammatical construct, etc.), and most native English speakers understand that word in roughly the sense in which I meant it, then it's a part of English, whether or not it follows a rule that has been codified in a book.

So, if I were talking about more than one Krampus, and I used the word "Krampi," I think that most people would understand what I meant (assuming that they had heard of Krampus in the first place). On the other hand, if I drop by an elementary school and start talking to the children about the line of yellow schoolbi, I'm probably going to get arrested.

From where I stand, then, "octopuses" and "octopi" are both native English pluralizations. "Octopi" just happens to use a rule that came into English through an appeal by (prescriptive) grammarians to Latin. "Octopodes," by contrast, will only be comprehensible to someone who either has studied Greek, or who has had this particular debate pointed out to them.

The poet in me feels the need, of course, to point out that there is no such thing as an exact synonym (blah, blah, blah). So, while "octopuses" and "octopi" both refer to more than one octopus, they don't mean the exactly the same thing. In particular, if I say "Look at the octopi," I am really saying something like "Look at the more than one octopus, and, hey, I'm doing that Latin thing." Whichever one you use, there are aspects of social positioning involved (maybe I want to look smart, or educated, or maybe salt-of-the-earth-ish, etc.), the details of which are going to depend a lot on the specifics of the social context in which you're talking. Really, pluralizing "octopus" is the third rail of talking about cephalopods (cephalopodes?), in that there is no way to do it where someone in the room is not going to make an issue out of it.

I also feel like maybe I should clarify what I perceive to be the game in the dorky/sophisticated outcome. The goal is not necessarily to implement pluralization as it would be done in language X by a native speaker of language X. Rather, it is to take a simple pluralization rule from language X, remove it from its native context, and implement it in English, sort of like the Krampus / Krampi thing. It's like trying to figure out how to pluralize something in a sort of Xglish (the language-X analog of Spanglish). For example, David Winter (@TheAtavism) points out that in Maori, one octopus would be "Te wheke," while two or more would be "Nga wheke." I take that to imply that the appropriate Maoglish plural of "octopus" would be "ngactopus," which is pretty fun to say.

That being said, in addition to this Maori tidbit, I have already learned some cool stuff via Twitter responses to the cartoon. Here's a sampling:

@symbolicstorage notes that the same ambiguity exists in German, where one might say "oktopusse" or "oktopi," adding that "octopusen" is 100% wrong. But, you know, I don't know about that. It only looks about 20% wrong to me. 30% at most. 100% wrong would be more like "farfegnugen."

@BobOHara says that Finns would most often use the partative form "octopusta," rather than the plural "octopust." I still don't fully understand the distinction, but is seems that "octopusta" would best be translated something like "some octopus, like probably more than one, but I'm not going to count them right now, since I have better things to do, like participate in my world-leading public education system."

And "Kraken-wrangler" @DrSeaRotmann suggests "octoposse," which is the only plural I am going to use from this day forward.

Have you got more? How do you say "octopus" in your native (or secondarily learned) language? How do you refer to more than one? And, how would you create an English hybrid (Xglish plural) using that pluralization rule? Post in the comments, or send a note on Twitter (@jonfwilkins), and I'll update the list!

Oh, and by the way, I forgot to include the French "octopeaux."

Members need to remove their hoods or leave the floor

So, it's not often that something exciting happens on C-SPAN, but here you go. Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL) was speaking out against racial profiling, when he pulled off his jacket to reveal a stealth hoodie. He proceeded to put the hood up, prompting acting speaker Gregg Harper (R-MS) to start gavel banging and un-recognizing. Eventually, he calls the sergeant-at-arms to remove Rush.

Awesomely, the clip concludes with Harper saying, "Members need to remove their hoods or leave the floor." I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pro-circumcision bias bordering on religious discrimination to me.



via Daily Kos.

Downton Arby's

So, for the life of me, I just don't understand why Lady Edith can't find a husband.