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(2002-06-24) Standard Jokes and "New Classics"
We credit whoever reports the joke (the author is rarely known).

2 lines or less:

If it wasn't for Thomas Edison, we'd all be watching TV to the light of a candle.

The contour integral around Western Europe is zero.
(All the Poles are in Eastern Europe.)

[den0eng3 2002-06-24]
There are three types of mathematicians:
Those who can count, and those who can't count.

[FlyingHellfish 2002-07-01]
There are 10 types of people:
Those who understand binary numbers, and those who don't.

[Coldfuse 2002-06-24]
If I had three months to live, I'd spend the time in a statistics class...
Three months would seem like an eternity.

[Fourbrick 2003-06-10]
They say that we only ever use 12% of our brain.  The other half is never used.

5 lines or less:

After the Flood, Noah lets all the animals out of the ark and tells them to go forth and multiply.  A few months later, all are doing fine except a pair of snakes.  The snakes beg Noah to cut down some trees and let them live there.  Soon, there are lots of little snakes and everybody is happy.  "How did the trees help?", wonders Noah.  "Well, we're adders.  We need logs to multiply."

Returning from a conference, Polish physicists find themselves in a plane whose pilot dies from a heart attack.  There's only one experimentalist in the bunch who dares try to fly the aircraft.  As he finds it difficult to figure things out, he apologizes to his colleagues:  "I am just a simple Pole in a complex plane."

During their first visit to Scotland, an astronomer, a physicist and a mathematician are on a train.  They see a black sheep grazing in a pasture.  The astronomer observes that Scottish sheep are black.  The physicist objects that they only know about one such sheep.  The mathematician intones: "In Scotland, there is at least one pasture with at least one sheep having at least one black side."

As Derivation approached, all functions fled, except the Natural Exponential:
- "Don't you fear me?" says Derivation.
- "I am e to the x,  you can't touch me."
- "Oh, but who says I differentiate along x?"

Three scientists observed that 2 people entered a house and 3 came out.
The physicist: "The measurement wasn't accurate."
The biologist: "They have reproduced."
The mathematician: "If one person enters the house, it will be empty again."

NASA scientists had developped a gun to hurl dead chicken at aircrafts to study the effect of accidental encounters with airborne fowl.  The British borrowed the gun to test a new high-speed train.  When they fired the gun, the chicken smashed the windshield, destroyed the console and embedded itself in the cabin wall!  The Britons wired NASA about this...  The answer:  "Thaw the chicken."
This "catapoultry" story was heard [ ? ] on the "Late Late Show with Tom Snyder", on 1997-03-03.

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(2002-07-01) Silly Answers to Funny Questions

The first one of these is the quintessential fruity "math joke"...

What's purple and commutes?	answer
What's yellow and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?	answer
What's green and homeomorphic to the open unit interval?	answer
What's a yellow complete normed space?	answer
What's nonorientable and lives in the sea?	answer
Why do programmers confuse Halloween and Christmas?	answer
What's the shortest mathematical joke?	answer
Watt Hertz Faraday, then Gauss away?	answer
How many seconds in a year?  Either 31557600, or...	12

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(2002-11-04)
Why did the chicken cross the road?

Is it really just to get to the other side?

Scientific explanations:

The fittest chickens cross roads. [Darwin]
The road moved beneath the chicken. [Einstein]
Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest, chickens in motion cross roads. [Newton]
We're not sure which side of the road the chicken was on. [Heisenberg]
There was already a chicken on this side of the road. [Pauli]

Unscientific ones:

For fun. [Epicurus]
It had a dream. [Martin Luther King Jr.]
Because the road was there. [Sir Edmund Hilary]
If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too! [Mr. T.]
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out. [Torquemada]
None of your business:  We own the chicken and we own the road. [Bill Gates]
The chicken did not --I repeat: did not-- cross the road. [Richard Nixon]
The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated. [Mark Twain]
That's the way it is. [Walter Cronkite]
I missed one? [Colonel Sanders]
Define "road". [Bill Clinton]

Philosophical perspectives:

It was a historical inevitability. [Karl Marx]
It is in the nature of chickens to cross roads. [Aristotle]
He was exercising his natural right to liberty. [John Locke]
Gaze too long across the Road and the Road gazes across you. [Nietzsche]
The possibility was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road". [Wittgenstein]
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. [Buddha]

Spinoff:

Q:   Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?
A:   To get to the same side.

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(2002-07-01)   Quotations
Funny or gripping.  Silly or wise.  Provocative or inspirational.

Socrates (469-399 BC), early moral philosopher.  
-   The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

Plato (427-347 BC), legendary philosopher (founded the Academy in 387 BC). 
-   Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state. 
-   The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal. 
-   Let no one ignorant of geometry enter  [Plato's Academy].
    "MHDEIS AGEWMETRHTOS EISITW"   [over the Academy's entrance]

Archimedes of Syracuse (287-212 BC), legendary engineer. 
-   I've got it!   [or "Eureka!", upon discovering his famous law of hydrostatics]
-   Give me a fulcrum and I'll move the World.   [probably apocryphal]
    "dos moi pou stw, kai kinw thn ghn" 
-   Don't disturb my circles!   [his last words, to the soldier who would kill him]
    "mh mou touV kuklouV taratte"   (Latin:  Noli turbare circulos meos)

Roger Bacon (1214-1294),  medieval scientist.
-   Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences ...  Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world.  And what is worse, men who are thus ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.   [Opus Majus, 1267]

William of Ockham (1288-1348).  Occam's Razor  is the rule of parsimony:
-   Pluralitas non ponenda est sine necessitate.   [Keep it simple, stupid.]

William Rowan Hamilton (1805-1865), Irish mathematician. 
-   On Earth, there is nothing great but Man;
in Man, there is nothing great but mind.

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915; Nobel 1908), bacteriologist. 
-   The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970; Nobel 1950), mathematician and philosopher. 
-   Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty. 
-   Most people would rather die than think;  many do.

[Godfrey Harold]  G.H. Hardy (1877-1947), quintessential mathematician. 
-   It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.  By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955; Nobel 1921), legendary physicist. 
-   Nothing happens until something moves. 
-   Imagination is more important than knowledge. 
-   Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. 
-   If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. 
-   Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. 
-   Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. 
-   The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. 
-   Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. 
-   Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not. [Quoting the first part suffices!] 
-   The telegraph is like a very long cat; you pull the tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles.  Radio operates the same way, but without a cat. 
-   We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. 
-   As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. 
-   Two things are infinite: the Universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the Universe... 
-   If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.

Niels Bohr (1885-1962; Nobel 1922), early guru of quantum physics. 
-   A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.

John von Neumann (1903-1957), mathematical prodigy. 
-   In mathematics you don't understand things, you just get used to them.

John Wheeler (1911- ), foremost patriach of modern physics.
-   If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics,
you do not understand it. 
-   Time is defined so that motion looks simple.     [This superbly deep statement was made to express a viewpoint attributed to Henri Poincaré.]

Paul Erdös (1913-1996), legendary mathematician. 
-   A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988;  Nobel 1965), cult figure of physics.
-   Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.  [1966]
-   I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. 
-   I would hate to die twice, it's so boring.     [His last words]

Steven Weinberg (1933-;  Nobel 1979), leading physicist and cosmologist.
-   The effort to understand the Universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.     [Last sentence of "The First Three Minutes", 1976]
-   At the deepest level, all we find are symmetries and responses to symmetries.     [1986 Dirac Memorial Lecture] 
-   We ought to try and preserve the meaning of words, and "God" historically has not meant "the laws of nature".   [Criticizing  S. Hawking]

Stephen Hawking (1942- , FRS).  Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.
-   What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?   [...]   Why does the Universe go to all the bother of existing?     [From the closing sentences of "A Brief History of Time", 1988]

Michel Audiard (1920-1985), French playwright known for hilarious dialogs. 
-   Deux intellectuels assis vont moins loin qu' un con qui marche.
[Two sitting intellectuals won't travel as far as a single walking fool.]

quoteworld | quotationspage | quoteland | sayings | science | brainyquote | last words | Andy's | etc.

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(2003-05-03) Famous Last Words
Guesses from the best experts are just guesses...

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin of Largs (1824-1907), top physicist. 
-   Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.   [1896]

Irving Fisher (1867-1947), leading US economist [Yale University]. 
-   Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.  [1929]

Albert Einstein (1879-1955; Nobel 1921), legendary physicist. 
-   There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.   [1932]

Thomas John Watson, Sr. (1874-1956), chairman of IBM. 
-   I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.   [1943]

Top 10 Scientific Blunders   |   The Crystal Ball: from Here to Eternity   |   Famous Last Words

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(2002-11-06) Well-Documented Anecdotes

General Relativity

On November 6, 1919, Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) announced the results of his eclipse expeditions on May 29, which had confirmed Einstein's prediction of the bending of light by gravity.  The occasion was a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society.  The chairman for the session was J.J. Thomson (1856-1940; Nobel 1906), who was then president of the Royal Society (he held the position from 1915 to 1920).  In his concluding remarks, Thomson said that:  "No one has yet succeeded in stating, in clear language, what the theory of Einstein really is."  As the meeting was dispersing, this statement prompted the polish-born physicist Ludwig Silberstein (author of an early book on Relativity) to come up to Eddington:

- Professor Eddington, you must be one of three persons in the world who understands general relativity...  Don't be modest.
- On the contrary, I am trying to think who the third person is.

The full story was told by Eddington, at a dinner of Trinity College during the Christmas recess of 1933, in the presence of his famous student Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995; Nobel 1983).  It appears in Chandrasekhar's 1987 book "Truth and Beauty", and/or in an earlier article of his, entitled "Einstein and general relativity: Historical perspectives".  This is probably the origin of the popular myth that: "Only three people in the world understand Relativity."

The 67^th Mersenne Number

The number 2ⁿ-1 (now called the n^th Mersenne number) can only be prime if the exponent (n) is itself prime.  This necessary condition is not sufficient :  Although 11 is prime, the eleventh Mersenne number is 2047, which is not (it's the product of 23 and 89)...  In 1644, Marin Mersenne (1588-1648) gave the first values of n for which the number obtained was thought to be prime (Mersenne primes may be used to form perfect numbers).  This mysterious list started correctly with 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, 17, 19, 31...  However, Mersenne's next entry was incorrect, as he omitted 61 which does belong (as first shown by I.M. Pervushin, in 1883) and included 67, which does not.  The Mersenne number corresponding to n = 67 is huge: 147573952589676412927.  This number was shown to be composite well before the computer era (by Edouard Lucas, around 1875) but it was not clear at the time if an explicit factorization of such a large number could ever be found.

So it was thought in October 1903, when Frank Nelson Cole (1861-1926) walked up to the blackboard, at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).  The announced title of his presentation was "On the Factorization of Large Numbers".  Cole silently calculated by hand the 67th power of 2, subtracted 1, and wrote the result (147573952589676412927) on one side of the blackboard.  Then, he multiplied 761838257287 by 193707721 and obtained the same result...  Cole did not utter a word and simply went back to his seat, under the first and only standing ovation ever recorded at an AMS meeting.  There were no questions.  Cole was a professor at the University of Columbia.  He had worked every sunday for 3 years to find this factorization.  Professor Cole served as AMS secretary for 25 years.  Two prestigious prizes (in Algebra, and in Number Theory) have been founded in his honor.

Anecdotes about famous scientists

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(2002-11-03) Parodies and Hoaxes
Clever practical jokes help make the intellectual world a healthier place.

The Mystical Properties of 137 - 1931

In 1931, three physicists (including future Nobel laureate Hans Bethe) managed to publish the famous spoof article reproduced below [in an English translation taken from "A Random Walk in Science", a compilation by R.L. Weber, edited by E. Mendoza and published in 1973 by the Institute of Physics (London)].

This short article actually ridiculed the mystical kind of numerology which was once advocated by Sir Arthur Eddington, when our experimental knowledge of Sommerfeld's fine structure constant (a) was consistent with the exact value 1/137 [the currently accepted value is 1/a = 137.035 999 76(50)].

Spoofingly equating degrees of freedom and degrees of temperature in the centigrade scale (which would officially be named after Anders Celsius in 1949), the authors offer a silly "explanation" for the fact that the absolute zero of temperature (-273.15°C) happens to be numerically close to -(2´137-1).

Remarks on the quantum theory of the absolute zero of temperature by G. Beck, H. Bethe, and W. Riezler in Die Naturwissenschaften, (1931) volume 2, pp. 38-39 Let us consider a hexagonal crystal lattice.  The absolute zero temperature is characterized by the condition that all degrees of freedom are frozen.  That means that all inner movements of the lattice cease.  This, of course, does not hold for an electron on a Bohr orbital.  According to Eddington, each electron has 1/a degrees of freedom, where alpha is the Sommerfeld fine structure constant.  Beside the electrons, the crystal contains only protons for which the number of degrees of freedom is the same since, according to Dirac, the proton can be viewed as a hole in the electron gas.  To obtain absolute zero temperature we therefore have to remove from the substance 2/a - 1 degrees of freedom per neutron.  (The crystal as a whole is supposed to be electrically neutral; 1 neutron = 1 electron + 1 proton.  One degree of freedom remains because of the orbital movement.)  For the absolute zero temperature we therefore obtain To   =   -(2/a - 1)   degrees If we take To = -273, we obtain for 1/a the value of 137, which agrees within limits with the number obtained by an entirely different method.  It can be shown easily that this result is independent of the choice of crystal structure.

 

The Great Carlos - 1988

In 1988, the so-called channeling craze (which had began in earnest around 1972) was in full swing, spearheaded by actress Shirley MacLaine and many others.  The professional magician James Randi (the Amazing Randi) was approached by Channel 9 from Australia with an offer to debunk the whole thing (hear an interview of James Randi, also posted by the Round Earth Society).

Randi took up the challenge and taught his friend José Alvarez a few tricks to impersonate the channeler of a fictitious 35000-year old spirit dubbed "Carlos".  As it turned out, "The Great Carlos" received a lot of media attention in Australia (culminating with a show at the Sydney opera house) and eventually developed a rather large following there...  Surprisingly, many continued to believe in "Carlos" and his silly messages, even after the hoax was publicly revealed!

The Sokal Hoax - 1996

In 1996, the phycisist Alan Sokal published a paper with a rather pompous title:

Transgressing the Boundaries
Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
Social Text #46/47, pp. 217-252 (spring/summer 1996).

It was, in fact, a cleverly disguised [and hilarious] parody, which had only the appearance of serious scholarly work:  In the very first paragraph, Sokal criticizes the "dogma" [sic] according to which "there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being".  The rest of the paper is similarly salted with nonsense.  Yet, it suited so much what the editors of  Social Text wanted to see that they did not even blink, and Sokal's article was duly published, next to other pieces of fashionably correct prose...

The Bogdanov Affair - 2002

This controversy is about the supposedley rigorous process which takes place before scientific doctorates are awarded.  It's one thing to fool the editors of a cultural journal using scientific gibberish, like Sokal did.  It would be another thing entirely if the same tactics could be successfull with a doctoral jury...

Many people hastily talked about a "reverse Sokal hoax", when physicist Max Niedermaier first blew the whistle in an e-mail he sent to several friends around 2002-10-22.  Niedermaier himself has since apologized and recognized that the Bogdanoff brothers "genuinely believe in what they are doing".  The whole thing would probably have gone unnoticed if the Bogdanovs had not been television celebrities, but this does not make the issue go away...

The twin semioticians Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff were born in 1949, in a castle of Gascony (southwest France).  They are gifted science-fiction writers who became famous in France as hosts of their own television show (Temps X) which premiered on April 21, 1979 (it aired prime-time on TF1 from 1980 to 1990).  With the philosopher Jean Guitton (1901-1999), they coauthored a subsequent bestseller entitled "God and Science" (Dieu et la science, Grasset 1991, ISBN 2-246-42411-9).

Doctorates in mathematical physics from the French Université de Bourgogne were recently awarded to Grichka (1999-06-26) and Igor (2002-07-08).  Dr. John Baez and others (including Field medalist Alain Connes) have since reviewed both doctoral dissertations and at least four related journal articles published by the Bogdanovs:  To summarize bluntly, the latest scientific jargon is clearly there, but actual scientific substance seems to be lacking...  Or is it?

The twins resumed their TV careers on October 3, 2002, weekly staging digital clones of themselves in 2-minute spots for public French television (France 2).

On 2003-09-23, Dr Arkadiusz Jadczyk wrote: By checking links to my own site I discovered [the above] relatively balanced, and well done, review of the Bogdanov affair. [To me, this does not belong in a humor page, though.]   Let me quote [Bion and] Plutarch:  " Though the boys throw stones at the frogs in sport, yet the frogs do not die in sport, but in earnest."  But I appreciate your personal perspective -- after all, the stones hit the target, and it must have been "fun!" Best wishes, Ark www.cassiopaea.org/quantum_future/homepage.htm

You have a point, Ark:  Regardless of the scientific merits of their work, the Bogdanovs didn't deserve the public ridicule they were initially submitted to.  Let's just state that a page about humor may include a few things that are not meant to be funny, including a possible example of an unethical use of derision.

On 2003-10-01, Dr Arkadiusz Jadczyk wrote:   I think that's fair.  Thanks!

Frauds & Hoaxes   |   Museum of Hoaxes   |   The Age of the Universe is a Function of Time
Web Hoaxes and Misinformation   |   Internet Frauds, Scams & Hoaxes
Cons, Fakes, Forgeries, Frauds, Grifs, Hoaxes, Rumors, Scams, Schemes, Swindles, Urban Legends

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(2002-05-26) Funny Units
Our top picks of funny units... [See also the serious side.]

In the Troy system of units, the millihelen is the amount of beauty required to launch one ship.  Its value in natural units [natural beauty] is about 0.001098612.
A microhelen is roughly the amount of beauty required to motivate one sailor.

The microcentury is 52 minutes and 35.76 seconds and was introduced by Enrico Fermi as the "standard" duration of a lecture period. It's equal to exactly 3155.76 s, as an exact submultiple of the scientific Julian century, which is defined to be equal to 36525 days of 86400 (SI) seconds each.

The attoparsec (apc) is the only official SI unit in this dubious bunch, it's equal to about an inch (or 1¼", more precisely, 3.08567758 cm)...  Well, as they say, "Give some people an attoparsec and they'll take 16.09344 tera-ångströms."

A nanoacre is exactly 4.0468564224 mm².

The microfortnight is about one second (more precisely, 1.2096 s).

The furlong per fortnight is about 2 ft per hour (0.1663 mm/s).

The millicochrane and microcochrane are submultiples of a unit of subspace distortion, named after Zefram Cochrane (2030-2117).

If you think the above is pretty bad, check some of the entries here, or below:

2000	mockingbirds	=	two	kilomockingbird
1000	whales	=	1	kilowhale
10	millipedes	=	1	centipede
10	monologues	= =	5 1	dialogues decalogue
3 1/3	tridents	=	1	decadent
0.01	mentals	=	1	centimental
0.001	ink machines	=	1	millink machine
0.001	on	=	1	million
1000 000 000 000	microphones	=	1	megaphone

 

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(2002-05-27) Funny Prefixes
There are no official metric prefixes above 10²⁴ or below 10^-24. What are some proposals to remedy that?

The one "proposal" which is not funny is the subreptitious introduction, a few years ago, of 10 bogus prefixes (revo, tredo, syto, fito, ento, hepa, otta, nea, dea, una) which found their way next to legitimate ones in many serious summary tables floating around the Internet.  There does not seem to be any way to get rid of those, except by encouraging whoever maintains a legitimate table to flag those prefixes as "bogus".  Just removing them entirely is simply not good enough, as long as there are tables around which will look more "complete" by listing the bogus information (and thus "reproduce" faster).  We took the initiative of starting the curative debunking by putting online a reference table that's hopefully "clearly better" than similar ones, in the hope that it would look authoritative enough to anyone researching the subject on the Internet...  This debunking seems to be slowly catching on, as some tables are starting to appear which are clearly based on our own vetted table, while others [ 1 | 2 ] include a footnote with some link to this site.  Either type of "bogus" warning serves as an erratum for all other similar tables a websurfer may be faced with.  Spread the word...

Now, back to the lighter side of the issue...

Here are the "proposals" we gleaned (so far) for the next pair of metric prefixes:

Source	1027	etymology	10-27	etymology
Morgan Burke (1993)	harpi		harpo	Marx brother
Tamara Munzner (1995)	lotta L	"many" (American or British slang)	lotto l	"minuscule" (chances in eponymous game)
Alex López-Ortiz? (Hoax: 1996-1998)	nea	9 (Greek ennea)	syto	?
Gérard Michon (2002)	nova N	9 (French neuf )	novo n	9 (French neuf )
Jeff K. Aronson? (Hoax: 2001-2002)	xenna X	9 X + ennea	xenno x	9

The last entry above is part of a scheme apparently advocated by the Oxford clinical pharmacologist Jeff K. Aronson, who argued that the "pattern" of abbreviations Z and Y for the latest official SI prefixes should be extended through the alphabet, by making X, W, V and U the abbreviations of the next large prefixes (and using x, w, v and u for the next small ones).  Since the letter T is already used for tera-, the scheme would only allow 4 more pairs of prefixes, but this should be more than enough for now...  The "new" names could be "xenna", "weka", "vendeka", "udeka", for the larger prefixes, "xenno", "weko", "vendeko", "udeko", for the smaller ones.  We don't know how serious Professor Aronson really was about this...  Unfortunately, this is being propagated as a fait accompli, so the thing may have already turned into yet another annoying hoax, until the CGPM finally adopts something (anything!) to fill the void...

"millikan-" (mkan) could be another natural name to propose for the 10^-27 prefix (mkan = milli-kilo-atto-nano), which is so much needed just below yocto- (the current smallest official prefix).  The mass of an electron would thus be expressed as equal to "about 0.91 mkang". That would only be fair to Robert A. Millikan (1868-1953), who was cursed with a name that makes it otherwise impossible to achieve the same kind of SI immortality as Pascal, Newton, Ampère, Tesla, Weber, or Alexander Gram Bell [sic]...  Either that, or we have to call a kan the charge of 1000 electrons (so each single electron would carry a millikan of charge).  For the record, this very silly idea of mine dates back to 1995, and I am almost ashamed to repeat it here...

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(2002-11-03) Anagrams

Build your own anagrams at www.wordsmith.org.  

• Marriage:  A grim era.
• Mathematics:  I'm the AMS act.
• Clever proofs:  Recover flops.
• Faulty proofs:  Poor lay stuff.
• Computers:  CMOS erupt   /   Cute romps.

From the anagram page of GG Wiz:  

• Dormitory:  Dirty room.
• Evangelist:  Evil's agent.
• Mother-in-law:  Woman Hitler.
• Desperation:  A rope ends it.
• Television:  Evil on site.
• Astronomer:  Moon starer.
• The Morse code:  Here come dots.
• Snooze alarms:  Alas, no more Z's!
• Vacation Times:  I'm not as active.
• Clint Eastwood:  Old West action.
• Alec Guiness:  Genuine class.
• Margaret Thatcher:  That great charmer.
• George Bush:  He bugs Gore.
• The Democratic Party:  Pretty chaotic dream.
• The United States of America:  Attaineth its cause, Freedom!

A few gems from www.anagrams.net: 

• Houses of Parliaments:  Loonies far up Thames.
• Sears Tower :  Worst rates.
• Hillary Clinton :  Only I can thrill.
• Christopher Evans:  He is a rich TV person.
• General Custer:  Cruel Sergeant.
• Admiral Nelson:  Mainland Loser.
• Lara Croft:  Oral Craft.
• Elle Macphearson:  Hall poser menace.
• Indira Gandhi:  Hi, grand India.
• Nelson Mandela:  Lean and solemn.
• Los Angeles:  Legal noses.
• St. Petersburg:  Best pert rugs.
• The Louvre:  True hovel.
• Guinness Draught :  Drug naughtiness.
• Saddam Hussein:  Humans' sad side.
• François Mitterand :  Mad strain of cretin.

 

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(2002-10-24) MNEMONICS
Mnemonics Neatly Eliminate Man's Only Nemesis:
Insufficient Cerebral Storage...

My Nasty Editor Might Occasionally Not Interpret Commas...

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
[Operator Precedence: Parentheses, Exponent, Multiply, Divide, Add, Subtract]

Important!  Very eXcellent Learning Can Demand Memorizing.
[Roman numerals: I V X L C D M]

King Hector Doesn't (Usually) Drink Cold Milk.
[Original Metric Prefixes (1793): kilo, hecto, deca, (unity), deci, centi, milli]

Dairy Cows Make Milk Not Pink Fruit, Airhead!
[Metric submultiples: deci, centi, milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto]

Those Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do.
[Mohs' scale: Talc, Gypsum, Calcite, Fluorite, Apatite, Orthoclase, Quartz, Topaz, Corundum, Diamond]

Pregnant Virgins Never Reveal the Truth
[Ideal Gas Law:   PV = nRT ]

OIL RIG
[Redox Reactions:   Oxidation Is Loss (of electrons); Reduction Is Gain.]

Cary Grant eXpects Unanimous Votes In Movie Reviews.
[Electromagnetic spectrum, highest frequency first:  Cosmic rays, Gamma rays, X-rays, Ultraviolet, Visible, Infrared, Microwaves, Radio waves]

My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets.
[Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto] 
Mon vieux, tu m'as jetté sur une nouvelle planète.
[Mercure, Vénus, Terre, Mars, Jupiter, Saturne, Uranus, Neptune, Pluton]

Roy G. Biv   (Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain)
[Colors of the Rainbow:  Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet]

Oh Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me!  (Right Now Sweetheart!) --Henry Norris Russell
[Harvard Spectral Classification Scheme: O, B, A, F, G, K, M, (R, N, S) ...]

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Numerical values

Count the number of letters in each word to obtain each digit of the number.  (A ten-letter word represents a zero digit.)

• c = 299792458 m/s   [= Speed of Light = Einstein's Constant]
  - My ingenious astronomy student remembers an easy light mnemonic.
  - We guarantee certainty, clearly referring to this light mnemonic.
   
• e = 2.718281828459045235360287471352662497757247...
  - By omnibus, I traveled to Brooklyn.
  [271828 -- David Mage] 
  - It enables a numskull to memorize a quantity of numerals.
  [2718281828 -- Gene Widhoff] 
  - I'm forming a mnemonic to remember a function in analysis.
  [2718281828 -- Maxey Brooke] 
  - It repeats: A constant of calculus, a constant of calculus.
  [2718281828 -- Jeffrey Strehlow] 
  - To distrupt a playroom is commonly a practice of children.
  [2718281828 -- Joseph J Guiteras] 
  - To express e, remember to memorize a sentence to simplify this.
  [27182818284 -- John L. Greene] 
  - We require a mnemonic to remember e whenever we scribble math texts.
  [271828182845 -- Joona Palaste (of Helsinki; 2004-11-07 e-mail)]
   
• p = 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751...
  - Yes, I have a number.  [31416]
  - How I wish I could calculate Pi nearly right.  [314159265]
  - See, I have a rhyme assisting my feeble brain.  [314159265]
  - May I have a large container of coffee?  Thank you. [3141592653] 
  - Our own update  (2003-11-04)  to a well-known classic:
    [The first two verses are attributed to Sir James Jeans (1877-1946).] 

  How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, After the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics. All of thy geometry, Herr Planck, is fairly hard, And thy calculus may be forever unearthly tough !

  3.1415926 5358979 323846264 33832795

  
  - Cadaeic Cadenza (& comments) by Mike Keith, © 1996.  [3835 digits]

A short poem by Joseph Shipley  (1960):

But a time I spent wandering in bloomy night; Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune. Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite, The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

3.14159265 358979 323846264 3383279

Famous French Poem:  [There are minor variants; this is the nicest we know!]

Que j'aime à faire connaître ce nombre utile aux sages ! Immortel Archimède, artiste, ingénieur, Toi de qui Syracuse loue encore la gloire, Soit ton nom conservé par de savants grimoires.   Jadis, mystérieux, un obstacle existait Pour l'admirable procédé, l'oeuvre grandiose, Que Pythagore découvrit aux anciens Grecs. Ô quadrature !   Vieux tourment du philosophe !   Insoluble rondeur, trop longtemps vous avez Défié Pythagore et ses imitateurs. Comment intégrer l'espace plan circulaire ? Former un triangle auquel il équivaudra ?   Nouvelle invention :   Archimède inscrira Dedans un hexagone; appréciera son aire Fonction du rayon.  Pas trop ne s'y tiendra : Dédoublera chaque élément antérieur ;   Toujours de l'orbe calculée approchera ; Laquelle limite donne l'arc, la longueur De cet inquiétant cercle, ennemi trop rebelle ! Professeur, enseignez son problème avec zèle !

3.1415926535 8979 32384626 43383279   50288 4197169 399375 105820   974944 59230 781640 628620   8998 628034 825342117 0679   821480 8651328 2306647 093844

This gives p (Pi) to 126 decimals (127 digits in 127 words)...

See also...

• Science Jokes > 11. Mnemonics > 11.2 Mathematics  |  11.4 Physics.
• L'univers de p (in French) by Boris Gourévitch.

 

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(2002-10-27) Acronyms
Silly acronyms, or alternate interpretations for established ones.

See also below some acronyms [supposedly] used in computerized conversations and/or Internet posts.  The following ones do not fall into that category:

ACRONYM:  Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning.

BAD:  Broken As Designed.

DAP:  Parents Against Dyslexia [sic].

PCMCIA: People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms. [Glenn Shaw]
(PCMCIA = Personal Computer Memory Card International Association)

TLA: Three-Letter Acronym.

TTP: The TTP Project.  [Engineering classic, submitted by Tony Dercola]
(More precisely, TTP stands for:  The "The TTP Project" Project.  Etc.)