Word: worm
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...scene, the beasties from Marc's ark came alive onstage, looking less like walking symbols than strays from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade; the "treacherous serpent" called for in the first act emerged as a big, cuddly, bloated worm with eight eyes, a dangling red tongue and the initials "M.C." prominently inscribed on one of its ears. It was a charming but slightly ludicrous moment, for it made the dauntless prince look like a sissy as he ran away in a cold fright...
Among the fast-proliferating journals that report on assorted scientific specialties, few are even remotely comprehensible to the average layman. And many a literate scientist admits to being all but stupefied by their jargon-filled contents. One notable exception among such somber publications is the sprightly Worm Runner's Digest, which serves up its well-edited and important scientific papers along with side dishes of humorous satires, poems and cartoons...
...Editor James McConnell, who heads the University of Michigan planarian (flatworm) research group, which publishes the W.R.D, "In psychological jargon," he explains, "those who experiment with rats are called 'rat runners,' and those who work with insects are called 'bug runners.' So we are 'worm runners'-and we're proud of it." Not enough scientists dig McConnell's logic-or humor. Some will not publish their work in a journal with so frivolous a name. Editors of other psychological journals refuse to allow their contributors to make any reference, however valid...
McConnell vows that he will retreat no farther in his battle with the conformists. The new Journal of Biological Psychology will still contain an upside-down humor section and a back cover with Worm Runner's Digest printed defiantly across it. "It seems to me," says the embattled psychologist, "that anyone who takes himself or his work too seriously is in a perilous state of mental health. I believe that the Digest is proof that a great many scientists can appreciate humor even when it's pointed at their own life's work, and that a scientist...
...sporting event on the whole. At the hospital, they tried casting for it; then they trolled for it, and that didn't work either. And then, after they used, a general anesthetic, I learned that they had tried a fly, but finally extracted it with an old-fashioned worm." Fish story or no, once unplugged, Galbraith politely took his hosts off the hook, said, "I'm sure my salmon was one of the finest local species...