Some April Fool's Day Stuff

I'll try to keep a running tab of some of the April Fool's Day stuff I notice. As I write this, I haven't tried to look very much.

The first one that I want to mention is ThinkGeek's catalog. (Tip of the cap to Jennifer Ouellette.)

As usual, there are some special papers on the arXiv, including this one and this one.

Here is another joke arXiv paper. (Tip of the cap to Chad Topaz.)

Here is a roundup of Google's jokes, including the ability to play "Where's Waldo?" on Google Maps.

April Fool's Day Round-Up

Let's start with this new paper on the arXiv. And also this one. Also this one. (Tip of the cap to Guido Caldarelli for the third one.) Also this paper and this one.

Here is something about Brexit from The Guardian. (Tip of the cap to Dominic Vella.)

Here is a collaboration between Mark Zuckerberg and H&M. (Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

Google had some issues with its Gmail joke this year.

Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, Stanford University's admissions rate has plummeted to 0%. (Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo Chavez.) This one is great!

I assume that this CNN.com article about an SUV chase in which the SUV ultimately takes out a fighter jet is a fake.

The country of Estonia is now going to run an OS for other countries. (Tip of the cap to Guillermo Valle Pérez.)

CERN also got into the act with a musical number that missed a perfect rickrolling opportunity. Techers should consider themselves suitably warned, and I got caught offguard by this one.

George Takei posted a prank on his Facebook page about a new sitcom costarring Cloris Leachman and him.

Here is CNN.com's round-up of today's pranks.

National Geographic announced that they would stop publishing nude animal photos. (Tip of the cap to Karen Kustedjo.)

Also, the New York Times crossword puzzles are ending.

And then there is the video advertisement for all-new Quilted Northern "Rustic Weave" toilet paper, which is hilarious. (Tip of the cap to Aaron Clements.)

30th Anniversary of the "Sidd Finch" Prank

This snuck up on me.

Baseball Tonight's Facebook post, which links to this article, brings up (and reminds me of) the Sidd Finch prank from 1 April 1985. It's amazing that that prank is now 30 years old. Sidd Finch had his 168 mile per hour fastball (and various other oddities), and the New York Mets played along with the hoax. So awesome!

April Fool's Day!

I am sure that there will be many gems for April 1st this year, just as there was last year and in previous years. Here is a link to some pranks from 2011 and to April-Foolish arXiv papers from 2010 (here and here). I have more April-Foolish blog entries around here somewhere...

This year, Google got into the act early by letting people play Pac-Man on Google Maps.

Now, CERN has demonstrated that The Force exists. (Now that is a truly fundamental force!) [Tip of the cap to Josie Messa for the "news" from CERN.] And in other news out of CERN, apparently rainbow universes are for real.. [Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson.]

And now we have an article in Nature by Bob May and collaborators indicating that dragons might be real after all. The article has been published in Nature, so we know that we can count on its scientific accuracy. [Tip of the cap to Catarina Amorim and another source that I can't recall.]

The journal Science has also gotten into the act, indicate that NASA has found strong evidence at least one Hell (the many-Hells theory is more plausible than the existence of just a single Hell), and it appears to be located on Mercury. Considering the planet's namesake, it kind of makes sense that one might find a Hell there. I really love the article's culminating quote: "Congress told NASA to go to hell, and, by Jove, they made it." [Tip of the cap to Physics Today.]

The BBC has summarized some of the pranks from "Tech sites", and of course technology sites tend to take the lead when it comes to April Foolishness. :) [Tip of the cap to Carlos Castillo Chavez.]

Also, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum unveiled a "limited exhibition" of Wonder Woman’s invisible jet. [Tip of the cap to Foster McLane.]

And the American Physics Society, in their popular blurb, reported on killer app for graphene. It was published in a strange journal called Physical Review Graphene. Choice quote: Markus Merk of the Max Planck Institute for Topological Physics in Dingenskirchen, Germany, who wasn’t involved in the research, said the finding is “Refreshing—and potentially very important.” But he thinks other materials could outperform graphene. “Graphene, unfortunately, has no spin-orbit coupling. But topological insulators do. Using these novel materials could increase the plaque-prevention efficiency of toothpastes by at least 35% at liquid helium temperatures.” I love it!

And the world apparently went backwards over at Google. [Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.]

The "Association for Computational Heresy" at Carnegie Mellon University produced an entire conference proceedings with serious realizations of joke ideas and joke realizations of serious ideas. [Tip of the cap to Juegren Pfeffer.]

Meanwhile, in a new paper on the arXiv, some scholars have proposed that we give up not only on Falsifiability (as others have suggested) but also on other 'F' words, such as Fidelity, Factuality, and Frugality. [Tip of the cap to Vinko Zlatić.]

Even DARPA got into the act. They advertised new programs that simultaneously test the limits of technology and credulity. [Tip of the cap to Heather Dean.]

Test Your Strength: Millikan Library and Lloyd Gong Edition

Yes, really. I am very amused.

A Most Excellent Welcome Back to Caltech Indeed: Googly Eyes at Caltech

So, I am here at Caltech today to be a dinner guest at Lloyd House, and I was so tired (and was just getting some work done) that I didn't even notice some excellent handiwork.

As part of my e-mail exchange with the current Lloyd President (Grace Park '16), I included the following message:

In case Lloydies want to have a completed prank ready for campus that Friday (I estimate a few hours of work when split across many people the night before), my recent inspiration for such things is summarized in the following two webpages: webpage 1, webpage 2

Simple, but elegant...

(This is inspired by one well-placed set of such eyes I noticed on the Stanford campus recently.)

Anyway, it's just a thought. :)  I don't arrive until the Friday, so I'll see when I get there if this happens.

They were up until 5am setting up googly eyes all over campus, and as you can see they picked some very sweet spots. (These are not anywhere close to all of them. There is also one pair on a door to the math building, a couple of cyclopean ones, etc. Maybe some more pictures will eventually show up?) And perhaps my favorite: one on Millikan Library itself!!!

I have seen people taking pictures of the Millikan bust with the googly eyes and indicating that it looks even creepier that way (and it's when I accidentally saw that after walking around a bit that I realized that it looks like they actually did it... I was pretty well zombified until then), I have on quite a few occasions heard people talk about the various places they have seen it, etc. Apparently, the Lloydies stayed up until 5am working on this.

Way to do me proud, modern Lloydies! I approve! (Let me count the ways... So awesome!) Now that's the right way to welcome an alum back to campus!

Update: Here is one more picture I took. (Also note that this prank is not only simple and elegant, but also inexpensive and very photogenic.)

The Hotter Institute of Technology

Caltech is apparently now the hotter institute of technology, according to a new prank by Caltech students during MIT's prefrosh weekend this year. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Heather Dean.)

Update (4/17/14): the California Tech has an article about how things went down.

Gotta' Catch 'Em All!

Somehow, the Pokémon theme song --- among other Easter Eggs --- has shown up among the mathematics subjects that our students are studying.

I guess one (or more?) of our students wanted to see how long it would take for us to notice. I was on College leave this past term, so I know I hadn't checked that website in a while... These Easter Eggs could have been here for months, for all I know.

Not that I would ever be involved in a prank involving Pokémon... (Tip of the cap to Quentin Miller.)

Caltech Strikes the Rose Bowl... Again

Caltech has struck the Rose Bowl again in a prank that also harkens back to the classic Hollywood sign prank of 1987.

On this website, Caltech highlighted several of the most famous pranks in its history (as compiled by the Legends I, II, and III books).

The Power of Fun-Noodles

So I was just walking past Walgreen's on Middlefield Road, and I noticed several large open boxes of fun-noodles (i.e., funnoodles --- or, apparently, "pool noodles" if one wants to use the official name) outside of the store. They appear like they might be on bulk sale (fingers crossed!), and the Techer in my soul screams "Opportunity!"

And there is a university nearby to whom we could demonstrate some Techer ingenuity...

So, who's with me?

(Honestly, I suspect that even in bulk, this is probably a several-hundred-dollar purchase. Where is the prank fund when I need it? And I'm doing work right now instead of actually trying to get this to work. But I have to admit that my heart and soul are both calling me...)

Tales from the arXiv: April 1st Edition (Part II)

There is at least one more fake arXiv paper.

Title: Orthographic Correlations in Astrophysics

Authors: Joe Zuntz, Thomas G. Zlosnik, Caroline Zunckel, Jonathan T. L. Zwart

Abstract: We analyze correlations between the first letter of the name of an author and the number of citations their papers receive. We look at simple mean counts, numbers of highly-cited papers, and normalized h-indices, by letter. To our surprise, we conclude that orthographically senior authors produce a better body of work than their colleagues, despite some evidence of discrimination against them.

Note: I very much appreciate the author names on this one.

Choice quote from the article: "We also follow usual practice and use a number of different estimators, continuing until we find one that can demonstrate the correct hypothesis to be true."

Another one: "Unlike real doctors, scientists are forgiven their worst work and judged on their best."

(Tip of the cap to Joe Antognini.)

Google is now called "Topeka"

In honor of the city of Topeka, Kansas temporarily naming themselves "Google", Google has decided to rename themselves "Topeka". I approve!

(In other news, Google.uk is offering animal translation capabilities. Now I wonder if past April Fools pranks by Google have differed in different countries. They must have, but it was only the obviously US-centric version of today's prank on google.com that compelled to think about this and look up what google.uk did.)

Update (4/01/10): There is a vowel outage on Gmail, but people writing in Hebrew thankfully aren't affected by it.

Update (4/01/10): Google is expressing its search times in (pseudo)randomly-chosen units for each search.

New Caltech Prank at MIT

There was recently a new Caltech prank at MIT, which wasn't particularly successful, according to an MIT student publication. Words from Caltech people suggest a somewhat higher level of success. We shall see.

Rickrolling Hack at MIT

A recent hack at MIT entailed putting the first 7 notes of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' on a part of a building that looks like empty sheet music. The hack itself is pretty neat, but I especially love the nod to Rickrolling.

(Tip of the cap to Craig Montuori.)

More press coverage for Caltech pranks

Here is a recent article from the Pasadena Star-News about pranking at Caltech in general and the Rose Bowl pranks in particular. My Legends coauthor (Autumn Looijen '99) and I were interviewed for this article. (Whenever somebody contacts Caltech's PR department about things related to pranks, they are basically passed along to us at this point.) I love my comment in the article's ending, as well as how the article's author stated how I "declined to state" the identity of an upcoming movie that has a 'DEI' in it. :)

In looking up this article (which I had neglected to do because of how busy I was), I also noticed that Elise Kleeman '03 is apparently a staff writer for the Pasadena Star-News. I guess she's been very successful getting into journalism.

Also, for people reading this who know of events in my personal life, remember that my blog policy (just like my general perspective) is that the show must go on and the tone of my blog entries is not necessarily going to be affected by that. Aside from the present ambiguous comment, I'm just making an active decision to leave that stuff off of this venue. (Also, that should not be interpreted as callousness. Blogging is a form of escapism, and sometimes I need escapism more than at other times.)

10th Anniversary of Cornell's Famous Pumpkin Prank

I wrote a blog entry about pranks recently and I neglected to mention that October 2007 marked the 10th anniversary of the great pumpkin prank at Cornell (my grad school alma mater).

Somehow, a group of students got a HUGE pumpkin on the top of Cornell's McGraw Tower spire (where the chimes get played), which is an extremely tall building. The thing probably wouldn't have stayed up very long, but the weather got really cold, which caused the pumpkin to freeze and stay on the tower. The pumpkin then stayed on top of the tower until the weather warmed up in the spring. It fell down one or two days before my visit as a prospective graduate student (evidently in a blooper during an attempt to take it down). Sigh... I just missed seeing that wonderful sight in person.

The pumpkin continued to decay over the years and "The last extant piece of the gourd sat beside a brain display in the Department of Psychology." (That sentence just amuses the Hell out of me.)

Anyway, given my association with Caltech pranks, I feel remiss in not having previously told this story on my blog and only my recent Cornell alumni newsletter reminded me of this awesome prank. It's still not known who the perpetrators were and I believe that how they did it might not be known either. (There was an article in The Cornell Daily Sun late in my graduate-school career that -- without identifying the perps -- claimed to state how the pumpkin was hoisted atop the tower, but my understanding is that a nontrivial number of people were disputing the purported methodology.

Encouragement for Oxford pranksters

My friend Danny (who I've known since I was 4) was visiting me from Friday until this morning, so between hanging out (in both London and Oxford) and trying desperately to get some work done, I haven't had a chance to do as much blogging during the past week. (I'll eventually be posting pictures from the past week, including one of me in my new role as Achilles.)

So, in order to cover the gap (so to speak), I am going to dig into the archives and tell the Oxford folks a bit about my sordid past. In the process, I hope to encourage some local shenanigans. (I apologize in advance to the others in my audience who have heard all this before.)

Let me start with something that will be new for everybody -- namely, what made me think of this? Well, I heard about a local drunken prank that I think is hilarious but for which the students seem to be have a fine heading in their direction. Namely, a rosemary bush was "borrowed" from a local restaurant (which I won't name) and, after much deliberation, planted in a toilet in a women's restroom so that it could grow big and strong. That's funny enough, but apparently our CCTV cameras (the ones that seem to be used predominantly for spying on students... actually, I ought to blog about that at some point; I'm finding a couple of things to be a bit Big Brotherish for my tastes, but I'll save that one for later) caught most of this on tape, so one can apparently see a fairly long discussion with deliberations. My reservations about the methodology of obtaining the videos aside, I hereby request that the Somerville porters post that video on YouTube or -- at the very least -- give me a chance to see it because I really want to take a look at it!

(Oh the other thing I found out is that I already have a rep among the Somerville students for dressing very differently from the others on High Table. Of course, only a small subset of them know that I have a charming personality as well.) But anyway, everybody seems to already know who I am even though I've only been here 7 weeks and change. I'm already making my mark! (Perhaps Oxford has met its match? As one of my friends said, it has been around 800 years but it hasn't got a chance to survive me.)

OK, so back to the archives...

Most of my Oxford peeps may not know this, but I coauthored a book about Caltech pranks and other shenanigans. For several months after its May 2007 debut, it was the number 1 selling item in Caltech's bookstore. It currently appears to be #3 among books.

I have been involved in a few pranks of my own. For example, I was the author and architect of this fake Caltech press release (it can be really useful to know people in your university's PR department!). I have a copy of the book with me if anybody is interested in seeing it, though as some might say, "Buy my book!" :)

So, I hope that you Oxford folks reading this blog entry will take this as a challenge and find something creative to do.

Thoughts on temporary `Nay Parking` signs

I be walkin' along San Pasqual an' noticed th' temporary `Nay Parking` signs that ben thar fer a while, an' me recently-acquired knowledge on th' topic compelled me t' eyeball them in more detail an' notice a wee things (which included some PS12in' t' find loopholes).

First, at least one or two o' th' signs be set t' expire on "Septembree 31" rather than Septembree 30th. While this t'ain't a loophole, th' mistake amused me. (I be more amused when I thought that all o' them had th' error, but that turned ou' t' be mistaken.)

Second, some o' th' signs only go until 4pm on a gi'en tide rather than 5pm. Th' swabbies who put th' signs thar really ortin' t' ben more careful about that, but that`s a pretty minor loophole.

Third, one o' th' signs be attached t' a tree, which I found ou' be actually illegal on Mondee while talkin' t' th' appropriate civic folks. (That had been what I be plannin' t' do. After returnin' homeport an' noticin' that thar weren`t poles on which t' post th' signs, Lemmin' an' I sailed' o'er t' OSH t' buy some stakes. We tried t' find a local "Magic Box," but we be unable t' do so an' I thus had t' settle fer some ghetto stakes.) Accordin' t' th' swabbies at Pasadena parkin' enforcement, th' `Nay Parking` signs be nay enforceable when they be put on a tree. (I doubt that`s how 't would work in practice, but technically....)

Fourth, I also found ou' on Mondee that each temporary `Nay Parking` sign in Pasadena be good fer nay more than twenty feet o' space. I saw today on San Pasqual that thar be a gap that be much more than twenty feet long. Strictly speakin', a couple o' cars could fit in th' part in which 'tis technically legal t' park (tho, again, I doubt that`s how things would work in practice).

After countin' inaccuracies, 't dawned on me that I nerehad t' present any verification o' needin' t' reserve th' spots in order t' get things t' happen. This made me imagine a scenario (mind ye, nay a specific algorithm fer doin' this) in which a relatively wee squadron o' swabbies could cause major portions o' a city t' be severely disrupted by ary th' same time removin' a large number o' parkin' spaces from normal use. (I assume --- an' hope! --- that in practice th' city would naice a large spike in requests fer temporary `Nay Parking` signs an' prevent this sort o' skullduggery.)

I then moved on t' more important considerations. Namely, be thar some way t' exploit these rules fer an interestin' prank? Th' only things that came t' mind be either simply th' convenience o' usin' th' parkin' spot (in which case 't wouldna be a central part o' th' prank itself) or stuff that wouldna be funny at all but would rather be really nasty an' obnoxious t' th' city`s residents an' business (obviously nay a cool thin' t' do). Does ere be havin' any ideas o' how this could be used fer a prank without bein' obnoxious? I couldna think o' one, tho I moved on t' other topics after a wee while.

Oh, an' in case any o' ye doubt th' veracity o' me OCD afflication, let this blog post put them t' rest.

(Thanks t' this url.)

Organizing Legends of Caltech IV

Today I spent several hours working a preliminary outline for the table of contents of Legends of Caltech IV, which should come out either May 2010 or May 2011.

As I discussed recently, I had been getting the urge to start working on the new Legends book, which was an excellent sign that the pain associated with the sprint to the finish line for Legends III had subsided substantially. The additional benefits of working on this today included (in no particular order) getting the thing organized so that we could start getting the actual stories more easily (i.e., the benefit that directly pertains to the book!), allowing me to not think about things that are still depressing me (I don't know when I'll truly get over that stuff; it's definitely going to take a while), and allowing me to avoid organizing and starting to write the grant proposal that I plan to submit as soon as possible after I show up in Oxford. (I'll definitely be doing some work on that grant proposal this week...) Plus, I had gotten a couple of different e-mails about Legends from Autumn this week, so the fact that she's doing some work on this stuff also provided an important spark. Given that today's Sunday and no e-mails asking me to do stuff arrived, I figured that today was the day I should start organizing the new book.

There are a couple of tentative title possibilities. Personally, I am most fond of "Legends of Caltech IV: Or How I Learned to Stop Studying and Love the Ride". The other one I wrote down is "Legends of Caltech IV: The Finesse, The Brute Force, and the Flaming", but that one really doesn't flow at all (even if the idea itself isn't horrible). Any subtitle suggestions? My current idea for a cover is to make it like the poster of a grindhouse movie (i.e., a B movie).

More media sluttage

Here is the blurb on Legends III by Engineering & Science, one of Caltech's alumni publications.

This is a bit belated, but here is the book review that appeared in The Tech in May. Also, here is an an article from The Tech about the book's release.

By the way, when the judge of the case I might be on found out I worked at Caltech, her next sentence included a comment about Caltech pranks. In particular, she mentioned Rose Bowl hijinks. Under other circumstances, I would have mentioned the book.