Female Scientists Describe Their Jobs Using Only the 10,000 Most Common English Words

she blinded me with science

Susana Polo

Published: Jan 23, 2013 12:28 pm

This article is over 11 years old and may contain outdated information

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A little while ago there was an XKCD picture that explained the Up-Goer Five, “the only flying space car that’s taken anyone to another world,” using only the ten hundred most used words in the very large group of words that I’m using right now. The Up-Goer Five is not easy to explain, so this was pretty funny, but also pretty interesting. Now on Tumblr, Theo Sanderson, Anne Jefferson, and Chris Rowan have a world wide computer place where men and women like the men and women who made the Up-Goer Five can explain how their jobs work, using only those same ten hundred words. They even made a world wide computer place that shows you what words to pick!

We think women who do things like making Up-Goer Fives are very cool, so we want to show you some of the things they do here on our world wide computer place! There are lots more at Sanderson, Jefferson, and Rowan’s world wide computer place. And in case you haven’t guessed already, these words were also written using their word-picking computer place.

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Author

Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.