Monday, February 28, 2011

Funny Sports Quotes

"You guys line up alphabetically by height."
  - Bill Peterson, a Florida State football coach


"You guys pair up in groups of three, then line up in a circle."
  - Bill Peterson, a Florida State football coach


"I play football.  I'm not trying to be a professor.  The tests don't seem to make sense to me, measuring your brain on stuff I haven't been through in school."   -Clemson recruit Ray Forsythe, who was ineligible as a freshman
because of academic requirements

"Why would anyone expect him to come out smarter?  He went to
prison for three years, not Princeton."   -Boxing promoter Dan Duva on Mike Tyson hooking up again with promoter Don King


"That's so when I forget how to spell my name, I can still find my #%@# clothes."  - Stu Grimson, Chicago Blackhawks left wing, explaining why he
keeps a color photo of himself above his locker

"I can't really remember the names of the clubs that we went to."   - Shaquille O'Neal on whether he had visited the Parthenon  during his visit to Greece

"I'm going to graduate on time, no matter how long it takes."   -Senior basketball player at the University of Pittsburgh

"Nobody in football should be called a genius.  A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein."  - Football commentator and former player Joe Theismann

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Important Discovery

BACKGROUND:

There's this nutball who digs things out of his backyard and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian, labelingthem with scientific names, insisting that they are actual archaeological finds. The letter below as written by one of
the Smithsonian curators after the guy sent in a Barbie dollhead, claiming it was a human fossil.

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled"211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post. Hominid skull."

We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination andwe regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that itrepresents "conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Hennepin County two million years ago." Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be the"Malibu Barbie".

It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feelthat there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to it's modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliestidentified proto-hominids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the "skull" is more consistent with
the common domesticated dog than it is with the "ravenous man-eating
Pliocene clams" you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.
This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses
you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the
evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it.

Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon dating is likely to produce wildly inaccurate results.

Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation's Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the scientific name "Australopithecus spiff-arino."Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin.

However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the specimens you have previously submitted tothe Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discoveredin your back yard. We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's
capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interestedin hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the"trans-positating fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix"that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recentlydiscovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm SearsCraftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Tom Snooselfox
Curator, Antiquities

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Kids aren't so dumb

Bill and Marla had a small apartment in the city. and they decided that the only way to pull off a Sunday afternoon quickie with their ten-year-old son in the apartment was to send him out on the balcony and order him to report on all the neighborhood activities. To a young boy, they thought, spying would be a lot of fun and would distract him for an hour or so.

The boy began his commentary as his parents put their plan into operation. "There's a car being towed from the parking lot," he said. "An ambulance just drove by."  A few moments passed.  "Looks like the Andersons have company," he called out, "Matt's riding a new bike and the Coopers are having sex."

Mom and Dad shot up in bed.  "How do you know that?" the startled father asked.

"Their kid is standing out on the balcony too," his son replied.