Humor

One of my favorite lines from The Big Bang Theory. Doonidesigns at Zazzle.

What is in a name? Juliet, you may have a point - a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,Retain that dear perfection which he owesWithout that title. Two very different items - exoplanets and fruit flies - are the subject of no small (or large) naming controversy. Before you say, "What does it matter what they're called?" - which is what I initially said - read on. Flies of Fruit1 Ah, scientific humor. Nothing tickles the funny bone of a geeky lab rat more than giving a model organism a hilarious and apropos name. Consider the following names…

In a religious quandary? Don't know which traditional/cult/New Age group to join? Fear not, the Holy Taco has worked it out for you. Simply follow the flow chart to your transcendental bliss: The only problem: I don't see the Flying Spaghetti Monster on the chart.

If you lived in 1844 and were a follower of American Baptist preacher William Miller, today would forever be marked as "The Great Disappointment." The world was expected to come to an end on this date. Guess they hadn't heard of the Mayan calendar. Most Millerites gave up on him after TGD, but descendants are still around - you know them as Seventh Day Adventists. In celebration of today's historic disappointment, the likes of which required capitalization, I give you Toothpaste For Dinner.

Can I make a nomination for this year's tiredest news metaphor? Goldman Sachs as a giant vampire squid. I am still getting "squid" news hits about banking. BORING! Today's was the most disappointing headline yet: Let's milk the squid, not murder it! At first I thought it was going to be a delightful biological joke, like milking whales in the fjords. It would have to be even more creative, because whales do legitimately have milk. What useful substance can you extract from a squid (besides calamari)? Of course, as I imagined the fabulous joke article that never was, the answer came…

www.physlink.com/fun has some great science humor. Check out this poem below by a neurobiologist making fun of physicists: (Cartoons Courtesy of www.physlink.com/fun) The Fate of the Universealso from www.physlink.com/fun a poem by Leslie C. McKinney, Ph.D You physicists have become annoyingYou can't seem to make up your mindsDid everything come from nothingOr was nothing all there was to find? What was that first singularityAnd what made it start to inflate?You say a vacuum is not really emptyAs long as energy potentiates? At time zero there was zero spaceBut fluctuation took care of…

As posted on Indexed. P.S. Suck it, biatch.

H/T to Toothpaste for Dinner.

While nations were icing their bruises this weekend after dueling for the 2016 Olympics, MIT hosted its own flock of the world’s best at the 19th annual Ig Nobel Awards Informal Lectures. Bestowed on “achievements that first make people laugh, then make them think,” the Ig Nobels go out to those like this year’s biology prize co-winner, Fumiaki Taguchi, for his team’s demonstration that panda poop bacteria can reduce the mass of kitchen refuse by 90 percent — not to mention produce enough hydrogen to power 1 million hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for 137 days. In a lecture hall filled with…

What kind of science is involved in comics? My guess is comics involve social sciences. The characters minds and behaviors are psychological sciences. The creator of the comics is involved in the science of humor and I am studying these topics in "Science in Comics".