humor

Bill Nye the Science Guy on Bow Ties, Books, and Binge Watching

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I loved this brief interview with Bill Nye the Science Guy in The Wall Street Journal. So many clever bits here.

I couldn’t agree more with this opinion of a book everyone should read. Elements of Style is on my bookshelf and one of my top ten all-around recommendations:

A book everyone should read is: The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. Omit needless words!

On his attire of choice:

My uniform is: a sportcoat and a bow tie. I started wearing bow ties in high school; it was then I realized their great utilitarian nature: They do not slip into your soup. They also do not flip into your flask when you’re in a lab. My favorite place to buy them is Seigo Neckwear, whose silk is really beautiful.

I am amazed by contact lenses too:

A technology that amazes me is: my contact lenses. They are multifocal. They breathe. They let water pass through them. And they’re disposable. Six bucks!

On paying attention when driving:

One thing everyone should do more of is: just drive while you’re driving. I have a custom license-plate holder. It says: “Try monotasking.”

The only thing that I disagreed with:

The most overrated tech trend is: binge watching. Sorry, I love you all, but I do not understand it. Knock yourselves out.

I’m anxiously awaiting for House of Cards, Season 3. Which I will likely binge watch.

Read the rest of the interview with Bill Nye here.

Craigslist Missed Connections for Cicadas

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Some humor this afternoon, courtesy of The New Yorker:

You put the “ten” in antennae—Central Park

Saw you yesterday by the Promenade, perched on a statue. Not sure which one because humans all look the same, LOL. We locked multi-lensed compound eyes for a minute through a roiling swarm of our brood-mates, and I couldn’t be sure, but I think you were smiling at me? Unless it was at one of the other millions of cicadas behind, above, below, and swarming around me.

I don’t mean to be shallow, but your dorsal thorax looks amazing. If you see this before our life cycle comes to its imminent end, want to meet up by the fountain and lap up some melted rocket-pop syrup from the sidewalk, then listen to my calling song followed by my courting song, head off to the nearest branch to fulfill our biological imperative to spawn hundreds of larvae in tree slits, and then get brunch?

I was the cicada with wings, noise-making tymbals, and a mischievous smile. To prove you’re who I’m posting about, tell me what you were molting.

Long shot, but you had a body that was cic—Tompkins Square Park

Saw you seventeen years ago on a stoplight at Fourteenth and Third Ave. You were buzzing at me, but I didn’t click back, because I was already involved in something (ended up only lasting a few weeks). I realize it’s kind of crazy that I’d be posting this after so long, especially since the average lifespan of a cicada is just over a month, but hey, YOMO. You only metamorphose once.

Haha, YOMO.

David Sedaris on Socialized Medicine

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Funny man David Sedaris writes about his experience with socialized medicine in this New Yorker piece. The bulk of the focus is his interaction with his dentist and periodontists, but it was the below exchange with his doctor in France that had me laughing out loud:

The last time I went, I had a red thunderbolt bisecting my left eyeball.

The doctor looked at it for a moment, and then took a seat behind his desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “A thing like that, it should be gone in a day or two.”

“Well, where did it come from?” I asked. “How did I get it?”

“How do we get most things?” he answered.

“We buy them?”

The time before that, I was lying in bed and found a lump on my right side, just below my rib cage. It was like a devilled egg tucked beneath my skin. Cancer, I thought. A phone call and twenty minutes later, I was stretched out on the examining table with my shirt raised.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” the doctor said. “A little fatty tumor. Dogs get them all the time.”

I thought of other things dogs have that I don’t want: Dewclaws, for example. Hookworms. “Can I have it removed?”

“I guess you could, but why would you want to?”

He made me feel vain and frivolous for even thinking about it. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ll just pull my bathing suit up a little higher.”

When I asked if the tumor would get any bigger, the doctor gave it a gentle squeeze. “Bigger? Sure, probably.”

“Will it get a lot bigger?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked.

And he said, sounding suddenly weary, “I don’t know. Why don’t trees touch the sky?”

Hilarious.

If you’ve never read Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day, get yourself a copy immediately.