Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Wednesday Wordage: Reading under the influence of Radio

I was driving into town the other day, radio tuned to the local NPR outlet.  I had listened to most of an interview with Carl Sagan, discussing how we should embrace ambiguity and the unknown and how it was necessary to have more science educators who were actually enthusiastic about science and education, when I drove past one of the dive bars on the outskirts of town.  The marquee proclaimed "NYE   PARTY  TUES."  So of course I assumed that it was some event where you were supposed to show up in a bow tie and safety glasses and illustrate some basic point of physical law with an amusing demonstration, maybe calculate partition coefficients of various spices between vodka and water.  I actually drove a couple of blocks before I realized that they were not honoring Bill Nye, Science Guy, and that Tuesday was New Year's Eve.  Alas.