DinkZone

One of the ways I waste time is by answering questions for the Internet Oracle. I haven’t had as much time to spend there lately as I used to (thanks to another semester-from-hell), but today I got a typically geeky question — containing a math joke and a scatological reference.

Here’s the question and my reply:

Do Australian math nerds snicker when they hear
the term that means inverse of an exponent?

"Turn in your books to page
106, class.  Today, we'll talk
about horizontal asymptotes."

                               Huh-huh...she said "ass"...

"Consider the demand function,
p = f(q),"

                               Huh-huh...she said "pee"...

"where p equals e to the
negative 4 q."

                               Huh-huh...she said "fork
                               you"...

"Now, if we take the natural
log of both sides,"

                               Wow, she's got nice boobs.

"we get q = vagina ln farty-
fart poop over wang squared."

                               Wait, did she say "log" a
                               moment ago?

This just totally made my day. :)

From today’s New York Times (probably soon to be now non-free): Apple’s latest software update to the iPhone appears to do nothing except to brick phones that Apple thinks were altered. Elsewhere on their site, they wrote,

Apple stands to receive several hundred dollars for each phone over the course of two years from AT&T’s service fees. Some people—actually a lot of people—don’t much like AT&T. Or they don’t want to pay AT&T’s roaming fees overseas and would rather use a local cellular company. And these people will always be looking for ways to defeat Apple’s locking system. [...] But this gets at Apple’s propensity for control.

Apple’s solution to those whose phones were bricked? According to Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock, “they should purchase a new iPhone.”

Over a year ago, I wrote about my displeasure with Apple over their marriage to Intel and their relentless promotion of iTunes even to the point of disregarding their members’ privacy. For me, this is yet another nail in their coffin. From last month’s non-rebate-rebate to this, Apple is alienating the tech-savvy market that sustains them.

I’m crossing my fingers in hopes that a platform like OpenMoko will bust out soon.

Part of my duties for this semester—and a part that I’ve tried to avoid over the years—includes working with a course that has what our department calls an “emporium component”.

That euphemism means that a portion of the course is delivered online using a home-grown system that, in ten years of operation, has never undergone an external review. The department calls it “exciting” and “bold”; then again, making a dookie on the drillfield would also be exciting and bold.

Anyway, one of the dubious joys this course brings me is having to answer questions from students like “I answered 1/8 but got the question wrong. Can you help me understand what my mistake was? I’ve attached a screenshot…”

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation is just as cringe-worthy as you might imagine.

After a recent press conference, former Virginia Tech student Michael Vick left behind these notes, in which he apologized to the “comissioner”, who was “dissapointed” over his “mistaks” and his error in “judement”.

At Virginia Tech, eh, that’s about a “B”.

As of today, I own my car. Paid off the loan completely, finito.

State Department official Randall Tobias resigns abruptly after being caught hiring “escorts” for “massages”.

One of the themes in the tributes to the students who were killed at Virginia Tech on Monday is how vibrant, intelligent, and creative they were. Just so Virginia Tech’s reputation isn’t too embellished by this, I thought I’d show you this display on the second floor of McBryde Hall, sponsored by Gamma Beta What:

Here’s the whole display (click the thumbnails to view full-size). See if you can spot what’s wrong with this picture.

Click “read more” if you need a hint.

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