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I’ve added a few new entries on the Math humor page, a process I shall be continuing throughout the week.  Hope you enjoy.

I was attacked by winter the other day.

Last week it was exceedingly (or, perhaps more meteorologically appropriate, bitterly) cold in South Dakota. Despite having January temperatures in the high fifties, last week winter reasserted its existence, plummeting the state into frigid temperatures, freezing winds, and a few days’ worth of white, powdery snow.

However, the temperature has since risen back to the forties and fifties, with bright blue skies and only patches of snow remaining. Indeed, so sublimely perfect was the weather, that as I was out driving about town to complete my weekend errands, the sunroof beckoned to open. I reached down and pushed the button to withdraw the sunroof and feel the warmth of the sun and the brisk chill of the winter air.

That’s when things went bad.

A horrible thing dropped in through my sunroof, enveloping me in a mass of cold. Not just cold, but a creeping, icy, wet cold. It froze my head and immediately slid slick icy wet tentacles down my neck and inside my shirt, causing me to gasp uncontrollably in much the same fashion as a doctor’s freshly refrigerated stethoscope placed on patient’s chest does. Frigid fingers of cold manhandled my arms, rattled my spine, slid down my back and into my britches. The horrible realization that my car had just been invaded by an unseen frostbite-inducing multi-tentacled demonic incarnation of winter was nothing compared to the subsequent realization that this demon’s appendages were making a beeline for my family jewels.

At this point, I screamed like a girl.

I also swerved erratically a few times before pulling off the road. I unsnapped my seatbelt, and erupted from my car in a frantic attempt to wrestle the thing off of me and save my genitals from becoming ice cubes. Yet no sooner than I was out of the car did the WinterThing cease its attack and disappear, leaving me cold, damp and confused, standing in a small puddle of water.

In horror, I glanced back at my car before it call became clear…

Before opening your sunroof, do be sure to remove all the snow from the top of your car.

My waking ritual each morning is to stumble my way to the kitchen, sleepily pour myslef a bowl of Raison Bran Crunch, and blurrily proceed to read my morning paper, the Rapid City Journal, partly to stay abreast of local, national, and international news, but mostly because Journal articles are frequently, if unintentionally, amusing. For example, the other day there was an article in the Journal with the following headline:

Sex-education bill stays in the grave

I had no idea necrophilia was even in the standard sex-ed curriculum.

As titles go, of course, it could have been worse.  Had it been my story, for example, I would have gone with Sex education bill is put to bed, which might go some way to explaining why I am not a reporter. (Well, that along with my complete disregard for “facts.”)

The article goes on to describe how the bill arose as a response to “requests from parents and children on instruction in abstinence.” I dunno, but it seems like abstinence, by its very definition, is probably the one thing on earth that requires no instruction to do properly:

Student: Do I have to…?

Teacher: No.

Student: Well, should the boy…?

Teacher: No.

Student: Does the girl…?

Teacher: No.

Student: What about…?

Teacher: No.

Student: You mean…?

Teacher: No.

Student: No?

Teacher: No.

I’m experimenting with Wordpress, so the site is gonna look a little funny and act a little punchy for a bit.

Deal with it.

Today was the perfect sort of day for staying inside and reading a book, in that the outside temperature was so cold as to kill you instantly. (Well, kill me anyway. I’m a total wuss.) I’ve borrowed a copy of A random walk in science from my colleague Don, a rather well-known collection of humorous anecdotes and satirical papers aimed at the amusement of math-and-science types. (The book, not Don.*)

* Although Don himself contains quite a collection of humorous anecdotes aimed at math-and-sciences types, too.

Not only does the book contain a more complete version of Joel Cohen’s Perjorative calculus, one of my favorite pieces of (il)logical wordplay, but today I found a clever article by Paul Dunmore called On the uses of fallacy, which begins thus:

In the last hundred years or so, mathematics has undergone a tremendous growth in size and complexity and subtlety. This growth has given rise to a demand for more flexible methods of proving theorems than the laborious, difficult, pedantic, “rigorous” methods previously in favor. This demand has been met by what is now a well-developed branch of mathematics known as Generalized Logic. I won’t develop the theory of Generalized Logic in detail, but I must introduce some necessary terms. In Classical Logic, a Theorem consists of a True Statement for which there exists a Classical Proof. In Generalized Logic, we relax both of these restrictions…

Damn, that’s funny.

You can read the rest here, if you’d like.