Thursday, August 16, 2007

This and That

I am somewhat busy these days, so my apologies for being more quite than usual. For your entertainment a couple of distractions I came across lately:

  • Randomwebsearch.com helps to 'waste your time more efficiently' - your employer will be thrilled to hear!


  • Carl Zimmer shows us a collection of scientist's tattoos in his post Branded with Science


  • I stumbled across this totally enchanting website of the Toronto artist Susy Bee (see painting below)


  • Which reminded me of the following joke:

    An astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician (it is said) were holidaying in Scotland. Glancing from a train window, they observed a black sheep in the middle of a field.

    "How interesting," observed the astronomer, "all Scottish sheep are black!"

    To which the physicist responded, "No, no! Some Scottish sheep are black!"

    The mathematician gazed heavenward in supplication, and then intoned, "In Scotland there exists at least one field, containing at least one sheep, at least one side of which is black."

    For more jokes of this kind, see here.


  • In case you missed it, Cosmic Variance discussed in detail the geek factor of eating colored candy. Those of you who are too nerdy to waste time with reality can play with M&M's online (zero calories!). For alternative Smartie-fun, see 'Blow Up Smarties', or shoot down your M&M's here.


  • Quote of the day:

    “It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer .”


    ~Albert Einstein


14 comments:

  1. I used to want a tattoo, but I think I've finally grown out of that desire. The main reason I didn't get one was that I never could decide what I'd want on me forever.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Amara:

    *lol* I love that one, I have it my picture folder too. We have a postdoc meeting today, I think about handing out a couple of these ;-) Best,

    B.

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  3. Dear Bee, If you inject a little bit of Franz Kafka into Susy Bee's murals, then you get this.
    (voice to Amara: enough distractions.. back to work!)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Organiker shows off tattoo of palytoxin wrapped around ankle. First elicited comment: "That stereocenter is inverted."

    It is overall a bad idea to implant poorly characterized micronized solids into living tissue and expose to light. Morrison and Boyd is best inked on cellulose.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Those sheep remind me of the ones in WB cartoons about Sam Sheepdog and Ralph Wolf. They'd punch in time cards in the morning, "Hi Ralph", "Hi Sam" and get to it. If the lunch or shift-over whistle blew, they'd quit right what they were doing and get back later. It was a scream, and especially the way the sheep would pop away if grabbed from underground. Once Ralph put Sam to sleep, and snuck up to look, Ralph's expression was hilarious. Can you imagine, these characters have their own Wikipedia article.

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  6. OK, they said: "Mornin' Sam. Oh, good morning Ralph." Audio file avail. at Wikipedia!

    ReplyDelete
  7. lol Bee,
    I didn't say I'm Smart
    I said I like Smarties
    - Smartie lover

    PS - the most successful marketing
    No, not smarties
    No, not the rubics cube
    No, not dvds or mobile phones

    The humble Potato Crisp

    What, more than bread, loafs and sliced bread?

    ReplyDelete
  8. The sheep are cute :-)

    Cheers, Stefan

    ReplyDelete
  9. So, be honest... did you stumble across Susy Bee while Googling yourself with respect to supersymmetry? :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi Aaron:

    I wasn't looking for anything Bee-related. I found that susy dot com is for sale by owner and then Googled for Susy - it's hit 15 or so. If somebody in the art committee here would listen to me, PI's walls were full with cute sheeps and these colorful flowers and bees and butterflies and all kinds of these lovely things :-)
    Best,

    B.

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  11. Hi Amara:

    Ah, sorry, I absolutely don't like the painting. Neither the colors nor the composition or the theme. Looks like the painter had in the best case a very vague idea of the female anatomy, and avoided men altogether ;-) Best,

    B.

    ReplyDelete
  12. “It's not that I'm so smart , it's just that I stay with problems longer.”

    Hmmm. That rings a bell somewhere. Ah yes, see Item #11 in Baez's Crackpot Index:

    "10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long you have been working on it."

    Carl

    ReplyDelete
  13. Doc: [...] Here's a red-letter date in the history of science, November 5, 1955. Yes, of course, November 5, 1955.

    Marty: What, I don't get what happened.

    Doc: That was the day I invented time travel. I remember it vividly. I was standing on the edge of my toilet hanging a clock, the porces was wet, I slipped, hit my head on the edge of the sink. And when I came to I had a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head, a picture of this. This is what makes time travel possible. The flux capacitor.

    Marty: The flux capacitor.

    Doc: It's taken me almost thirty years and my entire family fortune to realize the vision of that day, my god has it been that long.


    [Back To The Future]

    ReplyDelete

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