Pun Intended

Pranksters and jokesters rejoice—April Fool’s Day is here. While there’s bound to be a joke or two sprung on the RTB staff today, I’ll confess right now that I’m not the culprit. Sigh. I’ve never been any good at pulling pranks, but we do house a few jesters in our midst.

Biochemist Fuz Rana is a connoisseur of corny jokes and puns. You can tell just by looking at the titles of his Today’s New Reason to Believe articles. Here are some of my favorites.

• “Do the Latest Advances in Origin-of-Life Research Put the Case for Intelligent Design on Ice?” (On snowball-Earths and the origin of life in ice)
• “Does Inflammation after Injury Traumatize the Case for Intelligent Design?” (On the source of the inflammation response)
• “Convergence Drives Evolution Batty” (On bats—what else—and their echolocation abilities)
• “Channeling the Case for Intelligent Design” (On the “tunnels connecting the interior compartments of the cell to the exterior environment”)
• “Fattening up the Case for Intelligent Design” (On fatty acids in cells)
• “New Flute Plays into Biblical Case for Human Origins” (On evidence for early humanity’s musical talents)
• “New Statue Figures into Biblical Case for Human Origins” (On evidence for early humanity’s creative abilities)

But don’t let these “punny” titles fool you. Fuz’s sense of humor may keep his coworkers in stitches, but these articles offer up serious challenges to the evolutionary paradigm. And that’s no joke.

— Maureen