For everyone that walks up to me and asks "Did you read my email?", the answer is no.

Dear My-Dental-Office,

I know that you think about teeth 24 hours a day. I know that any redness or swelling is the death knell of gingivitis. I know you make your money on extra services. But can I please be clear: I do not care if I have "celebrity white teeeth" or not. Please stop trying to bring me into your world. I don't want my teeth whitened.

Sincerely, Dr. Mr.-off-white-teeth

Here is an awesome link to the CERN particle collider's live webcam. Finally some public oversight of those renegade academics who are willing to risk the public safety in the search for their "God" particle. Click here.

While doing a number of fun things in Los Angeles this weekend: visiting the misnamed La Brea Tar Pits, visiting the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball museum and hanging out in Westwood, I came across this funny sign outside a Jews for Jesus office.

The E"st. 32 A.D. (give or take) line cracks me up!

I'm going to have a new Angus Chipolte BBQ Bacon burger from McDonald's and wash it down with a diet Berries and Cream Dr. Pepper. If I need a pick me up later I think I'll have an Orange Banana Mango Vivanno from Starbucks. Thank you International Flavors and Fragrances!

I found this awesome infographic attached to the boomerang I bought in Sydney last week. What a great way to easily let everyone in the world know how to throw and catch a boomerang! Simply dress up like an aborigine, carefully measure the angle of throw, point toward the wallaroo that you are pretending to kill (but intend on missing), then catch the boomerang on return like a pancake. Viola!

What this looks like for me: Simply dress up like a fool American. Go to a park next to the train station. Throw the boomerang toward the koala park. Run to the other end of the field. Pick up the boomerang. Turn around. Repeat.

While in Sydney last week, we stopped in a park to practice hunting wallaroos with our authentic hand painted boomerangs. We did not kill any wallaroos - in fact we were hard pressed to get the boomerang to return to us - except me - I did it once. The park had a very strict policy of no glass as you can see by this sign. But the quotation marks remind us that everyone knows that when they say "glass" they really mean ... (tourists? Americans? transparent things?)

From a talk I attended yesterday.
Q. How do marketers make technology more appealing to women?

A. "Shrink it and pink it!"

TurboTax should never be allowed to show a figure like this one. It's enough to cause people to have a heart attack. I know I'm not done entering information, but come on!

From my wife:

"You are just like those cheesy hotels on trip advisor"

In reference to the fact that I was the first one to rate me on RateMyProfessors.com (9/30/2005 entry) and that many hotels are clearly trying to defend themselves by creating fake happy customers on trip advisor. In my defense I don't maintain a wikipedia page on myself.

I have found myself looking for this cartoon repeatedly over the years. It is from Matt Groening's "School is Hell" book and it shows a list of nine different types of professors. My favorite is The-Single-Theory-To-Explain-Everything-Maniac. I often feel like that guy.

The Chief Household Officer reports that the reinforcements have arrived. It is not clear whether or not this is a fresh recruit or a seasoned "refurbished" veteran. It is enough to say that this is the turning point in the battle for progress.

The home espresso machine has gone down! We had to call in reinforcements. All of our coffee gear mustered on the table ready for duty. We have been relying primarily on French press and drip these last few days (at home - at work all is quiet on the front).

The remarkably anti-Murphy's law bit of intelligence that has arrived from the Chief Household Officer is that the two year extended warranty ran out two days after the machine broke. So by the grace of God, we are spared several hundred dollars in coffee related costs. It's hard to recognize the grace of God in your life when it comes in the form of disasters that you never see.

If you haven't seen the Microsoft Surface demo it's pretty exciting. It is like watching minority report with the promise of an actual product. The demo is here.

But then you can watch a parody of it too. It deflates the excitement quite a bit, but is hilarious. The parody is here.

Sweet Pac-Man skull from here.

Recently heard in the Patterson household:

"Can you guys please stop fighting with your dinosaurs and just eat them?"

A few of my students participated in a flash mob on campus this week. It was inspired by the movie "300". Think many people spontaneously emulating a turtle with umbrellas and then attacking pedestrians. The youtube video is a little long, but fun. Notice the anteater on the pavement.

Click on the image on the left for the link to youtube.

Pre-cookie monster eats a computer. Very funny if you are a geek. I am. It is.

Click on the image to watch the YouTube movie.

Here is a really funny video from some Fox comedy show which plays off of Steve Job's tendency to dramatize his products, the Apple "i" line of stuff, and the rhetoric around the current Gulf War. Given the state of copyright online it's bound to be taken down quickly.

I'm at the American Association for Artificial Intelligence Spring Symposium 2007. It's a low-key conference. I overheard the following funny quote in the hall as someone was looking for their workshop.

"Excuse me, are you looking for common sense?"

Only in Seattle does one hour of espresso machine maintenance require an email to the entire academic community. I feel their pain.

I would have gotten in so much trouble if I had worn these on my uniform. I did get in so much trouble for far less than these.

Here is a great YouTube video which pokes fun at the rhetoric around Dr. Richard Dawkins recent media blitz to promote his book, "The God Delusion"

Dr. Dawkins is an evangelical atheist.

Click on the image on the left to watch/listen.

"I'm sorry ma'am he's going to be an engineer." Click on the image on the left to play the Dilbert clip. BTW, since when is Dilbert an animated cartoon?

This is a *great* patent. You may no longer sport a comb-over without paying a licensing fee to Frank J. Smith and Donald J. Smith of Orlando, Florida. See the full patent by clicking on the image on the left. The rush is on to patent the mullet, the spike, the caeser and the florence henderson.

Method of concealing partial baldness

"Patent number: 4022227
Filing date: Dec 23, 1975
Issue date: May 10, 1977
Abstract: method of styling hair to cover partial baldness using only the hair on a person's head. The hair styling requires dividing a person's hair into three sections and carefully folding one section over another."

From: Planned Parenthood

"More recently, vegetable seedpods, plugs of grass, and crushed roots were used in various parts of Africa. Wads of seaweed, moss, and bamboo were used in Japan, China, and the South Sea Islands."

Congratulations Nate!

The Chinese seem to have evolved past Chinese checkers. In a really random YouTube video, click on the image on the left to see it, you can see the fun that Chinese families are having today! This game apparently must be played next to a dangerous precipice or the incentive to win is gone.

There is "some" back story on this blog, but it isn't really enough to explain what the heck is going on with "Smack the Lion"

Thank you Wyndham Midtown Atlanta for introducing me to the shampooing experience that is "Cedarwood and Spanish Borage Oil". I feel like I'm shampoo'ing in the middle of the Alamo on a really bad day. But why let a bad day at the Alamo mean you can't have *great* hair.

So Honda made a funny set of commercials for the Element which a friend of mine had a key role in designing (the car, not the commercials). He sent me a link. The funniest one is the crab one.

This viral marketing thing is sort of wierd. It seems strange to be sending out news about commercials, but I guess if it's funny then good for Honda for making some decent content.

Update 1: I guess this was so popular that they had to take it further. Now all of the commercials have been rolled up into a game that you play. Now you drive your Honda Element around to different locations on an island where the dialogue from the commercials is played. It's elaborate, but still funny. Find the crab on the lower left of the island to get a sense for what the original commerical was like.

Update 2: Clearly this has gotten far out of hand. Gil, the crab from the Honda commercial, now has his own myspace page. He has fans who are singing songs to get Honda to make a new commercial about him (see here.) Again, this is really weird to be talking about. It's a viral ad campaign. The myspace page, and probably even the song are likely plants from Honda. The whole thing could be a completely fake grassroots campaign to bring Gil back for another commercial (a process called Astroturfing). But I guess, who cares. It's funny. Gil has a new commercial out as a result. Click on the image on the left to YouTube it.

This comic just cracks me up. It's goth, but it's not. It's from a comic strip called "The Perry Bible Fellowship" which frequently has humor which is more crude than funny, but there are some gems in there.

This is an ancient (in Internet time), but very funny series of commercials about a hypothetical car add-on available only at the Suburban Auto Group outside of Portland, Oregon called the Trunk Monkey. I think they get funnier as they go on. But it's also good that they quit while they were ahead. Below I present the complete set as I know it:

The original links went down, so here are the YouTube links:
1:Road Rage
2:Hoodlums
3:Bribe
4:Theft
5:Pediatrics
6:Chaperone

Thanks Nate!

This commercial for "Fresh Up" soda cracks me up. At first, as you are watching it, it's like every other commercial for anything, but by the end they play on the ad formula to absurdity. Click on the image on the left to watch it and see what I mean.