Humans Are Shmoo's to Bacteria

Remember the shmoo? The shmoo w^as invented by Al Capp in the comic strip "Li'l Abner": a wobbly, tenpin-with legs sort of creature with the misfortune (or good fortune) of being almost totally consumable. Broiled shmoo tasted like steak; fried, like chicken. Shmoos gave eggs, butter, and Grade A milk. The shmoo's skin was a versatile fabric, the eyes made perfect buttons, and even the whiskers served as toothpicks. Most important, shmoos reproduced in prodigious numbers and delivered themsel...

 Cooleridge Describes Davy's Work as Methodical

This refusal to allow anything to chance, ‘accident’ or good fortune was exactly the same as Herschel’s insistence that chance played no part in his discovery of Uranus. Coleridge had taken this up as one of the key philosophical problems associated with science, in an essay provokingly entitled ‘Does Fortune Favour Fools?’, which he republished in The Friend in 1818. Here he described Davy, perhaps mischievously, as ‘the illustrious Father and Founder of Philosophic Alchemy’. B...