Alien Corn: An errant cosmic ray, travelling through space at the speed of light, passes through the atmosphere, the earth's crust and its molten core, and finally through David Adesnik's brain and subtlely re-routes a thought pathway as he types.

An errant cosmic ray, travelling through space at the speed of light, passes through the atmosphere, the earth's crust and its molten core, and finally through David Adesnik's brain and subtlely re-routes a thought pathway as he types.

"But what it comes down to is that [Ted] Kennedy has a reputation as a man of principle and a deep thinker, [...]"

At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with.
Posted by David Fleck at 14 November 2005 08:05 AM

Comments

Best headline ever (complex sentence category)!

Posted by: Joe Kristan on November 14, 2005 12:02 PM

I don't believe cosmic rays can penetrate very far into solid matter. I think you're thinking of neutrinos.

Posted by: Angie Schultz on November 15, 2005 11:37 AM

You know, after I pushed the "publish" button, I thought to myself, "Dave, I think you want to say 'neutrinos' there..." but then, I'd already pushed the button, and I didn't want to take the time or effort to mess around with the title, and I thought, "Eh, who's gonna know?" Fool! Fool that I was! Curséd indolence!

Posted by: David Fleck on November 15, 2005 12:19 PM

David, I don't know that I'd be taking advice about the nature of the universe from a woman with jungle-print sheets.

Posted by: Moira on November 15, 2005 04:47 PM

Moira - good point. I wrote to Mr. A. to ask him about this seemingly anomalous statement. He replied:

I hope you didn't spill your coffee. But it can't be too much of a surprise that journalists think of Kennedy that way. Not on a Moynihan level, perhaps. But still.

To which I responded:

Well, honestly, it is a surprise to me. But I trust you to know better what lurks in the minds of journalists than I. (I think that says more about the condition of the collective journalist mind than it does Kennedy's ethics and intellect, but let it pass.)

Posted by: David Fleck on November 15, 2005 06:35 PM

David, I don't know that I'd be taking advice about the nature of the universe from a woman with jungle-print sheets.

Back off, lady. I'm a scientist.

I'll have you know that the nature of the universe practically demands jungle-print sheets.

These were giraffe-print, actually. With a rather ugly leopard trim. We are very into leopard in this house. I told Niles he just can't slap leopard print on every damn thing; it looks tacky. So he accessorized with zebra, and that was much better.

By the way, neutrinos don't really react with matter very strongly (that's why they can penetrate the earth so freely, and why you need a small ocean of cleaning fluid to detect them), so it's unlikely that a neutrino would cause Adesnik's brain glitch. I mean, we're showered with zillions of neutrinos at every moment, and if they could cause brain glitches, we'd all be nitz loob ishkabibble snocka gebfooten.

And that's just silly.

Posted by: Angie Schultz on November 16, 2005 09:53 AM

If you watch the Senate (C-SPAN 2) long enough you'll learn that there are only two guys who are orators, Kennedy and Byrd.

I barely got to watch Moynihan on C-SPAN at all (basically his last press conference) but wasn't he won of the guys who _really_ appealed to cigar-chewing, buick-driving, union member racists of the North?

Posted by: JS Narins on December 6, 2005 03:34 PM

Yeah, the "Joe Sixpacks" really swooned over him after he got his MIT professorship...

Actually, I think you're confused — Moynihan's real priority was reanimating the corpse of Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Posted by: David Fleck on December 6, 2005 09:51 PM