Category: Funny Ha Ha

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Conference Spam

Amusing, in a twisted an irritating sort of way.
Who’s on first:

Dear scholars:
Here is an invitation letter from 6th International Conference on Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM’09) which will be held in Xiamen in June next year. We hope you can submit your new papers and exchange new ideas with us. There is a call for letter in attachment. And if you’re interested in,please login our conference website: http://sm2.xmu.edu.cn/icsssm09/index.htm.
Looking forward to your participation!
ICSSSM09 COMMITTEE
—
Thank you again for your contribution.
Sincerely,
icsssm09 Organizing Committee
Email:

What’s on second:

Please remove me from your email list.
dabacon (at) cs.washington.edu
– Hide quoted text –
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 1:12 AM, icsssm09 wrote:
> Dear scholars:
>
> Here is an invitation letter from 6th International Conference on
> Service Systems and Service Management(ICSSSM’09) which will be held in
> Xiamen in June next year. We hope you can submit your new papers and
> exchange new ideas with us. There is a call for letter in attachment. And if
> you’re interested in,please login our conference website:
> http://sm2.xmu.edu.cn/icsssm09/index.htm.
>
> Looking forward to your participation!
>
>
> ICSSSM09 COMMITTEE
>
> —
> Thank you again for your contribution.
> Sincerely,
> icsssm09 Organizing Committee
> Email:
>

I don’t know’s on third:

ICSSSM09
Dear Author(s):
Thank you for submitting your paper to ICSSSM2009!
We are sorry to notify you that the submitting method has changed
from sending e-mail to this mailbox to login of the conference website
http://one-stop1.baocard.com/icsssm09/en_index.php .And this mailbox
is invalid now. So if you have already submitted your paper, please
make sure that you will re-submit on the website. Otherwise, the paper
which sent into this mailbox will not be collected for the meeting.
And icsssm09 Organizing Committee would not be responsible for it.
Sorry for bringing these troubles to you.
And thank you again for supporting us!
ICSSSM09 Organizating Committee
—
Thank you again for your contribution.
Sincerely,
icsssm09 Organizing Committee
Email:

Posted on

Large Earth Collider

Oh noes: Scientists Warn Large Earth Collider May Destroy Earth:

BATAVIA, IL–In October, Fermilab scientists joined a growing number of physicists around the world in warning that the Very Large Earth Collider–a $117 billion electromagnetic particle accelerator built to study astronomical phenomena by colliding Earth into various heavenly bodies–could potentially destroy Earth when it sends the planet careening headlong into Mars, Jupiter, or even the sun.
…
Physicists at CERN and Brookhaven National Laboratory, who underwrote the VLEC’s construction with donations from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, agree that there are “some troubling variables” whenever attempting to launch Earth through the vacuum of space into a massive body of solid matter. Yet, they insist, the academic benefits of a planetary collision outweigh any risk of annihilating the Earth

Damn, and I’d just drawn up plans for the Incredibly Large Sun Collider (we can get ahold of the sun, so the joke goes, by traveling there at night.)

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Other NSF News…Of Funny Kind

Melody points me to this gem of an advisory from the NSF:

In the event of a natural or anthropogenic disaster that interferes with an organization’s ability to meet a proposal submission deadline, NSF has developed the following guidelines for use by impacted organizations.  These guidelines will take the place of the previous NSF practice of posting notices to the NSF website regarding each specific event.
Flexibility in meeting announced deadline dates because of a natural or anthropogenic disasters may be granted with the prior approval of the cognizant NSF Program Officer. Proposers should contact the cognizant NSF Program Officer in the Division/Office to which they intend to submit their proposal and request authorization to submit a “late proposal.” Such contact should be via e-mail (or telephone, if e-mail is unavailable). Proposers should then follow the written or verbal guidance provided by the cognizant NSF Program Officer. Generally, NSF permits extension of the deadline by 5 business days. The Foundation, however, will work with each impacted organization on a case-by-case basis to address their specific issue(s). Proposers should be aware that all applications submitted after the submission deadline must be submitted through FastLane since Grants.gov does not accept proposals after the deadline.

Boldface mine. Yeah, read that again: you can get an extension for a natural disaster with prior approval. “Dude, Dr. Program Manager, I know there is going to be an earthquake on the day I have to submit, so could I please have an extension?”

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Picking on the Quantum Physicists

From this Sunday’s New York Times in an article entitled Wall Street, R.I.P.:

In search of ever-higher returns — and larger yachts, faster cars and pricier art collections for their top executives — Wall Street firms bulked up their trading desks and hired pointy-headed quantum physicists to develop foolproof programs.

Quantum physicists? Come on media get it right. I’m pretty sure those were string theorists who ruined America 😉
Personally I think we should use the association of Ph.D. physicists as the cause of the Wall Street mess to lobby for higher science funding. “Sure you could cut science funding, but then all those Ph.D.s are going to end up on Wall Street and the next thing you know everyone will be on the street stuffing newspaper in their shoes to keep warm.”

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Got NSF?

I really need to create a category for blog posts for things which Google’s products do which amuse me. Today in reading an email about the National Science Foundation:
Many a faculty member’s got NSF, I guess, and are damn sick or writing grants to continue having NSF.