Hurray! My letter to Physics Today along with a delightful response from N. David Mermin has been published. I particularly enjoyed Mermin's closing line:
It may be quixotic (but certainly not Qxotic) to try to correct the spelling of an entire community, but I owe it my best shot. What else is retirement good for?
Sweet! Now I can check off from my list of things to do in life: "Get published in Physics Today over issues related to my literature degree."
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So, this post is almost ten days old, but I just now found some time to actually read the 35 comments on it as well as what others wrote about it on their blogs. I guess it is time to continue that conversation now.
First, let me be clear about the origin of that rant: I've been teaching for quite…
Ewww, you're one of those Techers? You majored in things with words, and writing? No fun!!
Too fun!
All science and no literature makes a Techer healthy, wealthy, and....boring :)
I read that last night and spent the next hour chuckling. It was quite entertaining.
The one argument that no one ever puts forth is that English spelling is simply not logical. We have a convention now. Deal with it. :-)
Congrats on getting a letter published in Physics Today!
That was truly beautiful.
I sincerely hope that the organizers for the next QIP have seen this little tiff, I reckon a debate on this would make for some fantastic after dinner entertainment!
I wouldn't have mentioned this, except that your letter to Physics Today was, well, so pedantic. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) Your profile says you're at the Univesity of Washington, and that you pursue your pursuits, allthough not all at the same time.
Congratulations, Dave Bacon, my fellow Caltech English Lit graduate!
It is immeasurably sweet to be published in a venue for which one has lusted for much of a lifetime.
When I was in elementary school, I decided on the list of the venues in which I most wanted to be published. This was determined by what was subscribed to at home, plus my intended career in science. In alphabetical order, the list was:
(1) Mad
(2) New York Times
(3) Punch
(4) Science
(5) Scientific American
My results so far (40% of goal):
(1) Mad -- still need to do this; Donald Knuth accomplished this when he was still in high school
(2) New York Times -- still need to do this; I've come close with Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, and the like;
(3) Punch -- no longer possible [17 July 1841 - 8 April 1992]
(4) Science -- accomplished; excerpts from a poem by myself and my wife (Dr. Christine M. Carmichael) as a sidebar in "Science's 20 Greatest Hits Take Their Lumps", Elizabeth Culotta, Science 15 March 1991: 1308-1309.
(5) Scientific American -- accomplished; "This sentence contains ten words, eighteen syllables, and sixty-four letters."
[Jonathan Vos Post, Scientific American, reprinted in
"Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern",
by Douglas R. Hofstadter, paperback reprint March 1996, pp.26-27]
Rugosa: That's what comes from being a literature major and not an English major ;) Thanks.
Qite a nice job Dave!
ThanQ