Hindsight's 2020 Presidential Campaign

I don't know about you, but I'll be voting for the team of Hindsight/Forethought in 2020.

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.

Natural Logs: Licorice Edition

A few minutes ago, I encountered Natural Licorice Logs (and principal ones, no less!) at a local chain called Taylor's...

We have a couple of locations of Taylor's across the street from each other on Little Clarendon. They have different things from each other, and I walked into the south one to buy some funky chocolates, and noticed the Natural Logs near the checkout counter. I don't like black licorice, though, so I didn't buy it.

Still, Natural Logs at Taylor's! That makes a lovely math joke.

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.)

Twenty Jokes for Intellectuals

I have seen many of these geeky jokes before, but some of them are new to me. My favorite one is number 5.

(Tip of the cap to Meredith Alden.)

"Uphill Both Ways Through the Snow" on Steroids

I will see your walking uphill both ways through the snow, and I'll raise you walking in the snow every day with no shoes on a non-orientable surface. I approve!

I am so going to use this one the next time I visit Cornell!

April Fools Day Roundup (2013)

Here is TechCrunch's 2013 April Fools Day roundup.

'Your Mom' Joke from 3500 Years Ago

Yes, some sort of 'Your Mom' joke seems to have been written on a 3500-year-old Babylonian tablet. (TWSS.)

(Tip of the cap to Puck Rombach.)

TWSS (That's what she said.)

Now there is a computer algorithm whose purpose is to analyze algorithmically whether '(That's what she said.)' (TWSS) would be funny if added to the end of a sentence. I shit you not.

Sometimes I love computational linguistics...

(Tip of the cap to Puck Rombach.)

He Might Want to Try Using the "Aristocrats" Joke Again

Gilbert Gottfried might want to use "The Aristocrats" joke again after he got himself fired from his role as the Aflac Duck for making insensitive comments about the situation in Japan via twitter in an attempt at humor that went over like a lead balloon.

I hadn't actually realized that Gottfried provided the voice of the duck, and given Gottfried's grating voice (for which he is best known), that's actually pretty cool. As described in the wikipedia entry for the Aristocrats joke (as well as in the movie about the joke), Gottfried made some 9/11 based jokes only 3 weeks after the event. When those didn't go over well at all (so there's a bit of a history here...), he rescued himself by switching to the Aristocrats and doing a massively funny version of the joke.

Gottfriend does seem like quite the douchebag, doesn't he?

Demotivational Poster of the Day

This is a very geeky joke, but I love it...

Some Baseball-Related April Fools Stories

Rob Neyer has collected them and generally phrased things pretty well on his blog. The reference to Sidd Finch, a fictional baseball player in one of the best April Fools jokes ever, is much appreciated.

Way too many blog entries for me the last couple of days...

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.

Tales from the arXiv: April 1st Edition

I saw Zombieland last night (I hadn't cried so much since Titanic), and I have zombies on my mind. So let's talk about zombies.

Like in this new article just posted on the arXiv that was co-authored by George Romero (well, not really):

Title: "How many zombies do you know?" Using indirect survey methods to measure alien attacks and outbreaks of the undead

Author: Andrew Gelman (and possibly George Romero)

Abstract: The zombie menace has so far been studied only qualitatively or through the use of mathematical models without empirical content. We propose to use a new tool in survey research to allow zombies to be studied indirectly without risk to the interviewers.

I love April 1st...

High School interventions

Here's the straight line (you provide the joke): My high school is adding "intervention periods" to its class schedule starting this fall.

(If you're interested, you can find the article about Beverly High's new fall bell schedule on the upper left of page 3 of the new issue of Beverly Hills Weekly.)

Google's 2009 April Fools joke (and other, much better, ones)

While I appreciate the subject matter of Google's April Fools joke this year, I just don't think their implementation is particularly amusing. Sorry, Google, but you've let me down this year. The idea was good, but this just didn't do it for me.

This year, I was lame and didn't do anything, so it's not like I have any foundation to back up the above comments. :)

Update: On the other hand, Expedia's $99 flights to Mars are a big win. Here is CNN's summary of April Fools jokes. (It would be really awesome if some of the ones they are reporting aren't actually jokes that anyone has pulled.) The Guardian has some fake stories on their website. The one I like best is about their impending conversion to Twitter format. Now that is awesome!

Update 2: Ah yes, and Rob Neyer in his blog has reminded me about the best. April Fools. joke. ever.

Bad Math Joke

We're currently having a bad math joke thread (with pretty frequent e-mails) on the Project NExT list. My contribution was basically to provide a link to an article that appeared a few years ago in Notices of the American Mathematical Society that collected a bunch of them.

Most of the jokes in the current thread have been bad and a few of them have been so horrible that they've made me groan, but here is a slightly reworded one that I actually really like:

Question: How can you tell that a guy is a topologist?

Answer: He can't tell his ass from a hole in the ground, but he can tell his ass from two holes in the ground.