A number of jokes of number

Paul Renteln, Alan Dundes and the American Mathematical Society (AMS) have done either a service or a disservice to the mathematical community. Renteln and Dundes’s compilation of old math jokes has been published in the Notices of the AMS, volume 52, no. 1. (Thanks to Tom Roberts for bringing this to our attention.)

Boxing chickens, too

Our mentions of boxing rats and cats and flies did not exhaust the list of ring-eligible contenders. There is a plan to equip chickens with boxing gloves. The Associated Press reports that Oklahoma state senator Frank Shurden is a strong supporter of the plan.

School name-calling

In the quest for excellence, some schools craft their own, specially excellent slogan or motto. Ball State University, in Muncie, Indiana, has the motto: "Powerful Resources, Personal Learning, Everything You Need." This seven-word elegiac poem was born in an intensive research and development programme…. So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian

Country Music/Suicide Lecture

James Gundlach, professor of sociology and co-winner of the 2004 Ig-Nobel Prize for Medicine, presents ?Research Enters the Culture Wars: The Effects of Country Music and Abortion on Suicide? Wednesday, January 26 at noon in Foy Room 213 at Auburn University. (This news comes from a report in the January 20, 2005 issue of The […]

Library shushing

"Foul-Mouthed Patron Drops Lawsuit" is the headline in a recent report in the journal American Libraries. The report begins: A patron who sued the Ann Arbor (Mich.) District Library after being banned for using obscene language has dropped his federal lawsuit. In a December 6 letter to U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh, author Fredric […]

Good hair at Kokomo and ASU

Two reptile ecological physiologists — Michael Finkler and Emily Taylor — have joined the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. Finkler is at  Indiana University Kokomo. Taylor is at Arizona State University. Both institutions are (or soon will be) renowned for their abundance of luxuriantly-flowing-haired researchers.