christmas cracker joke

last night was my astronomy department's christmas party (yeah, i know its still november). the tradition in the UK at a christmas dinner is to open a christmas cracker, which looks like a cardboard toilet paper roll wrapped in shiny paper! the cracker makes a loud 'crack' when you open it, and inside you find a paper hat to wear during the meal, a tiny toy you can play with until it inevitably breaks, and a joke or riddle or motto!

i received a joke in my cracker and surprisingly, it was pretty good!


Q: why did the scientist install a knocker on his door?






A: he wanted to win the No-bell prize!

mathematician joke

just to forewarn you, this is a raunchy little joke i recently heard from a mathematician...

what did the constipated mathematician do?


he sharpened his pencil and worked it out!

read previous non-vulgar nerd jokes here and here.

black hole joke

if a black hole got married, would it still be considered a singularity?


i'm a sucker for a good bad nerd joke.

i saw this one somewhere on twitter this week, but i cant remember from whom... sorry.

hoarseness

things that are not fun about losing my voice:

-not being able to answer my phone calls.

-listening to music and trying to sing along every now and then because i forgot... again.

-not being able to call people when i want to... like the doctor's office to make an appointment... or my friend who's supposed to pick me up at the airport.

-not being able to escape the "what was that? i couldnt hear you" joke.

-not being able to call the dog back inside.

snow joke in nottingham

i love the building in the center.


still with the heeled boots, and thinking umbrellas protect from the snow ;)














the invisible man's house...


a snow flap...


the sled riding hill - with a cleared path in the middle in order to safely walk back up the hill!






cyclists are hardcore!








my little snowman in front of ye olde trip to jerusalem - 1189 AD.


when i walked passed a couple hours later, someone had added and very happy little snowman friend!

squeez bacon

i used to say that i was a vegetarian who experienced the occasional pleasure of a good piece of bacon. but this is just wrong.


i hope squeez bacon is a joke, but i cant really tell.

wow.

thanks sara... i think!

family christmas carols

what i miss most while traveling is my family. this holiday season, i won't be home for christmas. while i'm enjoying the discovery of many british christmas staples (i cant believe i'd never heard of christmas crackers!), i'm feeling a bit homesick for all my family traditions.

every year, my dad's side of my family gathers together on christmas day. i have about 35 cousins on that side, so you can imagine the epic size of the event! for as long as i can remember, we have sung christmas carols together at the gigantic gathering on christmas day. in preparation for the singing, an excited energy floats around the room while people refill their bourbon slushies and find their place around the room. one uncle always leads the songs, sometimes unintentionally beginning songs on notes that make certain later notes quite unattainable to average voices! many harmonies are attempted and some are proudly achieved - although some years are definitely better than others!


the infamous song that makes everyone perk up, prepare their ears, and roll their eyes is oh holy night! the several-part harmonies reveal themselves as the family's volume increases excitedly. the voices intensify toward the climax of the song, when my aunts and uncles stand up, comedically reach out their arms, and wail "oh niiiiight diviiii-iiiine!!!!!!" inevitably, there is always an encore of the last verse of this christmas song, because the final crescendo is just so satisfyingly hilarious! at the end of this battered carol, we all smile and clap, and laugh at ourselves once again.

after going thru 20 or 30 carols, the last song we sing is always jingle bells.... dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh.... as soon as this song begins, *santa* appears at the top of the stairs!! while we finish the song, he patiently makes his way to the christmas tree, through the rushing crowd of adoring children and jovial adults. at the end of the song we all cheer for santa and he tells us about his year. he usually adds a bad joke about the reds or the bengals or some other local college sports team. he distributes all the presents, one by one, with the aid of a few lucky little helpers. then we cheer him off again as he returns up the stairs to his sleigh.

when i was young and there were fewer family members, i grew to recognize santa as my uncle, mitch. now, it has become a little game to try to recognize who santa is among all of my too-grown-up boy cousins!

here's one of my favorite old pictures of the events - me, my cabbage patch doll and my mom singing with my cousin, her cabbage patch, and her mom... and the rest of the family!!!


the caroling spectacle was fun as a young child, horribly embarrassing as a teenager, and delightfully wholesome as an adult, because it's so much an endearing part of my family's culture. i will immensely miss the family gathering this year, so maybe i'll sing some carols by myself! happy holidays!

grasshoppers don't like infinity

in my seventh grade math class, i heard my first version of zeno's paradox in the form of a thirsty grasshopper. a tired grasshopper wants to drink water that is some distance away. he can only jump half the distance to the water, because he is tired. but he is even more exhausted after the first jump and can only jump half of the remaining distance the next time, then half of that distance the next jump, then half, etc... will the thirsty grasshopper ever reach the water?

my answer was no.

but what about when it comes to mathematicians and beer?


haha! more dork jokes here.

joke found thru talk like a physicist.

sunday at shelly beach

the forecast called for rain, and how wonderfully wrong they were.

the morning looked a bit cloudy in my neighborhood, but i decided to grab a ferry for the coast anyway.

there was a volleyball tournament on the beach!

after a tasty brazilian feijoada for lunch, we decided to walk to that little beach off in the distance.

we spotted a big lizard along the way...

almost at shelly beach!

ahhh...

one thing i like about australia is that matters are not complicated by subtlety or suggestion. no, they are presented in an upfront and honest manner. for instance, when i first heard of shelly beach, my passing thought was that maybe it was named after a historic person named shelly who lived in the area and achieved something special.

and then i visited the beach today. as i walked into the water, i realized my feet were becoming quite sensitive because the sand went from very small granules to increasingly larger chunks of broken shells. i thought to myself "wow, there are a lot of shells here! oh right, shelly beach is... shelly!"

(shells photo credit: amanda gilligan)

when i lived in england, i felt like there was always some deeper, hidden, clever meaning to everything and i was constantly on the look out so as not to miss the subtle joke. the british take great pride in their humour, even moreso when people "dont get it." actually, i just found this quote about the english and their use of understatement from the "Humour Rules" chapter of Watching The English, by Kate Fox, which explains it all very well.

anyway, in australia, understatement is not commonplace. they call it like it is. shelly beach has a lot of shells. es ist wie es ist.

i like not feeling as though i'm always missing something!

i think youre doing it wrong

not dirty space news, but a funny knob-related joke that involves the infamous vuvuzela!


from cyanide & happiness.

doctor of astrophysiology?

without a doubt, the best graduation present i received is a handmade creation from my aunt - my godmother - the one who inspired my interest to travel - the woman i've looked up to my entire life. the week before my ohio graduation party, we talked on the phone for a couple hours and she told me she was making me a present, but i had no idea how awesome it would be!! just look for yourself...


she painted the galaxy and the background, then attached everything else. the tent flaps are attached with velcro and open to reveal a detailed backpack! interactive art! she gave me this present at the party, where i felt completely amazed and thrilled!

there's a strand of beads dangling from the top that reads:



"dr amanda bauer phd astrophysiology"

i said... huh? what? oh, no! haha!!!

see, my aunt is a wonderful writer and an english teacher, and we've always laughed and teased each other about the imperfections of our lives.

she looked surprised and asked "what, i didnt spell it wrong, did i? i looked it up in the dictionary!"

i asked, "what did it say astrophysiology means??"

"oh, i don't know, i didn't read that far!"

hilarious! the english teacher. an instant joke forever and ever! if anyone can give me a good definition of astrophysiology that doesnt already exist under some other common title, please let me know, i'm interested.

many, many people erroneously call me an astrologer... a mistake i happily correct, remembering the day long ago when i made myself remember, "astronomy is the science. astrology is not."

sometimes clever people jokingly ask me about the progress of my cosmetology degree. i recommend this humorous post at deepastronomy.com on cosmology for cosmetologists, if you have the time.

during that conversation on the phone with my aunt, she referred to my "astrophysics" degree twice, and then near the end she mentioned my study of "astrophysiology." i was quietly amused because no one had ever called me that before! i just let it slide thinking, "she got it right twice, she knows what she's talking about!"

silly doctor. assumptions are for amateurs.

this painting will definitely be hanging in my office at my new job! i love it.

where is Arp 220?

while peculiar galaxies might not seem as symmetrically pleasing as their spiral counterparts, the events creating their odd structures are quite exciting! the galaxy, arp 220 (the 220th object in halton arp's atlas of peculiar galaxies), represents a well-studied, relatively nearby (250 million light-years away) galaxy, that doesnt appear typical at all!


the hubble space telescope image above shows the optical view of a mashed-up, non-symmetric mess! arp 220 appears as one object, but as you can infer from the wisps of faint starlight curling around the outskirts of the galaxy, something unusual is occurring!

arp 220 is also the brightest object in the local universe, as it shines extremely brightly at both x-ray and infrared wavelengths. here is an image of arp 220 in the infrared, where it radiates 90 percent of its energy, making it a classic example of an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG = "you-lerg"):


so what explains all these crazy characteristics of arp 220? this peculiar galaxy is the result of two separate spiral galaxies colliding together to become one! the wispy tidal tails seen in the optical image are the result of some stars and gas getting flung out of each galaxy during their initial close encounters. other chunks of gas and dust get concentrated into dense clumps during the entire merger process, seen shining brightly in the infrared image. these dense regions of gas, cool enough to form stars - lots of stars! the newly-formed stars shine very brightly, but enough dust surrounds the star-forming gas clouds that the dust absorbs huge amounts of the stellar light and heats up! the dust naturally wants to cool off and does so by releasing light energy in the infrared... thus, we see arp 220 shining very brightly in infrared observations!

at its current rate of star formation, arp 220 will shine brightly in the infrared for about the next 40 million years! this sounds like a long time to our human scales, but its not that long, astronomically speaking. after 40 million years, nearly all the gas in arp 220 will have condensed into shining stars and the resulting galaxy should eventually look like a regular elliptical galaxy.

although arp 220 lives pretty close to our milky way galaxy, it represents potential to study what may have happened to the earliest galaxies that formed in our universe, since early galaxies experienced interactions and mergers with surrounding galaxies quite often!

my fellow graduate students and i used to joke about arp 220 because it seemed to be a favorite galaxy of a particular professor of ours. every time any of us presented results on any aspect of galaxies evolving, this professor would ask "and how would arp 220 fit in with your scenario?" or "where does arp 220 lie in that plot?" he was so predictable with these questions, that we all learned to expect them and prepared ourselves, and each other, for his inevitable comments.

even though we joked about his insistence with this particular galaxy, he taught me a good lesson about the universe - when trying to understand how things occur very far away and long, long ago, its good to take examples of local, well-studied galaxies to see if they can be explained by your new theories. if arp 220, or the milky way, or andromeda, or the magellanic clouds cannot be explained to some degree by your theory, then some aspect of it is not sufficiently comprehensive in its current form.

ironically, i now find that i ask myself quite regularly - "where would arp 220 be in that plot?" and the thought experiment often proves to be useful!

eight anecdotes

i was tagged by PZ myers.

The Rules:

1. You have to post these rules before you give you the facts.

2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

1. when i was 15 i went to south korea for one month to visit my aunt amy who was living there and teaching english. i enjoyed helping her out with some of her classes and taught a group of young students an origami fortune teller game that i enjoyed playing with my friends. i slowly explained how to cut the piece of paper into a perfect square, then fold the paper in half to make a crease in the center, then unfold it, etc... after the next fold, a boy came up to me and excitedly said "teacher, teacher, i know, i know!" i was a bit confused but said "good! do it!" he went back to his desk and furiously folded while i went back to instructing the class. eventually, i showed the kids where to write the numbers and where to add little statements and fortunes like "you are nice," "i like you," "you will be rich." i showed the kids how to play the game, but it proved to be very anti-climactic as they didnt really seem to get it, but kept wanting me to go through the game so they could choose numbers over and over. as i was demonstrating how to play the game, the excited kid came back to me, said "see?" and handed me the most intricate origami bird that i had ever seen!!! wow!! i was amazed, and told him it was beautiful. then i felt completely embarrassed as i showed him the simple little game i had originally intended for him to make and read the fortune to his confused countenance "you will have many friends"!! easily outdone by a six year old!

2. one morning a couple years ago, my ringing phone woke me up. i saw that it was my sister's number so i answered... i strained to hear the little tiny voice on the other end saying "hello auntie manda!" it was my 3 year old nephew, keldan... i instantly smiled and relaxed into a waking state. he immediately asked "what's a telescope?" how freakin cute! he and i had talked about his binoculars during my last trip home so i described a telescope as big binoculars with a place for only one eye to look through at a time. you use telescopes to look at things in the sky at night. he told me that with his "bindahkoolars," he looks at "far away things" like birds and squirrels. i said that i use my telescope to look at far away planets and stars in the sky. he said that he always sees "two stars in the sky and a lot more." i told him that he could use his binoculars to look at the moon and he'll see dark spots and bright spots which are mountains on the moon. he yelled "WOW!! papa, there are mountains on the moon!!!" he was so excited.... i couldnt stop grinning. what a great way to wake up!

3. i have 51 first cousins. i'm grandkid #2 on my mom's side and #6 on my dad's so i've always had tons of little kids running around at family gatherings and i quickly became an experienced babysitter! on my dad's side, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren have finally started to overlap, but surprisingly late since the first cousin to have a child was 31 years old at the time. i cannot imagine the potential craziness of either family had my generation reproduced at the rate of my parent's generation!!

4. my family likes to sing together. for as long as i can remember at the gigantic gathering on christmas day, we have sung christmas carols. this tradition goes so far that there are packets with lyrics to over 50 songs that are distributed among the masses while everyone fills up their cup and takes their place in preparation for the event. this was terribly embarrassing to admit to people as a kid, but now it's so much an endearing part of my family's culture that i really miss it when i can't make it home for christmas. the last song we sing is always jingle bells. as soon as this song begins, santa appears at the top of the stairs and makes his thru the crowd of adoring youth and jovial adults towards the christmas tree. at the end of the song we all cheer for santa and he tells us about his year and usually adds a bad joke. he distributes all the presents with the aid of a few lucky little helpers and then we cheer him off again as he returns up the stairs to his sleigh. so very quaint! the infamous song that makes everyone perk up, prepare their ears and roll their eyes is oh holy night! the harmonies reveal themselves as the volume increases. the voices intensify toward the climax of this song when aunts and uncle stand up, reach out their arms to wail "oh niiiiight diviiii-iiiine!!!!!!" inevitably, there is always an encore of the last verse and on a good year, we all smile and laugh and clap at our accomplishment.

i'm a bit hesitant to reveal this evidence to the world, but here goes...


(last year's performance was admittedly not so enthusiastic, and the harmony levels were a bit low (due to my father's absence i think) but it's the only video of the event i've ever seen!)

5. i sang in a band for a few years as an undergraduate in cincinnati. i not-so-jokingly asked myself many times whether i should be a rockstar or an astrophysicist?

6. i've always been a cat person. i'm not anti-dog or anything, i've just never had a dog or even lived with a dog. when i was young i got a kitten and named it "sock". unfortunately, the kitten died, but i liked it so much that i named the next kitten "two socks". my other favorite cat name was "roxanne cruella deville bauer" or "roxie" for short!

7. i had no patience yesterday, so you can read about my crazy dream thing here.

8. in one year i will graduate with a PhD in astrophysics and i have absolutely no idea where the universe will send me upon completion. it's a bit scary to realize that i will exit the "professional student" status that i've held onto without a single break from school since i started! but i admit that i'm really ready to not be a graduate student anymore! so other than the typical research/academic post-doc positions that i will apply for, anyone have interesting leads to jobs involving science writing and/or bringing science and astronomy to the masses?

this was fun, so i'll ask these folks to participate:
operation bumblebee
fraser cain
skepchick
the bad astronomer
holly mazurka
lab lemming
blissfork
agujeros temporales