Little Devil

Back in my undergrad, when things got really rough, people did what ever they could to bring a little levity to the situation. The ten 30-hour Physical chem lab reports were by far the worst experience of our education and a couple of my classmates out of extreme stress made a bet about who could get the word "buttocks" into a lab report, within context. Indeed it was achieved, and the story is now the stuff of legend.

The other day, I had a similar experience. Sometimes proofreading starts to grate on my nerves, especially when they didn't even spellcheck first. I was asked to read the two page English abstract of a labmate's master's thesis which was otherwise in Hebrew. The subject of the thesis: nanorods. After reading in the opening paragraph about how in nano "size matters" and further dull sciencey commentary on how to change the dimensions, I was struck by the pitchfork of a little devil sitting on my shoulder.

I was so tempted to edit in ambiguous nouns and adjectives that could make a sentence or two of his thesis abstract read like a real bodice-ripper. There was so much room for creativity! Increasing length of the rod, and ample girth of the rod, applied greasy ligands to the rod, the seed of the rod....it sure would make science a little more readable! Why say diameter when you can say girth?!

You will be relieved to know that I gave the little devil on my shoulder a quick flick away and I did no such cruel thing to an unsuspecting Hebrew speaker. I am as pure as snow.