Snarky One-Line Descriptions of Countries

Some of these one-liners are pretty damn funny (and some of them are also pretty damn true). I would put the one that describes my country in both categories, by the way. Also, some countries that are seemingly easy targets were (surprisingly) spared from the snark.

(Tip of the cap to Taha Yasseri.)

I Want Labeled Axes!

I want labeled axes --- or possibly a giant sign for his door that says "Label your fucking axes!"

Misinterpretations are also welcome.

(We'll see if there are some labeled battle-axes or something similar waiting for me when I return to Oxford.)

As Rachel Gray points out, there is an an appropriate xkcd for the occasion that involves ending relationships and lack of axis labels. There is also another strip --- I think it might also have been xkcd? --- about putting snarky labels on any unlabeled axes submitted by students. I saw this a couple of years ago, and I might add a link to it later. (I looked briefly just now and couldn't find it, and I don't feel like looking more at the moment.)

Thesis-like Objects

I think that the term "thesis-like object" ought to be in standard academic usage. That is all.

Post-Seminar Comments

After our applied math seminars, we have coffee and cookies (and other pastries, or "cakes" as they are known in the UK) in the common room.

Earlier this year, after a particularly frustrating seminar, one of my colleagues uttered the memorable line "I'm going to have a fucking cookie. I earned it." (We all earned it. It was awful.)

But the best (and most memorable) post-seminar piece of snark that I have ever heard occurred during my postdoc years at Caltech and came from the mouth of Catalin Turc: "His theory is retarded."

Let's Call The Whole Thing Off

You say "universality"
I say "bullshit"
Let's call the whole thing off.

This is inspired by this song, obviously.

The Science of Failure

One popular thing to study in complex systems these days is the so-called science of success.

One of these days, I hope to have a suitable project within studies of citation networks or other things related to 'success' so that I can use the title "The Science of Failure" for some of my presentations.

Update (6/06/14): As Mikko Kivelä pointed out to me when I first wrote this post, "The Science of Mediocrity" would also be an excellent title of a talk to give in this area.

"NSA Vanilla"

In the latest installment of 'Here's the straight line; you provide the joke', we have the following situation:

Coffee Bean has a powder with the label "NSA Vanilla". As you can see on this website, there is a secret ingredient that goes by the name of "NSA Powder". I wonder if it's anthrax?

Subtitles: A Legal Requirement of Popular Biographies

Or, in longer form, Subtitles: A Legal Requirement of Popular Biographies (even when we're completely out of clever ideas)

Or how About: Author: Because Somebody Actually Wrote The Book You Had To Read In High School

I am thinking of this because Somerville College's Senior Common Room has a copy of this book, because the potential consumers needed to be reminded that William Golding is the dude who wrote Lord of the Flies. (To be fair, I also remembered the book title but not the author.)

We Call It "Tenure"

As far as I can tell, "tenure" is the academic version of sainthood.

They have miracles; we have publications. Same difference.

(OK, so they have to deal with a pretty tough journal!)

Quote of the Day: Spoiler Alert

I think my best line from last night (after my cousin mentioned that she didn't want to hear info about the Steve Jobs biography before she reads it) was the following: Not to spoil the ending, but he dies.

You're welcome.

Preparing for Valentine's Day

On Facebook, the Cornell Alumni Association posted a quiz [as their status] asking "What are your favorite love songs?"

Perhaps my answer of "Hold Your Head Up High (And Blow Your Brains Out)" by The Bloodhound Gang was not the most appropriate answer in the world?

I guess my second choice would be "Black Celebration". :)

Comment on "Bifurcation Analysis of Parametrically Excited Bipolar Disorder Model"

A while back, I blogged about a letter to the editor a collaborator and I wrote regarding a paper that was suspiciously similar to our work. Here is the published version of that letter. Notice the snarkiness at the end. Here is my old blog entry.

By the way, I don't remember if I blogged about this previously, but the ending ended up being a happy one: Because of this whole business, the previously-unpublished article by my collaborators and me (which had been on the arXiv preprint server since 2003) has now been accepted by the very same journal that published the article that raised our ire.

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from the art submission guidelines from the J!NX catalog in their solicitation (with potential monetary reward) for new t-shirt ideas:

"3. We have disabled BMP files in the art upload. If you are using MS Paint, you probably don't need to be submitting art."


Comment: I approve! (As a side note, some of you reading this may be aware of my numerous rants at students who submitted drafts of papers to me in which the figures were in .bmp format. In the MTBI REU program in particular, that a was well-known way to make me go ballistic.)

Who says I'm not abrasive!?!

Bruce Charlton, a Reader in Psychology at University of Newcastle, published an article called "Why are scientists so dull?" in Oxford Magazine (5th week, MT 2008, issue 281). I couldn't find a link to it online, so I hope I can add that later. I just sent an extremely sarcastic response letter to the magazine's editor. It would be easier to "appreciate" [ :) ] my response if you read the original article first, so maybe I'll be able to find a link to it later. The article, by the way, refers to our dullness both in terms of being boring ("But we were never being boring.") and in terms of being stupid because extreme intelligence is apparently (in his view) selected against by the sheer years of training we're required to have to get a permanent position. (While I don't agree with that conclusion, he does have a valid point that many really smart people leave academia because it's such a pain in the ass to go through what it takes to get a permanent position.) Anyway, here is my snide response:


I read with great interest Dr. Charlton's essay about why scientists are so dull. While my successful perseverance through countless years of postgraduate and postdoctoral training indubitably indicates that I am too dim-witted to grasp his subtler points, I think I can manage enough coherent thoughts to figure out at least some of the points he's trying to make. For example, I assume based on his essay that his home field of psychology has no trouble hiring practitioners (or at least essayists) who are "awkward" and "abrasive" and perhaps does not have the unfortunate circumstance of encompassing too many people who are saddled with the unconscionable "personality attributes of conscientiousness and agreeableness?" Of course, my IQ is probably so low that I might be completely missing his point.

P.S. While it's hard for me to make unbiased comments about the quality of my science, I can assure Dr. Charlton -- as I hope my letter indicates -- that I am capable of offering no shortage of abrasiveness. I'd also like to think I'm pretty damned interesting, but I'll let other people decide that one. I haven't bothered to provide any evidence of that here, but then I suppose that's just something else that Dr. Charlton and I have in common?

Sincerely,

Mason A. Porter
University Lecturer
Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Mathematical Institute

Quote of the Day

Today's quote of the day (technically yesterday's, but I just read it) comes from an online chat by ESPN.com writer Rob Neyer:


Yankee Hater (St. Louis, MO): New Year's Resolution: to hate the Yankees more than ever. Are you with me?

Rob Neyer: I don't have enough energy to hate a team that loses every October.



Comment: I approve!