Venn’s been working on this for years. With the convention drawing close, his pace accelerates. Late nights. Early mornings. Lost sleep. Mid-day coffee. In the earliest fraction of morning light, his wife leans against the kitchen counter, sipping the day’s first mug of coffee. “Are you ready, darling?” The lip of the cup reaches her mouth. A shy smile of shared giddiness opens toward him. “Of course, Lil,” he says, drinking his orange juice. “Never so much as now.” He sets the juice cup on the counter. “Does this tie go with my suit?” “Does anything not go with gray,…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By benjamincohen
Benjamin Cohen is an assistant professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Virginia. He also co-authors The World's Fair and contributes to McSweeneys.net.
DALE PECK REVIEWS EINSTEIN’S LATEST
(Because it’s also the International Year of Astronomy, over the next few weeks, we are happy to present a few reprinted funny pieces that relate to this business of space – Enjoy!) Pedestrian crap. Albert Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity” (Annalen der Physik, Leipzig: Verlan Von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1916) is crap. It’s oblique, it’s opaque, it’s bloated with transparent effort. Salted, sanctimonious effort. I literally fidget turning the pages. Einstein is the worst physicist of his generation. Yet it goes deeper. He also grovels to the reader–God, it’s hackneyed–trying to ingratiate himself with “quaint” turns of the phrase, “curved”…
BISPHENOL-A: THE ONE-ACT PLAY
Our evening began in Peter Seychelles comfortable study in his New York townhouse, where the candlelight was just right, the hi-fi was in the background, and the Bisphenol-A was causing a stir. – – – Narrator: A worried friend rushes in worried about recent plastics news. She is worried. The scene is set. Worried Friend, rushing into the study (appears worried, gnawing fingernails, shifty, unsteady eyes, a mauve t-shirt that says “concerned” right across the chest): What do I do? What do I do? Other friend, not worried (puffing a pipe, which he is quick to note is not a…
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DRESS YOUR MONKEY?
– FROM THE ARCHIVE – Every year, upwards of tens of tens of assistant primatology researchers exchange cutting edge data retrieval techniques, field-based observation protocols, and daring new pants-and-jacket combos at their annual meeting. Usually a coastal locale, San Diego or Stamford, CT, the meetings are a veritable meat market for new blood. The cattle call of interviews is so famous it’s infamous, aspiring primatology assistants stacking their cv’s with just that many untraceable unpaid internship listings and five-letter acronyms. Primatological assistantship has, as a matter of course, become a lucrative and difficult-to-land job, not the least reason for which…
DALE PECK REVIEWS EINSTEIN’S LATEST
Pedestrian crap. Albert Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity” (Annalen der Physik, Leipzig: Verlan Von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1916) is crap. It’s oblique, it’s opaque, it’s bloated with transparent effort. Salted, sanctimonious effort. I literally fidget turning the pages. Einstein is the worst physicist of his generation. Yet it goes deeper. He also grovels to the reader–God, it’s hackneyed–trying to ingratiate himself with “quaint” turns of the phrase, “curved” regurgitations on space-time. It’s more pandering than this Serbian nationalism fad. A decade ago, he shoved that tortured Special Relativity onto us. And it was stupid, just plain stupid. Complication masking inanity,…
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO DRESS YOUR MONKEY?
Every year, upwards of tens of tens of assistant primatology researchers exchange cutting edge data retrieval techniques, field-based observation protocols, and daring new pants-and-jacket combos at their annual meeting. Usually a coastal locale, San Diego or Stamford, CT, the meetings are a veritable meat market for new blood. The cattle call of interviews is so famous it’s infamous, aspiring primatology assistants stacking their cv’s with just that many untraceable unpaid internship listings and five-letter acronyms. Primatological assistantship has, as a matter of course, become a lucrative and difficult-to-land job, not the least reason for which is the requisite grooming skills.…