Tag Archives: humor

honorable mathematical intentions

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In looking up a rather obscure paper on list decoding on Project Euclid I noticed that they link bibliography items to the MathSciNet reviews. I figured I’d take a look at the review of Shannon’s famous paper, A mathematical theory of communication. It turns out the review was written by Doob, and contains this little dig:

The discussion is suggestive throughout, rather than mathematical, and it is not always clear that the author’s mathematical intentions are honorable.

I have this image in my mind of Doob as the father of Mathematics, saying in a Southern accent “I’m not sure your intentions towards my daughter are entirely honorable, Mr. Shannon.”

a good excuse

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Friends of mine returned from their honeymoon, during which they visited the Sossusvlei sand dunes in Namibia. They went as part of a tour group and there were two planes to take them back, except that one wouldn’t start. So first the pilot of the other plane tried whacking the engine with a hammer. Then they found that the solenoid had broken so they fixed that. Then they saw the battery was dead so they were stuck. The pilot announced that they would have to switch planes because “not enough things are working on this one.”

That strikes me as a good excuse to use for general things — it would all work out if enough things were working, but…

Hello Kitty : the mark of shame

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Thai police use Hello Kitty armbands as punishment:

The armband is large, bright pink and has a Hello Kitty motif with two hearts embroidered on it.

So if you come late to work at the station — you have to wear Hello Kitty! I know so many people for whom this would not be considered punishment that it just seems plain weird to me. Of course, the arm band probably clashes horribly with the uniform color…

The Book of My Enemy

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Via BookSlut, a link to a poem by Clive James entitled “The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered.” My favorite bit: “And (oh, this above all) his sensibility, / His sensibility and its hair-like filaments, / His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one / With Barbara Windsor’s Book of Boobs, / A volume graced by the descriptive rubric / ‘My boobs will give everyone hours of fun.'”

a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while

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The Bulwer-Lytton winners have been announced. The winner?

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you’ve had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.
Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

I have no idea what kind of body would say that to me, but it would take more than a beautiful woman to stop me from eating burritos.

scaling laws as comedy

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[Note : imagine B is from India.]

A: Oh my God!
B: What is it?
A: I just proved this great result!
B: Really???
A: Yeah, it’s an lower bound on the achievable rate!
B: So what is it?
A: Well my scheme shows it’s at least log! Log(N)!
B: Ok…
A: Isn’t that cool?
B: Seems a bit… low.
A: Well it’s not polynomial…
B: Hardly. Log(log(N))? You’ve got to be joking.
A: C’mon! Look, if you have a log, log(N) growth you can bootstrap that up to something better.
B: No you need to get rid of a log.
A: I did get rid of a log! It’s an improvement on Singh et al.
B: So it was log log log before?
A: No, log log.
B: So what’s your contribution?
A: Well it’s log log…
B: Exactly! Log log!
A: By log, do you…
B: Log log by log?
A: No, you have an extra two logs in there, it’s…
B: 1 by log? What the heck are you trying to prove!
A: It’s log! Log! Log!
B: I give up. Why don’t you come back when you’ve figured it it out. See if you can get it to log(N). [exits]