A New York Times article about physicist blog drama? Awesome, natch. But even more awesome? When said article includes the following section on the endlessly charming UW physicist and blogger Gordon Watts:

On May 28, an anonymous physicist wrote to the comments section of Dr. Dorigo’s blog, asking if it was true that D Zero was seeing an excess of so-called b-quarks spitting from the Tevatron. […]Dr. Dorigo is in the C.D.F. collaboration and thus had no inside knowledge, but repeated that he had also heard the rumor. The rumor was picked up by the publications Slate and Wired.

In response, Gordon Watts, a physicist from the University of Washington and longtime member of the D Zero team, scolded Dr. Dorigo for speculating on rumors.

“Dude! If you get called by the press to comment on this rumor — you will be making secondhand comments on rumors!” Dr. Watts wrote on his blog, Life as a Physicist. [#]

Gordon responds with a post on his own blog, claiming that he never uses the word dude:

On a more personal note, I never use the word “Dude” in conversation. It was a little awkward reading that. But, that is blogging for you. How often does someone get the word “Dude!” into the NY Times? I think my family will have some fun with that… [#]

True or not true? I suppose we’ll never know–particularly since now he’ll surely be more careful. But hey, at least the world knows that UW Physics is anything but boring. Like, totally, dude.