"Apostryphal Grammatical Constructions"

I think that "apostryphal" really ought to be a valid adjective. That seems like a great way to discuss apostrophes, especially when they annoy me or I want to change them.

Based on my quick googling, however, this appears to be apocryphal.

I also like the idea of evoking apocalypses in related comments and puns.

Example usage: "I rewrote the sentence to avoid apostryphal grammar."

Tales from the ArXiv: Building on "Seminal but Laconic" Findings

I am highly amused by one of the sentences in the abstract of this paper, which is called "Systematic elimination of Stokes divergences emanating from complex phase space caustics".

The sentence in the abstract reads as follows: Building on the seminal but laconic findings of Adachi, we show that the deviation from second order can be used to rigorously determine the Stokes lines and therefore the region of the space that should be removed.

I think I need to steal the first part of that sentence, and I know that I have felt that way on many occasions (e.g., with respect to work by Nesterenko) in my career.

Encounter at the Gates of Hell

Sweating from the profuse heat, at the gates of Hell, you encounter a devil, dressed in a lounge suit and singing "Baby It's Cold Outside."

(I would humbly suggest requesting "I Won't Back Down".)

Tales from the ArXiv: A Poetic Opening

This paper's topic isn't my cup of tea (or, rather, coffee), so to speak, but its abstract has among the best opening sentences that I have ever seen in a scientific paper: When drinking a cup of coffee under the morning sunshine, you may notice white membranes of steam floating on the surface of the hot water.

I approve!

Update: I do actually find fluid mechanics fascinating --- and this was true even before I joined the applied math group at Oxford --- even though it is not a topic on which I have (yet) published. However, the 'cup of tea' pun still applies and absolutely had to be part of this blog entry. (Also, in general, I am fond of papers that just start with some everyday phenomenon and try to figure out what's up.)

"(Then again, it may not.)"

One of the new papers on the arXiv today has an abstract that ends with the following sentence: "The work may shed light on the possible properties of different ensembles of mixed systems."

Whenever I see a sentence like that to end an abstract, I automatically think about the implicit "(Then again, it may not.)" sentence that naturally follows as the next sentence.

Update (9/19/14): This also applies to sentences that end conclusions.

Adam Ant is Adamant About Adamantium.

The following is possibly one of the best sentences ever: "Adam Ant is adamant about adamantium."

I'm just saying...

Best. Compound Adjective. Ever.

This whopper of a sentence comes from a letter that Richard Feynman wrote to his piano tuner (which has been published as part of an article in the December 2009 issue of Physics Today): "Why are the ear-created (or bad-amplifiers-etc-in-radio-and-phonograph-created) harmonics exact multiples?"

It makes one wonder how physicists could possibly have earned a group reputation of not being able to write well. The compound adjective has 7 dashes in it! Sheesh.

Classic "Awesome" Spam

Courtesy Felicia Gottmann, here is an oldie-but-goodie --- a list of "awesome" (and occasionally awesome) sentences by some future Bulwer-Lyton laureates. (A few of these actually are legitimately good, though most of them are just "awesome." Make sure you get all the way down to #56. I approve!) I can't remember precisely when in my life these sentences (or many of them) arrived in my e-mail box back in the day, but I definitely saw at least many of these sentences at some point many years ago.