Monday, February 23, 2009

Bad evolution puns award #1: Cod in the act of evolution

Sure - we are celebrating Darwin this month and through the year. But one negative of evolution in general is that it seems particularly ripe for puns, and bad ones at that. So I am starting a new award here - the Bad Evolution Puns Award. And the first winner is the Boston Globe for their new article "Cod in the act of evolution" by Murray Carpenter.

6 comments:

  1. Did you see the athiest bus slogan generator?
    http://ruletheweb.co.uk/b3ta/bus/?s1=There%27s+probably+no+cod.&s2=Now+stop+complaining&s3=and+eat+your+sardines.

    "There's probably no cod. So stop complaining and eat your sardines". If you can get the link to work you can make your own slogan.

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  2. that is excellent Maxine ...

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  3. The problem is that the best puns are by definition bad -- it's the groaners that really work best, or as Edgar Allan Poe supposedly said, "The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability."


    On a somewhat related note, I just happen to be reading (okay, listening to) Mark Kurlansky's Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World during my commute. Its not quite John McPhee, but great background to bring to a read of the paper by Darimont, et al. that led to Carpenter's pun.

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  4. That cod piece is interesting....

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  5. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of Origin, can we really say that Dar-wins?

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