2008.02.14
Joke email from a colleague --
A Physicist On Valentine's Day
Every Friday after work, a physicist goes into a bar, sits in the
second-to-last seat, turns to the last seat, which is empty, and asks a
girl, who isn't there, if he can buy her a drink. The owner, who is used
to the weird local university types, always shrugs but keeps
quiet. But when Valentine's Day arrives, and the physicist
makes a particularly heart-wrenching plea into empty space,
curiosity gets the better of him, and he says, "I apologize
for my stupid question, but surely you know there is NEVER a
woman sitting in that last stool, man. Why do you persist in
offering a drink to an empty space?"
The physicist replies, "Well, according to quantum physics,
empty space is never truly empty. Virtual particles come
into existence and vanish all the time. You never know when
the proper wave function will collapse and a girl might
suddenly appear there."
The owner raises his eyebrows. "Really? Interesting. But
couldn't you just ask one of the girls who comes here every
Friday if you could buy HER a drink? Never know -- she might
say yes."
The physicist laughs. "Yeah, right. How likely is THAT to
happen?"
2008.02.09
I should mention something about Bobby Knight's retirement from coaching --
NYT:
Knight's Greatest Hits.
> Good riddance!
Another reason to be glad I pay for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal --
WSJ (subscription):
For Vietnamese, The Year of the Rat Starts With
Lunch.
"Rat may taste like chicken, but with a tiny rat
drumstick between your fingers, it's hard to
pretend it really is." ...
"And despite a 1998 government ban on cat
consumption enacted to control the rat population,
felines are also sometimes eaten at some
restaurants; on menus, they appear as ‘little
tiger.’"
