Fooling Around in April

This entry from CafePress is a big win. (Tip of the hat to Heather Dean.)

In a Facebook post, Tears For Fears announced a new collaboration with Kid Rock.

As usual, there are also some appropriate papers on the arXiv. I noticed one on my own that just isn't funny, so I'm ignoring it. But Kevin Hickerson and Physics Today found A Necro-Biological Explanation for the Fermi Paradox, which has been submitted for publication in The Necronomicon.

My former colleague Lew Lefton from Georgia Tech was on the receiving end of a joke this year. (Tip of the cap to the School of Physics at Georgia Tech.)

For those with some time on their hands, there is the Google Maps Pokemon Challenge.

The Guardian also included a report about a curious and symmetry-breaking outcome of Scottish independence. (Tip of the cap to Cecilia Mascolo.)

Here is a summary of fake products from a few tech companies. (Tip of the hat to Sham Kakade.)

The White House got into the action with a President's Council on Beards. (Tip of the cap to whoever posts for MLB on Facebook.)

Depeche Mode has an April Fool's Day prank with new t-shirt designs with lyrics on them, but this joke was really lame.

Update (4/04/14): I'm posting this belatedly, but here is a summary of some of the April Fools Day pranks from various tech companies and some others. I like the one from CERN. :)

Update (4/04/14): NPR's prank was brilliant. (Tip of the cap to Lada Adamic.)

What Happens in (NY)^2 Stays in (NY)^2

Today I am flying to New York City --- aka, (NY)^2 --- and will be there for the first time since July 2011. I am traveling there because one of my cousins is getting married.

Update: When I was in line to drop my bags, the security person was pretty thorough. I needed to show him my card that lets me live in the UK, he checked my passport for several minutes, etc.

He asked me if I had any weapons, and of course I said know. He then asked me if I had anything that could be used as a weapon, so I explained that my laptop could be used to bash someone over the head but that I didn't want to do that because it's my computer. Maybe this wasn't the best answer to give?

He also said I shouldn't take accept any items from anybody, so hopefully getting a certain karate trophy from Aaron won't be an issue.

Is My Hair a Security Risk?

The security officer at San Francisco Airport needed to pat my hair to make sure that I wasn't hiding something in there.

(I am not making this up.)

I should also add that this is because the really invasive 'x-ray' (microwave?) machine apparently wasn't able to penetrate what might be in there.

Airport Security Job Qualifications

I received some extra special screening at LAX, and one of the TSA security people involved was chatting me up. She was telling me about her educational background and eventually this led to the following exchange:

Me: "So how did you get this job?"

Security person: "I couldn't get anything else."

I think there is nothing else to say.

I'm a Distraction.

Apparently, my t-shirts have the ability to distract airport security officers---good to know.

Airport security people sure do pay attention

Here is a recent exchange with security (TSA) people at Burbank airport:

Security person: "Are you going to Austin, too?"

Me: "No"

Him: "But you look like a musician."

Me: "I do my best." (other security person laughs)

Him: "Enjoy your time in Texas." (Hopefully, that will only be to change planes! Also note that they never bothered to check that I have a second ticket that takes me from Dallas to London.)


Yes, I can assure you that airport security people in the US really are focused on doing their job. The person right before me was going to Austin, and she was having a conversation with the security people. It didn't take much time, but I'd really rather have these people focusing on what they should be focusing on.

"Awesome" online security code

I was buying tickets to the February 20th 2010 Depeche Mode concert in London---Oh, Hell yes!!!!! (and the set lists for most of the concerts on this tour have even included both "It's No Good" and "Strangelove", which I really want to hear live and often aren't included on DM concert set lists these days!)---and the online security code to confirm that I was a human were particularly "awesome" (and maybe even awesome) on this occasion: "$10-billion castrate".

Now I just have to wait 6 months for the concert (which I'll be attending with a couple of friends)...

What happens in the United States stays in the United States

I flew from Heathrow to LA yesterday and had a layover in the Twin Cities. As has become a tradition, I added a bit of a small incident with Customs Security to my resume. (Will somebody explain to me why so many of these people insist of being sarcastic without any provocation?) Part of it is that those people just can't handle the fact that I would choose to have a job somewhere outside of the US. (I am asked how long I've been gone, and I have to then explain that I live in the UK, which always leads to several subsequent questions.) When I say I am a professor, I am always asked what kind. (Note that yesterday I actually tried saying "mathematics professor" for that answer, and there was a brief bit of confusion when the guy didn't notice that I had said mathematics. I thought for a bit that he actually wanted me to say what kind of math I studied. I was like "Do you really want me to describe that?") This guy sarcastically asked "What do you profess?" I told him I was a math professor, though my heart screamed to give any one of a number of sarcastic responses at that point (unlike Roxette, I did not listen to my heart on that particular occasion), I just answered. His response was to ask me what the square root of 237 was, and he seemed a bit perturbed that I then paused to figure it out in my head. How else was I supposed to react? Anyway, he seemed convinced because of that and then let me through. All of this, of course, was after he told me he didn't want me puking on him (the whole motion sickness deal).

I'm on Caltech's campus right now, and I saw someone walk by with a t-shirt that said "Don't be a d^3s/dt^3" (I'm using latex notation here) on the back. (Yes, people at Caltech wear shirts like this! So do I, obviously...) I feel like I should get this, but I'm not. I was thinking of 's' as arclength, but I'm not sure. Does anybody have any ideas here? I must be missing something obvious...

Adventures in Security X-Rays

Today I saw something "awesome" during the carry-on luggage security at LAX. There was a guy trying to get flowers and balloons into the x-ray machine, and the balloons were causing all sorts of misadventures as they were lifting into the air when he and a security (TSA) person were trying to get them into the x-ray. It was delaying that entire line and taking so long that they needed to open an additional x-ray machine. (Everybody in line was filing towards the second x-ray machine because of the balloon ordeal, so they opened up the third one to usher people through faster. A bit of a pile-up was starting to occur and the TSA folks wanted to nip it in the bud.) I can't say I've seen this one before, but a couple of minutes viewing futile attempts to get the balloons into the x-ray machine was pretty damn amusing.

In other news, the UK customs people once again let me through immediately, even though the US ones gave me some grief. Thanks for the hometown loyalty, guys. (Though I didn't have a repeat of last time when after saying I had a faculty job at Oxford, one customs person asked something along the lines about my not having been able to get a job in the US. Naturally, I answered "No. I couldn't." --- with a complete deadpan, of course. What kind of retarded question is that? It's Oxford! I wouldn't have moved to the UK to have a job at a pissy university.)

In one last bit of news, I preordered the core 4th edition Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks today. It actually only cost about $10 more in total buying it through the UK rather than picking them up in the US, and I'm willing to live with that premium. (The mark-up is of a different order-of-magnitude when it comes to video games, however.)

Finally, I will eventually be blogging about several movies I've seen in the last couple of months. I'll make it one big entry, and maybe I'll even be able to get myself to write it tomorrow. I've been promising this for a while, so we shall see.

Gatwick Airport

I am writing this post from Lemming's house back in good old Pasadena.

First, I need to say that I am "awesome". Some of you have seen me accidently wear shirts backwards before. This was especially memorable with my xml shirt. In that case, one way to tell the shirt was on backwards was to see the incorrect syntax. Today, however, I soared to new heights. I happen to be wearing a Somerville shirt that clearly identifies me as being affiliated with both Somerville and Oxford. Of course, I didn't put it on backwards; instead, I accidently put it on inside-out! I didn't realize it until I was in line to check in my luggage. (The check-in at that stage was craptacular. The line wasn't that long, but that didn't stop things from being ridiculously slow. I was at London Gatwick airport 2.5 hours before my flight, and it turns out that I needed the entire time. One advantage of the slow line, however, was that I had plenty of time to ponder things -- like the fact that I had been wearing my shirt incorrectly for the past several hours.) I don't remember ever having done that before, and I'm a bit surprised that it took me so long to notice. When I finally reached the security person before checking in my luggage, she altered the normal line of questioning and started out with, "Are you tired?" (I'm guessing she asked because of the shirt, although my eyes and body language probably also gave it away.)

It turns out that in the UK, only one carry-on is allowed. This was somewhat annoying, as I had prepared to be able to bring the two small items I had always been allowed to carry on everywhere. Apparently, for about a year, it's been this way when going outbound in the UK. It hadn't been that way the last time I flew out of the UK, so I didn't realize this had changed. I obviously would have prepared differently, but as a short-term solution, I basically stuffed necessary things like my iPod, DS, and wallet into my computer bag (which has taken a lot of abuse during it's 9+ years in my possession). The security person even asked me how long I've owned each of my bags. Why does that matter? (I'm surprised they still have the whole bit about 'Did anyone else give you anything to put on?' here. Maybe terrorists are supremely honest folks? Or perhaps they always pack their bombs and knives on their own?)

One couple in the check-in line had to open and "disarm" all of their Christmas crackers, which are a traditional part of Christmas in the UK. They were going to bring them to other people after their flight, and they were unsurprisingly displeased about this.

Once I had checked in my luggage, the rest of security was thankfully trivial. I guess each airport has a different rate-limiting step? I'm used to the check-in being faster (and typically much faster) for lines of comparable size and the x-ray part of things being slower.

By the way, this was my first experience with London Gatwick airport. Among the UK airports, I had only sampled London Heathrow in the past.

On the flight from Dallas to Burbank, one passenger almost managed to get herself thrown off. She settled for delaying the flight by 10 minutes with her shenanigans. Otherwise, the trip was basically uneventful, which is good. (At the Dallas airport, I did walk past the area where we camped out many moons ago.)