Thinkers Anonymous It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker. I began to think alone "to relax," I told myself but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time. That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's. I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself. I began to avoid friends at lunch time so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?" One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job." This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking ..." "I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!" "But Honey, surely it's not that serious." "It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!" "That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door. I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors... They didn't open. The library was closed. To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. As I sank to the ground, clawing at the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye. "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked. You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker. I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was "Porky's." Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed ... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking. I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me. [Author unknown: cited in various websites. Brought to our attention by SC member]

Q:  Why did the chicken cross the road? A:  To show the opossum it could be done.

"Always remember, you're unique, just like everyone else." Michael Ludwig Spittel, University of Wisconsin Department of Sociology/Rural Sociology

YOU JUST MIGHT BE A GRAD STUDENT IF: Your cubicle is better decorated than your apartment. You have ever, as a folklore project, attempted to track the progress of your own joke across the Internet. You have ever brought a scholarly article to a bar. Everything reminds you of something in your discipline. You have ever discussed academic matters at a sporting event. You look forward to summers because you're more productive without the distraction of classes. You find the bibliographies of books more interesting than the actual text. You have given up trying to keep your books organized and are now just trying to keep them all in the same general area. You have accepted guilt as an inherent feature of relaxation. You reflexively start analyzing those Greek letters before you realize that it's a sorority sweatshirt, not an equation. You find yourself explaining to children that you are in "20th grade". You start referring to stories like "Snow White et al." You frequently wonder how long you can live on pasta without getting scurvy. You look forward to taking some time off to do laundry. You wonder if APA style rules allow you to cite talking to yourself as "personal communication". Credited to Aaron Pitluck 30/1/97

Psychiatrist to his nurse: "Just say we're very busy. Don't keep saying 'It's a madhouse.'"

A young physicist, upon learning that he was denied tenure after six productive years at a University in San Francisco, requested a meeting with the Provost for an explanation, and a possible appeal. At the meeting, the Provost told the young physicist, "I'm sorry to tell you that the needs of the University have shifted somewhat during the past six years leading up to your tenure decision. In point of fact, what we now require is a female, condensed-matter experimentalist. Unfortunately, you are a male, high-energy theorist!" Dejected but not defeated, the young physicist thought for a moment about the implications of the Provost's words. "Sir," he said, "I would be willing to convert in two of the three categories you mention, but ... I'll never agree to become an experimentalist!"

A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on a photo-safari in Africa. They drive out into the savannah in their jeep, stop and scour the horizon with their binoculars. The biologist: "Look! There's a herd of zebras! And there, in the middle: a white zebra! It's fantastic! There are albino zebras! We can publish this!" The statistician: "It's not significant. We only know there's one white zebra." The mathematician: "Actually, we know there exists a zebra which is white on one side." The computer scientist: "Oh no! A special case!"

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." attributed to Groucho Marx

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field." - Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962)

"Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." -- Football commentator and former player Joe Theisman.

"It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry." — H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Susan Landau: "There's a touch of the priesthood in the academic world, a sense that a scholar should not be distracted by the mundane tasks of day-to-day living. I used to have great stretches of time to work. Now I have research thoughts while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Sure it's impossible to write down ideas while reading Curious George to a two-year-old. On the other hand, as my husband was leaving graduate school for his first job, his thesis advisor told him, 'You may wonder how a professor gets any research done when one has to teach, advise students, serve on committees, referee papers, write letters of recommendation, interview prospective faculty. Well, I take long showers.' In Her Own Words: Six Mathematicians Comment on Their Lives and Careers Notices of the AMS, V. 38, no. 7 (September 1991), p. 704

I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx

"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls." -- Matt Cartmill

I got drunk at math club last night, but fortunately there was a designated deriver. From: "Buffalo Chilkat" (mammal#NoSpam.watering.hole)

A promising PhD candidate was presenting his thesis at his final examination. He proceeded with a derivation and ended up with something like: F = -MA He was embarrassed, his supervising professor was embarrassed, and the rest of the committee was embarrassed. The student coughed nervously and said "I seem to have made a slight error back there somewhere." One of the mathematicians on the committee replied dryly, "Either that or an odd number of them."

"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury." — Groucho Marx

Higgledy piggledy Herr Werner Heisenberg Said "Now Your Honour it just isn't fair, That I was speeding is unascertainable, Or if I was, then I can't have been there!" [This old verse was recalled by a SciCon member.]

Q:   Divide 14 sugar cubes into 3 cups of coffee so that each cup has an odd number of sugar cubes. A:   1, 1, 12 Riposte:   12 isn't odd! A:   It's an odd number of cubes to put in a cup of coffee!

"I learnt very quickly that the only reason that would be accepted for not attending a committee meeting was that one already had a previous commitment to attend a meeting of another organization on the same day. I therefore invented a society, the Orion Society, a highly secret and very exclusive society that spawned a multitude of committees, subcommittees , working parties, evaluation groups and so on that, regrettably, had a prior claim on my attention. Soon people wanted to learn more about this club and some even decided that they would like to join. However, it was always made clear to them that applications were never entertained and that if they were deemed to qualify for membership they would be discreetly approached at the appropriate time." - Sydney Brenner (South African/British molecular biologist, 1927-...) in Loose Ends From Current Biology (1997)

A Short History of Medicine: "I have an earache." 2000 B.C. Here, eat this root. 1000 A.D. That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer. 1850 A.D. That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion. 1940 A.D. That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill. 1985 A.D. That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic. 2000 A.D. That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.

Something tells me that no matter how good a series of experiments on reproductive technologies, the paper written about the work will never be described as seminal.

Three men are waiting to be hung: a priest, a lawyer and an engineer. The priest steps up. He is asked, "Father, any last words before you die?" "No, my son," he says. His head goes in the noose, and the hangman pulls, but the equipment fails. "God's Almighty Grace!" cries the crowd. And he is saved. The lawyer steps up and is asked "Any last words?" "No, let's just be done with it," he says. The hangman pulls and nothing happens. "Another sign from GOD!" the crowd exclaims. Both men are released into a welcoming crowd. The engineer steps up and is asked, "Any final words to say?" "Well, as a matter of fact," he says, "the reason it's not working is that that bolt up there is ..."

Astronomer #1: .... so anyway, the cop pulls me over and asks if I realized that I had just run a red light. So I said that I did not see the light as being red, because it must have blue-shifted as I was approaching it. Astronomer #2: And he let you go? Astronomer #1: No. He gave me a speeding ticket instead.

A guy walks into a podiatrist's office and says, "Doc, you gotta help me! I think I'm a moth!" The doctor says, "You don't need a podiatrist. You need a psychiatrist. What did you come in here for?" The guy says, "Well, your light was on..." (Tim Myers, Grand Rapids, Michigan)

A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning at the third tee (par 3, 285 yards, slight dog-leg to the left, water hazard on the right), while a particularly slow group of golfers were flailing away ahead of them. Engineer: "What's with these guys? We've been waiting for 15 minutes!" Doctor: "I don't know, but I've never seen such ineptitude!" Engineer: "Hey, here comes the greenskeeper. Let's have a word with him." Priest: "Hi George. Say George, what's with the group ahead of us? They're rather slow aren't they?" George: "Oh yes, that's a group of blind fire fighters. They lost their sight while saving our clubhouse last year, so we let them play here any time, free of charge!" Doctor: "Wow! Thanks for the scoop, George." Priest: "That's so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight." Doctor: "Good idea. And I'm going to contact my opthalmalogist buddy to see if there's anything he can do for them." After a short pause... Engineer: "Why can't these guys play at night?"

Q. Can free radicals be isolated under ordinary laboratory conditions? A. NO.

A physicist and a mathematician are in the faculty lounge having a cup of coffee when, for no apparent reason, the coffee machine bursts into flames. The physicist rushes over to the wall, grabs a fire extinguisher, and fights the fire successfully. The same time next week, the same pair are there drinking coffee and talking shop when the new coffee machine goes on fire. The mathematician stands up, fetches the fire extinguisher, and hands it to the physicist, thereby reducing the problem to one already solved...

Two guys in prison talking: "I still don't understand how they found out it was you. All they knew was that the guy was an amateur astronomer?" "The interrogator started talking about how he bought this great department store scope that could go up to 800x...."

Q: How do you know when an engineer is flirting with you? A: He stares at your shoes.

From: snispilbor#NoSpam.yahoo.com (Snis Pilbor) Q: What is the physicist's definition of a vector space? A: A set V satisfying the axiom that for any x in V, x has a little arrow drawn over it.

Q: How many economists does it take to change a light bulb? A: None. The market will take care of it. Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? A: One - but it has to want to change.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary addition and those who don't.

The head of our department was a professor who liked his titles very much. The name tag on his office door read "professor PhD engineer xxx, director of the laboratories of petrochemical engineering". And he always introduced himself as "professor, PhD engineer xxx". He used to work in the industry and was still very keen on "shaking hands", as he called it, with people from the industry (no doubt to get research funds). One fine day, we had a plant visit and we drove there by bus (our whole chemical engineering group was about 7 people, so we had a mini-bus) but the professor came directly from his home. We were there first and were introduced to some people, then they offered us a drink, while waiting for our professor to arrive. About fifteen minutes later, he arrived, looked around the room and went to the first person he saw and didn't recognize as one of his students or assistants, shaking hands and introducing himself in his familiar way. We all turned our heads to hear the reply: "Nice to meet you, I'm Jeff, the bus driver."

From: The Sanity Inspector I've just developed a proof that demonstrates that, where n>2, the equation an+bn =cn cannot be solved with integers. Unfortunately, my train is coming. -- Graffito in subway station

From: "George Maxwell" on http://www.xs4all.nl/~jcdverha/scijokes/ A great way of getting through boring practicals: We squirted acetone on the backs of our hands, and brushed them against a lit bunsen. The acetone lit up impressively and burned for about twenty seconds, but because it evaporates as it gets warm, our hands remained intact. This was a particularly popular trick when visiting parents or prospective students were visiting (complete with hysterical screaming and panic).

The Science Behind a Wildlife Biologist's Pay The "Salary Theorem" states that "Wildlife Biologists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people." This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates: 1. Knowledge is Power. 2. Time is Money. Now, recall from physics class: Power = Work / Time. Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, then Knowledge = Work/Money. Solving for Money, we get: Money = Work / Knowledge. Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done. Conclusion: The less you know, the more you make. from http://home.comcast.net/~wildlifebio/Jokes.htm

From: alohacyberian@att.net The larger the sample size (n) the more confident you can be that your sample mean is a good representation of the population mean. In other words, the "n" justifies the means.

The Harvard Law Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure, temperature, light, humidity, and other variables, the organism will do as it damn well pleases.

A little neurological put down: You've only got two neurons--and one of them's inhibitory.

A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician are sitting at the window of a restaurant looking at a building that they believe to be empty. They see two people enter the building. A while later they see three people leave the building. Here are their ensuing remarks: Biologist: "They must have reproduced." Physicist: "There must have been a measurement error." Mathematician: "If one more person goes into the building, it will be empty."

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a pub. One says, "I think I've lost an electron." The other says "Are you sure?" The first says, "Yes, I'm positive..."

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