American Politics Explained

I just think that this is so right-on and funny to boot!

Yoram Bauman is the world's only stand up economist.

A video that kinda works the day after an election...

I still love this. Dedicated to all the swing voters out there.

Handyman Homage

OAME Banquet

I am just back from the OAME Conference in Ottawa, the city of my up-bringing. As usual the conference was a great experience and I even stayed a day and enjoyed scaling the Gatineau Park on a bicycle.

I helped to nominate Joel Yan for a well-deserved OAME award. At the banquet, he told a hilarious story about being fired from a volunteer job for his love of Math. It turns out that he was volunteering at the bingo hall selling tickets and the like when his big break came. The caller was leaving and they needed someone who could talk loudly, read numbers in English and French and be enthusiastic. Joel fit the bill. He correctly called B8, but when B9 showed up next he called "Add one". There was a lot of confusion and an official warning to "just call the numbers". Joel behaved for a night or two, but when 32 rolled out of the machine, he couldn't help but call "two to the fifth", thus ending his stint as a Bingo caller.

The OAME banquet featured some comedians from Absolute Comedy. The first comic had trouble following Joel, since he had a paucity of exponential humour. Rick Currie came up next cracking jokes about assessment, government workers and the like. My favourite was his ending song about Billy Bob Thornton. You can find some of his other bits on Youtube, but I have his permission to post this bit here.

If you haven't seen the interview - it is worth seeing just for the cringe value.

Once you have watched that, the song below will make more sense.



Here is a photo of Joel and I.

Mathematical Music

There have been a surprising number of posts here about poetry.

Here is some Mathematical Music, via Heather. Better to watch at Youtube with the lyrics visible.



The Klein 4 Group.

Tickling my odd sense of humour

In a Pair-a-dimes post, David Truss embedded this cartoon:



I thought it was sly, so I looked for some more. I laughed out loud at this one:

Do we love it enough to take care of it?

The world, I am writing of.



How long will it take for you to get that song out of your head? Is it only my Canadian sensibility that thinks the missile is out of place?

And if that is too heavy an issue for you, try this Friday Funny from my new favorite New Zealand folk duo parody band, the Flight of the Conchords.

Prove that you are human

From the Top 10 Worst Captchas via Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day:



It reminds me of the aerobics in hell cartoon.

If it is on that popular video sharing site, it must be true

Here is the video from the highly reputable BBC used to launch its iPlayer.

Funnies for the Friday before March Break

From the MathNotations blog:

From Savage Research, Humor...

Math Knowledge

Two mathematicians were having dinner in a restaurant, arguing about the average mathematical knowledge of the American public. One mathematician claimed that this average was woefully inadequate, the other maintained that it was surprisingly high.

"I'll tell you what," said the cynic. "Ask that waitress a simple math question. If she gets it right, I'll pick up dinner. If not, you do." He then excused himself to visit the men's room, and the other called the waitress over.

"When my friend comes back," he told her, "I'm going to ask you a question, and I want you to respond `one-third x cubed.' There's twenty bucks in it for you." She agreed.

The cynic returned from the bathroom and called the waitress over. "The food was wonderful, thank you," the mathematician started. "Incidentally, do you know what the integral of x squared is?"

The waitress looked pensive; almost pained. She looked around the room, at her feet, made gurgling noises, and finally said, "Um, one-third x cubed?"
So the cynic paid the check. The waitress wheeled around, walked a few paces away, looked back at the two men, and muttered under her breath, "...plus a constant."


I'm sorry, but that did make me smile! Reminds me of when I was teaching calc, I would tell my students that if they forgot the +C in an indefinite integral, their grade would be C+! Actually, I wasn't kidding...

BTW, there are many more of these at the above web site. Many are one-liners with that twisted sense of humor characteristic of Steven Wright or Jackie Vernon. I will not apologize for laughing!

Here are a few more...

1) Save the Whales -- collect the whole set.

2) If you believe in telekinesis, raise my hand...

3) The early bird may catch the worm, but it's the 2nd mouse that gets the cheese.

Ok, enuf' already (for now)...

I was once told about a job interview for a high school Math teacher position where the applicant was shown two ways to get an integral which yielded two apparently different results:
ln(2x)+ c, and
ln(x) + c ,
and was asked to explain what the issue was.

Do you have any good Math teacher interview stories?

Does Microsoft have a sense of humour?

This video about the Office Developer Guy may be evidence that they do.



Where do I get a whiteboard for the shower?

Do Programmers have a sense of humour?

Why yes they do! Is it too arcane for anyone else to be able to determine? Maybe. Here are some funny puzzles from a great post and a long list of comments. Can you guess what the idiom, song or movie is?

// idiom 3

injury += insult;

// idiom 6

a = getThickness('blood');
b = getThickness('water');
assert(a > b);

// idiom 9

prey = 'worm';
time = getCurrentTime();
if (time >= 4 && time <= 8) {
   bird.catch(prey);
}

// idiom 19
return way.my || way.high;

// idiom from comments

if (!fire) {
   smoke = null;
}

// song 1
sleep = false;
gogo();

// song 3;
var tiger[i];

// song 5
var it = now || never;

// song 10
compare(null, u);

// song 14
person.name = 'jude';
person.greet();

// song 16
var s1 = 'tutti';
var s2 = s1.replace('tu', 'fru');
print(s1 + ' ' + s2);

// song 20
var country = new Array('UK', 'Italy', 'USA', 'Spain');
giveBirth(country[2]);

// movie 1
while (i < infinity) {
   tomorrow = dies;
   i++;
}

// movie 2
int numerator = 1;
int denominator = 0;
int mission = numerator / denominator;

Posters that I find compelling

The Mission Minded Management blog featured despair.com for the Friday funny. I heard an interview with the CEO of despair.com several years ago. He said that people neither read nor get inspiration from the posters that are found in businesses and schools. There sure are a lot of them in my kid's schools. Imagine if someone posted one of these in a classroom and someone else actually did read it!

Just Fix the System Please - A Friday Funny

By Michelle Malay Carter on January 31, 2008

I’ve been called irreverent. Sometimes I use sarcasm to get a point across, but Despair, Inc. has found a way to turn cynicism into cash-flow with an entire line of products for people interested in responding to the lame motivational words and techniques that organizations attempt. Just fix the system please!

Below are my personal favorites. They are from the Demotivator Poster line and they are available for $15.95.

If you were to create a Demotivator poster, what would it say?

.

Here are some more from their site:

Clearly the shirt is not for me - check my feedjit widget! Maybe if it said "More people have read this shirt than have posted a comment to your blog"...

This next poster was one that the CEO described on the radio show. Hilarious!


I wonder what it says about me that I find this much more compelling than the saccharine version?

Another example of Read/Write Culture?

In a previous post, I reflected on Larry's Lessig's talk at TED on Read/Write culture. He gave three examples of what people are creating. The second one being a very disturbing video of a Jesus character.

Scott Adams, of Dilbert fame, challenged readers to come up with nonsense lyrics according to some rules in a recent post. Readers responded. Then a band created the song. Then it was posted to a popular video sharing site with images added. Much of this is likely illegal, but I do think it is illustrative of what Lessig was trying to get across. Think about the various literacies involved in the production of the work and the collaboration that was involved and the fun that the various players had.

Underestimating Children?

The New York Times reports the following conversation between a child and a contender for the U.S. presidency:

“Who is your favorite author?” Aleya Deatsch, 7, of West Des Moines asked Mr. Huckabee in one of those posing-like-a-shopping-mall-Santa moments.

Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss.

In an interview afterward with the news media, Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level.

“My favorite author is C. S. Lewis,” she said.

Sometimes truth is funnier than comedy.

Man fired for posting a Dilbert Cartoon

I think that I may need more than one blog so that these posts aren't so unrelated to one another. But I got a kick out of this posting to the Dilbert Blog.

Disclaimer: No one I have ever worked with or for in any way resembles a drunken lemur.