It’s also pepsi-through-the-nose funny, especially if you are a reasonably strict grammarian.
Read about the f’amazing Dr. Novoselov
Category Archives: Misc
He's Dead, Jim
Analytics according to Captain Kirk
Yellow-shirt crewperson deaths: 6 (10%)
Blue-Shirt crewperson deaths: 5 (8 %)
Engineering smock crewperson deaths: 4
Red-Shirt crewperson deaths: 43 (73%)
Design by Committee
US currency is ugly, and the new $5 bill, which entered circulation a few weeks ago, especially so. A purple “5” on a green bill? Fugly. The fun thing about visiting other countries is seeing currency and coinage that looks interesting. I never realized how bland US currency was until I did my postdoc in Canada, and after only a few months away had trouble telling US bills apart.
New British coins are out, and IMO they look awesome. Compare and contrast the artistic value with our new fiver.
Update: John Gruber at Daring Fireball writes
When I commented on the ugly new U.S. five dollar bill the other day, several readers wrote in to argue that the bill should not be criticized, because some of the changes which have made it uglier were made for the benefit of people with low vision. That’s bullshit. Accessibility is an important and worthy goal, but it is not at odds with good design. We should settle for nothing less than beautiful and accessible currency. This isn’t it.
Google Sightseeing
Oh Crap, it's the Day After Mar 31
Your April Fool’s Day Joke Continues to Suck
… I get called a curmudgeon, or lambasted for having no sense of humor. And every year, the jokes online get lamer and lamer.
Ditto for me, and anyone who knows me knows I am not humorless. I’m of the opinion that a good prank need not be limited to one day in the year. This is the one day I probably won’t ever pull a prank — it’s amateur day. A good prank is almost like “The Sting”
You gotta KEEP your con even after you take his money, he can’t know you took him
Jury Duty
I’ve been summoned for jury duty. While I hope I get an interesting case, like one involving entropy cops arresting someone for violating the second law of thermodynamics, or the symmetry squad nailing someone on a CPT violation, I know I won’t. They always seem to plead those out.
UPDATE: Much ado about nothing for the first day — I’m still on call for next week. Lots of sitting around and waiting, until finally called in as one of the B-list prospective jurors for one trial, and caught the second half of the voir dire. They ended up with 12 from the original crowd, and apparently all the other trials were done selecting by the time the lunch break was over. So I was set free a couple of hours early.
But I did hear the prosecutor warn that CSI, Law & Order (duh DUH, or is it DUH duh?), et. al are TV, and the jury shouldn’t presume anything from TV would carry over into reality. And the defense’s line of questioning spelled out what the defense strategy would be, and I’m pretty sure that I would have been excused.
It Was a Dark and Stormy Night
Lightning and the Runaway Breakdown Theory at the At the Speed of Light! blog.
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Oh, and here’s another link, in case you were thinking the title was a reference to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
“The Barents sea heaved and churned like a tortured animal in pain, the howling wind tearing packets of icy green water from the shuddering crests of the waves, atomizing it into mist that was again laid flat by the growing fury of the storm as Kevin Tucker switched off the bedside light in his Tuba City, Arizona, single-wide trailer and by the time the phone woke him at 7:38, had pretty much blown itself out with no damage.”
Random Thought
A sarcastic comment used when someone does something stupid is, “Way to go, Einstein!”
What did people say prior to 1905?
The New Phonebook's Here!
This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print, that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now! Navin R. Johnson
I’ve actually been in print before, with some cartoons published in Physics Today back when they had an art editor with taste who liked my work. Since then, not so much.
A little over a year ago, a book editor asked for permission to use a cartoon and I agreed, shrewdly negotiating a free copy as my payment. The book was originally scheduled to be published this past summer, but that slipped a bit and confirming publication fell off my radar. It looks like it was published in November, and I went a-lookin’ for it this week, because I haven’t gotten my copy yet! (and email to the editor keeps bouncing)
The first big-chain bookstore I visited (the one that starts with a “B”) didn’t have it, but if they did, it would have been in “Young Adult Non-Fiction,” which is a section that didn’t appear to exist in their store. Plenty of Young-Adult Fiction, with many warnings about how the content may not be appropriate for some readers, and I’m sure that would be an effective lure if any young adults read anymore. The second big-chain bookstore (that other one, that starts with a “B“) had it on one of their display tables that was still being stocked with a whole bunch of science-y books. (Overheard: “Mumble mumble Women’s brain. OK, Woman’s brain over here. Men’s brain? Is there a men’s brain? No men’s brain? OK.)
Anyway, the book in question is “The Story of Science: Einstein Adds A New Dimension” by Joy Hakim, published by Smithsonian Books. My cartoon appears on p. 162
From my quick glance through it, it looks great, and I’ve read good things about the first two books in the series. (I also noticed at few Sidney Harris cartoons in it. I wonder what kind of deal he got?)
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My other exposure news (that involve neither a trench coat nor shrieking) was some sweet, sweet linkage from Uncertain Principles that pushed my Technorati authority into double-digits and my ranking to the sunny side of the Mega mark. I’m slightly more relevant than before! Woohoo!
The Quote "Controversy"
“Smart” quotes, “dumb” quotes. Nobody has explained to me why I should care, or why one is correct and the other incorrect. I think some people are caring about this a little too much.
(At the moment, I can apparently post only if I don’t use any html markups. Blogging in the dark ages. Cut-and-paste the link, if you care to.)
(problem fixed)