One does not simply walk into Mordor. One has to build a spacecraft because even the eagles can't fly there.
That's amazing. Such an effect on our cultural some authors have.
Nah, it's good and helps people remember things. Easier than the arbitrary name of the discoverer
i was going to say that english was a mistake, but you convinced me
english IS a mistake, but not for the puns
I don't know whats worse: Scientists naming everything unpronounceable unspellable Latin, naming things after people, or naming things jokes. Just name it what it fucking does in a language someone actually uses jerks.
Now I want to become a scientist so I can name something after a pun.
People are really awful at naming things.
Some German nerd thought it was cool while they discovered some new receptor so they called it "toll" (German for cool/awesome). Computer science is full of names that are kind of funny if you already know the particular area but are total gibberish if you're trying learn it. We're not even good at naming humans. The default is to either pick one of the names that's common in your culture. When people deviate from that you get a huge number of "special" names.
We need to put this in the hands of experts. I'm gonna propose a new field, "nameology". Those folks will do a bunch of research into names that make sense. How do we best name things so they completely and unambiguously label them in a way that's easy to remember and use? Then they can run around and give non stupid names to all the things.
Hmm, I think we should start referring to the toll-like receptors as the awesome-ish receptors.
Another example: there's a fruit-fly gene named decapentaplegic (which has to do with forming the 15 imaginal discs during embryonic development). When they discovered another gene that interfered with it, but only when inherited from the mother, they named that one "mothers against decapentaplegic".
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
