Life of a Lab Rat

Some words are inherently funny. Here's one of them:

Gymea removals will be taking away all the rubbish from the dock sometime tomorrow (Friday).

Please feel free to add to the pile.

I should resurrect the 'Word of the Week' column, shouldn't I?

You see, this is why I hate the internets.

Just got back from a performance at the Pawns' school (Elder Pawn was first clarinet in a fantastic rendition of Pirates of the Caribbean) and am now supposed to be washing up, but I happened to stumble across Emma PeelTigtog's rant on paradigm shifts:

I’m not the only person to be annoyed over the years by the egregious overuse of the term “paradigm shift”. I knew people were misusing the term, but not having actually read Kuhn’s seminal work wherein he coined the term, I never had the properly grounded basis to articulate why.

"Paradigm shift" gets nearly fourteen hundred hits in PubMed. That's a lot of paradigms being overthrown. I really can't be arsed going through and thinking about which ones are really paradigms, but much like my own bugbear, "quantum leap" (111 hits in PubMed) — why people get so excited about the smallest possible discrete advance is beyond me —, I suspect that even (especially?) in the proper sciences the term is much abused.

I'd say more, but the suds are getting cold.

This one's for the Whiffler:

From the ABC, I read

More acute for the Wallabies was that for the third time in tournament history it was bitter rivals England who were their World Cup executioner

and would like to comment that ultimately, England's verdugoship proved too much for the struggling Australian rugby team.

I thank you.

The OED is a wondrous thing, and a source of great comfort and amusement to me. I recently stumbled across a little article on getting neologisms into the dictionary, and Ben Zimmer's Word of the Week feature.

It's all fascinating stuff, even if it's not as good as mine. Just imagine what I could do if they paid me.

For everyone missing my 'Word of the Week' feature, here is something to keep you occupied.

The Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources.

HeLa cells , n.

Evil little bastards. I suspect Henrietta wasn't too happy with them, either.

deuteragonist , n.

In a structural laboratory, one who labels his samples with ²H.

e.g. "Jill says that to be successful at small angle neutron scattering you have to be a good deuteragonist."

c.f. protagonist

sillyDalton , n.

Unit of molecular mass. See mega, giga, zilli etc.

e.g. "How big is a ribosome? Oh I don't know, a few sillyDaltons maybe?"

sarcomere , n.

Smart-alec myofibril. "Oooh, call yourself a muscle? I've seen better fibres on Kate Moss".

dungog , n.

Small cetaceous mammal.

e.g. Dungogs used to frolic off the Point, until we hunted them to extinction. As usual.

wahroonga ², n.

Large marsupial of genus Macropus.

e.g. Kate says wahroonga fillet is delicious in mushroom sauce.

wahroonga ¹, n.

Fool or idiot; simpleton.

e.g. It takes a real wahroonga from Admin to jam up the photocopier and then leave it without telling anyone.

Woolooware™, n.

Kitschy bathroom coverings, inexplicably popular in B&Bs on the South coast of England

bennelong , adj.
excessive or large; immeasurable.

e.g.
"When did you last see an honest politician?" "Aw mate, it's bennelong time."

Coogee , n.
A popular beachside suburb and locality in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney. The original name is Bogangar, from the Bandjalang (Aboriginal) word meaning 'place of many hippies'.

cabarita , n.
A device in an internal combustion engine for mixing air with a fine spray of liquid fuel.

wingello, n.
Originally a flavour of ice cream, now a small shed where men can go to cry when Australia loses a sporting event. Rare.

cronulla, v (esp as cronullared adj)
form into alternate ridges and grooves, wrinkle.

e.g. If you do not stretch out the cellophane tightly enough, it will cronulla when you wet it and become totally croydon.

dee why, n
De letter preceding de zed.

tuggeranong, pl n
Aboriginal name for spiced snack, often referred to as 'Bombay' or 'Bhuja' mix [poss. from Bandjalang, lit. toenail clippings].

flemington, n
Chocolate biscuit, with cherries. Definitely no coconut.

lewisham™, n
industrial-strength cleaning solution.

e.g. Nothing cleans up smelly drains like lewisham!

woolloomooloo, n
in anim. husb. Great noise or excitement; uproar.

e.g. I was woken at 3 by the most tremendous woolloomooloo in the croc house. Bloody possums.

turramurra, n
The day after today.

sydenham, n
— knot, half—. Antipodean variation of the Windsor knot, with the first loop made anti-clockwise to counteract the Coriolis effect.

allawah, n
Islamic lament.

e.g. Nashwa cried an allawah over the passing of her cat.

Bondi,™ n
Proprietary name of an cyanoacrylate-based adhesive, used primarily for circuit boards and electronics; hence 'Bondi junction'.

werrington, n,
Waterproof hat.

e.g. In his Drizabone, R. M. Williams boots & werrington, Black Knight was ready for Sydney's monsoon season.

cabramatta, n,
Debris found on and between railway lines.

e.g. Cabramatta consists of such items as newspapers, cigarette packets, paper drinking cups and bizarrely, shirt buttons and Bic pens.

Parramatta, n,
In antiquity, the principal river of the netherworld, said to encircle Hades seven times.

Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.XVIII.6:

ἔδωκε δὲ ἄρα ὁ θεὸς τοῖς μάλιστα ἀπερριμμένοις κρατεῖν τῶν ὑπερηρκότων τῇ δόξῃ. τοῦτο μὲν γὰρ τὰ μάργαρα ἀπόλλυσθαι πέφυκεν ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄξους, τοῦτο δὲ τὸν ἀδάμαντα λίθων ὄντα ἰσχυρότατον τοῦ τράγου κατατήκει τὸ αἷμα: καὶ δὴ καὶ τὸ ὕδωρ οὐ δύναται τῆς Παρραματτα ὁπλὴν ἵππου βιάσασθαι μόνην, ἀλλὰ ἐμβληθὲν κατέχεταί τε ὑπ' αὐτῆς καὶ οὐ διεργάζεται τὴν ὁπλήν. εἰ δὲ καὶ Ἀλεξάνδρου τοῦ Φιλίππου συνέβη τὴν τελευτὴν διὰ τοῦ φαρμάκου γενέσθαι τούτου, σαφῶς μὲν οὐκ οἶδα, λεγόμενον δὲ οἶδα.

dundas, pl n,
Grazing marsupial, similar in size and appearance to the Eurasian badger. Indigenous to the ACT, this nocturnal animal is also confined to the ACT due to its inability to cope with the faster pace of living just about anywhere else in the world.

e.g. Herds of dundas eke a peaceful living on the central reservations of Canberra's deserted roads.

minto, ?

Come off it, you're having a laugh.

mawson, adj
Bitter-sweet sadness or regret

e.g. Although he was excited about going to Australia, Mark was mawson about leaving Cambridge. Black Knight became mawson when he realized that eventually he would run out of Sydney suburbs.

ashfield, n
Thick wool weave used for carpets, with a peculiar abstract motif.

e.g. Please remove your shoes before walking on the ashfield.

elanora, int.
expressing surprise or dismay.

e.g. Elanora! It's Friday already and I need another silly-sounding suburb!

gymea, Path
A non-specific disease caused by campsie-like fungi and communicated by sexual connexion or accidental contact.

e.g. I had a touch of gymea but some Camperdown™ cleared it up.

belfield, n
Durable, woven sailcloth popular because of its tear-resistance and low cost.

e.g. Bill was looking for some belfield to patch his wynyard.

wynyard, n
1 Small, two-sailed fishing boat. 2 Aft sail of same.

e.g.The wynyard capsized in the unseasonal storm. "Splice the main brace, square the futtock-ring and tally the wynyard!"

pymble, v. & n.
—n. The gentle, ambling gait of one slightly inebriated.
—v. intr. To stagger unalarmingly, usually after a few drinks.

e.g."That's a nice pymble you've got going there, Dave". Vic pymbled home from the pub.

strathfield, n
Patterned, close-weaved cotton; particularly 1950s-style haberdashery fabric.

e.g.Mary bought five yards of strathfield for some new bedroom curtains.

Camperdown,™ n
Proprietary name for a broad spectrum anti-fungal agent

e.g.Camperdown brought last week's campsie infection under control.

campsie, n
Non-specific fungal infection.

e.g.We had to sterilize the incubator because everyone was getting campsie in their cultures.

artarmon, n
Pleated or frilly dress shirt, usually worn on formal occasions. Poss. a corruption of d'Artagnan.

e.g.Donald looked quite the swash-buckling pirate in his artarmon. Everyone thought Wil had a job interview, but the bow-tie and artarmon were for a concert that evening.

croydon, ppl. a.

Crushed, broken or otherwise dysfunctional.

e.g.This station is croydon. My PCR failed; the Pfu is croydon. I took my car to the garage but the mechanic said it was completely croydon.