Mathematics

My two favorite math jokes:

A mathematician walks into a bar and asks for ten times the normal number of drinks anyone else has. “Wow,” says the barkeep, “That’s an order of magnitude.”
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“What do you do with that math degree?” “I use it to park my SUV. You see, if I roll up the windows, then the SUV is a closed and bounded subset of Euclidean space and therefore compact.”

Serious business of bed linens

Sitting in a train for over an hour at least gives me an opportunity to look thoroughly through all the college-related retail mail I received over the past week. While contemplating my options regarding the bed linens, the following advertising line caught my attention:

“In previous years, some students always showed up with their sheets that did not fit the beds on campus. Parents were frustrated, and some students were left literally “short-sheeted” and unable to properly make their beds. This is now how we want your student’s first nights at college to be remembered. “

Right now I am on verge of ordering the over-priced “Value Pak” (it includes even an extra-long egg crate pad and a bedside buddy!) because a frustration from an improperly made bed is something I certainly don’t want to carry in my memories and give me shivers whenever I think of my first college endeavors.

Free planes available in Viet Nam

Funny. A plane belonging to a company no one has ever heard of landed on Hanoi last year and no one has expressed interest in it since. I would take it, just to save it from being scrapped, however that would make me a hypocrite after bashing the gas-thirsty SUV owners and suggesting them to switch to something smaller.

Congress to nationalize American oil industry?

Not yet, but some are apparently thinking about it. That should really solve the energy problems!

At another point, Ms. Waters [Democratic Congresswoman from California] brazenly suggested that perhaps the American oil industry should be nationalized, acknowledging that it was an “extreme step” but one that might be necessary if outsize profits and exorbitant gasoline prices continued.