They are so huge and so baffling that one tends to retreat to the comfort of habitual attitudes — politicking, academicking, and the like.
1982 December 23rd–30th, David E. H. Jones, “Ariadne in the Springtime” in New Scientist, volume XCVI, №№ 1,337–1,338, ‘Les cris de coeur et le own goal’, 792/1:
A survey revealed that scientists were poorly paid, on the whole. If you wanted more money, you should have gone in for doctoring, academicking, police inspectoring or company secretarying.
Yr Editor always considered academicking to be a relatively prestigious occupation, but a couple dozen times a year, you hear about pursuits like what these British and French scientists did (camping out on the island of Oleronto chart the hoots of 17 territorial male owls to gauge the level of machismo) or like that of these four at Leeds Univ.’s Food Science Dept., who actually tested 700 variations of “bacon sandwich”to produce a recipe for perfection:N = C + [fb (cm) x fb (tc)] + fb (Ts) + fc x ta.
