BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhD)
d_ozkan@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
Now, I talk pretty often about the weird world of animals, but make no mistake—humans are no less bizarre. I’ve recently discovered a Tumblr repository of students’ blunders, and it’s a sight to behold: It’s got everything from classic cases of spellchecker vengeance (“Later the hurricane was downgraded to a cat orgy 3”; “Kant’s categorical imperative does not apply conditionally or hypnotically”; “Christians usually marry only one person for life. This is called monotony”) and strange leaps of logic (“With this knowledge that we do exist, we cannot know that other people exist. Where would they live?”; “Let’s begin relating clowns and the circus to the Maasai. The Maasai are not clowns”) to thrilling alternate history fiction (“Oedipus was an insect love king”; “Lady Lazarus refers to Jesus’s wife, Lazarus, whom he resurrected from the dead”; “After Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, John Wilkes Booth became the next president”) and scathing social commentary (“A ballerina should focus on being good at dancing and anorexia”; “My favorite forum of writing is social media because I do not have to worry about my lack of evidence while arguing a point”).
I also fancy myself to be at least a passable biologist, but I learned many things about science in general (“The carbon particles move the fastest because they’re afraid of dying”; “And surprisingly, psychology is not just information that is made up”) and biology in particular (“Animals can only produce offspring with the same animal, but humans can produce offspring with any female”; “Additionally, it is rumored that algae must grow on the top of a pond. Growing algae on top of the pond leads the algae to compete with the fish for records, so they end up consistently eating human flesh”) from that blog. Long story short, I was in hysterics for a good hour or two, much to the discomfort of my officemates, and I highly recommend that you check out this list. You can find it by searching for any of the quotes provided, and if you do, you’ll quickly see why I’m not mentioning it by name.
…And now that I’ve sunk half my allotted word count into a pit of quotes, I will proceed to list my other favorite blogs and websites at breakneck pace to round things off—hence the title.
“Lowering the Bar” is a humor blog that collects absurd legal cases from all over the world, and is written by a lawyer with a very sharp wit and a way with words—the headlines are usually in the detached, no-nonsense tone of a newspaper, but their contents are far more amusing: “Mullet Sentenced for Beard Crimes” details the beard-cutting cult of one Samuel Mullet; “Baby Walks” discusses a case involving a toddler charged with attempted murder; “Man Who Stabbed His First Two Lawyers With a Pencil Stabs Another Lawyer With a Pencil” concerns exactly what it says.
“In the Pipeline,” the blog of chemist Derek Lowe, deals with the many, many travails of industrial drug discovery, as well as various bits of biochemical news that should be of immediate interest to the MBG folks in particular (but everyone should read the “How not to do it” and “Things I won’t work with” categories for colorful accounts of highly dangerous chemicals). Also of its ilk are blogs like “Chemjobber,” “Chembark” and “The Curious Wavefunction,” for those with more chemically inclined tastes.
Biology aficionados can try “Not Exactly Rocket Science,” one of the most accessible popular science blogs out there—“Tetrapod Zoology” and “Catalogue of Organisms” are also highly recommended, and the “Echinoblog” boasts one of the most enthusiastic scientists I’ve ever seen. “Parasite of the Day,” “Real Monstrosities” and “WTF, Evolution?” are other biology-oriented blogs for folks interested in the dark side of Mother Nature—“Bogleech” is also in that category, although its portfolio is wider: dedicated to monsters of all kinds, it features an extensive list of articles about anything from Ghostbusters phantoms to flesh-eating flies, and also contains two semi-independent settings (“Mortasheen” and “Noisy Tenant”) full of ghosts and ghouls of every description. Lastly, “xkcd” is the only comic strip that I follow with any regularity, and its “What If?” series in particular (which answers such questions as what a pile containing all the viruses of the world would look like, or how many goods and services two undecillion dollars is worth, or whether humanity has produced enough paint to cover the entire surface of the Earth) is well worth checking out.
…You know, after listing all the things that I regularly follow, it no longer strikes me as odd that I never get any work done.