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Conversational scrap

posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:07pm on 11/02/2010
Overheard in an academic building last week:

"Is that a test tube?"
"No, a scalpel."

I wonder how it's possible to confuse these things?

I went to a lecture tonight in which the speaker spoke of the town's worthies. I hadn't realized that people did that any more. It was especially striking to realize that "worthies" included notable sportspeople, not just famous gentry.
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There are 5 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 

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posted by [identity profile] friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com at 11:17pm on 11/02/2010
LOL! I am boggling too.
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posted by [identity profile] booksandtea.livejournal.com at 11:22pm on 11/02/2010
Our scalpels originally come covered in cardboard slips that are useless for further storage. We therefore keep our scalpels stuck into tubes so nobody reaching carelessly into the drawer will lose a finger!
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posted by [personal profile] owlfish at 11:26pm on 11/02/2010
But then's BOTH a scalpel AND a test tube - not just one or the other. (Very sensible.)
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posted by [identity profile] booksandtea.livejournal.com at 08:19am on 12/02/2010
Not in laboratory semantics! We mcguyverize items like this all the time because our budget doesn't allow us to buy the real stuff (which is horrendously overprized anyway). So the dialogue "Is this X?" "No, it is Y." sounds very familiar. And most of the time you cannot return to function X from function Y, so, not "both-and".
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posted by [identity profile] midnightmelody.livejournal.com at 08:42am on 12/02/2010
Perhaps a (box of) test-tubes(s) vs. a (box of) scalpel(s), which need to be unpacked in different places?
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