…Is the power of the molecular biologist not a kind of onomapoetics? Does she not manipulate names as much as she handles specimens? Researchers in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have recently identified two new fibroblast growth factor genes (so-called FGF genes), named ‘Thisbe’ (ths) and ‘Pyramus’ (pyr), in Drosophilia, the common fruitfly and the model species of modern genetics. These genes, which indirectly code for the proteins necessary to the development of cardiac tissue, are always found linked closely together in sequence, and since the mutant phenotype (a fly without either ths or pyr) exhibits incomplete cardiac development, the authors named their discovery ‘for the “heartbroken” lovers described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,’ the very myth of loss and transformation that inspired Shakespeare to write the plot of the ‘rude mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and which Bottom and company submit to such monstrous ‘disfigurement’ at Theseus’s court. —Henry S. Turner, Shakespeare’s Double Helix. 
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…Is the power of the molecular biologist not a kind of onomapoetics? Does she not manipulate names as much as she handles specimens? Researchers in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at Berkeley and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have recently identified two new fibroblast growth factor genes (so-called FGF genes), named ‘Thisbe’ (ths) and ‘Pyramus’ (pyr), in Drosophilia, the common fruitfly and the model species of modern genetics. These genes, which indirectly code for the proteins necessary to the development of cardiac tissue, are always found linked closely together in sequence, and since the mutant phenotype (a fly without either ths or pyr) exhibits incomplete cardiac development, the authors named their discovery ‘for the “heartbroken” lovers described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses,’ the very myth of loss and transformation that inspired Shakespeare to write the plot of the ‘rude mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and which Bottom and company submit to such monstrous ‘disfigurement’ at Theseus’s court.

—Henry S. Turner, Shakespeare’s Double Helix. 

How To Write A Dissertation Chapter

  1. read a shit ton of criticism about whatever you think the chapter is going to be on
  2. panic, change topic of chapter
  3. repeat steps 1 and 2 until you are mentally exhausted OR a month has gone by, whichever comes first
  4. throw hands in the air, say “fuck it,” start writing with no clear goal in mind
  5. feel disgusted with self
  6. drink too much caffeine
  7. probably crash from the caffeine
  8. write a bunch of poems and feel neurotic about them and email them to your significant other over and over with the subject line “is this good”
  9. stare at computer
  10. have a general crisis about what on earth you are going to do with your life when/if you actually finish this thing
  11. write more and start to feel like you are making sense
  12. watch episodes of Twin Peaks on mute while writing because this is how you roll
  13. feel pretty good
  14. keep writing
  15. feel elated
  16. write the most
  17. finish writing
  18. enter severe state of anxiety in which you imagine everything you just spent several months doing is awful and derivative and not interesting 
  19. cry
  20. close document file with chapter in it and refuse to open it again
  21. repeat entire process for remaining chapters
  22. die