Today the PI dropped in on a conversation where my labmate was saying to a postdoc, "But apparently they're transparent!"
"But are they apparent?" Said the PI, and gave us the pleased smile of someone who had just told a really great joke.
We stared at him blankly for a moment.
"...what?" I finally said.
"Just thought it's an interesting turn of phrase," replied the PI, looking pleased with himself.
I thought about it for a moment and got that apparent and transparent sounded alike. Then I got transparent = trans-apparent. Then I realized that the PI was making a joke about how if something is apparent it's easily visible and if it's transparent, it's invisible. So saying something is apparently transparent is like saying something's visibly invisible. Or something.
It fitted with what I know of the PI's sense of humor.
"...but that's a terrible pun," I thought, but saying so seemed impolitic.
"He always comes up with these things that he thinks are funny and that no one else does," my labmate whispered to me as we left to go back to our experiments.
In other news, turned in transcript and stuff for my training grant application today. Am feeling twitchy.
2 comments:
LOL. "apparently transparent" Heee :P Well, I thought it was funny. But then again, I'm a lover of terrible puns. I approve of your PIs sense of humor.
And no twitching allowed.
I keep reading PI as "pie".
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