Punch Lines
Science & Humor
...and the geek shall inherit the Earth.
& (b. 1958)
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves,
for they shall never cease to be amused.&
may not always be possible.
can be legitimate ones.
Why not read all that mathematical stuff& faster&?
to funny questions.
Scientific and other explanations.
by famous scientists and others.
& to be translated
into as many languages as possible.
Proofs that the guesses of experts are just guesses.
:& The day of reckoning.
A millihelen is the amount of beauty that launches one ship.
A lottagram an electron is 0.91&lottogram.
Only look where there's enough light.
or just a viable alternative to orthodoxy?
Rearranging letters may rev-)
Remembering things and/or making fun of them.
Funny ones and/or alternate interpretations of serious ones.
If you can't beat them, join them (and HF, LOL).
On this site, see also:
scientific mysteries...
Brain teasers & riddles.
:& "I said& nontrivial."
Did you think there ought to be a simple formula?
A tribute to cartoonists Gotlib & Goscinny.
A tribute to Herg&& (n& Georges R&mi, ).
A French mnemonic about some weird family diner...
Related Links (Outside this Site)
by Jennifer Costello
by Michael A. Fischer.
by Simon Dedeo.
by Randall J Scalise
Cranks, crackpots, kooks & loons ...
In the media:
& by& & (Harvard University).
Science&Humor
() & Standard Jokes and "New Classics"
We credit whoever reports a joke (actual origins are usually unknown).
2 lines or less:
Chemists think they're physicists, physicists think they're gods
and God thinks He is a mathematician.
If it wasn't for ,
we'd all be watching TV...to the light of a candle.
The contour integral around Western Europe is zero.
(All the Poles are in Eastern Europe.)
If I had three months to live, I'd spend the time in a statistics class...
Three months would seem like an eternity.
They say that we only ever use 12% of our brain.
The other half is never used.
There are three types of mathematicians:
Those who can count, and those who can't count.
There are 10 types of people:
Those who understand binary numbers, and those who don't.
There are two types of people:
Those who can be classified into one of two types, and those who can't.
5 lines or less:
After the Flood, Noah lets all the animals out of the ark and tells them to
go forth and multiply.&
A few months later, all are doing fine except a pair of snakes
who beg Noah to cut down some trees and let them live there.&
Soon, there are lots of little snakes and everybody is happy.&
"How did the trees help?", wonders Noah.&
"Well, we're
We need logs to multiply."
Returning from a conference,
Polish physicists find themselves in a plane whose pilot dies from a heart attack.&
There's only one experimentalist in the bunch
who dares try to fly the aircraft.& He has trouble figuring things out and
apologizes to the others:&
"I'm just a simple Pole in a complex plane."
An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are visiting Scotland by train.&
They see a black sheep grazing in a pasture.&
The astronomer observes that Scottish sheep are black.&
The physicist objects that they only know about one such sheep.&
The mathematician intones:
"In Scotland, there's at least one pasture with at least one sheep
having at least one black side."
As Derivation approached, all functions fled, except the Natural Exponential:
- "Don't you fear me?" says Derivation.
- "I am e to the x,& you can't touch me."
- "Oh, but who says I differentiate along x?"
To an optimist,& the glass is half full.
To a pessimist,& the glass is half empty.
To an engineer,& the glass is twice as big as needed.
Three scientists observed that 2 people entered a house and 3 came out.
The physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate."
The biologist: "They have reproduced."
The mathematician: "If one person enters the house, it will be empty again."
() is arrested for speeding&:
- "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?"
- "Very much so, but I didn't know where I was."
A pre-med student rudely interrupts a
- "Why do we have to learn this useless stuff?"
- "It saves lives."
- "How does physics save lives?"
- "It keeps
out of medical school."
NASA scientists had developped a gun to hurl dead chicken at aircrafts to study the
effect of accidental encounters with airborne fowl.&
When the British used the gun to test a new high-speed train,
the chicken smashed the windshield,
destroyed the console and embedded itself in the cabin wall!&
The&Britons wired NASA about this...&
The answer:& "Thaw the chicken."
"" story was
heard [ ? ] on the "Late Late Show with Tom Snyder", on .
() & On Limericks and Spoonerisms...
popularized by Edward Lear (1845) and many others.
A mathematician confided
That a M&bius band is one-sided,
& & & And you'll get quite a laugh,
& & & If you cut one in half,
For it stays in one piece when divided.
(anonymous)
There once was a fellow with a horse.
He taught him all forms of math discourse,
& & & Sparing just one mystery:
& & & Cartesian geometry.
You can't put
(G. Michon, )
() & Circular credit about an&
Infinite Descent& ...
The so-called& Method of Infinite Descent&
establishes that no positive integer can possibly have a given property
by showing that a strictly& smaller&
positive integer with the same property would otherwise exist...
The French mathematician Michel Mend&s-France
& ()& that Mike Keane
and himself have credited& each other&
for a great proof of the irrationality
using the& method of infinite descent.&
So, the following proof now belongs to& folklore,&
without a known author:
Since 1 & Ö2 & 2,&
if a positive integer& n& was making&
an integer, the smaller positive integer&
m&=&(Ö2-1)&n&
would make& mÖ2& an integer also! &
For the sake of pedagogy only, let's be less terse and more general:
Theorem of Theodorus&
(before 399 BC)& by&infinite&descent:
If the integer & q & 0 & isn't a perfect square, its square root is irrational.
(465-398&BC)& taught mathematics to&
(427-347&BC)& and&
(c.&417-369&BC).&
The latter would then expand his work on irrationals, culminating in the synthetic account given
in&&Book&X& of&
's elements& (c.&300&BC).&
named after& Theaetetus,& Plato himself recollects how
Theodorus was teaching his own result, in 399&BC, for values of& q& "up to 17"&
[probably for pedagogical reasons]& and how the young Theaetetus
got excited "generalizing" it...
would provide a& simple& proof.& However, a&
more elementary& one can be
obtained by generalizing the above two-line proof&
(which corresponds to& q&=&2,& k&=&1)& as follows:
The square root of any given integer& q& which isn't a perfect square
is strictly between two consecutive integers& k& and& k+1.&
For any positive integer& n& which would make&
nÖq& an integer, we'd
consider the integer& m&=&(Öq-k)&n&
which would make& mÖq& an integer also.&
Well,& m& is positive because& k&&&Öq&
and it's less that& n& because&
Öq-k& is less than& 1.&
Thus, by& infinite descent,& no such& n& can exist.&
Therefore,& Öq& is& irrational. &
() & Trick Questions & Lateral Thinking
Legitimate questions can be& bad jokes& played on students.
Some of the links contain clues, others are just straight information...
for polyhedra with
In a , how many months have
The first one is mine ().&
I have not tried it on anybody yet...
() & Ignorance is bliss...
What's the big deal about mathematical texts, anyway?
& & the following anecdote involving two married friends of his,
who were both attending graduate school at&the&time.&
The&wife is a mathematician.& The husband is a physicist.
A certain acquaintance of theirs was then working on her Ph.D. in history.&
She became aware of&and appalled at&the glacial pace at which
graduate texts in mathematics and physics were being covered.&
She asked them to& please& lend her
one of their texts so that she could form an opinion.&
As she insisted, they lent her a text on
The& next day,& she returned the book to them,
gleefully proclaiming that she had finished it.&
They asked her if she had understood it.&
She said that she had.&
However, she was wondering why the authors never reduced "fractions"&
by cancelling the factors of&...
Ignoramus,& n. &
A person unacquainted with certain kinds of knowledge familiar to yourself,
and having certain other kinds that you know nothing about.
(1890)by Ambrose Bierce ()
Ignorami :
What ignoramuses think the plural of ignoramus ought to be.
() & Silly Answers to Funny Questions
The first one of these is the quintessential fruity "math joke"...
What's purple and commutes?
What's yellow and equivalent to the
What's green and homeomorphic to the open unit interval? &
What's a yellow complete normed space? &
What's nonorientable and lives in the sea? &
Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas? &
What's the shortest mathematical joke?
How many seconds in a year?&
Either , or...
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Is it really just to get to the other side?
Scientific explanations:
The fittest chickens cross roads.
The road moved beneath the chicken.
Chickens at rest stay at rest, chickens in motion cross roads.
We're not sure which side of the road the chicken was on.
There was already one chicken on this side of the road.
Unscientific ones:
For fun. [Epicurus]
It had a dream. [Martin Luther King Jr.]
Because the road was there. [Sir Edmund Hilary]
If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Thy Chicken Shall Bear Witness. [Victor Sj&str&m, 1921]
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out. [Torquemada]
N& we own the chicken, we own the road. [Bill Gates]
The chicken did not --I repeat: did not-- cross the road. [Richard Nixon]
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. [Mark Twain]
That's the way it is. [Walter Cronkite]
I missed one? [Colonel Sanders]
Define "road". [Bill Clinton]
Philosophical perspectives:
It was a historical inevitability. [Karl Marx]
It is in the nature of chickens to cross roads. []
He was exercising his natural right to liberty. [John Locke]
Gaze too long across the Road and the Road gazes across you. [Nietzsche]
The possibility is encoded into the objects chicken and road. [Wittgenstein]
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. [Buddha]
Q: & Why did the chicken cross the
A: & To get to the same side.
Video : & ? & by& Michael Stevens & (Vsauce).
() & Quotations
Funny or gripping.& Silly or wise.& Provocative or inspirational.
(469- BC), early moral philosopher.
- & The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
(427-347 BC), legendary philosopher (founded Academy in 387 BC).&
- & Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young,
not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.&
- & The knowledge of which geometry aims is
the knowledge of the eternal.&
- & Let no one ignorant of geometry enter& [Plato's Academy].
& & "MHDEIS AGEWMETRHTOS EISITW"
(287-212 BC), legendary engineer.&
- & I've got it! & [or "Eureka!",
upon discovering the law of hydrostatics]
- & Give me a fulcrum and I'll move the World. &
[probably apocryphal]
& & "dos moi pou stw,
kai kinw thn ghn"&
- & Don't disturb my circles!
[His last words, to the soldier who would kill him.]
& & "mh mou touV kuklouV taratte"
& (Latin:& Noli turbare circulos meos)
(),& medieval scientist.
- & Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences&...& Neglect
of&mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who
is&ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world.&
And&what is worse, men who are thus ignorant are unable
to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.
& [Opus Majus, 1267]
William of Ockham
Occam's Razor& is the rule of parsimony:
- & Pluralitas non ponenda est sine necessitate.
[ KISS & = & Keep it simple, stupid. ]
Irish&mathematician.&
- & On Earth, there is nothing great but Min Man,
there is nothing great but mind.
bacteriologist.&
- & The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
mathematician & philosopher.&
- & Most people would r& many do.&
- & Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.&
- & I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular
to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe--because,
like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
Godfrey Harold&
(), quintessential mathematician.&
- & It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.&
By&definition, there are already enough people to do that.
legendary physicist.&
- & Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.&
[Quoting the first part suffices!]
In German :&
Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht.
In French :&
Dieu est subtile, pas malveillant.
- & Nothing happens until something moves.&
- & Imagination is more important than knowledge.&
- & Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.&
- & If you are out to describe the truth,
leave elegance to the tailor.&
- & Gravitation cannot be held responsible
for people falling in love.&
- & Everything should be made as simple as possible,
but not simpler.&
- & The only reason for time is
so that everything doesn't happen at once.&
- & Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age
eighteen.&
- & The telegraph is
you pull the tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles.&
Radio operates the same way, but without a cat.&
- & We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used
when&we created them.&
- & As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality,
and&as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.&
- & Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the Universe...&
[ Attribution to Einstein is dubious. ]
- & I didn't arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws
of&the&Universe through my rational mind...&
- & Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent.&
It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.&
- & If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
early guru of quantum physics.&
- & A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.
mathematical prodigy.&
- & In mathematics, you don't understand things, you just get used to them.
(1911-2008),
foremost patriach of modern physics.
- & If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics,
you do not understand it.&
- & Time is defined so that motion looks simple. & &
[This superbly deep statement was made to express a viewpoint
attributed to .]
&- & We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance.&
As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. & &
[D. Lightfoot]
(), legendary mathematician.&
- & God may not play dice with the universe, but
something strange is going on with the prime numbers.
- & A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
of physics.
- & Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.&
- & I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.&
- & Physics is like sex.&
Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.&
- & I would hate to die twice, it's so boring. & & [His last words]
known for hilarious dialogs.&
- & Deux intellectuels assis vont moins loin qu' un con qui marche.
[Two sitting intellectuals won't travel as far as one walking fool.]
French wordsmith and stand-up comedian.&
- & Un jardinier qui sabote une pelouse est un assassin en herbe.
[A piece of untranslatable humor, unrelated to Science, for good measure.]
leading physicist and cosmologist.
- & The effort to understand the Universe is one of the very few things
that&lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some
of the&grace of tragedy. & &
[Last sentence of "The First Three Minutes", 1976]
- & At the deepest level, all we find are symmetries and responses to
symmetries. & & [1986 Dirac Memorial Lecture]&
- & We ought to try and preserve the meaning of words,
and "God" historically has not meant "the laws of nature". &
[Criticizing& S. Hawking]&
- & Good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things.&
It&takes religion for good people to do evil things.& [&cf.
(1942-&, FRS).&
Former Lucasian Professor at Cambridge
- & What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes
a universe for&them to describe? & [...] &
Why does the Universe go to all the bother of existing? & &
[From the closing sentences of "A Brief History of Time", 1988]
- & I love deadlines... and the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
(1979-&).&
- & When you find the purpose to your pain, you will find
the&drive to go through it and out .
& () & Please translate
Ben Franklin's quote:
"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late."
The ongoing challenge is to translate that quote into as many languages as possible.&
in any language that you happen to know& very well.&
Make it as elegant and idiomatic as possible...
The only noteworthy trap is that Franklin's words do& not&
necessarily imply that we get old before we get wise&
(which would be& really& tragic).
A quote from Benjamin Franklin&
Life's tragedy is thatwe get old too soon and wise too late.
FrenchSlang
On d'vient vioque trop t&t et cador trop tard, c'est&tragique.
La [grande] trag&die de la vie c'estqu'on devient vieux trop t&t et sage trop tard.
Zivotna tragedija je sto nam starost dodje prerano, a&mudrost&prekasno.
Tragediya zhizni shto mui stareem slishkom buistro
i&preobretaem mudrost slishkom posno.
A tragedia hogy gyorsan yon az oregseg de lasan a okosag.
Największą tragedią w życiu jest to, że starzejemy się za wcześnie,
a mądrzy stajemy się zbyt p&żno.
SophieMargi
La tragedia de la vida es que nos hacemos viejos demasiado temprano y llegamos a ser sabios demasiado tarde.
Livetstragedi &r att bli gammal f&r tidigtoch klok f&r sent.
The above entries are posted in the order received.&
Give the name of the target language& in English.&
If possible, provide a link that identifies you.
() Famous Last Words
Guesses from the best experts are just guesses...
J&r&me LeFran&ais de
(), French astronomer.&
- & L'homme ne volera jamais.&
[May 23, 1782.& Man& did& fly
, Lord Kelvin of Largs (),
- & Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. & [1896]
- & Radio has no future. & [1897]
- & X-rays will prove to be a hoax. & [1900]
oldest of the four& Warner Brothers.&
- & Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?& [1927]
(), leading US economist [Yale University].&
- & Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.&
legendary physicist.&
- & There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be
obtainable from the atom. & [1932]
(), chairman of IBM.&
- & I think there is a world market for maybe five computers. & [1943]
() & Well-Documented Anecdotes
On November 6, 1919,
() announced the results of his
on May&29,
which had confirmed Einstein's prediction of the bending of light by gravity.&
The occasion was a joint meeting of the Royal Society and
the Royal Astronomical Society.&
The chairman for the session was
was then president of the
(he held the position from 1915 to 1920).&
In his concluding remarks, Thomson said that:&
"No one has yet succeeded in stating, in clear language,
what the theory of Einstein really is."&
As&the meeting was dispersing, this statement prompted the polish-born physicist
Ludwig Silberstein (author of an early book on Relativity)
to come up to Eddington:
- Professor Eddington, you must be one of three persons in the world who understands
general relativity...& Don't be modest.
- On the contrary, I am trying to think who the third person&is.
The full story was told by Eddington,
at a dinner of Trinity College during the Christmas recess of 1933,
in the presence of his famous student
It appears in Chandrasekhar's 1987 book "Truth and Beauty", and/or in an earlier
article of his, entitled
"Einstein and general relativity: Historical perspectives".&
This is probably the origin of the popular myth that:
"Only three people in the world understand Relativity."
The 67th Mersenne Number
The number 2n-1 (now called the nth Mersenne number)
can only be prime if the exponent (n) is itself prime.&
This necessary condition is not sufficient&:&
Although 11 is prime, the eleventh Mersenne number is 2047, which is not (it's
the product of 23 and 89)...&
In 1644, Marin Mersenne () gave the first values of n
for which the number obtained was thought to be prime
( may be used to form
This mysterious
started correctly with 2,&3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31...&
However, Mersenne's next entry was incorrect, as he omitted 61 which does belong
(as first shown by I.M. Pervushin, in 1883) and included 67, which does not.&
The&Mersenne number corresponding to n&=&67
is huge: .&
This number was shown to be composite well before the computer era&
(by , around 1875)&
and it wasn't clear whether an explicit
of such a large number could& ever& be found.
So it was thought in October 1903, when
() walked up to the&blackboard,
at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society
The&announced title of his presentation was
"On the Factorization of Large Numbers".&
Cole silently calculated by hand the 67th power of 2, subtracted 1,
and wrote the result () on one side of the blackboard.&
Then, he multiplied
and obtained the same result...&
Cole did not utter a word and simply went back to&his&seat,
under the first and only standing ovation ever recorded at an AMS meeting.&
There were no questions.& Cole was a professor at
He&had worked every sunday for 3 years to find this factorization.&
Professor Cole served as AMS secretary for 25 years.& Two
(in&Algebra, and in Number Theory) have been
founded in his honor.
() & Parodies and Hoaxes
Clever practical jokes help make the intellectual world a healthier place.
Well, at least some of them do& (some others have depressing outcomes).
In 1931, three physicists& (including future Nobel laureate
managed to publish the famous spoof article reproduced below
[in an English translation taken from "A Random Walk in Science",
a compilation by R.L. Weber, edited by E. Mendoza and
published in 1973 by the Institute of Physics (London)].
This short article actually ridiculed the mystical kind of numerology
which was once advocated by
when our experimental knowledge of
fine structure constant&
(a)& was consistent with the value 1/137
[the currently accepted value is 1/a = 137.035 999 76(50)].
Spoofingly equating degrees of freedom and degrees of temperature
in the centigrade scale (which would officially be named after
the authors offer an "explanation" for the fact that the absolute zero of temperature
(-273.15&C) happens to be numerically close to
-(2´137-1).
Remarks on the quantum theory of the absolute zero of temperature
by G. Beck, H. Bethe, and W. Riezler
in Die Naturwissenschaften, (1931) volume 2, pp. 38-39
Let us consider a hexagonal crystal lattice.&
The absolute zero temperature is characterized by the condition that
all degrees of freedom are frozen.&
That means that all inner movements of the lattice cease.&
This, of course, does not hold for an electron on a Bohr orbital.&
According to Eddington, each electron has 1/a
degrees of freedom, where alpha is the Sommerfeld fine structure constant.&
Beside the electrons,
the crystal contains only protons for which the number of degrees of freedom
is the same since,
according to Dirac, the proton can be viewed as a hole in the electron gas.&
To obtain absolute zero temperature we therefore have to remove from the substance
degrees of freedom per neutron.&
(The crystal as a whole is supposed to be
1&neutron = 1&electron&+ 1&proton.&
One degree of freedom remains because of the orbital movement.)&
For the absolute zero temperature we therefore obtain
To & = & -(2/a - 1) & degrees
If we take To = -273,
we obtain for 1/a the value of 137,
which agrees within limits with the number obtained by an entirely different method.&
It can be shown easily that this result is independent of the choice of crystal structure.
Philadelphia Experiment - 1943
During World War II, the legend was born that the U.S. Navy
had perfected its& degaussing&
of warships& (which made them effectively invisible to magnetically-triggered mines)&
and could achieve total invisibility to radar and ordinary light, with the same type
of technology...& For good measure, it&was also claimed that the method,
secretly devised by& Albert Einstein,& could also make
ships and their crews dematerialize and teleport to remote locations.&
Allegedly, some glitches had made human body parts
fuse with the metal of the ship upon rematerialization.&
This gruesome side-effect was supposedly the reason why the Government kept covering up
its initial experiments&
(including a whole destroyer dematerializing in Philadelphia).
It's difficult to imagine how anyone could believe such a crazy tale but it
has&remained popular for decades.&
After many years, in 1979, the central "eyewitness" confessed
to be the perpetrator of the hoax.& However, the story refused to die.&
He recanted the confession and remained at the center of the delusion he had created,
for the rest of his natural life.& And beyond.
This man passed away at a Colorado nursing home in 1994,
under his& pen name& of&
Carlos Miguel Allende ().&
His death certificate also lists what he fancied himself to be:&
"Science consultant, electromagnetic force fields".&
He had enlisted as a seaman half a century earlier (number 7416175) under
his actual birth name,& Carl Meredith Allen.& RIP.
The True Story of the Philadelphia Experiment& (video) :&
In 1988, the so-called channeling craze
(which had began in earnest around 1972) was in full swing,
spearheaded by actress
and many others.&
The professional magician
(the Amazing Randi)
was approached by Channel 9 from Australia with an offer to debunk the whole thing
of James Randi, also posted by the
Randi&took up the challenge and taught his friend
Jos& Alvarez a few tricks to impersonate the channeler
of a fictitious 35000-year old spirit dubbed "Carlos".&
As it turned out, "The Great Carlos" received a lot of media attention in Australia
(culminating with a show at the Sydney opera house)
and eventually developed a rather large following there...&
Surprisingly, many continued to believe in "Carlos" and his silly messages,
even after the hoax was publicly revealed!
James Randi speaks& (video) : &
In 1996, the phycisist
published a paper with a pompous title:
#46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).
It was, in fact, a cleverly disguised [and hilarious] parody,
which had only the appearance of serious scholarly work:&
In the very first paragraph, Sokal criticizes the "dogma" [sic] according to which
"there exists an external world,
whose properties are independent of any individual human being".&
The rest of the paper is similarly salted with nonsense.&
Yet, it suited so much what the editors of& Social Text
wanted to see that they did not even blink,
and Sokal's article was duly published,
next to other pieces of fashionably correct prose...
Bogdanov Affair - 2002
This controversy is about the supposedley rigorous process which takes
place before scientific doctorates are awarded.&
It's one thing to fool the editors of a cultural journal using scientific gibberish,
like Sokal did.&
It&would be another thing entirely if the same tactics could be successfull
with a doctoral jury...
Many people hastily talked about a "reverse Sokal hoax",
when physicist Max Niedermaier first blew the whistle
in an e-mail he sent to several friends around .&
Niedermaier himself has since apologized and recognized that the Bogdanoff brothers
"genuinely believe in what they are doing".&
The whole thing would probably have gone unnoticed if the Bogdanovs had not been
television celebrities, but this does not make the issue go away...
The twin semioticians Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff were born in 1949, in a castle
of Gascony (southwest France).&
They are gifted science-fiction writers who became famous in France as
hosts of their own television show
(Temps&X) which premiered on April 21, 1979
(it aired prime-time on TF1 from 1980 to 1990).&
With the philosopher Jean Guitton (), they coauthored a subsequent bestseller
entitled "God and Science" (Dieu et la science, Grasset 1991, ISBN 2-246-42411-9).
Doctorates in mathematical physics
from the French Universit& de Bourgogne
were recently awarded to
(including Field medalist
) have since reviewed both doctoral dissertations
and at least four related journal articles published by the Bogdanovs:&
To&summarize bluntly,
the latest scientific jargon is clearly there,
but actual scientific substance seems to be lacking...&
The Bogdanoff twins resumed their TV careers on
weekly staging digital clones of themselves in 2-minute spots for public French television
By checking links to
I discovered [the above] relatively balanced, and well done, review of the
Bogdanov affair.
[To&me, this does not belong in a humor page, though.]&Let
me quote [Bion and] Plutarch:&
"&Though the boys throw stones at the
frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest."&
But I appreciate your personal perspective -- after all, the stones hit
the target, and it must have been "fun!"
Best wishes,
You have a point, Ark:&
Regardless of the scientific merits of their work,
the Bogdanovs didn't deserve the public ridicule they were initially submitted to.&
Let's just state that a&page about humor may include
a few things that are not meant to be funny,
including&possible examples of unethical uses of derision.
I think that's fair.& Thanks!
The Bogdanoff papers&
(e.g., Grichka Bogdanov & Igor Bogdanov,
)& have been
reviewed by &
(The Reference Frame,&
Other recent reviews are less ambiguous and rate as "nil" the scientific value of the Bogdanov's
contributions& (Bogdanov update by Peter Woit,
() & The day of reckoning...
Often engraved on sundials:& Omnia vulnerant, ultima necat.
(All& [hours]& hurt,& the last one kills...)
The famous algebraist and inventor Jerome
() was also proud of his
reputation as an astrologer.& He once predicted the day of his own death.&
He did die on that fateful day (Sept. 21, 1576).&
He may have committed suicide.
When the mathematician
noticed that he was sleeping 15 more minutes each day,&
he extrapolated this to find the day where he would be sleeping 24 hours a day.&
He died on that day& (Nov. 27,1754).
() & Funny Units
Our top picks of funny units...& [See also the .]
The beauty of
launch a thousand ships.&
Thus, in the& Troy& system of units,
the millihelen (mHel) is the amount of beauty which can launch one ship.&
Its value in natural units [natural beauty] is about
A microhelen is roughly the amount of beauty
required to motivate one sailor.&
The symbol for the& helen&
Hel& is pronounced "hell"& [the beauty of the Devil].
wrote: & Ah - you silence me!
The microcentury is 52 minutes and 35.76&seconds and was introduced
by Enrico Fermi as the "standard" duration of a lecture period.
It's equal to exactly 3155.76&s, as an exact submultiple of the
scientific Julian century, which is
to be equal to 36525 days of 86400
(SI) seconds each.
The attoparsec (apc) is the only& official&
it's about an inch (1.215" or, more precisely, 3....&cm)...&
Well, as they say,
&Give&some&people an attoparsec and they'll take
In August 2012, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) gave the
of the "astronomical unit"& (au)& in metric terms as
&m.& Since a parsec is defined as
the radius of a circle whose circumference is& 1296000&au, an attoparsec is
the radius of a circle whose circumference is& exactly&
Modern astronomers have thus squared the circle
the same way the
did& (by having separate units for the radius and the
circumference of a wheel).& The following
is an exact one:
9.& cm / apc
A nanoacre is exactly 4.&mm2.
The microfortnight is an
equal to 1.2096&s.&
this used&to be called a& yonk,& according to
The furlong per fortnight is about 2 ft per hour (0.1663&mm/s).
The millicochrane and microcochrane are submultiples of a unit
of subspace distortion, named after
Zefram Cochrane ().
If you think the above is pretty bad, check some of the entries
, or below:
2000mockingbirds=two<A
HREF="../noscript.htm" onClick=
"answer('To Kill a Mockingbird(1960 novel by Ms. Nelle Harper Lee)');
return false">kilomockingbird
1000whales=1kilowhale
10millipedes=
1centipede
10monologues==
51dialoguesdecalogue
tridents=1decadent
0.01mentals=1centimental
&0.001&ink machines
=1millink machine
& 000&microphones
=1megaphone
Wikipedia: &
units of measurement.
() & Funny prefixes & dubious proposals
& [ updated yearly ]
There are no
above 1024 or below 10-24.
What&are some proposals to remedy that?
One "proposal" which is& not& funny is the subreptitious introduction,
a few years ago, of 10& bogus& prefixes&
(revo, tredo, syto, fito, ento, hepa, otta, nea, dea, una)&
which found their way next to legitimate ones in many& serious&
summary tables floating around the Internet.&
There does not seem to be any way to get rid of those, except by encouraging
whoever maintains a legitimate table to flag those prefixes as& bogus.&
Just removing them entirely is simply not good enough, as long as there are tables around
which will look "more complete" by listing the bogus information
(and thus& reproduce& faster).&
We took the initiative of starting the curative debunking by putting online a
that's hopefully&
clearly better& than previous ones, in the hope that it would look
authoritative enough to anyone researching the subject on the Internet.
EPILOGUE:& The above approach caught on.&
appeared which were simply based on our own vetted table, while others
have included a footnote with a link to this site.&
Either type of "bogus" warning serves as an& erratum&
for all other similar tables a websurfer may be faced with.&
The above hoax has been all but eradicated.&
Unfortunately, as reported below, newer schemes keep popping up which cease
to be funny when they are taken seriously by people
who aim to educate others& (on Wikipedia or elsewhere).
A few "proposals" gleaned (so far) for the next pair of metric prefixes
Source1027etymology
10-27etymology
(.)brontobrontobyte(Brontosaurus)&&
Morgan Burke(1993)harpi&
harpoMarx brother
lottaL"many" (Americanor British slang)
lottol"minuscule"
(chancesin eponymous game)
Alex L&pez-Ortiz(Hoax: )
nea9(Greek
(1999)taxoTxTaxes(too much
emptoe, eEmpty(vanishingly small)
G&rard Michon(2002)novaN9(French
novon9(French neuf )
Jeff K. Aronson
(Hoax: -2002)
xennaX9X + enneaxennox9&
xonaXX "pattern"xontoxx "pattern"
hellaH"hell of" &=&
very(N. California slang)helloh"hella"counterpart
My own "proposal" was discussed by at least one person,&
in&2009& (I&only noticed on ).&
Unfortunately, he misread my abbreviation for the& novo& prefix&
(it's the Greek letter "nu")& and chastises me for not knowing& [!]& that
the lowercase "n" is already in use for "nano".&
(The mistake is due to Saibian'
another .)&
Sbiis, if you read this, could you please also update your link to my&
In advocating his scheme,
the Oxford clinical pharmacologist& Jeff K. Aronson&
argued that the "pattern" of abbreviations Z and Y
for the latest official SI prefixes should be extended backward through the alphabet,
by making X, W, V and U the abbreviations of the next large prefixes
(and using x, w, v and u for the next small ones).&
Since the letter T is already used for tera-,
the scheme would only allow 4 more pairs of prefixes...
This didn't stop Jim Blowers who made a similar independent proposal&
(with slightly different names).& Blowers just assigns two-letter prefixes
whenever the single-letter prefix is already used and he goes on and on, well
beyond the point where those things are physically useful&!&
(Arguably, just one extra pair would be enough.)
Aronson advocated the names
"xenna", "weka", "vendeka" and "udeka",
for the larger prefixes&
("xenno", "weko", "vendeko" and
"udeko" for the smaller ones).&
We&don't know how serious
Professor Aronson& really& was about this...&
Unfortunately, this is being propagated as a fait accompli,
so the thing has turned&into yet another& annoying& hoax.
Aronson's names for the first three prefixes are a strange merging
of the letters from the bogus "pattern"& (X, W, V)& with the legitimate
Greek roots for 9, 10 and 11& (ennea, deka and endeka).&
This gives the scheme a fake scholarly appearance
up to that point& (U is left out)&
which may have enthralled unsuspecting souls.&
Yet, the Aronson joke has probably not yet turned into the alledged crusade
reported by a Wikipedia contributor who seemed impressed by the
registering of related& domain names&
Such misguided efforts will probably keep popping up
until the CGPM finally adopts&
something& for the next prefix pair&
(preferably avoiding "X and x" to discourage extensions of the aforementioned&
dubious pattern&).
"millikan-" (mkan) could be another natural name to propose for the
10-27 prefix (mkan&=&milli-kilo-atto-nano),
which is so much needed just below yocto-
(the current smallest ).&
The mass of an electron would thus be expressed as equal to "about 0.91&mkang".
That would be a way to honor
() who was cursed with a name that makes it otherwise
impossible to&achieve the same kind of SI immortality&
or Alexander Gram Bell (sic&;-)...&
Either that, or we have to call a kan the charge of 1000 electrons
(so each single electron would carry a millikan of charge).&
For the record, this very silly idea of mine dates back to 1995,
and I am almost ashamed to repeat it here. &
() & The Lamppost Theory
Look under the the lamppost for there's not enough light elsewhere.
Also in the early 1990's, I coined for myself the term& Lamppost Theory&
which I shared at a few cocktail parties.& Nowadays, an
would reveal that a number of people apparently had the
exact same idea (probably independently)
to&denote this very important scientific concept,
which may sound so&ludicrous at&first...&
The&name comes from a classical joke:
A drunkard is looking for the keys to his house under a lamppost near his home.&
A&neighbor comes to the rescue and helps him search.&
As they don't find anything, the neighbor begins to have doubts:
Are you sure you lost your keys under this lamppost ?
Well no, but there's no way I'll it's too dark !
The drunkard is right when it comes to scientific investigations:&
Don't ever look for&obscure solutions,
because you can't find anything in the dark vicinity of such solutions.&
If there's nothing under the lamppost, just give up.
If you're lucky, there might be a& flashlight&
under some lamppost.&
It's hard to catch a black cat in a dark room,
especially if it isn't there.
& (Confucius)
() & Insanity
Alternatives to orthodoxy.
A car is speeding at night through a deserted town.&
The driver doesn't stop at red lights.&
They have a& near miss&
(which really means a& near hit)&
that doesn't seem to bother the driver
and the puzzled passenger is getting really scared:
- & Why don't you stop at red lights?
- & It' we never do in our family.
Suddenly, they arrive at a green light and the driver hits the brakes...
- & Why are you stopping now?& The light is green...& Go!
- & Heck no!& My brother might be coming the other way.
() & Anagrams
Build your own anagrams at
Marriage:& A grim era.
Mathematics:& I'm the
Clever proofs:& Recover flops.
Faulty proofs:& Poor lay stuff.
Computers:& CMOS erupt & / & Cute romps.
Dormitory:& Dirty room.
Evangelist:& Evil's agent.
Mother-in-law:& Woman Hitler.
Desperation:& A rope ends it.
Television:& Evil on site.
Astronomer:& Moon starer.
The Morse code:& Here come dots.
Snooze alarms:& Alas, no more Z's!
Vacation Times:& I'm not as active.
Clint Eastwood:& Old West action.
Alec Guiness:& Genuine class.
:& That great charmer.
George Bush:& He bugs Gore.
The Democratic Party:& Pretty chaotic dream.
The United States of America:& Attaineth its cause, Freedom!
A few gems from :&
Houses of Parliaments:& Loonies far up Thames.
Sears Tower :& Worst rates.
Hillary Clinton :& Only I can thrill.
Christopher Evans:& He is a rich TV person.
General Custer:& Cruel Sergeant.
Admiral Nelson:& Mainland Loser.
:& Oral Craft.
Elle Macphearson:& Hall poser menace.
Indira Gandhi:& Hi, grand India.
Nelson Mandela:& Lean and solemn.
Los Angeles:& Legal noses.
St. Petersburg:& Best pert rugs.
The Louvre:& True hovel.
Guinness Draught :& Drug naughtiness.
Saddam Hussein:& Humans' sad side.
Fran&ois Mitterand :& Mad strain of cretin.
() & Meaningful Gibberish
The odrer of the mdlide lteters deson't rlealy mtetar.
As lnog as the fsrit and lsat lteetr of ecah wrod are trehe,
polepe dno't hvae tbuorle rianedg txet at namrol seped.
() & MNEMONICS
Mnemonics Neatly Eliminate Man's Only Nemesis:Insufficient Cerebral Storage...
My Nasty Editor Might Occasionally Not Interpret Commas...
Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
[: Parentheses, Exponent,
Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract]
FOIL : First, Outer, Inner, Last. &
(a+b)(x+y) &=& ax + ay + bx + by
[The 4 terms in a expanded product of two ]
Important!& Very eXcellent Learning Can Demand Memorizing.
[: I V X L C D M]
King Hector Doesn't (Usually) Drink Cold Milk.
kilo, hecto, deca, (unity), deci, centi, milli]
Dairy Cows Make Milk Not Pink Fruit, Airhead!
deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto]
Those Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do.
Talc, Gypsum, Calcite, Fluorite, Apatite,
Orthoclase, Quartz, Topaz, Corundum, Diamond]
Pregnant Virgins Never Reveal the Truth
[: & PV = nRT ]
Oxidation Is Loss (of electrons); Reduction Is Gain.]
Cary Grant eXpects Unanimous Votes In Movie Reviews.
[Electromagnetic spectrum, highest frequency first:&
Cosmic rays, Gamma&rays, X-rays, Ultraviolet, Visible, Infrared, Microwaves, Radio waves]
My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us .&
[Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune,
Mon vieux, tu m'as jett& sur une nouvelle plan&te.&
[Mercure, V&nus, Terre, Mars, Jupiter, Saturne, Uranus, Neptune,
I eat green carrots & [ Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto ]
Galilean moons of Jupiter& (3 mistresses of Zeus and his Trojan
Roy G. Biv & (Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain)
[Colors of the Rainbow:& Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet]
Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me!& (Right Now Sweetheart!)
by& Henry Norris Russell
[: O, B, A, F, G, K, M, (R, N, S) ...]
Oh My, Such Great Apple Pie!& (Sweet As Sugar!) &
Oxalic, malonic,
glutaric, adipic, pimelic& (suberic, azelaic, sebacic).
Lili Becta Bien Chez Notre Oncle Fran&ois Nestor.
Napol&on Mangea All&grement Six
Poulets Sans&Clamser&Apr&s.&
[French mnemonic for .]
Numerical values and constrained writing
Count the number of letters in each word to obtain each digit of the number.&
(A&ten-letter word represents a zero digit.)
m/s & [= Speed of Light =
- My ingenious astronomy student remembers an easy light mnemonic.
- We guarantee certainty, clearly referring to this light mnemonic.&
e = 2.757247...
- By omnibus, I traveled to Brooklyn.
[271828 -- David Mage]&
- It enables a numskull to memorize a quantity of numerals.
[ -- Gene Widhoff]&
- I'm forming a mnemonic to remember a function in analysis.
[ -- Maxey Brooke]&
- It repeats: A constant of calculus, a constant of calculus.
[ -- Jeffrey Strehlow]&
- To distrupt a playroom is commonly a practice of children.
[ -- Joseph J Guiteras]&
- To express e, remember to memorize a sentence to simplify this.
[ -- John L. Greene]&
- We require a mnemonic to remember e whenever we scribble math texts.
[ -- Joona Palaste (of H
p = 3.1...
- Yes, I have a number.& [31416]
- How I wish I could calculate Pi nearly right.& []
- See, I have a rhyme assisting my feeble brain.& []
- May I have a large container of coffee?& Thank you.
- Our own update& ()&
to a well-known classic:& [The first two verses are attributed to
How I want a drink, alcoholic of course,After the heavy lectures
involving quantum mechanics.
All of thy geometry, Herr Planck, is fairly
hard,And thy calculus may be
forever unearthly tough&!
&&3.14159265358979
by , & 1996.&
[3835&digits]
A short poem by Joseph Shipley& (1960):
But a time I spent wande
Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.
Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,
The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.&& & &3.3589793383279
Famous French Poem:&
The following four verses were published by&
R&cr&ations math&matiques& (vol. II):
Que j'aime & faire apprendre
un nombre utile aux sages&!
Immortel Archim&de, antique ing&nieur,
Qui de ton jugement peut sonder la valeur ?
Pour moi ton probl&me eut de pareils avantages.
This quatrain was reprinted on August 5, 1906 by& The&Academy,&
a London literary magazine which challenged its readers to come up
with English equivalents& (they were in short supply at the time).&
The first verse, at least, used to be taught to French schoolchildren.&
The last verse is a personal parallel
between the little-known approximation of& p&
due to Lucas himself& (0.26&&#214;146)& and what
Archimedes came up with& (22/7).& This was generally considered too arcane
and verses 3 and 4 have since been replaced by better ones...&
Several extended variants exist, which differ very little from the following one:
Que j'aime & faire conna&tre
ce nombre utile aux sages&!
Immortel Archim&de, antique ing&nieur,
Toi de qui Syracuse loue encore la gloire,
Soit ton nom conserv& par de savants grimoires.
Jadis myst&rieux, un probl&me existait
Dans l'admirable &difice, l'oeuvre grandiose,
Que Pythagore d&couvrit aux anciens Grecs.
&O quadrature&! & Vieux tourment du philosophe&!
502884197169399375105820
Insoluble rondeur, trop longtemps vous avez
D&fi& Pythagore et ses imitateurs:
Comment arpenter
l'espace plan circulaire
Valant un polygone mesur& en superficie ?
97494459230781640628620
Approche innovante:& Archim&de envisage
Cercle et polygone approchant une aire
Inscrite en exc&s.&
Son plan de s'y r&duire
D&doublera chaque &l&ment ant&rieur.
89986280340679
R&sultat de l'id&e ancienne curviligne,
Laquelle limite donne l'arc, la longueur
De cet inqui&tant cercle, ennemi trop rebelle.
Professeur, enseignez
ses m&thodes
avec z&le&!
82148086513282306647093844
This gives p (Pi) to 126 decimals (127 digits in 127 words).&
The first& &
is beautiful and worth memorizing& (it's perfectly metered and features
some rhyming).& The other stanzas are less than perfect...
Phonetic Numerical Mnemonics& (H&rigone's System)
Endearing as it may be, the above method of encoding one digit per word
isn't quite practical:&
Once you have memorized a sentence, it takes a while to retrieve
the corresponding digits by counting the letters in each word...
A more efficient approach was invented by the French mathematician
who had the idea of assigning consonants to every digit&
(like-sounding consonants being assigned to the same digit).
of H&rigone's system were subsequently devised and revised
by several people, starting with
() in 1648.&
inspiration from Winkelmann's code for his own scheme of
writing all languages phonetically.&
In 1806, a German monk from Salem& (near Konstanz)&
Gregor von Feinaigle,&
started to make a name for himself with his own version of
H&rigone's system, which he demonstrated brilliantly&
(along with the rest of his mnemonic methods)&
at lectures in Paris, in 1807 and 1811.
believes that a misunderstood reference to Feinagle's mnemonics
in Lord Byron's& Don Juan& (1818)&
may have been the origin of the word& finagle,
which eventually acquired a pejorative meaning in the 1920's
to describe all sorts of deceitful methods.
The modern version of H&rigone's system, presented below,
was perfected around 1820 by the Frenchman&
Aim& Paris& whose book on mnemonics was
re-edited many times&
(Principes et applications diverses de la mnemonique,
7th ed., Paris, 1834).&
In English, that code became known as&
The Major System& in the 1840's,
because it was popularized from London by a Polish refugee
known as& Major& Beniowski&
(Handbook of Phrenotypics, 1845).
This system can be used, in English or other Indo-European languages,
to&associate "striking" words or sentences with important numbers&
(dates, security codes, telephone numbers, etc).&
In the 1970's,
it was advocated for that purpose by the memory artist
&& 0 &&&& 1 &&
&& 2 &&&& 3 &&
&& 4 &&&& 5 &&
&& 6 &&&& 7 &&
&& 8 &&&& 9 &&
s (c)ztd (th)n&mr
lch, shj (g)k (c)g (q)fvpb
presents one dubious sentence to memorize
the first 24 digits of& p&
with that code& (vowels and unlisted consonants are discarded):
My&turtle&Pancho&will,&
my&love,&pick&up&
my&new&mover&Ginger.
3.14159 &2 65 &
35 89 &7&9
323 & 8 4&6 26 4
See also...
& 11. Mnemonics &
(in French)& by
() & Acronyms
or alternate interpretations for .
for acronyms
[supposedly] used in computerized chats and/or&Internet posts.&
The following ones do not fall into that category:
ACRONYM:& Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning.
BAD:& Broken As Designed.
DAP:& Parents Against Dyslexia [sic].
PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms.&
(Personal Computer Memory Card International Association)
TLA: Three-Letter Acronym.
TTP: The TTP Project.&
[Engineering classic, submitted by ]
More precisely, TTP stands for:& The "The TTP Project" Project...&
(In&the&comic strip of
that's whatever
is working on.)
Other such
have& actually& been used.&
When the recursion is placed on the first letter& (instead of the second one,
that first letter is totally arbitrary.& The best known example is
(GNU's Not Unix)&
which was the model for naming the defunct
(GNE Non-Encyclopedia)&
formerly called& GNUPedia& (which was, arguably, one of the
two precursors of& ).
&Some Usenet-Related Acronyms
MeaningComments(see also...)Sources
2U2To you too&&
AFAIKAs far as I know&&
A/S/L?[What is your] age, sex &
location?&&
ATOAssume the opposite... &
[Introducing a proof by contradiction.]
AWGTHTGTTA?Are we going to have to go through this again?
BRBBe right back&
BTWBy the way...&&
DNODo not open. & &
[Message is entirely in the subject line...]
DYTDo you think [that...]&&
FYIFor your information&&
GAGo ahead&
(obsolete way to end your turn, in a 2-way exchange)
GLGood luck!&&
HFHave fun!&&
HTHHope this helps&
IIRCIf I recall correctly&&
IITYWIMIWHTKYIf I tell you what it means,
I will have to kill you...
IITYWIMWYBMADIf I tell you what it means,
will you buy me a drink?
IMHOIn my humble opinion(IMO)&
IMOIn my opinion(IMHO)&
J/KJust kidding&&
KISSKeep It Simple, Stupid
LOLLaugh(ing) out loud&
OMGOh, my God!&&
OPOriginal poster&or post&
[the origin of a Usenet thread]
OTOHOn the other hand(OTTH)&
OTTHOn the third hand(OTOH)&
POVPoint of view&&
SODDISome other dude did it&
TANSTAAFLThere ain't no such thing as a free lunch
TILToday, I learned [that...]
TTFNTa Ta For Now
WBRWith best regards&&
YMMVYour mileage may varyIndicates
an experimentalquantity as elusive asa car's fuel efficiency.
YMWVYour mileage will vary
Search database at : &}