Humour

I occasionally do weird things. In the fullness of time, weird things I've done and put up on older websites will be migrated here. Because of the rather significant amount of humour here, it has historically been split up. The random leftovers follow. More examples of me running amok may be found on my former group's Photo Gallery A: "Humour" webpage.

MRIs of my Brain

I had an MRI done on my brain in June 1999, to prove that it was, in fact, there. Several people commented that the fact that I had this done proves the opposite. They're just jealous.

A follow-up scan in January 2002 also came up positive, confirming the original diagnosis: I still had a brain. This time, I got the original image files, or JPEG versions thereof (74 slices in total), making this addition to the webpage a great deal more convenient. Have you ever tried to scan or photograph an MRI film? It's jolly tricky!

I combined the abovementioned jpegs into animated gifs of my brain. Because of the size of the resulting files (they total 2MB), I put them on their own webpage. Analogous amalgamations of the later scans joined them.

In April 2003, I got another scan, this one while in the midst of marking Physics 352 lab exams. Yes, this is my brain on marking. And yes, these are the original images from the scan. The radiologist apparently spent several minutes staring at these scans the following morning, wondering what on earth she was looking at. Sadly, I finished marking, my brain returned to normal, and the radiologist did not get a new disease named after her, which was thus never turned into a Broadway musical. The supermarket tabloids did not notice the story -- that could potentially have incited a pitchfork-wielding mob to hunt me down. And that could have been bad.

Mmmm... Brains...

Public Transportation of Cryogenic Liquids

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you took a styrofoam cup full of liquid nitrogen on board a bus? Here's your answer:

Driver: "You need a lid with that."

Driver: "You need a lid with that."

<I look around, there are no lids handy.>

Driver: "You need a lid with that."

<Nitrogen casually flung out door, onto sidewalk. Loud sizzling noise, with expanding disc of fog>

Driver: "What the hell IS that?"

Me: "Liquid nitrogen."

Driver: "You definitely need a lid with that."

Me: "If I put a lid on it, it would just blow it right off."

Driver: "Oh, yeah, it is kinda bubbling."

You may also wonder what would happen if liquid nitrogen were used to blow up a film canister inside a jury room, if the aforementioned nitrogen were to actually make it onto the bus unhindered. Nothing much would happen. Turns out the rooms are pretty effectively soundproofed, which is probably a good thing. Although it would make things less interesting. Theoretically...

Marking

While enjoying the delightful drudgery of marking, I find the monotony broken from time to time by unintended gems. Some may require a bit of a basic physics background to be appreciated. All appear here well after the term in question is over, and I have no intention of identifying the students (I tend not to record that information in the first place, and wouldn't consider putting it on my webpage). Spelling mistakes are theirs, not mine.

    • "Our first meathod was a little bit scewed with a bit of a range simply because the class's measurements were a little different from others way of measuring. Different decimal places were used."

      • -Phys 101 student, fall 2000, grappling with error analysis.

    • "Before the bubble bursts, the color at the top of the bubble become colorless. It is due to gravity forcing the fringes to go downward, the bubble breaks because there's no fringes at the top to support the bubble."

      • -Phys 101 student, fall 2000, on the mass and structural importance of visible-light interference fringes.

    • "The result of our experiment was quite close to the theological value."

      • -Phys 101 student, fall 2000, on the apparent agreement between experiment and theology.

    • Phys 352 manual, "Lumped Constant Transmission Line", Spring 2001: "How should the capacitors on the end of the line be treated?" Phys 352 student: "The capacitors on the end of the line should be treated with compassion and caring as they only have 1 nearby friend and all the other capacitors have 2."

    • "Using equations derived by others with methods unknown to us, we were able to calculate with our data that Boltzmann's constant is actually 30 times smaller than the widely circulated value of 1.38×10-23 J/K."

      • -P352 student, fall 2001, on the lab manual and fundamental constants.

    • "The magnetization of the rotor is “N” obtained by a compas."

      • -P352 student, fall 2001, on magnetic monopoles in the gyroscope lab.

    • "The error on these points seams quite large, but large error seams to be a reaccurring theme so I guess I'll just have to live with it."

      • -P352 student, spring 2002.

    • "The slope of the graph should be exponential (T4)."

      • -P102 student, spring 2003.

    • "DMM reads Peak to Peak RMS voltage."

      • -P352 student, fall 2003.

Poetry

I've been known to submit poems to Poetry.com. If you do this, it doesn't matter how horrible the poem is, they'll enter you in a contest, flatter your skills shamelessly, and offer you a rare opportunity to blow about $70-90 on a book containing your poem and other mindless drivel by fourth-rate poets. You can also buy your poem on paper, in a frame, on a shirt, mug, audio tape, greeting card, apron, etc. If you're actually serious about your poetry, I'd reccommend not entering. The site is designed to take advantage of your delusions of grandeur. I think at least one of my postal addresses is now on their black list. One poem I entered was taken down, and when I re-entered it, it didn't last long:

If

Then.

Another marginally longer poem met a similar fate. Only two of my poems associated with that address were ever published:

Reverse

Mug spelled backwards is gum,

And mud spelled backwards is dum,

But prey spelled backwards is yerp

And prune spelled backwards is enurp.

Late

The bus is late,

I'll have to wait.

Great! Just great!

The bus is late.

Some phrases they used to flatter me for Late were "unique talent," "special talent" and "poetic artistry." For Reverse, they referred to my "unique talent and artistic vision," "special talent," "artistry," "exceptional," and "unique perspective and your artistic vision." You be the judge. Sadly, several of my published poems have been removed from their website, most likely due to age. Other deep, thought-provoking poems I've had published, dealing with such issues as flooral relativism and the environment, include:

(Note: A UK-based knock-off, Noble House, solicited and published Paint. They don't operate on the same scale, yet.)

Carving Turnips

These are Turnip O' Lanterns. Turnips are somewhat more tricky to carve than are pumpkins, as pumpkins are inherently hollow, and somewhat soft besides. Turnips, of course, are neither. Turnip-carving is definitely something you should not attempt unless you are fairly adult-ish, non-clumsy, and are using a great deal of caution. Please try to aim the knife away from you, so that you don't inadvertently kill yourself. That would be bad, and might make you upset with me. I'd also recommend not burning a candle in one of these indoors. That really stinks. My parents like the taste of turnip, but they couldn't stand the stench of burning turnip. I assure you, this is a far better use of turnips than actually eating the wretched things.

After carving complicated faces into small turnips (which, in case I didn't emphasize this enough earlier, are extremely solid and not conducive to this), pumpkins are completely unchallenging. I understand peppers are also quite nice, and look spectacular with a candle inside, but they're presumably even easier than pumpkins.