WEEK 17 (APRIL 20—24) FINALISTS

  • Brian, who maybe likes Harold Brazil, maybe doesn’t, but definitely has his doubts about City Paper HR: “What kind of duchelords do they have writing for this paper? Do they recruit from the ‘Weekly World News’? News of the Wierd, rental listings for hirsuite, vegan, non-smoking, queer-positive green room-mates, personal ads for scatophiles who like to be done with strap-ons, and tons and tons of mock journalism.”
  • Dave, who thought a reference to Marion Barry’s chemistry degree was a joke: “‘”It takes three times as much hydrochloric acid to digest it,” says Barry, a chemist by training.’ Ooooooh. Below the belt, LL. Below the belt.”
  • Big Easy Native, who was properly (IMHO) chagrined by a post written in dialect: “Wow. I find myself vaguely insulted by almost this entire piece. Thanks City Paper!”
  • cminus, who thought McKenna’s blog item on hail was a little…answerable: “Seriously? Well, at the risk of oversimplification: hail typically forms when warm, wet air is being blown upwards into significantly colder air. Water vapor in the warmer air freezes into tiny droplets of ice in the colder air and falls back to earth, but as the droplets fall back into the warmer air the updraft pushes them back up again. The process repeats, with the droplets gaining a new coating of ice each time and growing in size, until the droplets become too heavy to be lifted by the updraft and fall to earth. If they don’t melt before they land, they become hail. It pretty much has to be warm out to get hail. The classic hailstorm comes during a spring thunderstorm: in spring because the low altitude air has warmed up from winter but the higher altitudes may still be cold, and during a thunderstorm because thunderclouds extend from low to high altitudes with updrafts throughout.”

That was so edifying I had to quote the entire thing.
AND THE WINNER IS…

On many weeks, calling us “duchelords” would be an automatic win, but I learned something from cminus, so that gets over the line a little faster. E-mail me for your free T-shirt. It really works!

Photograph of Cypraea tigris schilderiana Cate, 1961, from Smithsonian National Museum of National History’s Flickr stream