Professor Hands Out "Erase Undesirable Data Points" Coupons To PhD Students

TIJUANA- Obtaining a PhD in the life sciences now routinely takes six or seven years, whereas 30 or 40 years ago, students could graduate from a PhD program in just 3 or 4 years. The University of California, Tijuana (UCT) hired a consultancy firm to help them identify the reasons for the prolonged PhD duration. The consultants found the culprit: Data outliers.

Richard ("Dick") Tator is a Professor for Complementary and Alternative Science (CAS) at UCT and explains the findings.

“If a PhD student conducts an experiment with eight mice and five respond one way, but three mice the opposite way, most students then have to conduct additional experiments with many more mice to obtain a definitive, statistically significant result. This can prolong the duration of a PhD by months or even years.”

Professor Tator has now come up with a very innovative program to address this problem. He hands out “coupons” to his students which allow them to simply erase any data points which are interfering with the statistical significance of the results or which do not conform with the anticipated findings.

Lay Zee is a student in Professor Tator’s laboratory and is a big fan of the new system. “Dick is just a wonderful mentor. He basically allows every graduate student to earn up to three coupons a year, and each coupon is good for up to two years. So you do not have to use them all up at once and you can keep them in stock for a future data point that does not support your hypothesis.”

Lay says that Professor Tator gives out one “erase undesirable data coupon” for performing three chores, such as walking his dog, picking up Professor Tator’s laundry and baby-sitting his children. Lay feels that implementing “erase undesirable data coupons” is a win-win situation for everyone.

“I get to graduate sooner and we get to publish our results faster. Some of my friends in other programs are going to be stuck in their PhD program for another two or three years, performing mundane experiments, just to ensure that they will have statistically valid results, whereas I am already receiving job offers.”

Tator’s colleagues are also impressed with his innovative approach. Knott Eggsist is a professor of philosophy and UCT and admits that he is a bit envious.

“Professors in the humanities also have dogs that need to be walked and our students are also stuck in a PhD program for a very long time, sometimes as long as 8 or 9 years. We would love to have something similar to Dick’s coupons, but our problem is that we do not really have any actual data in the humanities.”

“How do you erase a data point that never even existed?”, Eggsist asks. After a brief pause, his eyes light up and he then nods vigorously, “Now that would be a great dissertation topic!”

Eggsist then talks about an equally innovative program that his department might implement.

“We are considering an entirely different approach in the philosophy department. We have determined that PhD in philosophy is prolonged unnecessarily because one has to deal with all the complex and long-winded thoughts of German philosophers. We will therefore start using an ‘Erase a German philosopher coupon’. With each coupon, our students will be able to write their dissertation and pretend that for example Hegel, Kant or Nietzsche or any other German philosopher of their choosing never existed and simply ignore all their writings.”

Study Reveals That Cold-Hearted People May Have A Slightly Higher Cardiac Temperature

NOVEMBER 5, 2012 - LOS ANGELES, California - A sensational new study was presented at the   Annual Conference of the American Society for Innovative Cardiologists. In a study conducted by the cardiologist Dr. Baskin at the Klondike Bar University, fifty-two participants were enrolled for an evaluation of their cardiac temperature. 

Each study participant was individually taken to an examination room in the university hospital and given a Nutella sandwich. Before the participants were able to eat the sandwich, they were asked to walk across a hallway to sign a document in the conference room. Unbeknownst to the study participants, a five year old child was waiting in the hallway for each of the study participants. Upon encountering each participant, the child began crying and demanded to have a bite of the Nutella sandwich. Study participants who gave the child either the whole sandwich or part of it were classified as warm-hearted. On the other hand, participants who ignored the child were considered cold-hearted. Based on these interactions, 39 of the fifty-two participants were cold-hearted while 11 participants showed signs of warm-heartedness. Two subjects had to be excluded  from the study because the child tripped them and removed the Nutella sandwich from the participants before the research team could ascertain whether or not the participants would voluntarily share the sandwich.

Following this initial portion of the study, the participants then underwent a cardiac catheterization performed by Dr. Robbins, another lead investigator in the research team. In this procedure, a catheter containing a temperature probe was advanced via the femoral artery into the aorta and then the left chamber of the heart. Measurements of the actual heart temperature were conducted in at least five different areas of the heart. 

To the surprise of the researchers, the average temperature of the heart in the cold-hearted participant group was slightly higher (37.1 degrees Celsius) than the temperature in the warm-hearted group (36.9 degrees Celsius), although this difference was not statistically significant. At a press conference, Dr. Robbins stated that these findings may represent a major paradigm shift in how the expressions "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" are used:

"Our data suggest that there is actually a trend for so-called 'warm-hearted' people to have a lower heart temperature. Even though this is not yet statistically significant, we believe that by increasing the number of study participants, we may soon be able to demonstrate that the 'warm-hearted' people need to be re-classified as 'cold-hearted'. This represents a semantic paradigm shift." 

Some novelists have expressed concerns about these findings and vowed to continue using the  terms "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" in the conventional sense, even if the scientific data contradicts this usage.

Goethe's Blog: Coffee Shop

I am in a coffee shop.

Sipping Lipton tea, because I do not have enough money for a cappuccino.

And because I can get free hot water refills without having to buy more teabags.

As long as I keep on sipping my tea, they cannot kick me out and I get to use their free Wi-fi.

I think I have hit rock bottom.

I have $ 370,000 in student loans – not a big surprise after getting a B.A. in philosophy, attending four years of medical school, two years of law school and even a Master of Divinity.

But no real job. Probably because I have never applied for a full-time job.

I get by, teaching at community colleges as an adjunct professor and tutoring some lazy high school students who are not very bright but happen to have rich parents. This is enough to pay my rent, but I do not have health insurance and I cannot defer my loan payments any longer.

I know that I am smarter than all the other professors and students, and I do not care that they do not recognize my brilliance. The fact that they think I am a loser is the best proof for my superiority. The unrecognized genius. 

The sad thing is that I am so smart that I know I am ignorant. They are so ignorant that they think they are smart. I like these two sentences. Maybe one day I will turn them into an aphorism.

The lady at the counter is glaring at me. I do not care. 

I keep on sipping my homeopathic Lipton tea. I think it is my sixth hot water refill, all from one teabag. If homeopathy works, than the tea buzz should get stronger with every refill. No buzz yet, but I probably just need to dilute it further. 

I think I know why I am so lazy. I am not afraid. Once I realized that I was smarter than every other person, I lost both - my ambition and my conscience.

As I am going through my email on my laptop, I see one email that does excite me. it bears the symbol of the elite hackers. Hacking into databases, uncovering secrets that nobody else has access to, this sounds like something I want to devote myself to. True knowledge, occult knowledge. I might make some money, too.

 All I need to do is to click on this link and I will join the ranks of the greatest hackers that have ever lived on this planet.  

I think I am going to be a hacker.

Image via Wikimedia: Painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein - Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787 

Phflogging

The word "blog" is a portmanteau derived from "web" and "log", because the earliest "blogs" were simply online diaries or online logs. I thought that it might be fun to create fictional blogs for famous literary or philosophical figures that are living in the present and sharing their personal thoughts with the world in the form of blog posts. I therefore proudly coined the portmanteau "flog", derived from "fictional" and "blog", but the “f” could represent a number of other f-words, such as "frustration", “funny” or “fake”. The words "flog" and “flogging” would also evoke images of literary characters being flogged by the challenges of contemporary life, i.e. imagine Goethe struggling with the fact that he has just written down a brilliant poem, but for some unfathomable reason, Windows Vista has crashed, his USB flash drive has become unreadable and the poem is lost forever. 

I googled the term "flog", just to make sure that it was truly unique and novel, but Wikipedia revealed that the word has already been taken. In digispeak, “flog” is used in a whole host of contexts, including “fictional blog”, “food blog”, “fake blog”. I then decided to coin a new portmanteau (I only recently learned what this word means, so I have the urge to keep on using it) – “phlog”, derived from “philosophical blog”. It turns out that “phlog” is already in use, apparently for a blog written with a Gopher protocol. I don’t really understand what that means, but I know that I cannot use it.

I have finally come up with a truly original portmanteau: “Phflog” – philosophical fictional blog. It is pronounced /fflɒɡ/ and the only way to distinguish it from just plain old “flog” is that “phflog” has a prolonged “f” sound in the beginning. I will soon start with some phflog-posts, probably some for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and for Friedrich Nietzsche, both of them living in the present day USA. The phflogs will contain fragments of their writings or quotes from their books, intermingled with some present day events. This is a bit of an experiment and I would like to see where it goes.

Sir, You Are Mental!

Monroe County Insane Asylum

I received a phone call this morning. The caller ID showed "Private Caller", so I could not discern who it was, but on a whim I picked up the phone. The person on the other line said "Asalamualaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatu". I responded with my salam, but I started feeling uneasy. The full, prolonged salam greeting including the "warahmutallahi wa barakatu" instead of just the more common brief "Asalamualaykum" ( or the even shorter IndoPak "Slamalaykum") has generally been a poor prognostic sign. It evokes images of bearded men, sermons, lectures and pronouncements about hell-fire. It usually also indicates that I am about to begin an unpleasant or boring conversation. 

The man on the other line then started speaking in Urdu and told me how this day would change my life. He also kept on mentioning AT&T, which I found rather distracting, since I do not associate this multimedia conglomerate with life-changing events. I figured that it was some sort of a scam or a telemarketer trying to get me to switch my telephone service and I pretended that I did not understand the Urdu. In a thick IndoPak accent, he then said "No problem!" I envisioned a head-bob with the "No problem!", then I heard a few clicks, some voices whispering to each other, and strangely enough, David Bowie's "Absolute Beginners" playing in the background. 

If it hadn't been for David Bowie, I would have probably hung up, but the combination of AT&T, David Bowie and conspiratorial whispers was just too tantalizing. Then another voice came on the line, speaking English with an equally thick IndoPak accent. He used the more universal and secular "Good morning, Sir!" greeting and introduced himself as "Ashok Verma". He then proceeded to say that I was extremely lucky, because the AT&T lottery had chosen me to receive $40,000.

From there on, the conversation went downhill.

"Why have I won $40,000?", I wanted to know.

"That is not your problem, Sir. This is the AT&T lottery and every day we pick one person to win $40,000. You are the lucky one today."

"I never entered a contest. How can I win money?", I asked.

"Don't worry about this, Sir. Just give us your account number and we will transfer the money into your account."

Obviously, this phone call had nothing to do with AT&T, which does not run a lottery. At first I thought it was a prank call, but this request for my bank info was quite specific. This was probably just the plain old 419-scam (named after section 419 in the Nigerian legal code), like the ones we normally find in emails. These 419-emails ask to give our account number so that large amounts of money can be transferred into them from obscure, jilted politicians, claiming that they are based in Nigeria or other West African countries. Unsuspecting (and greedy) folks occasionally fall for this and hand out their bank information, but instead of receiving millions of dollars from West Africa, they see money disappearing from their own bank account. I know about the email scams, but this was my first 419-phone call.  

The background song "Absolute Beginners" had ended and now I heard some Bollywood music song playing, while the person on the other line was patiently waiting for my account details. I decided to play my own game and said:

"I work with the Naperville police fraud detection unit and I am supposed to report any fraud attempt to them. Can you please give me your exact name, number and address so I can report you?"

I do not think that the small town of Naperville has a fraud detection unit, but I figured this small lie was not as outrageous as my request for the caller's phone number and address.

Suddenly the background music was turned off.

"What you say?", he asked, with an even heavier IndoPak accent and some anxiety.

I calmly repeated my request.

Then he became very agitated and started yelling:

"Sir, you are mental! I am giving you money and you bring the police into this!"

I told him that we routinely receive calls like this and in our town, we have been told by the police to immediately contact the fraud detection unit so they can start the investigation. 

He first yelled at me and said "You do not need a police station, you need to go to a mental hospital. You are saying no to free money. Sir, you are mental!"

Then someone in the background yelled something and the line went dead.

   

Lady Gaga's Brother May Convert to Islam

OCTOBER 19, 2012 GOTHAM CITY, NY - Joey Germanotta is not as famous as his older sister Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who is also known as "Lady Gaga". This could change in light of Joey's recent press conference in the Gotham City Public Library. In a meeting room packed with 29 tweeters, 14 bloggers and one journalist, Joey announced that he was considering a conversion to Islam. While most of his audience stared at him with obvious shock and incredulity, the first tweets regarding the announcement were already being transmitted to the outside world, together with the new Twitter hashtags #joeymuslim and #ladygagabrotherislam.

Lady Gaga in Japan
via Wikimedia / Giorgio Zeniquel 

One blogger immediately asked: "What is it that attracted you to the Muslim faith? Have you met Muslims and read books about Islam?" Joey responded by saying, "I do not really know any Muslims and haven't read any books, but I kind of know that Muslim men get to boss around women and blow up stuff, which sounds pretty cool!"

When Joey was asked whether his decision had anything to do with Lady Gaga, he screamed, "This is my press conference and this has nothing to do with Stef! I hated growing up as her little brother, because she always wanted to be the center of the attention. She got to be in all the high school musicals and wear those great costumes. I also wanted to be in the musicals but nobody cared about me. It used to be all about Stef, Stef, Stef! But this will change now, and my decisions have nothing to do with her." In closing, Joey said that he had not decided if and when he would eventually become Muslim, but he would hold another press conference once he had made up his mind. He also encouraged everybody to follow him on Twitter @joeykingoftheworld.

In a rare display of harmony, two rival Muslim organizations COCA (Central Organization of Compassion in America) and COLA (Central Organization of Light in America) issued a joint statement following Joey's press conference:

 "We hope that Joey will soon join the Muslim faith and we see this as a reward for the great work that our organizations have done during the past years. We realize that becoming part of our faith is enough of an incentive, but Joey and other people should know that new celebrity converts receive a free iPad 2, preloaded with Muslim apps such as iHumility. We would also like to use this opportunity to remind Muslims that they need to increase their donations to our organizations in order to support our tireless efforts." 

Joey's announcement also elicited very critical comments. An organization of conservative American fathers called "Don't Ask, Don't Sin" (DADS) issued the following statement: 

"It is the culture of feminism, Marxism, fascism, homosexuality and Darwinism that is propagated by our liberal elites which makes victims like Joey convert to Islam. If Joey were able to assert his manhood in our own culture, we would not lose him to Shariah-wielding Islamists."

An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Huffington Post 

Four Year Old Boy Is Suspended From Pre-School For Plagiarism

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012 CHICAGO, IL – The Wisdom Truth Fortitude (WTF) Academy is the nation’s best elite pre-school. For an annual tuition of $57,000, three-year old child prodigies can enroll in the WTF Academy if they can pass a highly competitive entrance examination. When the WTF students graduate two years later, most of them have acquired the cognitive maturity that is normally found in middle school students. WTF Academy proudly advertises that 87% of its graduates ultimately end up going to an Ivy League college, and over half of these are accepted into these colleges before they become teenagers. This past week WTF Academy made headlines when it suspended the four-year old student Axel Foley for plagiarism.

Principal Edward Rooney made the decision after a plagiarism committee reviewed Axel’s work during the preceding year. The committee found numerous examples of misconduct, including recycling parts of an essay he had written when he was three years old and fabricating quotes of fellow students when he covered a bake sale for the pre-school newspaper. However, the most blatant case of Axel’s plagiarism was identified by his “Introduction to Postmodern Analysis” class teacher Ms. Derrida, who was grading a short story that Axel wrote. Ms. Derrida noticed that Axel used the phrase "You are made out of cardboard boxes, you must have a story to tell." Ms. Derrida knew that she had heard this phrase before, but could not remember where. “When I showed our standard anti-plagiarism video ‘Plagiarism in the Elementary Classroom’ to the incoming class of students, I finally realized what Axel had done”, Ms. Derrida explained. Apparently, Axel used the last line of that video for his short story. “Plagiarizing an anti-plagiarism video is one of the most egregious crimes that one can imagine”, Mr. Rooney stated at a press conference, “this is why we decided to immediately suspend Axel from WTF.”

Plagiarism has received a lot of press recently in light of the Jonah Lehrer controversy, the Harvard cheating ring and the fact that the German defense minister Guttenberg had to resign because large portions of his doctoral thesis were plagiarized. After Axel’s suspension and these other scandals, elite pre-schools all over the country are currently assembling plagiarism committees to review the work of the pre-schoolers. When we asked Axel for a comment, he responded with the words “If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research.” 

How To Suck At Your Religion

Copyright © 2012 Matthew Inman.

A  really interesting comic entitled "How To Suck At Your Religion" can be found on "The Oatmeal" and forces you to ask yourself questions such as:

‎"Do you validate your beliefs by constantly trying to convince others to believe the same thing?"

‎"Do you mock other religions for believing crazy things.....?" 

Read more here: